You are an electromechanical device or machine, even if it’s the product of biological evolution. You certainly operate on electricity (converted from the chemical energy in your foods); you’re certainly mechanical. Those bones, joints, muscles; your movements, are certainly mechanical in nature and biomechanical engineering is certainly an active academic pursuit, especially for athletes and those with skeletal-muscular abnormalities.
Part of that electromechanical you is your brain – more electrical than mechanical, though engineered never-the-less. Your brain houses a very up close and personal part of you – your mind. Your mind is the key to your reality which will not be the same as anyone else’s reality and in fact your reality maybe totally unreal.
The only thing you know that is really real is your mind. Everything else could be an illusion to a greater or lesser degree. Even your mind could be an artificial construction rather than a natural one and you would be none the wiser, but at least an artificial mind would still be a really real mind to you.
Your mind is the gateway to your perceptions of reality. If you have no mind (like before your conception) you have no perception of reality.
REALITY INSIDE THE STRIKE ZONE (EVEN IF NOT RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLATE)
Your reality is twofold. There’s your here-and-now reality, reality as perceived by your five senses and channeled into your wetware; there’s your there-and-then reality, reality stored as your memory inside your wetware.
In either case, your reality is all in your mind. Your brain chemistry; your neural network wiring are where you’re here-and-now and there-and-then reality lie.
But is that reality accurate? Would your reality match someone else’s version of the exact same events? No!
BRAIN CHEMISTRY
Your brain chemistry is never the exact same moment to moment. Ditto for every other odd bod and sod on the planet.
What determines your brain chemistry? Your age; genetic makeup and background heritage; foods and beverages; sleep patterns; what drugs and/or medicines you use; pollutants in your immediate environment; disease and/or injury to the brain or nervous system; even outside manipulation, say electrode stimulation by a neuroscientist.
Your brain chemistry isn’t the same as anybody else’s. If everybody’s brain chemistry were the same, if everyone were hardwired up the same (neural networks), then each and every one of us would like and dislike the exact same things equally. Each election would be a 100% landslide for all votes would go to one candidate. Even the opposing candidate would vote for their opponent, which is all nonsense as the two candidates (in fact all candidates) would have identical worldviews/policies. There would be no such thing as ‘different strokes for different folks’ and as such the world would be in one hell of a mess.
FIVE SENSES
When it comes to your five senses, your mind doesn’t receive the original stimulus or stimuli, only a crude copy that’s been translated into another language – one that your mind can interpret and come to terms with.
Your mind didn’t receive that photon of light – just an electrical signal describing the information that photon carried.
Your mind didn’t receive that sound wave – just an electrical signal describing the information that sound wave carried.
Your mind didn’t receive that molecule of food odor or taste – just an electrical signal describing the odor or taste information that molecule carried.
Your mind didn’t receive that cat scratch – just an electrical signal describing the sensation of receiving a cat scratch elsewhere.
Everything ‘real’ in the here-and-now is the sum product of the feed via electrical signals into your mind via your five senses. But the ‘real’ in your mind is a crude copy of the ‘real’ outside your mind as input gets translated in the process and any translation is never as good as the original.
Another facet to that is that your five senses can be tricked into perceiving illusions. You’ve experienced optical illusions. A common one is the perception that the Sun goes around the Earth. We still say that the Sun rises and the Sun sets as if the Sun were moving and not the Earth rotating. You’re also probably familiar with the Moon Illusion, whereby the Full Moon at the horizon appears much larger than when higher up in the sky, but it is not. Your perceived reality and real reality aren’t the same. There’s also taste and smell illusions that can be perpetrated. There are illusions with touch and no doubt audio illusions as well. Mankind’s technology helps confuse the picture too. A hologram looks 3-D and solid but isn’t. The mind, via the senses, can be fooled into accepting six (or more) impossible things even before you’ve sat down to breakfast!
You’d be well aware that witnesses in courtroom cases will have their ability to translate what they experienced via their five senses into reliable data that can be recalled into question when the guilt or innocence of the accused is at stake. You’d probably be aware that there are seemingly millions of psychology studies that prove again and again that eyewitness testimony isn’t worth squat and can be easily manipulated via the power of suggestion.
Using independent instrumentation to verify reality like a thermometer or Geiger counter isn’t any better as their readings are meaningless until you use your five senses to read the readings resulting in the same translation issues and thus you’re back to square one.
Even if you have absolutely perfect sensory apparatus, your reality will be relative, not absolute, to someone else’s reality as Einstein so aptly demonstrated. Without going into a longwinded example, just accept that you may see Event A happen before Event B. Someone else in a different frame of reference sees Event B happen before Event A. Yet another person sees Event A and Event B occur simultaneously. That’s why it’s Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Relativity, and not Einstein’s Theory of General and Special Absolutes.
MEMORY
Your Reality: Strike One: Your brain chemistry isn’t reliable or consistent.
Your Reality: Strike Two: Your five senses that input to mind isn’t reliable.
Your Reality: Strike Three: Your memory is definitely not reliable. Memory is not infallible as those courtroom dramas often highlight.
So, if 100 people experience an event, and have to recall that event say ten years later, how many versions of really real reality are you going to get? What odds that even one of these recollections will be 100% spot on? What odds that none reflect that really real reality (RRR) of that event (assuming such a concept as RRR in the first place of course)?
To be continued…
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