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

Alternate Realities - Donald Trump and Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump

 Donald Trump and Ted Cruz do not live in the same world as as many of us do; They have a completely different reality in their heads, literally.  As they wander through this thing we call time and space their brains seek information to be used for understanding what is happening and for reassurance that what they think is 'correct' among other things. The important things, things that they consider useful for interpreting the world and for making predictions, they store into memory. Brains do not store everything into memory. It is selective in what it keeps and what it discards. Memories are what form our reality, nothing else. Memories *are* our reality, our personal realities. What Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have stored in their memory banks is not the same as many others.

It is not clear to me that either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz are even aware that other 'realities' exist. Both of these people are behaving as though theirs is only  possible take on 'reality' and that they have been, for whatever reason, privilege to see it. The rest of us are idiots and/or useful tools to be used in accomplishing what they would like to accomplish. The only 'real people' to them are those that see/remember approximately the same things that they do. Donald Trump or Ted Cruz understand and respect these other 'real people' for their ability to see things as they 'really are'. At least, this is the way that they speak and behave. They are both clever at manipulating their physical and social environment; they are very smart people.  But they seem to believe that they alone are privileged to see reality 'as it really is'. They do not seem capable of stepping outside of their own personal realities, or even to realize that what they perceive is *not* necessarily 'real'.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz do not live in the same world as as many of us do; here is how. People gather information to confirm what they 'believe' or that they find useful. These are things that the brain likes and seeks out for future reference. The brain is interested in prediction and when it fails the exceptions are noted and are presented to the conscious mind for 'consideration'. Consideration refers to a conscious effort to rationalize unexpected observations. The conscious mind looks for ways to integrate the unexpected observations into the brains preexisting Individual Reality Models (Belief System). If the conscious mind cannot do this, it then seeks reasons (rationalizes) to reject the information; the conscious mind finds the "extenuating conditions" which will nullify the negative effects of a problem and leave the Reality Model intact if possible, or it will modify the Model to the minimum degree possible. This is how the brain works, as far as I can tell, with everyone, myself included.

There is a wonderful psychology experiment where people are asked to keep track of something complex and give their answer at the end which, they do. At the end of the experiment during debriefing they are asked about the naked lady  (OK, it was a gorilla) that walked through the middle of the court and the middle of ones focal point.  Only about half of the people even see the gorilla. It is not part of Individual Reality, at all. The memory is not accessible to the conscious mind. Even just one second after an event, all one has is what the brain decided to retain. Individual Reality *is* memory and memories are chosen by each individual brain according to its own individual Reality Model and according to what it considers important or is searching for at the time.

This may be a bit easier to swallow by washing it down with the following analogy. The brain seeks out information to build a functioning intellectual structure that can interpret and predict 'reality'. Useful observations are collected and broken down into the material which is used to build and maintain an intellectual structure or interpretation of the world, which I call 'Individual Reality'. Information is sought out and digested and used 'intellectually' in the same manner that that an individual seeks out food for the the body and stores it in the stomach as it is broken down into its fundamental building blocks (i.e. protein), which are then incorporated into the physical body.

Some people, however, have one other process going on. Some are fully conscious that their brain makes mistakes and what it presents to the conscious mind is often wrong. This is the whole point of 'scientific' thought process and the null hypothesis. Many people actually believe the things that their brains come up with. Many people don't. Ones 'reality', the world in which they live is constructed of the things that the brain has decided to store, nothing else. People store different things into memory.

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump really are living in a different reality. I mean the literally. They do not "see" the same things that you do. They do not "hear" the same things that you do. All they have is their own individual memory of the event, nothing else. What I am saying, less delicately put, is that it is not clear to me that either of these people are endowed with the property of a brain that is taken to be 'uniquely human', the ability to recognize and step out of their own Individual Realities.

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.

Islamic Terrorism, My Take

The Daily Beast. Are all terrorists muslims?

Frankly, I want people to stop talking about Muslims and Islam, totally and completely. Let's start talking about the problem, not our prejudice. That's my take so far. Want to stop Muslim terrorism? Christian terrorism? nationalistic terrorism? economic terrorism? Catch my drift? This type of behaviour transcends ideology or religions. They all have it. therefore the problem is not the ideology. That is the logical "therefore" that I use here, by the way. Ideology/religion is one of the tools that sociopathic people use to rationalize/justify their behaviour. It they were born Christian or Hindu or ... instead of Muslim, they would still destroy the social structure around them if it suited their purpose. Time to stop talking about the ideology as if it were the problem. The individuals that use the ideology to trick or otherwise convince other to kill and destroy are the problem. Some people get sucked into things because they are not clever enough to figure it out. That is common. Some people, however, actively convince others to go out and destroy and kill; THEY are the problem, not the foot soldiers.

ALL the ideologies have their deranged. Yes, some ideologies are better than others and some rationalize killing non believers and some rationalize killing homosexuals and some rationalize ejecting families out on the street if they loose their jobs and some rationalize punishing people that dance or drink or listen to the wrong music. What the fuck is the difference? Nasty people are the problem, nasty people wrote the 'rules' and then claim transgression as an excuse to 'punish them'. Nasty people actually like punishing people, they like making rules too. Nasty people think that the world is out to get them, because it is; people do not like ass-holes and will get them if they can. Nasty people need guns to defend themselves and then create an environment where everyone actually needs a gun to protect themselves. We call these areas war zones.

Vengeful people who think that their take on reality is the one 'true' take on reality are the problem. They 'know' how things 'should be' and 'would be' if it were not for 'them'. They are capitalists, socialists, Catholic, Muslim, saxophone players, painters, scientists etc. Stop talking about Islam as if it were the problem, it is not. Vengeful sociopathic people are the problem. I estimate, that a good 30 percent of USians are obsessed with punishing transgressors. this is a number that I invented. Look at our incarceration rate. 'Punishing' people is counterproductive; it makes the problem worse. Think about it. If you want to 'punish' the people that planned the latest round of attacks, then YOU, my friend, are part of the problem. Think very carefully about the word punish and the concept of vengeance.

There are some very strong indications, supported by objective fact, that the the worlds largest terrorist state, averaged over the last 50 yr, is the United States. Average over the last hundred years and Europe becomes the culprit. Yes, yes, I know... Russia, China, Cambodia, Argentina, ... , This serves to strengthen my case. Terrorism, at its root, has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, nothing, zero; it transcends even ideology and jumps into nationalism as well.

Neither Africa nor the Arabs, nor any of the Islamic states individually or in total has risen to the level of butchery that Europe and the United States have perpetrated against the rest of the world, and themselves over the last 5 generations. The Africans and Muslims do not even reach the knees of the 'Western World' in this regard; is not even close. Just count up the dead, that is all you have to do. I don't want to hear anything about morals or justification. Now, stop this nonsense about "Islamic" Terrorism. The numbers killed is easy to find. I leave it as an exercise for the reader. Just count up the fucking dead!

Islam is not the biggest problem, not by a long-shot. Our false perceptions and bad reactions and totally ineffective Reality Models are the problem. Open the  borders and take in these poor refugees, no questions, give them free train and plane bus tickets; give them food and shelter so that they can get to their friends and relatives houses and get set up as quickly and efficiently as possible. We can do the paperwork later. The numbers of people coming is insignificant. Yes, some will be thieves and murderers, so what. Statistics over the years show that migrants commit Less violent crimes than the 'native' populations; they have more to lose. The great majority of these people hate violence. It would be nice if the 'Western Nations' would stop being ass-holes. Want to improve crime statistics? Want to reduce the levels of violence on the planet? Yes? Open the borders. Do it now; it is easy and costs virtually nothing. The alternative is devastatingly expensive and sows the seeds of conflict for another five generations. Open the fucking borders!