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My favourite definition of reality is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. This makes reality a social phenomenon, beyond just physics
by barrkel 5y ago
My favourite definition of reality is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.
This makes reality a social phenomenon, beyond just physics. For example, institutions are a reality because many people believe in them; the police don't go away when criminals stop believing in the law.
If you get enough people to believe in your dream, it can become real, self-sustaining. Neil Gaiman wrote a nice short story, taking the idea literally - A Dream of a Thousand Cats.
- collyw 5y agoThe implication is that your dreams never involve any of these things.
- barrkel 5y agoI don't understand this comment. Is "the implication" from my comment or the parent comment? Is it the dreams I talked about, or the dreams that the parent comment's child interlocutor was talking about? By never involving any of "these things", are you talking about institutions? To be more verbose, by "institution" I mean stable, recurring patterns of behaviour (much like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution), which isn't that far off of the continuity point made by the parent.