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Consensus Reality

#1
Magical Realist Offline
We live in a consensually constructed and described reality. We describe the experiences that happen to us with the same words and phrases and metaphors. It is something we learn very young. Does this mean reality is limited only to what we can describe consensually? That everybody calling their experience of a blue car "a blue car" means the blue car is real in itself? Maybe not. Maybe reality exists precisely as that which cannot be consensually described, but only experienced.
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"I have recently been on a quest to learn more about the greater “landscape” of realities and have actually had some rewarding successes. I call them all realities, because the definition of the word “real” is entirely arbitrary and subjective; hence, everything may be considered a reality. During a recent lucid dream, I had a revelation. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem as substantial of an idea now as it did then, but here is the gist of it:

The only significant difference between a dream state and what we think of as our “normal physical reality” is the level of consensus that is applied to it."

When we dream or fantasize, our minds are fully in control of creating the reality that we take part in. In our physical world, however, this is clearly not the case. We can’t just make the sky red, fly, or defy the laws of physics. However, there is incontrovertible evidence that we can mold our reality, as demonstrated by:
The power of the placebo. For example, placebo was shown to be effective as active treatment in patients with mild neurological deficits, producing an improvement of about 50%, according to a study by the Bayer Pharmaceutical Research Center.
The power of positive intent. For example, positive emotions have been shown to increase openness to new experiences, according to a study done by the Journal of Consumer Research.

The observer effect. For example, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed.

And, as if to put the final nail in the materialistic determinism coffin, scientists at the prestigious IQOQI institute in Vienna, demonstrated to a certainty of 1 part in 1E80 that objective reality does not exist.

So why does physical reality seem so real? It is because it is designed that way. We are much more likely to learn when we believe in well-grounded cause and effect. Seriously, when was the last time you actually consciously learned something from a dream? (Subconsciously, that is a different story.) In order for us to get something useful out of this physical-matter-reality learning lab, we must believe it is somehow more real than what we can conjure up in our minds. But, again, all that means is that our experience is relatively consistent with that of our free-willed friends and colleagues. She sees a blue car, you see a blue car, you both describe it the same way, it therefore seems real and objective. Others have referred to this as a consensus reality, a descriptor that fits well.

It is not unlike a large-scale computer game. In a FPS (first person shooter), only you are experiencing the sim. In an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), everyone experiences the same sim. However, if you think about it, there is no reason why the game can’t present different aspects of the sim to different players based on their attributes or skills. In fact, this is exactly what some games do.

So, one can imagine a spectrum of “consensus influence”, with various realities placed somewhere on that spectrum. At the far left, is solipsism – realities that belong to a singular conscious entity. We may give this a consensus factor of 0, since there is none. At the other end of the spectrum is our physical matter reality, what most of us call “the real world.” We can’t give it a consensus factor of 100, because of the observer effect. 100 would have to be reserved for the concept of a fully deterministic reality, a concept which, like the concept of infinity, only exists in theory. So our physical matter reality (PMR) is 99.99-something.

Everything else falls in between.

Many researchers have experienced realities at various points on this spectrum. Individual OBEs that have closely locked into PMR are at the high-consensus end of the scale. OBEs that are more fluid are somewhere in the middle. Mutual lucid dreaming can be considered a consensus of two and is therefore somewhere toward the low-consensus side of the spectrum.
I believe that this may be a useful model for those psychonauts, astral travelers, and quantum physicists among us."=====http://blog.theuniversesolved.com/2013/0...-spectrum/


[Image: quote-far-from-reality-being-this-oppres...261313.jpg]
[Image: quote-far-from-reality-being-this-oppres...261313.jpg]

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#2
C C Offline
Quote:[...] So why does physical reality seem so real? It is because it is designed that way. We are much more likely to learn when we believe in well-grounded cause and effect. Seriously, when was the last time you actually consciously learned something from a dream? (Subconsciously, that is a different story.) In order for us to get something useful out of this physical-matter-reality learning lab, we must believe it is somehow more real than what we can conjure up in our minds. But, again, all that means is that our experience is relatively consistent with that of our free-willed friends and colleagues. She sees a blue car, you see a blue car, you both describe it the same way, it therefore seems real and objective. Others have referred to this as a consensus reality, a descriptor that fits well.


One might say that there has been a long history of reifying the coherence of the world and its interpersonal consistency into an ontological substance; rather than part of a formulaic process regulating the events of experience.

Edward S. Reed: Matter for Huxley was just what it was for Mach or Hertz: a set of phenomenal observations made by scientists. It is thus remarkable but true that the most reviled "materialists" of the 1880s--Huxley, Tyndall, and Clifford--were all phenomenalists of sort or another and not [conventional] materialists at all.

Quote:[...] It is not unlike a large-scale computer game. In a FPS (first person shooter), only you are experiencing the sim. In an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), everyone experiences the same sim. However, if you think about it, there is no reason why the game can’t present different aspects of the sim to different players based on their attributes or skills. In fact, this is exactly what some games do.


Arthur C. Clarke: Of all the thousands of forms of recreation in the city, these were the most popular. When you entered a saga, you were not merely a passive observer...You were an active participant and possessed—or seemed to possess—free will. The events and scenes which were the raw material of your adventures might have been prepared beforehand by forgotten artists, but there was enough flexibility to allow for wide variation. You could go into these phantom worlds with your friends, seeking the excitement that did not exist in Diaspar—and as long as the dream lasted there was no way in which it could be distinguished from reality. --The City and the Stars (1956) ... "In The City and the Stars, there is somewhat more circumstantial detail about the life of Diaspar. For example, there are 'sagas', total-immersion virtual reality entertainments where you apparently lose your outside knowledge."
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#3
Yazata Offline
Magical Realist Wrote:We live in a consensually constructed and described reality.

We do??

I disagree strongly and vehemently that the universe is "constructed". That looks like a reassertion of divine creationism, with humanity playing the role of God. Never having been a theist, I feel no drive to preserve it's forms of thought in my own thinking.

I would say that we live in a reality that exists whether we are aware of it or not. Then we seek to describe and understand what's happening around us. It's our descriptions and explanatory schemes that are 'constructed' by us.

I most emphatically do not want to identify reality with our descriptions of it.

Quote:We describe the experiences that happen to us with the same words and phrases and metaphors.

There's a difference between describing expereriences and describing what the experiences are of. I don't for a moment want to collapse that distinction. In fact, I question whether 'experiences' exist in any substantial sense. I conceive of them as events rather than things.

Quote:It is something we learn very young. Does this mean reality is limited only to what we can describe consensually?

No, of course not. But there is doubtless some truth to the assertion that social agreements at particular historical instants on how reality should be described and understood are consensual.

Quote:"I have recently been on a quest to learn more about the greater “landscape” of realities and have actually had some rewarding successes. I call them all realities, because the definition of the word “real” is entirely arbitrary and subjective

It might arguably be said that any word we use is arbitrary. But I'm not convinced that the meaning that we attach to words is entirely subjective, since that would seemingly make communication impossible. I definitely don't want to use the arbitrariness of language as a lever to drive a strong metaphysical idealism.

Quote:hence, everything may be considered a reality.

Only if the word 'reality' loses its meaning and its use.

Quote:During a recent lucid dream, I had a revelation.

That's as far in that direction as I'm interested in going.
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#4
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:I disagree strongly and vehemently that the universe is "constructed".


I personally consulted Deepak Chopra via Skype and he confirms that you Yazata are in fact a construct of his own mind. I am too. We are all energy critters swimming around inside the vast mind of Dr. Chopra. Isn't that wonderful? So when Deepak kicks the bucket, we all go down with him. San Francisco. The Grand Canyon. The Great Barrier Reef. And the universe. It all collapses into a colorless wavefunction of ubiquitous energy rippling thru interdimensional space. So there. Are ya happy NOW? Smile

[Image: Deepak_Chopra.jpg]
[Image: Deepak_Chopra.jpg]

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