Do you ever get the feeling... [Archive]

Kodo

07-12-2008, 07:37 PM

Hmm I remember having this conversation with some friends in ninth grade. We were saying, "How do I know that you're real? What if you're all robots just pretending to go along with me?" Funny stuff.

Actually, today I was on the highway driving around visiting people. We started discussing how all the cars around you in either direction seem to come from nothing and go back into nothing. You never meet any of the people. Were they real? You'll never see them again.

Haha.. this seems to have some infinite depth you could apply this to pretty much every form in the external world.

walter

07-12-2008, 07:47 PM

Kodo, what you just said completely fucked my mind haha :P. I do get this feeling sometimes. When you think about it, what is life? Are we going to just wake up from this someday and things will be completely different? It's weird when you think about it that everything you do may not even be real and could be a dream or just some sort of state of mind.

Zidane

07-12-2008, 07:50 PM

Weird, haha. My friend Joe was just talking about this as he left my house a couple hours ago.

Strike.

07-12-2008, 08:11 PM

Tyler

07-12-2008, 10:37 PM

I feel like im doing something in my head, or im saying something in my head, and that everyone can here.
its nuts.

Patrucci

07-12-2008, 11:28 PM

It's a hard topic to discuss tbh.
Me and my dad go on for hours and hours about this kind of stuff.
Like, what if life revolves around one person, being me.
And all of you are here to "entertain" me per se.
Or, what if we are just an experiment from scientists who watch over us,
they pick certain people to give cancer to, or have hurricanes in certain places,
Just to study it to see how they can help stop these things in their world.

Shadow Conception

07-13-2008, 04:28 AM

I think about this, too. I'm the only real person, maybe everybody else is just there for me. Incredibly selfish concept, but it's one that makes you wonder...

Vortigern

07-13-2008, 05:44 AM

This is actually a major issue in western philosophy. The relation between our observations and reality (and wether or not there is such a thing as an objective reality) has been considered since Antiquity. It makes perfect sense to ask that question, as long as you know that you'll never get a final answer to it. Different answers do have great repercussions, like wether it is possible to practice science in a meaningful way and wether the existence of God is impossible or compulsory for the universe.

Leegion

07-13-2008, 07:24 AM

Rather than feel like a dream. sometimes i feel like the world is hyper real.

Staged almost.

voodoo

07-13-2008, 09:10 AM

Yeah. I sometimes get that feeling that everything is just a dream. Also if any of you have watched The Truman Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show) I sometimes think life could be similar to that (i.e We are being watched by someone/something that decides our fate.)

My philosophy teacher gave us an interesting website on that thought. Clicky (http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/matrix_start .htm)

As Vortigern said, how can we know that what we perceive to be life is not reality? I can think of - and presumably nobody before me has - one way of undeniably proving that life isn't just a product of my own imagination. How can I know that you guys are not something made up by my brain to give me something to do right now?

I think the beauty of the thought is that if anyone tries to prove what you say to them as wrong, you can just toss "How do I know it's not my brain making that up?" back at them.

You can't rely on your own senses to prove it to you, such as touch. If you view a stick half in water, half out, it appears to bend as it enters the water. It appears to be in a different place than it really is, we call that the refraction of the light. Clicky (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thu mb/b/b9/Refraction-with-soda-straw.jpg/527px-Refraction-with-soda-straw.jpg)

What if it was the same for random people you drive past in the car? What if they appear to be there, but they're not really? I love it.

Glanerd

07-13-2008, 11:33 PM

Sometimes I feel as if I am in a coma and that any second I will wake up seven years old in the hospital. :X

.:Mouldy Punk:.

07-14-2008, 07:23 AM

In the words of that guy in Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy, that's just natural paranoia :p

It's quite pointless and impossible to try and come to a definite conclusion, but interesting to discuss possible conclusions. Descartes did the whole doubting everything. Doubting your senses because they've deceived you in the past, doubting 'reality' because he could be dreaming and thinking that there is an 'evil demon' who controls our minds etc. A bit matrix-esque. And really there is no decent way to prove those doubts to be false. Our senses have tricked us before in illusions, or when we think we see someone we know in the street only to realise when we get closer that it is a totally different person, maybe they do trick us all the time. Like you guys were saying, you can't really determine if you are dreaming or not sometimes, maybe this is just all a weird dream. The evil demon theory cannot be disproved because if such a demon exists and is controlling our thoughts, he will not let us prove his existence.

Descartes argument against all that is very weak. I can't be bothered to go into it, but he 'proves' the existence of god, and Descartes knows god to be benevolent and all that so wouldn't allow us to be deceived by an evil demon and wouldn't allow for all these doubts to be true. - Bit of a summarised version, but that was the general jist - utter shite.

raikkonen

07-14-2008, 07:32 AM

same here, also imagined the concept of matrix, that people are just graphic from a computer or something!

GrungeRockCity

07-14-2008, 08:20 AM

I get that feeling ALL the time. And I can safely say that I only have moments where I feel like I should, weird as that is. But when it comes to how I normally concieve things, it's like a weird, fucked up dream I'm just not waking up from. Oddly enough, every avenue I take seems to leave me fucked over in some way, as well. Much like a bad nightmare would. Maybe it's still 1997, and I've been in a coma the last 11 years after my bike wreck, or something? lol.. I wish..

WiM

07-14-2008, 08:50 AM

Like Strike said: what if my life was like the Truman Show?
Aver since I started playing the MGS games, I kept wondering if The Patriots weren't controlling my life, which, of course, is rediculous. Or is it?
I've had questions in my head like: "Who says your red is the same is my red? Who says that shit doesn't smell like vanilla in your world?"
I've also had the "empty life" theory. That people just walk by and when they're around the corner, they just vanish. Or when my friends go home the just plug in to recharge or something. Their lives are empty. Because, they SAY they go home and do a lot of stuff, but who says they do?

Sometimes I think I'm alone. SO alone that I made everything up. And I never did anything I thought I did...

Two years ago, 2 of my friends were saying that they were not real. They were sick of being my imagination. Of course, I did not believe them. But they kept saying that for months and you tend to get brainwashed then. I started to believe them...

When you're told something over and over and over again, you start to believe it. Just like Hitler made everyone believe the Jews were bad.

timbob

07-17-2008, 06:41 AM

Isn't it called "Mescaline"?

Pablo Escobar Jr.

07-17-2008, 07:29 AM

I often think about how I might be just some sort of chemical reaction, in space and which is making my whole life up.. that the world does not exist, people do not exist, I do not exist, and so on.. like a floating dream, not inside a person.

I also sometimes think about the same as Leegion and Patrucci.

I think it's just natural for the every well functioning human mind to think like that sometimes, and I think humans would not be as well developed if we would never think beyond the.. standard things.

edit: omg hippie.

LordLeverette

07-17-2008, 10:40 AM

I get that feeling when I notice, I'm viewing my life through my own eyes. Holy shit, I'm controlling it too. Sometimes I feel like life can be an FPS, and I don't mean that in a Counter Strike addict way, I mean that as in are other people around me.. real? I mean I know all you guys but only I can look through my own eyes, it's like all you guys are just.. fake, made for my own reality.

V-Gamer

07-19-2008, 08:44 PM

Yeah actually, but more like my entire life is a Tv show. I blame the media for that one, but yeah I do feel that way. Very interesting topic, to actually see that people feel the same way.

Oxymoron

07-20-2008, 01:56 PM

I always think about that. Like everyone around me is just there to be "fillers" in my life and to help me with my life experience, whether it be good or bad.

TwistedArachnid

07-26-2008, 03:04 PM

Mouldy reminded me of Descarte, and the guy was a nut. I learned about him in Philosphy...

Anyway, I don't really have the problem with dreams. I remember watching a TV show where at the end, the character ended up being in an insane asylum and hallucinating everything. I used to sometimes wonder if something like that could go on. Because I'll be living life and get a feeling that something's going to happen or someone's going to say something, and it'll happen or they'll say it. It's weird, but it doesn't happen all the time. And I can't think 'this girl's going to fall for me' and she does. So I figure I'm not controlling the world since obviously I'm not influencing it. I just get a feeling. So that theory fell through.

The thing that happens to me now though, is the past seems like a dream. ZombieNM and I were talking about some stuff last night that happened like...6 or 5 years ago and it seems so fake like another lifetime ago.

In intro to psychology (when we got past the boring biology and into the exciting stuff) we learned about how the mind can think it remembers something, but doesn't. There was this story where this girl found her aunt after the aunt committed suicide and remembered everything. However, it came out that the girl didn't find her aunt, her mom did or something. She just thought she did and her mind filled in the gaps with memories. So that raises the question, how do you know you actually did what you think you did years ago? Weird concept huh? Kinda interested on your thoughts on this.

Holster

07-29-2008, 04:10 AM

Yeah, I sometimes think that this isn't really real, it's just my imagination. This is hard to explain but sometimes I feel that I'm imagining everything going on, and other people's actions. And then other people are doing the same as me, imagining their own little worlds or something.. argh it's weird i can't explain it.

I always went deep in thought in RE because it was fuck boring and i got a bit freaked out thinking about everything, why are we here, what will happen when i die, is it one big place where i'll see everyone who has died before me, it's so weird.

guilty.by.association

07-29-2008, 04:55 AM

I often think that. It freaks me out sometimes. Glad to know i'm not the only one.

I also worry that there may be absolutely nothing after death and everyone's hopes of a nice afterlife with the angels etc is just human stupidity.

I hope not.

Yam Trigger

07-29-2008, 07:37 AM

JMR

07-29-2008, 01:05 PM

danhex

07-29-2008, 05:46 PM

you asked i answered, i dont feel the exact same way, but i do feel we are being controlled through mind manipulation sometimes...dont ask...or if you want to, google New World Order, North American Union, Free Masons, etc

BlazingEvanator

09-02-2008, 06:56 PM

sometimes i space out and think what if our whole lives isnt real.. its really freaky sometimes.

guilty.by.association

09-02-2008, 07:04 PM

I sometimes feel as though I'm the only true human being, as though everyone else are "actors," much like the Truman Show. Mainly because some things happen that are so ridiculously stupid that I can't believe they would happen for any other reason other than to "test" me.

I often think that and get worried that everyone else is in on something im not.

Luckily everyone is supporting me traveling out of NZ instead of trying to keep me here haha :)

But yeah. Someone once suggested that our lives are like the sims, alien life is controlling us somewhere and doing whatever they want with our lives.

Sounds absurd but interesting.

Tendercrisp

09-02-2008, 08:04 PM

That life is just a dream? That people around you are concepts of your imagination? Or am I the only one?
I seem to have thoughts about this every so often it makes me think about it.

Also it's a pleasure to open the discussions on this forum... <3 Kodo

Of course you're the only one. :evilsmile:

I mean, We are all just illusions, so how can we think for ourselves?

But yes, I have gotten that feeling before.

BlazingEvanator

09-03-2008, 05:00 PM

I often think that and get worried that everyone else is in on something im not.

Luckily everyone is supporting me traveling out of NZ instead of trying to keep me here haha :)

But yeah. Someone once suggested that our lives are like the sims, alien life is controlling us somewhere and doing whatever they want with our lives.

Sounds absurd but interesting.

it makes sense.. its really creepy though. I mean people watching you at all times?

Sam B.

12-31-2008, 05:56 PM

I feel completely the same about it, I keep thinking of this everyday

Asmo

12-31-2008, 06:03 PM

I've thought about it many times, actually. I've never really talked about it with anyone though, it's strange. One of my big questions is, what happens when you die? Does everything and everyone around just go away with you?

It certainly is a vague topic to discuss.

Niko Bellic999

01-01-2009, 08:41 AM

That life is just a dream? That people around you are concepts of your imagination? Or am I the only one?
I seem to have thoughts about this every so often it makes me think about it.

Also it's a pleasure to open the discussions on this forum... <3 Kodo
Well, to be honest, sometimes life looks like a dream but then we scratch our eyes and see we're in reality... ;)

Pivotto

02-05-2009, 04:09 PM

Definitely have felt that before.

DiscoBombs

02-05-2009, 07:36 PM

There's the theory that we, and the universe around us, are just projected "holograms" of our actual selves from another dimension/universe. Hawking touches briefly on it in one of his books, which were overall very intriguing reads. Similar to what you wonder about Lynk.

I believe that there are two universes we frequent, this one, and the one our dreams take place in. Dreams fascinate me, and my own are especially vivid. I can usually tell if I'm dreaming or not by the general lucidity of my surroundings. For me my dreams seem more real than this place I type from now, which lacks... "vividity" and creativity. But this may be because of my escapist mentality towards the universe as it exists now.

All the proof in the world to me that all these philosophical and pseudoscientific thought patterns we have are in some way or another real/true is because seemingly everyone has them. Even people that have never even read on the subjects can become overwhelmed with a question they ask themselves about reality and life (and life after death). Countless times my friends have asked me out of no where my opinions on such things or if I have ever given thought on them. I tell them of course "all the time", but then ask what sparked it for them. My answer is 99% of the time "I dont know, the thought just occurred to me" or "I was just thinking about it". I believe we as humans are meant to think these things, they seem almost hard-coded into our psyche from birth as we sometimes even think about these things in early childhood (at least I did) and continue to all through life!

I enjoy topics like this. c: