We decide how much structure is needed to count as real by looking at how much structure is actually there. If volcanic eruptions have only 10 miles of structure, then only 10 miles of structure is needed for an eruption to be real.
This is perfectly obvious. How much structure is needed for a chair to count as a real chair? You decide that by looking at chairs and figuring out how much structure they actually have. You do not have some a priori idea of how much structure a chair needs, so that you can say that a chair is fake if it doesn’t have that structure. You first check how much structure normal chairs have; then if other things look like chairs but don’t have that structure, you can say they are fake.
In the same way, if normal eruptions have 10 miles of structure, but you find one that has not even 1 mile (e.g. a video), you can say it is fake. But you cannot say the one with 10 miles is fake because it doesn’t have 100 miles, when you have never even seen one with 100 miles.
It looks like the word “fake” is not very correct here. Let say illusion. If one creates a movie about volcanic eruption, he has to model only ways it will appear to the expected observer. It is often done in the cinema when they use pure CGI to make a clip as it is cheaper than actually filming real event.
Illusions in most cases are computationally cheaper than real processes and even detailed models. Even if they fild a real actress as it is cheaper than multiplication, the copying of her image creates many illusionary observation of a human, but in fact it is only a TV screen.
Personally, I lost point which you would like to prove. What is the main disagreement?
Whether the stuff that generates our experience can reasonably be described in terms that contrast it with real stuff. Illusion has the same problem as “fake.” The word is relative: it means something like a real thing, which isn’t actually a real thing. But basically real just means the normal stuff, and illusions and fake things mean things which are externally similar. But “the normal stuff” just refers to whatever is normal for us. So all of the stuff that seems normal to us, is real, and is not fake or illusory.
So, are the night dreams illusions or real objects? I think that they are illusions: When I see a mountain in my dream, it is an illusion, and my “wet neural net” generates only an image of its surface. However, in the dream, I think that it is real. So dreams are some form of immersive simulations. And as they are computationally cheaper, I see strange things like tsunami more often in dreams than in reality.
So, are the night dreams illusions or real objects? I think that they are illusions
I agree. But “they are illusions” only makes sense because they are illusions relative to the ones we see during the day, which are not illusions. In other words, as I said, fake or illusion is relative to real, so it only has meaning when you know about a real one.
In other words, if you lived all your life in a night dream and were never awake, the mountains in your dreams would not be illusions. They would be real. That does not mean they would be day mountains—they would be something different. But when the dreaming you said “this is a mountain,” the word “mountain” would refer to a dreamt mountain, not to a day one, since you would have never seen a day one and could not talk about them. So the dreaming you would say, “this is a real mountain,” and that would be true. But other awake people would say, “he sees an illusion,” and this would also be true. But that is because you and the awake people would be using “mountain” for different things. This is like what I said before about BBs.
I think there is one observable property of illusions, which become possible exactly because they are competitively cheap. And this is miracles. We constantly see flying mountains in the movies, in dreams, in pictures, but not in reality. If I have a lucid dream, I could recognise the difference between my idea of what is a mountain (a product of long-term geological history) and the fact that it has one peak and in the next second it has two peaks. This could make doubt about it consistency and often help to get lucidity in the dream.
So it is possible to learn about an illusion of something before I get the real one, if there is some unexpected (and computationally cheap) glitches.
“Miracles” doesn’t have a sufficiently well defined meaning for this purpose. I think you mean that real things tend to have more stability and permanence, and illusions tend to have less. And I agree: real mountains tend to stay the same, while illusory mountains like ones you are dreaming tend to change rapidly.
But this is relative, as I was saying before. There are real mountains, but there also real clouds, and real gusts of wind, even though clouds are less stable and permanent than mountains, and gusts of wind are less stable and permanent than clouds.
So if you lived all your life in a dream, the mountains you dreamed would be real. But as I said before, they would be “mountains” with a different meaning; as real things, they would be more like clouds in the real world.
Notice that if mountains in the real world suddenly multiplied or changed in a “miraculous” way, I would never conclude that the mountains were not real; I might conclude that there are other principles at work that I did not know about. Including that real mountains might have a relationship to something else that is similar to the relationship of an illusion to something real; but not that the mountains were not real.
if I see that mountain start to move, there will be a conflict between what I think they are—geological formations, and my observations, and I have to update my world model. Onу way to do so is to conclude that it is not a real geological mountain, but something which pretended (or was mistakenly observed as) to be a real mountain but after it starts to move, it will become clear that it was just an illusion. Maybe it was a large tree, or a videoprojection on a wall.
Sure. But then you will be relating the pretend mountain, to other mountains, which are still real ones. If all mountains start to move, you will not be able to do that. You will have to say, “Real mountains could not move before, but now they can.”
In fact, I will probably do a reality check, if I am in a dream, if I see something like “all mountains start to move”. I refer here to technics to reach lucid dreams that I know and often practice. Humans are unique as they are able to have completely immersive illusions of dreaming, but after all recognise them as dreams without wakening up.
But I got your point: definition of reality depends on the type of reality where one is living.
We decide how much structure is needed to count as real by looking at how much structure is actually there. If volcanic eruptions have only 10 miles of structure, then only 10 miles of structure is needed for an eruption to be real.
This is perfectly obvious. How much structure is needed for a chair to count as a real chair? You decide that by looking at chairs and figuring out how much structure they actually have. You do not have some a priori idea of how much structure a chair needs, so that you can say that a chair is fake if it doesn’t have that structure. You first check how much structure normal chairs have; then if other things look like chairs but don’t have that structure, you can say they are fake.
In the same way, if normal eruptions have 10 miles of structure, but you find one that has not even 1 mile (e.g. a video), you can say it is fake. But you cannot say the one with 10 miles is fake because it doesn’t have 100 miles, when you have never even seen one with 100 miles.
It looks like the word “fake” is not very correct here. Let say illusion. If one creates a movie about volcanic eruption, he has to model only ways it will appear to the expected observer. It is often done in the cinema when they use pure CGI to make a clip as it is cheaper than actually filming real event.
Illusions in most cases are computationally cheaper than real processes and even detailed models. Even if they fild a real actress as it is cheaper than multiplication, the copying of her image creates many illusionary observation of a human, but in fact it is only a TV screen.
Personally, I lost point which you would like to prove. What is the main disagreement?
“What is the main disagreement?”
Whether the stuff that generates our experience can reasonably be described in terms that contrast it with real stuff. Illusion has the same problem as “fake.” The word is relative: it means something like a real thing, which isn’t actually a real thing. But basically real just means the normal stuff, and illusions and fake things mean things which are externally similar. But “the normal stuff” just refers to whatever is normal for us. So all of the stuff that seems normal to us, is real, and is not fake or illusory.
So, are the night dreams illusions or real objects? I think that they are illusions: When I see a mountain in my dream, it is an illusion, and my “wet neural net” generates only an image of its surface. However, in the dream, I think that it is real. So dreams are some form of immersive simulations. And as they are computationally cheaper, I see strange things like tsunami more often in dreams than in reality.
I agree. But “they are illusions” only makes sense because they are illusions relative to the ones we see during the day, which are not illusions. In other words, as I said, fake or illusion is relative to real, so it only has meaning when you know about a real one.
In other words, if you lived all your life in a night dream and were never awake, the mountains in your dreams would not be illusions. They would be real. That does not mean they would be day mountains—they would be something different. But when the dreaming you said “this is a mountain,” the word “mountain” would refer to a dreamt mountain, not to a day one, since you would have never seen a day one and could not talk about them. So the dreaming you would say, “this is a real mountain,” and that would be true. But other awake people would say, “he sees an illusion,” and this would also be true. But that is because you and the awake people would be using “mountain” for different things. This is like what I said before about BBs.
I think there is one observable property of illusions, which become possible exactly because they are competitively cheap. And this is miracles. We constantly see flying mountains in the movies, in dreams, in pictures, but not in reality. If I have a lucid dream, I could recognise the difference between my idea of what is a mountain (a product of long-term geological history) and the fact that it has one peak and in the next second it has two peaks. This could make doubt about it consistency and often help to get lucidity in the dream.
So it is possible to learn about an illusion of something before I get the real one, if there is some unexpected (and computationally cheap) glitches.
“Miracles” doesn’t have a sufficiently well defined meaning for this purpose. I think you mean that real things tend to have more stability and permanence, and illusions tend to have less. And I agree: real mountains tend to stay the same, while illusory mountains like ones you are dreaming tend to change rapidly.
But this is relative, as I was saying before. There are real mountains, but there also real clouds, and real gusts of wind, even though clouds are less stable and permanent than mountains, and gusts of wind are less stable and permanent than clouds.
So if you lived all your life in a dream, the mountains you dreamed would be real. But as I said before, they would be “mountains” with a different meaning; as real things, they would be more like clouds in the real world.
Notice that if mountains in the real world suddenly multiplied or changed in a “miraculous” way, I would never conclude that the mountains were not real; I might conclude that there are other principles at work that I did not know about. Including that real mountains might have a relationship to something else that is similar to the relationship of an illusion to something real; but not that the mountains were not real.
if I see that mountain start to move, there will be a conflict between what I think they are—geological formations, and my observations, and I have to update my world model. Onу way to do so is to conclude that it is not a real geological mountain, but something which pretended (or was mistakenly observed as) to be a real mountain but after it starts to move, it will become clear that it was just an illusion. Maybe it was a large tree, or a videoprojection on a wall.
Sure. But then you will be relating the pretend mountain, to other mountains, which are still real ones. If all mountains start to move, you will not be able to do that. You will have to say, “Real mountains could not move before, but now they can.”
In fact, I will probably do a reality check, if I am in a dream, if I see something like “all mountains start to move”. I refer here to technics to reach lucid dreams that I know and often practice. Humans are unique as they are able to have completely immersive illusions of dreaming, but after all recognise them as dreams without wakening up.
But I got your point: definition of reality depends on the type of reality where one is living.