RE: An Existential Twist of the NPC MEME: The Fine Line Between Auto-Pilot and Cruise Control
Your need to doubt it is quite needless 😀.
Here's the way for the proof you are seeming without any need for but necessitate it nonetheless:
By name I assume you're a woman (though I meet Sharon as a guy as well, which will make the experiment that much more problematic if you have a girls name 😋) and if you beget anyone than clearly, you'd have proof of their realness-as-you, and that the other person and their entire lineage going back to time immemorial, are also real, as real as your lineage. Another simpler test but not as veracious would be DNA, or more precisely, mDNA. If you cannot have children because guys are gross, maybe donating the egg would do? If all that is too much, fall back to getting a simple mDNA test done. Now comes the challenging part: will you be skeptical of the methodology of the testing as it will apply in a vast conspiracy to dupe you, to scam you, to pull a fast one on you for whatever reason if you chose the later?
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I'd say it's instead absurd to be content with being certain of something we lack evidence of.
Nope. I know I'm real because I think. I can't be certain that if I give birth to a child, the child's thoughts will be as real as mine because I will not be able to perceive them as I perceive mine. I'm not even certain I have hands, that I have a body, that I have a voice or that I can see. I am only certain that I think, that I exist, and that there is a reality (a reality with a nature that I cannot be certain of).
If you can think it follows that you can stop thinking whenever you want for as long as you want, so the question is, are you thinking or are you aware of thoughts in the same way that you're aware of the sun and sounds?
The next question is, can something real-as-you create a life with something unreal, or less real than you?
Why is it absurd? Take the absurdity of "I think, therefore I am" and the certainty it lacks, does that compare with "People are like me, because of biology, and the mountains of correlations to me and my experience"?
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That's a common philosophical question. The answer is we don't know, but it certainly means that somehow something exists, and I have a feeling of identity, so therefore I exist.
Yes. If you dream you give birth to a child, is that child real? The same happens here, we don't know if this is the equivalent of a dream, so if I give birth to a child and I am in some sort of Matrix, the child is not necessarily real, but I am.
None of them are absurd. The first one is the resolution of scepticism, the acceptance that there is something that is real, and the second one is a comparison statement in an outer level of assumption.
I'll explain the levels like this:
0- I don't know anything
1- I perceive a thought, the thought exists
2- I perceive a feeling of identity and I perceive thoughts, regardless of the nature of the thoughts or their origin, I exist somehow
3- I see things. I don't know if they are real. I have a choice:
3-a- These things are illusions
3-b- These things are real
3-conclusion- I don't know whether a or b is the truth, but I choose to live as if "b" were the case because it's unpleasant to live as if "a" were the case.
4- I describe the world as I see it as if it were real, even though I am not certain, because I made a choice to live as if it were real.
The first statement you mention is level 2, and the second statement is level 4. One is a real assumption, the other one is an assumption within a choice of uncertainty, so it does not have any effect on the previous levels of assumptions.
The question was, are you aware of thoughts, very much like you're aware of feelings and sensations or are you actually thinking and therefore you ought to be able to stop thinking like any such activity would warrant if you were the one in control? Why do you believe that you cannot know the difference when clearly the proof for "I think therefore I am" would simply to stop thinking, or else you're not the one thinking any more than you're the one making or actively creating the feelings or sensations you experience. It's the same for the "narrator" you have as thoughts or the "screen" upon which visuals occur as is for your feeling of identity, they happen without any involvement on your part, and contrary to any effort you might muster to avert them from happening.
The difference between a dream and waking reality is readily verifiable, even, and especially in lucid dreaming. In dreams, there's no continuity, so that if you, while lucid, wrote something on a blackboard and looked away, when you look back, without fail, every time you'd see that it invariably changed. Both dreams and waking reality are inherently illusionary as they constantly change, and as they constantly interrupt one another as does deep sleep or unconsciousness, as far as you experience yet the concreteness of reality and the concreteness of dreams as is the reality of unconsciousness, are all qualities that unmistakably you possess inherently.
If you're in a Matrix you revert to the same position of doubting everything about reality without any reason to do so, at least without any reason you could muster behind such a conspiracy, or simply because "it could be possible".
It's not absurd to assume yourself as being because you're assuming that being aware of thoughts means you're the one creating or manifesting the stimuli? Why must you validate such an undeniable thing as one's very existence and clearly accept something without any depth of investigation as proof of ones being? Does it not fail the litmus test for "I think" the moment that you recognize that thoughts happen as all other sensations do, without your accord, and if that fails, why would it invalidate ones being, or existence, which obviously doesn't cease in deep sleep even if you've no recollection of that, because clearly, you're uninterrupted, and without cessation, whereas reality, dream and unconsciousness/deep sleep cease and arise in you uninterrupted presence?
If anyone can validate such things, does that not prove their reality as you, as for how else could they validate your experience with such veracity, describing, without assumption, what you regard as real?
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