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March 15th, 2009 by Sean Certainty

Why is it that, the older we get, the more certain we become about reality?

And the more certain we become, the less magic there seems to be in the world?

Of course we can answer this in the boring sense: by virtue of having “unknowns” in your belief system, you subjectively sense magic because you cannot predict the future. It’s an inevitable result, limited to the confines of the mind. An illusion born out of your own ignorance.

Yeah, I get it.

What if it isn’t an illusion though? What if, by virtue of holding on to uncertainty, you genuinely affect reality, and allow magical things to happen? Meaning that: if you hold on to uncertainty, reality itself behaves differently for you.

It’s a mind-fuck. It blurs the line between subjectivity and objectivity.

I would like to test this theory out, but I have no clue how to go about it. How do you measure how uncertain you are? How do you determine whether this uncertainty is affecting reality, or mearly your perception of reality? How do you locate and bottle up the unknown?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under Note to Self, Philosophy, Belief Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

### 10 Responses to “Certainty”

1. Mr. Tallyman Says:
   March 15th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

   Interesting.

   Try to materialize something.. that would qualify.

2. X-Master Says:
   March 15th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

   Well just like in a magic show, if we know how a trick was preformed it loses its magic. But if we don’t know how it was preformed then it still has magic for us. Despite knowing it is an illusion.

   And I have also been wondering how I go about and change the way I view reality. And the way you view reality is nothing more than a belief you hold in your head about how things are and work because of what you have been told by people with some measure authority and your own experiences to back them up.

   That being said, the best way to change a belief is to cripple it with doubt.

3. mrj Says:
   March 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm

   Perhaps part of this “certainty belief” comes from learning things from television, and schools and so on. It all applies to society pretty well, thus hardening our beliefs.
   In the natural world, things are quite different, even when people go to it. No bills, no “daily commute”,[i]you never know what might be around the corner[/i]. The point is, much of society’s predictability doesn’t exactly apply in nature. That way, if you wanted to experience something “weird” or “insane”, then perhaps you can go camping or something, and “re-make” a belief system, where everything is uncertain. (the natural world is there to help provide evidence to uncertainty, reinforcing the uncertainty belief).

   So who knows, many of you might not be willing to go out into the dangerous wilderness searching for a bit of “magic”.For those who aren’t, maybe you can just “unlearn what you have learned”

   One thing about what I’ve said feels funny to me however.

   What would happen to people around you, if you came back and the beliefs you’ve held had an effect on reality? (i.e. how would their experience differ from yours?)

   I suppose it depends on what is experienced.(or if this even does effect reality.)

4. shantoruk Says:
   March 19th, 2009 at 3:11 am

   The old “ruining the magic” argument? I don’t buy it.

   Think of when you were a kid and you watched kiddie shows on TV. Or your parents read you kiddie bedtime stories. Those were fun, weren’t they? But if you go back and watch/read those kiddie things now, they’ll probably seem a bit silly. Shallow. Boring. Predictable.

   Is this a bad thing? That because of your jaded, worldly experience, the magic of kiddie shows and stories has disappeared? Nah. There are plenty of movies and books for adults which have more depth to them. And now that you’re old enough to understand them, they’re generally more fun than the kiddie stuff.

   (Don’t get me wrong, some kids’ books are awesome, but as an adult I tend to look at it from the point of view of the writer - “how do I tell a captivating story using simple words?”. Writing children’s fiction is a challenge and it’s fun to see how different writers approach it. And I still love watching the occasional Disney movie. But a lot of the things I read as a kid would just be a waste of time now.)

   It’s the same with things like science. If you study engineering for three years, you probably won’t be as excited as you were as a kid when you found out you could make a computer say “hello world”. But on the plus side, you’ll have the ability to read about and do research much closer to the cutting edge of knowledge. You could be programming an AI to defeat any opponent at Go. Or designing a database to make government just a little less wasteful and inefficient.

   The curiosity never has to disappear … it just moves focus to more challenging (and interesting) areas.

   Why hold on to the kiddie level stuff when the world is out there in all its awesomeness?

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7hsQA3wo3Q
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0

5. Mr. Tallyman Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

   Have you heard of tulpas?

   http://www.scribd.com/doc/2354554/ThoughtForms-by-Besant-Annie-Wood-18471933

6. X-Master Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

   I have, they are very interesting to say the least.

7. bainzyboy14 Says:
   March 27th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

   hi u guys are all about proving stuff but the only proof needed is whever you believe in it hippyish stuff i know but true all the same.

8. Mr. Tallyman Says:
   March 30th, 2009 at 4:50 am

   Here is a link to a video, where a man talks about his findings in the area of cattle mutilation. This was the first time I had heard of Tulpas..

   http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7446993523613419979&ei=1ZTQSZzhEqW2qAPao7HbBg&q=cattle+mutilation&hl=en

9. GoldenJoe Says:
   April 18th, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   Testing the theory is simple - move the control group outside of your range of perception. Record the circumstances of whatever elements you believe you have used to affect reality, and compare them to reports from the control group. This control group must be reporting on the same events though, so coordination might be tricky.

10. illiterate hippie Says:
    July 10th, 2009 at 4:18 am

    While you’re growing, your brain functions essentially as a gigantic (subjective) map of all the reality outside of your body. (In some cases, it becomes a literal map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus#Role_in_spatial_memory_and_navigation )

    The brain adds new connections, and culls off ones it doesn’t need or use. It tries its best to become more and more accurate, and it “succeeds”, as long as the person whom the brain belongs to lives a life of routine and structure.

    It will never be entirely certain though. Suppose there’s a problem encountered in this routine. A completely unpredictable one, like a car accident, and a limb must be removed. Soon the brain will have to restructure its little version of reality around the lost limb, but for the most part, will have to make due with the part of reality it has stored away.

    If a brain is forced to constantly adapt to new environments, you might think it forms no structure whatsoever. That’s wrong, because it makes a generalization of everything it encounters, so it does end up forming a solid structure. In a sane individual, at least. Maybe that’s why there are people who are insane, they form a map of reality based on one transient thing, and when that is gone, they are left with nothing.

    This is the result of subjectivity, and we all know what that is. To me, subjectivity is a difference in ability or way of perceiving something. Because of subjectivity, we have people who make mistakes because of an incorrect assumption about something.

    “I didn’t know the car was going 90 m.p.h. as I was crossing the street, it looked like it was going pretty slowly! At least until it ran me over.”

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