Derealization and life as a simulation

[checkitout_]

Hi,
I was reading an article about a theory of life that says life is a simulation. Right after I read it, my mind gave me a question "are these people around you real? can they feel things like I do? do they have their own point of view?". And I've made up quite reasonable answers to that question which is, yes, they are the same as I am but every single time I try to convince myself that, a part of my mind will just push and convince me otherwise and it triggers the anxiety inside, which makes me for some reason worried and scared that people aren't real. It really might be a dumb thing to get worried about, but it honestly has been affecting me mentally and physically. It also makes me experience some sort of derealization. Have anyone experienced this sort of thing and does anyone have maybe tips regarding to my situation? I'm really sorry if it is such a dumb question. Thank you.

[Paxiled]

First, note that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is one of the drivers of this which he meant as a joke but he's also a nut job of a conspiracy theorist, which doesn't actually take anything away from the fact he's also a business genius.  You can be nuts and very successful, but these aren't the people you want to listen to for philosophy as their main philosophy is, what's good for me is good for, well, me.  But it's not a dumb question.  This kind of thing comes up a fair amount just on this website.  Here's the thing about thinking:  it's what makes humans human.  It's what makes us incredibly creative.  It's what makes us nuts.  Unlike other species, humans have this cerebrum that formed that allows us to overrule instinct and act on thought or impulse in ways that can make life a lot more interesting or a lot more troublesome.  It all depends on how you regard your thoughts and the nature of those thoughts.  Every human thinks.  It's what we are.  So we are able to make up a story about life that isn't factually true.  In that sense, yes, life is a simulation or a dream or whatever you want to call it because people created it, not nature.  But we are also a part of nature, and so it is part of nature too.  Societies and religions and civilizations and philosophies are all made up by people.  That's why there are so many of them.  You can look at that as enriching or you can look at it as chaotic or however you want to look at it.  But if you let those thoughts drive you nuts or obsess over it instead of just analyzing it and reasoning from it and joining in on the fun of participating in our imaginative creation of our lives it can make life very hard.  Depression and anxiety are obsessive ways of thinking that are counterproductive and just plain no fun.  It's an illness.  Thinking isn't an illness.  Realizing the incredible diversity of how societies are organized kind of says people are just making this stuff up and persuading others but that doesn't have to make you unhappy or frightened.  It can be grist for your own acts of creation.  So the question is, do your ideas test out or not and are they serving your life or making it very hard to live.  If the latter, therapy might help you do it in a way that doesn't bother you so much.  Now, are people real?  Is anything real?  Who knows?  But it really doesn't matter because we're alive and living it whether it's a simulation or not, so we have no choice but to make the best of it and enjoy it.  Again, your thinking isn't the problem, it's what intelligent people do.  It's only a problem that it seems to be a problem for you.  Peace.

[checkitout_]

So people do feel things and have their own point of views then ?

[Paxiled]

Not sure I understand the question.  Everyone has a point of view.  When a lot of these agree, you get movement.  When few agree you get stasis.  But a point of view is a starting point, not an end-point.  It does have to be tested to make sure it is fact based and not just completely made up.  Let me give you a specific example.  Hundreds of years ago some rabbis came up with the notion that Earth was what would now make it about 6000 years old, a notion reflected in the Hebrew calendar.  Few Jewish people still believe this but they still use the calendar.  Christians took this belief when that religion was invented but again, most don't believe it to be true now but some fundamentalists who are very active in US politics do believe it to be true.  However, many of these folks get their electricity from nuclear power plants and all believe we dropped atomic bombs on Japan twice and that many nations have nuclear weapons.  The knowledge of the half-life of radioactive elements is a way of approximately dating how long things have been around, and so we know that life on Earth is a whole lot older than 600o years.  You have to believe that to turn on your electricity, but they still don't.  So that's a point of view, as you call it, but we know it isn't factually true and that can get in the way of innovation and social progress.  So yeah, without different points of view nothing would ever progress and we'd never come up with anything new and nothing would ever get better, but that point of view does need to accord with reality.  Whether that reality is a simulation or not really doesn't matter if we're living in it, we still have to live by the rules of nature.  As to feeling things, of course people feel things.  But feelings again are not necessarily accurate.  Now, many have the point of view that scientific discoveries just make life more complicated and it's easier to live with made-up beliefs that didn't stand the test of evidence, and if you want to live that way nobody's stopping you.  So yeah, we all have feelings about things and points of view but wouldn't it be nice if they were fact-based when facts were available?  

[checkitout_]

That is true. Thank you so much for your complete answer. Really appreciate it.

[checkitout_]

What I originally meant was whether or not the concept of pov is real as if these people around can actually look at how I look through their eyes or are people just software programmed coded robots of some sort

[Paxiled]

You seem very obsessed with the idea life isn't real.  Is this a creative mind or something you need to seek professional help about is the question.  If you really believe humans, who have existed before we were able to create robots, are software coded robots then you are in the aliens are here and in control group.  Not a great group to be in unless you turn it into a series of best selling fantasy novels, but remember, those authors know they're making it up.  Do you?  Today's robots are quite limited, we don't actually live in the world of Terminator.  Or Westworld.  Those are fantasies.  We are flesh and blood and we know this because we've been cut open quite a lot over the centuries.  No software there.  As to the concept of point of view, it's not a concept, a concept is something theorized about.  You know everyone you've ever met has a point of view on lots of things.  Not necessarily a factual one, but we all have opinions, and there's a lot more about life we don't know than we do so opinion and theory are more prevalent than knowledge.  Now, again, if you enter the world of philosophy and religion you are going to see lots of thoughtful people with ideas that are fairly equivalent to the idea of humans being controlled by external forces, usually some form of God or Gods or the devil, which is really still God because God made the devil if you believe that sort of thing, and philosophers such as Hegal and Marx believed there are forces that move human civilization that they don't expressly attribute to God but you pretty much have to go there to believe that.  So again, if this isn't an obsession and you're not living in a fantasy world, in which case you need professional help to make life clearer for you, you're in good company ti think humans aren't really rugged individualists at all but are programmed, but not in every thing we do, just in the great movements of civilizations.  Before events happened that destroyed my creative side I was a fiction writer, and that's why I respond like this.  I also have an advanced degree in political science, so that's why I know about political philosophy some and can speak to that.  So there's a whole lot of interesting things people can do with creative thinking when we don't have factual answers to things.  And you can also be living in a world you've made up because something has gone wrong.  I can't know which place you're at, but that's the distinction you have to make to decide if you're just a really interesting thinker or you're suffering and it's led to this.  Peace.

[Paxiled]

Sorry, Hegel, not Hegal.

[Paxiled]

And by the way, it's unlikely anyone has ever truly understood Hegel or Marx.  Everything you've heard about Marx is not what he said, it's what others have done pretending to be following him.  Nobody's truly understood Adam Smith, for that matter, I don't think most economists have even read his book all the way through.  So it goes.

[checkitout_]

It's just an idea that I saw on an article and infested my mind for so many days. Plus my mind kept on convincing me that people are not real and giving me some scenarios of it (even give me some ideas that did not even correlate to the reason  why I was scared at all) which I dont like at all because it triggers the anxiety in me. My mind works a lot just leaking scenarios and ideas of things and that  might be bad in a lot of situations cause all it does is that it's just going to distract me. But looking at your explanation and your answer here, I'm quite relieved. Thank you so much for your answer, I truly appreciate it.

[specialmom]

Ah man, the mind is beautiful and a trap at the same time, isn't it?  We can go places and ponder things in our mind that is awesome.  Interesting.  Deep. But then, it can just be  a trap in which we get thoughts stuck in our head that torture us or just bug us.  You might be in the tap area with this thought.  My son who has anxiety will start thinking about something and his whole day becomes about that life mystery  and if it is negative (he's into thinking about how we are all the same, no one is really unique, there are probably 20,000 males just like him doing the exact same thing around the world so he doesn't matter an dis not special . . .   yes, he thinks about that until he feels like he's nobody and depressed when I can't really understand the obsessing over these thoughts.  It's his age and what he does.  you sound in the same boat!  Do you have trouble sleeping?  That's common with this wandering mind thing too, I've noticed.  My son does better if he is busy, if he has a goal list of things he wants to accomplish every day and he is working on the anxiety disorder.  

[checkitout_]

Thank you for your reply. I really hope your son will get better regarding his situation with anxiety.

[checkitout_]

Thank you for your reply. I really hope your son will get better regarding his situation with anxiety.

[checkitout_]

And yes I do have trouble sleeping.