Reality and the human minds

I would like to share my ideas about 'reality and the human minds' with you, because these ideas are among the most important things I have learned in my life, and because spreading this knowledge may reduce the amount of human conflicts a bit, if increasing clarity on what is really going on in our confusing world, can help.


Reality and human virtual reality
There seem to be 2 kinds of reality..
The first kind is the one and only real one. It is the whole universe. But reality is very inaccessible for the human mind.
The second kind is not really reality, and present in every human brain. It is our perception of the world around and our fantasies. I call this "human virtual reality" or "think window" or "think space". Each person has his/her own unique version in the brain, a very useful and limited tool.


What is reality?
Reality is all that is out there. What all that is, where it comes from, where it ends... I have no clue!. But I do know that what I see, is just my tiny personal human perspective on it. It is possible though, to together discover the inner workings of reality. And I know that the things we can discover will be very different from our daily life.

Reality has many levels of size and complexity. Our human lives are somewhere halfway. There are thing smaller and less complex than us, and there are larger more complex things. When searching for the theory of everything, the core of reality, it makes sense to search for the most essential elements. Not necessarily the smallest part -because that may be as smart as searching for the smallest number. Complex parts are a combination of less complex parts, thus it is a search for the most simple parts.

The theory of everything, explaining all of reality, will be quite simple. But discovering the theory of everything will probably not matter much to our daily lives, because we are many levels higher in complexity. Compare that to our computers, the way we experience them is far from its inner working. We see and hear: movies, pictures, sound, text. But the inner working is about: bits, switches, pixels, and such.


What is Human virtual reality?
In order to survive in the hugeness of reality, evolution has developed a brain capable of creating a virtual reality. This virtual reality is an imaginary space filled with memories of simple patterns found in waves that have entered our system through our senses. Yes, quite a biotechnical story.
Everybody has their own and unique virtual reality experience. And although the experience is based on input from reality, this virtual reality is not equal to reality. Problem is that this think-space is very convincing, making people think that they their personal view is the reality. People can be so into their think-window, that they lose contact with reality.

There are about 86 billion nerve cells in one human brain. A staggering number all ready, which must even be multplied some 7000 times to estimate the number of direct synaptic connections these nerves make!
The mind in the brains seems to be equal to: the structure of the connections, the activity of these nerves. Each brain is unique, and changes over time. Next to fully functional, a brain can be: unhealthy, sick, messed up, damaged. And an ill brain can't support a healthy mind.
It is hard to image that a mind is just a n awful lot of dynamic connections in the brains. Is that what we are? What about the soul and being conscious? I don't know, but I do know how similar the computer that I am writing this text on is, as all the stuff I am doing on it is basically just flipping an awful amount of bits. Don't expect saving a photo on your computer places a that picture somewhere. It's bits bits bits.


Confusion
The human think-space is an amazing and essential tool of the brains, but there is a lot of confusion surrounding it. Let me try to sum up some common confusions:

Confusion 01 "I can see and understand reality"
This is impossible. What you see is what your mind makes of sensing some of the reflections of your surroundings in combination with some patterns stored within your brain's memory. Although some of your think-space has a connection with parts of reality, we have to stay very humble here. Similar: a photo of Paris is not equal to Paris. There is a connection between the two, but Paris is so much more than one photo of it.

Confusion 02: "Reality is created by our conscious minds"
The confusion here is to think that your think-space is the reality. It is not. That the things that you not know of do not exist? These things are not present in your think-space, but the really are there, outside your head, in the reality.

Confusion 03 "Reality is an illusion"
Well, that has a negative tone to it. As if reality is not true. Instead, see it like this: a photo of Paris is not equal to Paris. The photo is kind of an illusion, but it is a real photo. Your think-space is like a photo of Paris. Paris is out there. Try not to confuse the two.

It may come as a shock to you, discovering that your knowledge of the world is like a photo of Paris. This is an ordinary step in your development, so don't worry. Next question is: then, what is Paris really? Reality is totally different from how we learn at first, as a child, at school, the human point of view. I guess many people don't get to search deep into the whole spectrum of reality. Living a human life is quite something all ready. But most must have wondered about "what is all this?!", maybe looked at boeddhisme, science, or the movie the matrix.


Reality is the boss
I have been doing vortex experiments for 6 years (building little tornadoes and smoke rings). Before each experiment I had expectations about what was going to happen, but most often some different was happening. Reality is the boss! When ever I do a real experiment, reality shows me what is real. It is not my mind that determines what is real, I can only learn from what is really happening, make reality show me its truth be asking it through experiments.


Reality does not fit in the brain
You can think of state of reality at one moment, as information. People have a brain that can deal with information, but reality is extremely complex relative to what the brain can grasp. For example; the amount of information inside one drop of water, is already way too much for our brains to deal with. The amount of parts, the motions, the interaction with its surrounding... it is simply too much information. Also is there no way to get all that information from the droplet in your brains. And even if all that information could somehow be transferred into your brain, then knowing everything about that droplet would still not be equal to that droplet.


We are blind to most of reality
With our bodies we can only sense tiny parts of reality. This overwhelming fact does scare me at times, knowing that I can see so little. Having so little control, that is part of being human. I know that I am experiencing my virtual reality, and that is ok. It supports me, helps me navigate through this thing we call life.

A summary of some of the things we can not sense with our body:
- that what is too far away.
- that what is obstructed by something else.
- motions that go too fast, or too slow.
- things that are too small or too big.
- things that contain too much information.
- all that we don't recognize.
- all that is invisible to our senses.
- all where our attention is not.

We can use technological tools to make visible what we can't sense which our body. But then still,====


Discovering reality, and working with it.
Luckily, there are many things we can do to reduce our blindness!
By doing research, we can discover how parts of reality seem to function. We need to write down the things we learned: what did work, what didn't work, and why. Others need to do the same research, to double check the conclusions.

The second thing to do, is to share our findings.

The third thing to do is to continue the research, based upon the previous research results. This is extremely powerful! "standing on the shoulders of giants". For this to function we need to trust the results of the people before us. Therefore we need to use the same standards.

Final thing to do, is to keep an open mind. We don't own the truth, we try to describe it as well as possible. We makes mistakes, we have a lot to learn. Especially when a mistake in previous fundamental research is discovered, all that was based on that, is now to be looked at again! That is ok though, positively exciting even! That is the road of learning, improving.


Reality Check
Can we check if reality is really out there?
Yes; just look at it, touch it, smell it, hear it.
But, sensing the reflections from reality doesn't imply that you can see the reality and its truth. It only implies that you can sense the presence of reality and thereby confirm that it is really there, whatever it is.

It's a tricky question though. Can we trust the information that our senses and memory bring into our mind? No, not always, but that doesn't mean our senses and brains are useless. Just know that you can be wrong. Optical illusions are cool, seeing something you know isn't there, but still seeing it.


Reality can be way different from what you might expect it to be.

While asleep and dreaming, this dream feels totally real. During sleep, our virtual reality gets its information input almost completely from its memory, as we lay still in a quiet place with our eyes shut. How can we be sure that we are not in a dream while awake? Well; in a way we are always dreaming. Our virtual reality is always active during dreams and when we are awake. The difference is that while awake, we have our inputs and outputs active, to interact with the world outside our bodies. Inputs: our senses. Outputs: our motions.

Although it is difficult to tell a dream from being awake, but there is a difference. I know that I am awake now because my dreams have a different atmosphere. For example; in my dreams I can walk and even fly, I can not do that now, so I am probably awake. I am writing this text now, and I can continue working on this text tomorrow, but I can't continue adding to this text while asleep... though I could be dreaming that!

There are arguments about reality that can not be proven wrong, though that doesn't mean they are right. Two examples. The universe has been created 5 seconds ago, including all memories, books and fossils. Or; if it is possible for an advanced civilization to create a virtual reality that one can not distinguish from reality, and if many of these civilizations have created numerous virtual realities, then the chance of us being in one of these simulations, is larger than us being in the reality. Can't proof them wrong, but that doesn't make them true.