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Goodbye Jesus

Do You Exist?


oddbird1963

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We have never really nailed down for certain whether we actually exist. Apparently there is some doubt. Who would have known?

 

One request. Would the person who is dreaming me please dream me better looking, richer and with better social skill?

 

thank you

 

Now please discuss.

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Ahhh, a good philosophical discussion. It's too late for me to think this deeply right now though. What philosopher was this? Or have there been mulitiple philosophies on this matter. I will check in tomorrow to see how this is going and I'll do some homework.

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Since I'm pretty good at lucid dreaming, i.e. knowing when I'm dreaming, would the products of my dream also know they're in a dream?

Does god dream he's in high school class in his underwear?

What kind of shit (sorry four letter word police) stuff was god sniffin' during my bad trips?

Inquiring minds, and me, want to know.

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Since I'm pretty good at lucid dreaming...

Are you seriously? I've been trying for YEARS without success! I even bought The World Of Lucid Dreaming to help me out....still no success! I freaking HATE it! I just want to LD so bad! Maybe I'm trying too hard.... :shrug:

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Depends on what you mean by the word "I"

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Nonexistent people will have some difficulty taking this poll and posting a response.

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What gets really spooky is when you consider the nature of matter, of atoms, and subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, neutrons, gluons, quarks , neutrinos etc. Essentially, all these tiny particles that make up matter, energy,etc are made out of nothing. So, essentially, all matter is made out of nothing. All matter is varying patterns of nothing. So to get really spooky, we both exist, and don't exist at the same time.

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I drink therefore I am.

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When I ceased to just exist and started living things got wildly interesting.

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Even if you exist in a dream, you still exist. "You" is the self-contained thought that can say that you are you. The one that gives you an identity of being. Even if that thought is some god's dream, it's still contained as being something that you call you. So existing is real (IMO), but how this existing works and what it is, that's a different question.

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I AM THAT I AM.

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Nonexistent people will have some difficulty taking this poll and posting a response.

Hmmmm. I'm not sure how to correct that bias.

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Nonexistent people will have some difficulty taking this poll and posting a response.

Hmmmm. I'm not sure how to correct that bias.

 

As of the time of my post, looks like one already did! FrogsToadBigGrin.gif

 

 

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Guest Babylonian Dream

Nonexistent people will have some difficulty taking this poll and posting a response.

+1 because I lolled.

 

What gets really spooky is when you consider the nature of matter, of atoms, and subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, neutrons, gluons, quarks , neutrinos etc. Essentially, all these tiny particles that make up matter, energy,etc are made out of nothing. So, essentially, all matter is made out of nothing. All matter is varying patterns of nothing. So to get really spooky, we both exist, and don't exist at the same time.

When you get to the smallest things observable, the counterintuitive nature of the very small only works to further complicate this already hard to answer philosophical question. This is one reason.

 

Also, look at the double state experiment. Until you observe something, it exists in 2 states at once.

 

I AM THAT I AM.

I will be what I will be.

 

Nonexistent people will have some difficulty taking this poll and posting a response.

Hmmmm. I'm not sure how to correct that bias.

At present, there is no way for us to answer this question without bias.

 

I chose that I exist. Not because I have some proof that I do, but becuase its a useful assumption to make. I don't know if I exist in someone else's dream, but since I have no use for such an idea, I'm discarding it for now.

 

This is a hard philosophical question to answer. You have the assumption that "I'm typing this, so therefore I exist". Then again, the same logic can prove the existence of free will, which seems to be an illusion. How can we tell our existence isn't also just that?

 

Until I'm able to adequately address such a question, I'm putting it away for another time. I think its more useful to ask, how can we go about figuring out how to ask this question and get a meaningful answer?

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I exist.

 

On a Newtonian/human scale, my body is a real physical entity.

 

The universe exists, though not in the way we tend to think of physical objects. "True" reality is waveforms and energy that collapse into localized areas (becoming more like what we intuitive assume matter is) when we poke them. On the large scale, Newtonian and Einstein physics describes how large numbers of energy waves act.

 

On the mental end of things, my sentient mind is the sum of the subjective experiences enabled by my brain of flesh, that will cease to exist when I die, like a house of cards that gets its table pulled out from under it.

 

I exist, in the narrow sense of the conscious mind that lives inside my larger mind. We are a committee, but the conscious mind always floats to top and generally determines which of many possible actions I dream up get enacted by my body. This conscious mind keeps a running dialog with itself and the other factors of my mind to maintain the illusion of a seamless single entity being in control. When the conscious mind is not in control, it must either be watching and ok with not being in control (yay delegating to the parts of me that are actually competent), or review the memories later in order to incorporate the experience into the illusion of a seamless self. We are one, we act as one, and when we are many we have to sit down with ourself and fix that, or I/we get really stressed out. Many voices, conflicting desires, several senses... one body, one will, only one reality to come to pass (well, unless when I make a choice that generates a new world in the multiverse, where a copy of me makes a different choice. But the I that is talking has only ever experienced one path and considers any potential copies as not-me).

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From a pragmatic POV, it feels as if I exist. As to the reality of that existence, I'm a hard agnostic: I see no way that the truth of the matter can be ascertained.

 

(Goes back to singing along with Her copy of Abbey Road, which also may or may not exist but still sounds great 40+ years after it was recorded)

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I AM THAT I AM.

yam.gif

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