Introduction To Reality

Today all that remains is an arid, lifeless landscape under an unearthly greenish-yellow sky that has no sun or moon -- a world which has neither day nor night. Strange rectangular-shaped boulders, some with mysterious markings on them, lie haphazardly scattered over the ground on both sides of the path. Some of the gigantic stones almost seem to have been placed in the form of a pattern, but it's difficult to be sure from your vantage point. Just ahead lie the ruins of the ancient city of Zendar-7. Through the pale reddish mist that surrounds you, you can just make out the remnants of the stone walls that countless eons ago had surrounded and protected this once-magnificent metropolis.

As you slowly walk down what's left of the path leading to the entrance arch of the city, your ears suddenly become aware of the faint sound of ominous music being played somewhere, but coming from no discernable direction. "Now who on earth could be playing music in a God-forsaken place like this?" you mumble to yourself. And then you remember ... this God-forsaken place isn't earth. It isn't anything at all like the beloved homeland that you once knew.

Cautiously you stumble through the frail archway leading into the heart of the ancient city. You pick your way through the crumbling ruins as you slowly head down the main avenue, past the pyramids of Z'adeph and Aristisans, past the statue of Martuus the Great, right up to the base of the Forbidden Temple of the Quellites. And all the while, the music is becoming louder -- and louder -- and more foreboding.

You are suddenly aware of the object you are holding in your right hand -- an object that you have been carrying ever since you arrived on this outermost planet of the Zendar star system. As you slowly raise your hand in front of your eyes, you see what appears to be some kind of high-powered laser pistol being held in a grotesquely deformed stump of a hand -- a hand that you've never seen before -- a hand that couldn't possibly be yours. And yet, there it is -- right at the end of your arm!

Climbing reluctantly up the stairs of the Forbidden Temple you begin to have the uneasy feeling that you are being watched by someone (or something) from the shadows. Something powerful and evil. Something that even the passing of countless centuries could not kill. And now it's hiding, and waiting ... for you.

Maybe it's still not too late to turn back. Surely they'll understand. I mean, after all, this is your very first mission, and they certainly can't expect a mere rookie like you to ....

Then suddenly and without warning, there it is -- standing right in front of you and not more than twenty feet away! Drops of green slime flow from its hideous scales while insane anger flashes in its blood-red eyes. As the "thing" slowly looks you over, it seems to sneer at you in contempt -- as if it knows that you are doomed. For several seconds you stand frozen in terrified fascination, unable to move and unable to think. You stare at the creature's death-ray rifle, which he's holding in his hands. And then you remember the laser pistol in your right hand! You must kill the creature before it kills you!

You begin raising the weapon from your side, but it's too late. A puff of smoke and a flash of blinding light emerge from the creature's rifle. Brilliant colors and lights flash all around and engulf you A loud clap of thunder fills your ears. And then, as suddenly as it all started, there is nothing but silence ... and darkness.

You are dead.

"Next time, you're going to have to move a little quicker than that if you ever expect to win the game," warns the attendant as she carefully removes the virtual reality helmet from your head. "But with a little more practice," she says with a smile, " I'm sure you'll eventually get the hang of it."

"But what was that ugly creature who got me?" you ask inquisitively. "It's hard to believe that it was only an image generated by a computer. It acted so real, almost like it was actually alive."

"That was me!" shouts a good-looking teen-age boy from across the way as he removes his V-R helmet. "You never had a chance! You were 'meat' the minute you started walking up them temple steps!"

"So, it was you who 'killed' me, eh?" you say teasingly to your murderer. "Just wait! Next time, you won't be so lucky. I'm a pretty good shot too, y' know!"

It's all a bluff. You never shot a real gun in your life. In fact you know fully well that next time, just like today, you'll be lucky if you can make it through the entire game without accidently shooting yourself with your gun.

"Hey, wait a minute," you suddenly mumble. "What would happen if I did shoot myself with my own gun?"

The game attendant thinks for a moment. "I'm not really sure what would happen," she finally answers. "I think that the computer is programmed to check only for hits on other players in the game, and not on the player doing the shooting. But then nobody has ever really tried it to find out. It would certainly be an interesting experiment!" And then she adds with a smirk, "Someday you'll just have to 'take a shot' at trying it out!"

As you leave the amusement arcade and its fictitious worlds of virtual reality, you are glad that you are finally back into the realm of real reality -- the reality that contains real stuff like blue skies, birds, flowers, trees, and little puppy dogs and kitty cats. Ah, yes, the real reality!

And just then a really weird thought flashes through your mind: How do you know that this current reality is actually the "real reality"? After all, it was only a few minutes ago that you had experienced a totally different "real reality" -- a reality located on a faraway planet in the Zendar star system. Is it possible that this current reality (the one with the flowers, puppies, kittens, etc.) might also be just another virtual reality, a virtual reality in which you have apparently been living for all of your apparent life? Is it possible that one day, when you least expect it, somebody (or something) will suddenly pull off your helmet and shout: "Surprise! You don't really exist! Your whole life has been nothing more than a computer-generated illusion"?

Of course, such an idea is preposterous, right? After all, if you've been wearing a virtual reality helmet on your head all of your life, wouldn't you have been able to see it, or at least feel it by now? And besides, the flickering little low-resolution TV screens inside those helmets are easily distinguishable from real-life vision. And furthermore, when you turn your head while wearing a V-R helmet, there is a slight delay between the time your head starts moving and the time the visual display in the helmet responds. And you can probably think of dozens of other "reasons."

But all of these objections are merely technology-based. Granted, the perpetration of such a deception by utilizing only present-day virtual reality techniques would be a virtual impossibility (no pun intended). But let's not confine our scope of theoretical possibilities to only those ideas thatcan be supported by our current meager understanding of possible future technologies.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Imagine a laboratory in another part of the universe (or maybe even in a totally different universe) in which the technological state of the art is millions of years ahead of Earth's. On a workbench in this laboratory is a living brain with all kinds of wires, tubes, computers, and other such stuff connected to it. (For the sake of simplicity we will assume that the brain is a "human-type" brain, although such an assumption is not really necessary.) Sensors mounted on the brain intercept signals being sent out, such as, "wiggle the index finger on my right hand." These signals are immediately directed to an ultrasuper computer, which instantaneously generates an ultra high-resolution image of a wiggling finger on a hand. This image is then reformatted into appropriate optic nerve pulses, which are then sent directly into the brain through the optic nerve. What's the result? From the point of view of "the person inside the brain" it appears that he is actually watching himself wiggle "his finger."

It's easy to see that all of the human senses (touch, smell, etc.) could be handled in a similar manner. The ultra high-speed computers could synthesize absolutely any stimulus to produce any illusion or any "reality." An entire virtual lifetime, full of memories of the past and perceptions of the present, could be generated. The brain could be made to view itself as a "person" living in a "real" world, a world containing birds, and flowers, and little puppy dogs and kitty cats. The computers could even create a scenario in which the brain perceives itself as being a person who's reading a book. (Think about it!)

And throughout the course of this "lifetime," there would be absolutely no way for the brain to ever discover the real truth about itself! It's perceived reality would constitute a completely different universe from it's real reality.

As our previous discussion illustrated, we can never really know the ultimate answer to this question. It is indeed possible that I may be the only living thing in the universe (assuming that there even is a universe!), and that every other person that I've ever seen or met is merely a "prop" in the virtual reality world that has been created for me by some ultrasuper computers. (To paraphrase Descartes: "I think, therefore I am ... but I'm not so sure about you!)

I can neither prove nor disprove the premise that "I" may be merely a "brain on a laboratory workbench." But I'm willing to bet that I'm not. Otherwise, I might be tempted to try the experiment of shooting myself in what appears to be my head with something that I perceive to be a gun, and then wait to see how the computers would handle it. (But I have a hunch that I wouldn't enjoy the results of that experiment at all!)

I believe that there is a real physical basis to the perception of reality. When I see a tree, I do not think that it is merely a figment of my imagination (unless I'm suffering from hallucinations), or that it is merely a virtual tree being generated in my brain by some alien computer. When I see a tree, I believe that some entity actually exists, and that entity is the basis for my perception. The entity might actually be a real tree, or it may only be a clever photograph or illusion (such as in a V-R helmet) that fools me into "thinking" that I'm seeing a real tree. But regardless of the mechanism, the cause of my perception ultimately has a real physical explanation. Of course, as we've already discussed, I can never actually prove such a statement. Therefore I must simply accept that premise on faith.

Clearly, there can be an unlimited number of different virtual realities. A computer can be programmed to generate almost any kind of scenario imaginable. But how many different real realities can exist? Is it possible that "my reality" could be different from "your reality"?

It is important to recognize the distinction between real reality (sometimes referred to as physical "truth"), and perceived reality. Perhaps you have heard the story of the three blind men and the elephant. Once upon a time three blind men were each asked to identify an object by feeling it. (The object was an elephant, but none of the blind men was told that.) The first blind man felt the elephant's trunk and thought that he was touching a hose. The second blind man felt one of the elephant's legs and thought that he was touching the trunk of a tree. The third blind man felt the elephant's tail and thought that he was touching a rope. In this story the three blind men each had a different perceived reality (hose, tree trunk, and rope). But the real reality (elephant) was the same for all three men.

Our perceptions of reality are constantly changing. These perceived realities are sometimes referred to as paradigms. In the days of Ptolemy the earth was thought to be the the center of the universe. In his paradigm, the earth stood still while the sun, the moon, and all the stars and planets revolved around it. Then Copernicus came along with a different paradigm: Instead of perceiving the earth as being at the center of the universe, he imagined that the sun was at the center, and the rest of the universe revloved around it. But that new view of "reality" also turned out to be wrong. The sun was later found to be part of an even larger structure called the galaxy. During the first part of the twentieth century the terms "galaxy" and "universe" were synonomous. But we now "know" (at least we think we know) that our galaxy is only one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

Has the real reality of the universe actually changed since the time of Ptolemy? Did the earth in those days actually reside at the physical center of the universe, and only just recently move away from that spot? Of course not. The true nature of the universe (whatever that true nature may ultimately turn out to be) has not changed. Only our perceptions of that ultimate truth have changed. In other words, there is (and always has been) only one real reality. Therefore we will drop the redundant word, "real," and from now on we will refer to "real reality" as simply, "reality."

The study of reality goes by a familiar name -- it is called science. And the primary goal of science is to discover the truths about the entire physical universe. And yet, science is often regarded by the general public as being some kind of esoteric study of non-reality!

A few years ago I was out walking with one of my friends who had an interest in science but limited training in the field. As we walked, we started discussing the earth, the solar system, and the Milky Way galaxy. I pointed out that if the entire visible universe were to be scaled down to the size of the planet earth, our Milky Way galaxy would be only about the size of the Goodyear blimp, and our sun would be merely a faint pinpoint of light too small to be seen. I suggested imagining a giant snail crawling along on top of the blimp at the ridiculous rate of one inch per century. Of course no snail could ever move at one inch per century -- because, at the current scale of size, one inch per century would be faster than the speed of light!

We talked about the distances between the stars and the existence of black holes, objects so massive that even light cannot escape. We discussed the giant gas and dust clouds, which are still giving rise to the birth of new stars. We walked and talked for several hours. And then, after a while, my friend looked at his watch and said that he had completely forgotten about another appointment that he had made.

"It's been fun," he said in parting, "but now I'm afraid it's time for me to get back to reality."

I found his parting comment rather amusing, because we had just spent the past several hours talking about reality! And yet, to my friend, "reality" meant nothing more than merely mundane work-a-day matters. In a complete reversal of perception, the real reality was akin to a fantasy or science fiction from his point of view!

On other occasions I have heard someone trying to explain some observed phenomon to a non-technically oriented person. The explainer might say something like, "A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters the shadow of the earth." And then the non-technical person would say, "Well, maybe that's the scientific explanation," with presumably the assumption that somewhere there exists a different real explanation.

But wait a minute. The given answer was not the scientific explanation. It was simply the explanation. "Scientific" explanations don't describe some kind of separate reality. They describe the one and only reality. So qualifying the noun, "explanation," with the adjective, "scientific," is redundant.

Science is a dynamic process. The theories and explanations of science are only good insofar as they continue to explain observed reality. If new experiments confirm the theories, the beliefs in the truths of those theories is strengthened. But if an experiment produces results contrary to those explainable by the theories, then the theories must be reformulated to accommodate the new data as well as all of the old data. Any theory which fails to do so does not accurately model physical reality.

As we have already seen, our perceptions of the universe are constantly changing. Sometimes new discoveries are relatively minor and simply confirm or refine that which we already know (like when we measure the mass of an electron to one more decimal place of accuracy). When this happens we take comfort in thinking that we have moved just that much closer to understanding a part of reality. But then every once in a while a new discovery comes along that is so unexpected and so contrary to what is "known" to be true that it causes a complete upset of the prevailing paradigm (like when Galileo first turned a telescope toward the night sky). It's those kind of experiences that should warn us to always question the credibility of any "knowledge" of reality.

The potential uncertainties about what "is" and what "isn't" have led to the introduction of a new way of speaking/writing/thinking known as "E-Prime." The name "E-Prime" (short for "English-Prime") seems to have been coined by David Bourland, but the concept was initially introduced by Alfred Korzybski in Science and Sanity. In simple terms, E-Prime replaces the "is" of conventional English with words that more accurately describe our observations or perceptions of reality. We can, in principle, never know what "is." We can only know what we "perceive."

Robert Anton Wilson in his book, Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, presents several good examples of traditional English phraseology and their corresponding E-Prime constructions:

*(Mr. Wilson could have taken this last application of E-Prime even further: "The first entity which I perceived to be a man appeared to stab another entity, which I also perceived to be a man, with a third entity which appeared to me to be a knife.")