The Truman Show side of things: Existentialism

[Undesired Walrus]

Have any of you driven yourself mildly insane asking the question as to if you mearly exist in a universe in which everything else is playing a giant cosmic joke on you?

The Truman Show was pop-culture philosophy, but it raised a few important points with me in my youth, and I wonder often if they are as silly and impressionable as I thought after my brief stint of worry.

Is perhaps rationality the biggest load of nonesense that there ever is, and the universe is in my mind? Classic questions I know, but how can I be so sure that this is real?

Why is it these questions are often worried about in youth, yet somehow are always put down to young thoughts and irrational philosophy? Presumably they should be as important in any stage of your life than anything else..

I'm sure some have the freak-outs that I get, and I wonder if there is any cure?

[Darat]

Yes - realise that a difference that makes no difference to you isn't worth worrying about!

[Ichneumonwasp]

Classic questions I know, but how can I be so sure that this is real?



You can't. As Darat said, all that matters is how the world works. We use science to try and understand the rules of the game. We can't know the game itself, however. But does it matter what the real game is?

ETA

Let me rephrase: Part of the issue revolves around what it means to know. We generally define knowledge as justified true belief. We can believe anything we want about the nature of reality, but there is no way that we can be sure of the absolute nature of reality -- we can't know how much our belief relates to the stuff that we can't interrogate. We can trust our senses and we test our observations. But that's the best it's ever going to get.

[Undesired Walrus]

Yes - realise that a difference that makes no difference to you isn't worth worrying about!

They told you to say that.....

[Darat]

No them told me to say that - they were too busy.

[KingMerv00]

They told you to say that.....

Well at least he doesn't play a bit part.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Heavy drink helps.

Until the puking starts.

[Undesired Walrus]

The most worrying question Darat, is what are you doing in on a saturday night?

Shouldn't you be making the most of binge drinking, mindless sex Britain? It only comes around once every incompetent government!

[RandFan]

For me calm came with understanding the limit to knowledge and the value of parsimony.

Absolute knowledge just might be beyond us.
Holding truth provisionally is the best way to correct spurious assumptions.
Things are not always as they appear.
If after looking at a thing from many different angles while employing reasonable doubt that the thing is as it appears, and that thing still looks to be as it is, then maybe it is.That's likely the best we will ever do.

[Seismosaurus]

The REAL question is, all those people who are lying to you, what if everybody else is lying to them? How freaky would that be?

[TuftedPuffin]

"Reality" merely means reacting the way we say it does. Whether everything is a dream or a game or whatever is irrelevant because things still obey the rules we say they do.

Though games, etc. could simply manifest as more accurate rules. IE, us being a virtual reality is really just the laws of physics having a good analogy with virtual reality games. It doesn't make us any less real.