There's a reason my response was more than two lines long.

Are you prepared to prove to me that if one jumps off a cliff that person will be able to take flight due to some mental desire because he's actually living in a dream? If not, be wary of looking like a fool.

Are you prepared to let rest an argument which has no relevance to an entirely hypothetical suggestion?
Since you seemed to ignore the point completely... I present for re-reading:

Most my dreams have some implied possibilities and impossibilities... I can't break them, nor do I try to break them. Though given the realization it is a dream (which, honestly, isn't very uncommon for me) then I can lead my mind wherever. Were I dreaming my life (which I've thought myself as doing... I imagine myself as a young child dreaming all my experiences... but that is irrelevant to the point I am trying to make.) but unknowing, I would be completely unaware and unbelieving that I was dreaming and thus I cannot change the dream to my likings.

This.

Also, Tool is a group of musical geniuses, so anything they say might need serious discussion. Life COULD be a dream, or some kind of fucked up experiment from a higher form of being (Not divine/Religious) I'm talking like aliens that study us. That's weird when u think about it, but I say that aliens studying humans would be no different from when humans study animals in the wild. It's not impossible.

Personally, Farty, when I'm asleep I don't have to know that I'm dreaming for my thoughts to have a profound effect on the "reality" of my dream. Things will just start happening that are beyond pure coincidence and yet I will still not recognize that I am dreaming until after I wake up. I do not have to believe, know, nor even be aware that I am dreaming to influence or change what's happening in my dreams.

I'm going to humor this and provide an actual argument, instead of the "lulz" I've been posting...

Let's take our life to be a dream. If all is but a dream, what must be necessary for everything to actually be a dream? Well, certainly something must exist, for the dream itself wouldn't exist without existence. So we have at least, an existent dream. If it is reasonable for the dream to exist, then I think it reasonable for other things to exist as well, for a dream by itself isn't much of a dream without contents. You can't have a dream purely about nothing. You can dream about the color black, where nothing happens in your dream but you see the color black, but then at least 1 other thing exists, the color black. Someone might say "well, the color black isn't really a color, so much as an absence of color, so you're not really seeing anything." To which I would respond, you are still recognizing the lack of something, which means that something is in fact going on. Maybe these things only exist within the dream, but they still exist since they exist within the dream.

Taking these to be true:
-the dream exists
-other things exist, at least within the dream
-reality consists of all real things

Now I ask what it would mean to have a dream but no dreamer. We have now, some sort of metaphysical existence, but no lower existence to base it on. Now, where precisely are the things that occur in the dream going to come from? Perhaps they can just spawn somehow through some sort of godly power, and the dream goes on, but if this dream is the foundation for all things, then it isn't really a dream at all. Since this dream exists, but other things outside the dream do not, it's a foundation of sorts for all reality, and essentially, it's own reality.

If there is a dreamer and a dream, there is naturally still some existence. This differs slightly, because in this case the things in the dream are going to come from the realm of the dreamer, unless someone has ever dreamt up something that doesn't exist, which would be something without color, without mass, without some form, concept, or idea. This I find highly unlikely, but if proven otherwise I would be forced to change the results of this proof. Though, it may be impossible to prove since describing the thing in terms of our language would be to describe it in terms of things which do exist, and if it's describable in terms of existent things, then it isn't unexistent. If the dreamer exists, then his realm is the reality, and the dream is precisely a dream, or unreal, however you wish to call it.

So, we have two cases, the dream and no dreamer, and the dream and a dreamer. The first case, if applied to us, gives us this: if we are nothing but a dream, then we are our own reality since there is nothing else. Our dreams would be dreams, but as for us ourselves, we are the reality and our "plane" is reality since there is nothing else but what comes from us.
The second case, if we are nothing but the dream of some god or alien, reduces to the first case. We (well, I at least) know nothing of the dreamer who has dreamt me, so while his reality may be the foundation of reality, only the stuff in my "plane" is of my reality, since nothing exists for me outside of the dream. That is to say, if I am being dreamt, I cannot leave the dream and enter the reality of my dreamer, for instance. Perhaps the dreamer may enter his dream, but then he is merely a part of his dream and not some other thing. Even if the dreamer were to bring with him something that had formerly not existed within the dream, it would then simply become a part of the reality of the dream. So if we are the dream of some other being, our reality is still our reality.

What it boils down to is this: Is it technically possible that we are only the dream of some alien or god? Well, the argument above doesn't actually refute that. What it says, is that we are real relative to ourselves. Since we know of no one below us dreaming us up, then it really doesn't matter at all that we are only a dream since we are surrounded with our own reality.

Go ahead and pick this apart if you like.

Life is not, and cannot, be a dream.

Hypothetically, if life were a dream. Only one person in the entire existence of existence is real. Arguably you could say God is the dreamer and we are his dream, But then I will ask you, how could he not have woken up by now, and destroyed us all? Is that when it ends? When his physical body wakes up? If that is the case, God doesn't exist but rather a figment of imagination (No change there then) You don't exist either (You've only been alive 13 to 19 ish years.)

Life could easily be a dream. Thats the whole Matrixism theory. Good enough basis for a religion IMO

It's hard to distinguish what's real and what's a dream really, since everything is just impulses to your brain. Hell, we could all be figments of Devilesk's dream, and eventually one day he'll wake up, only to realize there's no SEN at all.

What is bugging me right now is that almost everyone is using fabrics from the 'dream' to protest the idea, which doesn't make sense.
Although this is also partially Fierce's fault people also seem to be basing their arguments on the way 'normal' dreams work, who is to say that the dreams you know work like the one we could be in? IMO I think Dream was a really bad word to use to start this topic...but anyway what is done is done.

So there is no set possibilities or anything? Anything will happen, even if impossible based on believed possibilities within the dream? They don't have to be the same as possibilities as when you are awake... Like I've had a dream where when I jump I continue going up until I freely choose when to fall. It's not possible in reality, but it was very possible in that dream. I couldn't just stop moving in mid air and float around a bit, as that was outside the possibilities of that dream.

I'm trying to use experience to show that the "reality" and "physical" laws of a dream can be radically different from what we are familiar with, but while dreaming they are perfectly accepted (as the normal laws are when we are awake.)
There isn't really any way to tell if life is a dream (at least for me) unless one was able recognize the differences between being "awake" and the "dream".

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 12 2009, 8:49 pm by FaRTy1billion.

Exactly. Dreams can look just like reality so how can people deny that possibility of life really being a dream?

This topic is a joke. If you can't prove your existence or believe you are dreaming right now, then you are not self-aware and are not considered by our standards life-deserving.

Thank you. We have ourselves a red-pill.

Suppose life is a dream.
What are the consequences?
Should we be doing something differently?
If we don't know anything about the external reality, does it matter?
Should we throw away the dream when we have no idea if the external reality is better or worse?
Should we go and do whatever we want and assume we can get away with it?
Are we sure this dream does not affect the external reality?
Do we know if that external reality is incapable of observing this one and passing judgment on it?

This entire topic is reminding me of string theory:


Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 13 2009, 12:33 am by Mini Moose 2707.

Fierce, I thought you wanted serious answers for serious discussion?
You have had 2 or 3 actually serious responses in this whole topic, namely,
A_of-s_t's:
http://www.staredit.net/138097/
and my 3rd one:
http://www.staredit.net/138132/

So what is your response to this?
Did you read either of them? Or shall we label this thread "hypocrisy"? (That goes for all you other folks who have yet to address the substantiative stuff too...)

Good thing this was moved to null...

I've already provided response to A-of_s-t's. I'll work on yours when I'm feeling less lazy, maybe. ;o
1. SEN mafia is a joke. If you can't prove your existence or believe that the people of SEN threw Darkling in a pit and dropped a giant stone on him ...
... oh right, noone believes that. We're on a messageboard for the purpose of talking about stuff. LIKEWUT.
So can we please get over that bullcrap?
2. How does it violate self-awareness?
3. your standards*?
Uh. That seems a rather random and arbitrary claim.

By being a hypothetical, omnipotent being which could follow entirely different rules than we do?

You responded to half of it - specifically the Occam's Razor portion - and ignored the remainder. How ironic this claim comes from the person saying there is more to his post with the statement "There's a reason my response was more than two lines long."

maybe it is a being that dreams for a really long relative time...
Also maybe you (the reader of this post) becoming self-aware was the start of the dream, and your death (or whatever will happen that terminates your self-awareness) is the end.