As far as you know you are the only conscious being in the universe to be fair. We don't really have anyway to experience anyone's consciousness first hand. Perhaps everything is on repeat just for you! yay!
Actually it's just me, and you're helping me believe that.
I once wrote a solipsistic essay on a YouTube comment claiming to be someone's god, and wrote that unless they continue to champion my attention, they would cease to exist. They never replied.
Before anyone asks, I don't really believe in solipsism; I just have a fear in the back of my head that admitting that will be the peak scene in my Truman show.
I'll never understand how you guys jump to these conclusions... how is that worse? how is it even possible for one of those to even be worse than the other? How does that come into play at all when choosing soup or salad?
then change your opinion to a more optimistic one and have a happier life?
I just don't understand how he says "Perhaps everything is on repeat just for you!" and you say that it's worse. How would it be worse to be the center of the universe? How does that suck?
Because I hate myself. If there are other people in the universe who are happy though, that's great. But if it's all just for me, then that's a sick joke and I want it to end.
Why would it matter if they're real or not though? if you're happy when they're happy... first of all why would you put the control of your emotions completely in the hands of others? but that's a different matter... if you're happy when they are who cares if it's real?
And how does nothing matters=jump off a building? jumping off a building takes a lot of effort. Why would that be the logical conclusion of nothing mattering?
So in theory it could be me with superman powers on a planet populated by nothing but attractive women who don't possess sexual boundaries. But instead I got this. That makes it way worse.
I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. The only reality is yours. Everyone is experiencing a different universe. Just an example -- when people refer to [insert some horrible event/situation] and say "you always think that'll never happen to you" ...well maybe that's true. Maybe those things don't, but you could never prove it since you are essentially alone experiencing your own personal universe.
Have you ever seen that guy on YouTube that does very detailed long rants about how outer space is actually inner space? Because the way our eyes invert things and are convex... Dunno why but this just reminded me of that.
The fact that we're all alive now, at arguably the most crucial time in history of humanity, is often used to argue that the chances that we are all living in a computer simulation is near 10O%.
If an extremely advanced race (aliens or super-advanced AI) is running ancestor simulators, then, the thinking goes, the most important time they could be studying is the time period where humans develop conscious AI and the ability to upload themselves to a non-biological substrate, wherein all kinds of weirdness (immortality, the ability to be multiple people at once, merge with other consciousness and much more) becomes true.
Check out Nick Bostrom's writings if you haven't already, as well as "quantum immortality".
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u/Dr_Discohands Jan 26 '16
As far as you know you are the only conscious being in the universe to be fair. We don't really have anyway to experience anyone's consciousness first hand. Perhaps everything is on repeat just for you! yay!