Reality, a Fantasy

The image, by the way comes from a pretty good article that has not much to do with what my point is here. It is a great article that makes a different point concerning reality: one that is not at all inconsistent with what I am saying here. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/virtual-reality-could-it-revolutionise-higher-education. 

"Reality" is for all practical purposes, something that our brains build entirely within our heads. In this sense it is a fantasy. It may be based on real experience, but it is a fantasy nonetheless.

The construction of a 3-D model is one of the primary functions of our brains; it does this so that we might move through space and time too. All animals do this too. It is an abstraction concerning the information that our bodies encounter with the five senses. That's it, just five things. From color patterns and smells and sounds and tastes and physical contact, all independent of one another and all coming into our brains on different channels at different times. Sometimes sensory data relates to one another, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they do and we miss the relationship entirely and sometimes they do not relate at all but we think that they do. It is a big job, a huge job; and the model that the brain puts together I call a Reality Model or just Reality for short.

Every individual has a different Reality which, is constructed from the memories of what we have stored about our experiences, not the experiences themselves. Not only that, but we only remember a very small number of the things that we observe and experience. Our brains choose what to remember based on its Reality Model and the strength of the emotion associated with the input.

We each have different memories: therefore the reality space in which one person manages is not at all the same reality space that another person lives within. All of this is completely unconscious. We have no conscious control over the process. Some people are more fearful than others; it is not a choice. Some people frame people as lazy and stupid, some frame them as productive and smart. The words lazy and productive, of course, mean nothing outside of comparison and who easier to compare with but ourselves.

The stories that others tell us and the things that other people point out to us are also important in the construction of our personal Reality. I did not discover by myself that light can be broken apart into a rainbow; it was pointed out to me and has since become part of my reality. People pass their observations to other people so that other person might experience the same 'reality' as they do and in such they construct what I call Communal Reality.

My favorite story illustrating the point comes out of the Internet, of course. It is true in the sense that this is what happens as people interact with each other but it is probably not true in the sense that this probably never happened; it is a story to illustrate a concept. Every person experiences these types of interaction every single day, provided that they are not in solitary confinement.

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A friend, who worked away from home all week, always made a special effort with his family on the weekends. Every Sunday morning he would take his 7-year old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some bonding time. Just he and his granddaughter.

One particular Sunday however, he had a bad cold and really didn't feel like being up at all. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter out. When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather.

"Well, did you enjoy your ride with grandma?"
"Oh yes, PaPa" the girl replied, "and do you know what? We didn't see a single dumb bastard or lousy shit head anywhere we went today!"
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So what is the difference driving to school with Grandpa vs grandma? Well, with grandma they don't pass through a world of idiots and lazy people and drunks; they pass through a world of hardworking handsome boys and flowers. The realities really are different even though they take the same streets in the same town.

What people see and how they behave and what they show others is determined by their Reality Model. All Reality Models are incomplete and all reality models are fraught with errors. Maybe we should compare notes to forge something that works well? Maybe not. Maybe we should take the traditional approach and kill all those that have Reality Models that conflict with our own. Your choice Conservatives and Liberals, your choice readers.

The Trump Card. A Description of Reality.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35552030

Take a look at Trump's nominations for the highest levels of government. Virtually every appointment is someone that detests the Agencies that they are to manage. Why? Because their job is to destroy the "effectiveness" of those agencies, that is if they are not successful in actually dismantling the agencies in their entirety. Trump's reality is one in which the most ideal society is one that is run by those people that control the world distribution of resources (Exxon, Monsanto, Alibaba, Gazprom, Glencore, etc.). For Trump, a democracy is absurd. Trump *would be* a follower of Ayn Rand, that is, if he read at all. Trump's reality does not include books. He is functionally illiterate. At least that is what *he* has said.

How in the world can a complex society be governed by people that do not understand how the economy works? They can't ... *if* ... one's concept of governmental function is to aid the good guys in building a perfect world and stopping the bad guys from damaging the effort. Bad guys should not be voting. The success of said society is measured by the amount of profit made. Ones "importance" to society is directly related to the amount of resources/cash that they control. It makes no sense to Trump nor to his supporters nor to the Republican Party that anyone *but* the 1 percent should be *allowed* to determine the rules by which society is managed.

The first rule of this new 'elite' is that there are *no rules* for the good guys whose job it is to fight evil (them). The very first action that the new Congress took was to attempt to abolish the Ethics Committee. Rules are to be applied to control the evil nature of those that *call themselves* Homo sapiens, but are not really quite there yet. One must free the good guys (them) to create a wonderful society and one must control the "less gifted" (the rest of us) with laws to stop us from damaging society. Rules do not apply to them because they are working for good. Rules only apply to the evil ones to stop them from destroying society.

Jess Session's nomination for Attorney General is particularly instructive. Sessions is one of the most virulent racists in American politics and has been for his entire career. His appointment speaks loudly to Trumps desire to make sure that the disruptions caused by the "less enlightened" be controlled. There is ample evidence that Trump *believes* in his heart and soul that the reason that American has been successful is because the "white race" (yes, I know that there is no such thing) has a more effective reality model (genetically superior) than the "other races" and that the "almost humans" are trying to take over governance, which would result in the destruction modern civilization (built by them, of course). The unenlightened must be stopped from doing this, for the good of humanity. Jeff Sessions has been working for this his entire life. He is the best able to manage the systems that were designed to stop the bad guys from damaging his country. He is the best qualified for this task. Trump has indeed found the best man for the job.

Property values fall when "non-whites" move into a upper class neighborhoods (White neighborhoods) . This is a clear indication to Trump) that non-whites, if left to their own devices will damage the economic structures that he has worked hard to create. He has personally denied non-whites housing in units that he controls. He has said clearly that many of Americas economic woes, derive directly from immigrants. He probably does not see this as racism or hatred of non-whites; it is an economic fact, so it cannot possible be racist. He loves non-whites, they can't help it if they are not equipped to be fully human. He feels sorry for them but still, he must control them from damaging society. He has ample evidence that they, in fact, do damage society ... as *he* envisions it.

Unfortunately Trump thinks that *his* vision of society and the vision of his friends (Putin, for example) is the only *real* and accurate description of "reality". The rest of us are either uninformed, misinformed, uneducated, lying for our own benefit, or outright evil ... in that order of escalation. He *does* give his opponents the benefit of the doubt; he starts the enlightenment process by assuming the person who disagrees is just "uninformed". Magnanimously Trump will attempt to help the poor fool. Total failure to "educated" the deluded soul will result in the "evil" label. One is *obliged*, by all morality and good sense, to eliminate evil, by whatever means possible; it is his job, at least as he perceives it. The use of vengeance, torture, and deadly force are tools to be employed in the eradication of the evil that will destroy society as he envisions it. At least that is what *he* has said.

The justice system must therefore, be specifically tailored, to treat each level of society differently, *if* the good guys are to win this battle for the benefit of the human race. Full privilege is only to be given to those that are fully aware (real humans, not those that just look, on the surface to be human, blacks, for example). Traditionally this means rich white folks, the ones that actually understand how the system must be structured for it to be successful. Practically speaking, this means those that agree with them. They don't appreciate me, for example. Jeff Sessions is the man with the proven track record to do the job. This is why he was nominated.

Trump has been appointing the top White Supremacists and Racists in the political world to the very top positions in his future administration. He is appointing people to deconstruct many of the social systems that have taken 200 yr to develop. He is appointing the 0.1 percent to govern the country. He said that is what he was going to do before the election and he is doing it. His campaign promise was to dismantle the political control of economic and legal structures as they exist.

To some readers, it may seem that I am being dramatic and exaggerating. I am not. What Trump and the American people have done is dramatic; I am just describing it. All that I am doing is presenting a coherent Reality Model that might explain behavior that I have observed. Everything that I describe within this reality model has been openly debated and discussed on the House and in the Senate floors and in the editorial pages of both major and minor newspapers throughout the country for the last 200 years. No, I am not exaggerating, at all. Go look for yourselves.

Americans just elected an illiterate man to be the President of the most powerful and dangerous country on the planet. He himself has stated that he has not read a book his entire adult life. Let that sink in. The man cannot read and does not see the importance of reading and he controls the most powerful and aggressive military on the planet. *Seventy five* percent of the American people have no real objection to this. "Hey let's give him a chance."

There is an virulent intellectual/emotional pathogen that is ravaging the US population at the moment. Maybe it has always been present and modern technology has allowed it to grow and/or allows us to see it for the first time? I don't know, probably. American Culture is in very deep shit and the sharks have already begun to circle. Oh well.

"Belief kills thought: fact is different than opinion: thinking is different than feeling."

 Read the letter Coretta Scott King wrote opposing Sessions’s 1986 federal nomination

Happiness and the Reality Model, a Love Story.

Emotion is a difficult word as people fight over its usage. I am using it as chemical change that is provoked by the brain's reaction to a set of stimulus: loud noise, fire smoke, and the person next to you has an arm blown off. The brain does not like the direction that this is taking at all and a set of chemicals is released that increases heart rate, muscle tension etc. This is noticed right away by the conscious mind that feels 'fear' or whatever 'emotion' has been unleashed on the body. I 'look around' to determine what is going on. It is my conscious mind that is doing this part of it. My use of the word emotion has generated some controversy, not in the concept, but which part of the physiologic process is described by the word. I don't care so long as the the idea has been understood.

The subconscious mind communicates with the conscious mind with emotion, by my definition of 'emotion'. Some subconscious/conscious communications are not 'emotional' in the sense of strong emotion but something has happened chemically or spiritually (for completeness) to get your body to move or even to notice what has happened, beer! This effect may not seem 'emotional' but in my construction, it is by definition emotion, subtle perhaps, but nonetheless emotion.  For example there is a glass of beer on the table in front of me. My conscious mind did not do a logical process to understand that it is beer and it is within arms reach and I want it and that I go for it. This is all automatic it is unconscious. Hell, I might not even be aware that I went for it and drank it. This happens with smokers all the time. Your subconscious brain can indeed control a person's body.

One principal function of the brain is to construct a viable model of the world around it. It includes: the location of objects in 3D space, that one cannot breathe in water, that fire is hot, lightning has the potential to kill me and that I want that woman, and that hamburger is a good thing. The Reality Model, as I call it is this construction of connections between memories. It goes beyond the physical environment. Some peoples brains have decided that people are evil and lazy, for example. Others that people are good and productive. When something is fully integrated into the reality model it is a belief, by my definition. At this point the brain is unwilling to question the interpretation. My brain is not willing to entertain jumping off a 1000 ft cliff because some fast talking salesman says that I can do it. Nope, not willing to even consider it without some sort of external aid like a parachute. My brain believes that if it jumps it will die. Not up for discussion.

This meme about the nature of man is the same way. Once the brain has an idea, it will look for substantiating evidence and often it will find that evidence and the meme becomes more and more integrated to the point that the eyes and ears are on the lookout for that behavior to the exclusion of contradictory information. The difference in driving to school with Grandma instead of Dad is that there does not seem to be any stupid lazy delinquents on the way to school with Grandma, there are only flowers and good looking boys productively making the world a better place. Grandma and Dad actually remember different things about the trip. Dad's brain is looking for confirmation of his memes and finding them, so is Grandma. Each brain chooses to store different memories of the trip; it is the stored memories that are remembered. That is why it is difficult to believe that Grandma and Dad actually took the same road. They are storing different sensory stimulation in their memory banks. They are living in different realities. They really are.

Conservatives store different words into their memory banks than Liberals do while listening to a speech by Barack Obama, for example. They literally do not hear the same things. They live in a different reality. Each side thinks that the other side is dumber than dirt because the evidence in right in front of there face! Yes, but they each stored away different fragments to remember. Different Reality Models choose to keep different information. Our memories are indeed all we have to describe reality. Personal reality is our memory.

Bias to me is mathematical. The information received by the conscious mind is indeed biased, and it cannot be any other way; it has passed through the Reality Model filter. Sometimes the bias is striking and wrong. The table top is an illustration of this; the two tables look as if the table tops are completely and totally different shapes. They are not. Cut them out and put them on top of each other and they have exactly the same dimensions. The brain has misinterpreted the data. It is interpreting the data as if it were a 3D reality but it is not. It is a 2D set of lines on a paper. The reality model gets it wrong and what your conscious 'sees' is NOT what your eyes see, it is the interpretation that your brain thinks it saw; it is wrong; it has been biased by the Reality Model.

Now take the new knowledge that the rectangles are the same dimensions and look at the illusion again. The brain will refuse to present the reality as it is now known; it insists on the 3D interpretation. It will not let go. My brain *believes* that it is seeing a 3D object even though my conscious mind knows that it is not a 3D object. Political interpretations and the good/evil interpretation of the nature of man suffer the same fate as the table top. Many people's brains *believe* the memes. No amount of logic or discussion can convince them otherwise; it is literally all that they see. When the brain is 'confused' it is unhappy, life is not good. That may be a decent way to define 'happiness'. Brains are not confused when their interpretation, their Reality Model is coherent; it might be 100 percent wrong, but it is coherent. Viola! Religion. Happiness. Contentment. Peace.

Individual Reality and Murder

An individuals Perception seems to be a cognitive process based upon information provided by our sensory organs. These organs detect temporal and spacial changes in physical characteristics of our environment and the objects within it. With touch and taste, it is necessary to be in direct contact with the object: is it more or less supple than our bodies, does it increase or decrease the temperature of our bodies, is it sharper or duller than our bodies?

It is not necessary to be in direct contact with an object perceive it. We see (eyes), hear (ears), smell (nose) or detect heat (skin) from the distant objects. Light and sound are distorted or generated by the distant object and these secondary effects are transmitted to us and detected by our senses.

Some people maintain that there is another perceptual process: spirit.  I do not know other peoples minds and bodies so I will not dispute the point. There may well be something called spirit to which I am blind and others are not; I can only work with what is available to me. Other people may indeed have perceptions that I do not have. Some people can see color, others do not. An interesting point here: people that perceive color have been able to convince those that do not, that color exists and it is not a figment of imagination; it is real. However, people that perceive spirituality have not been able to convince others of its existence. Spirituality is a perception of certain individuals and not others. These impulses from our sensory organs are the totality of what we experience. These are the basis of everything that is the human experience.

Our bodies, minds and spirit (if that exists) do more than just react to this information, our bodies remember the reactions that our bodies  had to the stimulus, when it happened, which side of our bodies experienced the sensation. That is our bodies register the relationship of the physical properties to our bodies but we also register the order in which the events occurred. We have therefore have stored the information that would needs to compute rates  of change with respect to space and time. Our bodies are bicameral and each side registers the effect of the object. This gives us the first derivative with respect to space. This, combined with time, gives our bodies the second derivatives of the perceptions with respect to time and space as well. The object is hotter on the right side of our bodies than on the left side, for example. The light arrived before the sound. Our bodies record this information in such a way that when all the individual cells containing the information have been replaced with new fresh cells, the information is not lost; the new cell builds the old information into the new structure. Perhaps in the same way that the replacement of a scar cell knows that it is not to be a regular cell, It copies the structure of the scar cell.

Our unconscious brains attempt to build a relationship between these different memories of events. Our brains link the information collected together in addition to remembering the events and the order in which they occurred. When multiple sensory events happen at the same time or in close proximity;  we see our hand move into the flame and at the same time that it enters we feel intense pain. There is now an association between flames and damage to our body. Our bodies record all the senses at the same time so if another event occurs at the same time, for instance a lightning strike in close proximity the brain will integrate that information as well. Was it the flame or the lightning bolt that caused the intense burning sensation in the hand. This is a flagrant example. The body felt the heat rise as the hand drew nearer so there is a much tighter association with the flame. However the scream of pain and the lightning bolt happened concurrently. Did we cause the lightning bolt? Could this be the result of a strong expression of pain and emotion? The brain must decide this as well. All this thought process is totally unconscious. Sometimes it makes mistakes.

There are physical differences in the appearance of people and in their internal organs. Some cannot eat certain foods, or see color or hear. There are differences in the way people 'feel' emotions as well. Hormonal levels change from individual to individual. This is measurable and the effects of this are observable. Some people feel fear more than others, and love and empathy. People do not sexually excite by the same people. Some prefer members of their own sex, some do not. It is not important whether these feelings are physical or cultural. It is the way that it is; it is reality for that individual.  The point is that our perceptions of the world are not the same from person to person. Individual Reality is unique for each human.

The brain is a physical organ as well and it has variations in structure and chemistry from person to person. That being said, there is no reason to believe that people think and process information in the same way. I do not perceive numbers, for example the way that  Daniel Tammet  does.  This has been disputed but I fail to see how even a cursory look at the different conclusions people reach when looking at the same data does not demonstrate the point definitively. Of course, that is the way that I see it. Others will dispute my observation and attribute the differences to other causes. Frankly, that does nothing but substantiate my hypothesis. In addition to individual reality being different, people also have different ways of thinking about their Individual Realities and different ways of constructing their ideas about their Individual Reality. Our thoughts seem to be fractal in nature.

Dolphins or Lovers

Dolphins or Lovers by artist Sandro del Prete is seen differently by children and by adults. The children see dolphins swimming in the bottle (or so I have been told) and the adults see a man and woman embracing (or so I have been told). This, if true, would illustrate that people's interpretation of their reality changes as we get older. That is to say what the subconscious brain presents the conscious mind changes. The data may remain the same but what we perceive changes.

The Dancer

The Dancer illustrates that different people perceive reality differently. The dancer spins clockwise for some individuals and for others she spins counter-clockwise. Personally, I can reverse the spin at will although, the more I look at it, the more difficult this becomes. My brain has its preference. I have seen blogs where people accuse others of lying when they indicate that the dancer spins differently than they perceive. Both perceptions of reality are, of course, wrong. There is no dancer, they are shades of gray on a flat surface and what is interpreted as a dancer is not spinning at all. This is a series of images projected on a two dimensional surface; nothing is spinning. Our brains have manufactured something useful but something that is not part of any objective reality. It is not at all clear that a mouse will interpret the figure as a dancing anything.

Shades of Gray

A powerful illustration that our conscious perceptions can be incorrect can be seen in Shades-of-Gray. The gray color at the top looks darker than the gray color on the bottom of the figure; they look strikingly different but they are not. The gray at the top is exactly the same shade of gray as that on the bottom. I have personally had arguments where people refuse to believe that they are the same color. When I have suggested how to test this, they have refused. Why bother? Any idiot can see straight off that they are two completely different colors; it would be a waste of time, a fools mission. Even very simple testing has been refused. When suggest looking at the code that produces the colors to see if the computer has been asked to create the same shades, that too is rejected.

The point is that some people actually define reality to be their Individual Reality and their perceptions may not be questioned; their perceptions are reality. When measurements suggest differently, it is because someone is attempting to trick them. These are people that live in their own world and do not believe that any other exists; all other people live in this same exact reality. Not perceiving what they perceive is an indication that one is of low intelligence, uninformed, misinformed, deceptive (lying), and/or evil, in that order. I am an evil person in some circles. The proof? The shades-of-gray example; it is the proof that I am actively attempting to confuse and deceive them. They can now dismiss everything else that I have to say without thinking about it. Yes, this is a true example. Interestingly enough, it is an example of bigotry and how that process works.

The brain (the unconscious part) presents the conscious mind a fully processed "image", in all the five senses, of what it has constructed when integrating the sensory input from memory. This model is not what the senses have experienced. It is an integrated interpretation of the memory of what the senses (including time) have registered. This model that has been presented to the conscious mind is what I call the Individual's Reality Model or just Individual Reality; it is often wrong as I have demonstrated.

Some people do not recognize any other reality. This is a mistake that causes a great deal of conflict in human society. Some people kill others based on their Individual Reality Model. I think that this might be because they do not understand how a person could not see what they see and believe the person to be lying in order to do them harm. The body is defending itself from what it perceives to be an malicious attacking organism. The organism is destroyed under the guise of ridding the world of evil.

Individual Reality can be fraught with so much psychosis that it is only proper and dignified to expose it to the world-at-large in very restricted and filtered pieces. Public conversations about religion, politics or sex have been discouraged for many thousands of years. Perhaps for good reasons. These subjects are the ones that socially responsible people avoid; at least that is a common message. Individual Reality is personal;  it comprises what an person experiences within their own body i.e. pain, joy, sadness, happiness, mental coherence, etc. Some people actually believe that their's is the only reality and will attempt to destroy different reality models that they feel are attacking theirs. People get worried enough that they physically kill their "adversary"; this is, in fact, very common.

People that accept their unconscious brain's model of reality (Individual Reality) as 'real' or as 'truth' can be very dangerous people. It is at this point that the brain will actually start making things up and filtering out information. The brain will present things to the conscious mind that never happened and it will ignore things that did happen; this is the definition of belief. It is the basis of bigotry and racism. This is how the unconscious brain rationalizes murder, intellectual and physical.