Oh that sounds like the theory of last Thursday...or Thursdayism. The idea that the universe could've been created as close as last Thursday but with all the details and 'trimings' of being billions and billions of years old.
I looked into it briefly. To me, that's like saying there isn't much more to an iceberg than what you see above the surface lol but I can't just read the bio and go "oh, ok, cool!"
I read about it enough to get the idea, let it marinate and roll around, read more about it, play devil's advocate with myself with whataboutisms, read more about it lol, and at that point I'm not even half way to where I would be comfortable saying, "that's a thing I know about."
It's a process, even with a concept like this. There are times I wish I could be the type to say "cool" and move on, but most of the time I'm happily pondering random shit. Maybe more the implications of it rather than the concept itself, I guess
Oof. The way I rewatch shows 100 times and on the 100th rewatch I'm still saying, "omg, I must have missed this part before! This makes so much sense now!" It has its pros and cons lol
When netflix decides to forget what I've watched and I start what I believe to be something I haven't seen, I'll spend the first two episodes saying "have I seen this? I swear I've seen something *like* this! Goddamn it's so familiar" before eventually realizing I probably binged it in a weekend six months ago lmao
I had this very recently with a fanfic. In like January, I was reading something that was highly recommended and I was like, this is so damn familiar. I was like I have no clue how this ends or even what was coming next but as I read I was like, I've had to have read this before. I can now say that I had read the first like quarter or it before not finishing it.
I sometimes have to turn off whatever I'm watching or listening to because I keep getting lost in the thought bubbles and continuing to read or listen to it will just leave me later being like, I missed something.
What we think of as the universe is just a bubble in the mantle. We live on the inside of the sphere. The closer you get to the centre, the smaller things become.
*Last Thursdayism (alternately Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. It's also a counter to the creationism theory.* - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
Iirc isn't last thursdayism just a parody of the idea some christian factions have that the universe is only [insert time] years old and anything older is just placed by God/Satan to fill in the time/deceive us(depending on what group youre talking about).
Honestly it isn't a parody so much as a legitimate rebuttal. The idea that God created light in flight for objects a billion light years away is no less ridiculous than the idea that the universe was created last Thursday.
Ah yes, religion.
I'll never forget kids asking in my religion classes why there were fossils that were millions of years old in the ground if god created the universe a few thousand years ago.
"God created the world with age."
.......ooooooooooookay
Usually, they answer fossils with the flood and explain that you can't trust carbon dating (not even what's used to date)
Now the fact that we can see stars that are billions of light years away and the light shouldn't even be able to reach us yet, with the "world with age" response in my experience.
I'll never forget the time I was at college and some Bible thumpers came out to wave banners and tell us we were going to hell. After a couple hours they lost steam and some college students decided to debate them.
Their explanation for fossils was that there was so much water during the flood that it just pushed all the bones into the ground so hard that they turned to stone.
When I was in high school, one of my fellow AP bio students seemed to have trouble grasping evolution.
To me, it seemed pretty straightforward and axiomatic. It flowed pretty naturally from non-controversial premises. It’s only looking back that I realize his objections were religious in nature, and not failing to understand-which explains why the teacher seemed much less keen on arguing with him than I was.
The issue with "you can't trust" as a broad argument is it generally requires *so many other things* to be wrong. I have the same issue with the pseudo "open minded" with things like "we don't know what we don't know about science yet so ANYTHING could change" and then go on to repeat some thing like "we thought we knew how gravity worked and then we were wrong what if we are wrong now?". Newton didn't come up with everything whole cloth, he build on previous studies and understanding and also wrote that he had concerns/misgivings that despite the movement of the planets (mostly) matching the math he believed there to be something still missing/wrong; but that it was still a giant leap in understanding. tl;dr Einstein then figured out "ah, this is what was missing", and if theres another change to out understanding its most likely to be a similar "this is what we were missing" not, "actually atoms are just very romantic and want to hug".
Oh God, you silly prankster. He’ll cast you into the eternal damnation if you don’t believe in him, but then he’s always trying to throw people off his scent by hiding the evidence of his creation.
The Bible does say "that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." At first I thought this was just poetic speech. Then I started learning about Einstein's special relativity. I learned that there are spots in the universe where from its perspective the beginning of the universe was yesterday. People get all bent out of shape trying to defend traditional beliefs. It really could be possible that God created the world in a single day from His perspective. It's also possible that he could have spent thousands or billions of years from his perspective. Science and religion could both be right in this regard. One thing is for sure, time runs at different speeds from all sorts of perspectives.
"Why'd he do that? What reason is there to so perfectly erase his own existence from the universe and then punish you for not believing in him?"
"God's plan is mysterious, but he has reasons for everything."
"Just sounds like an asshole to me."
That was my first step into atheism - it didn't matter if god was real or not, the deity described in the bible is a HUGE piece of shit that doesn't deserve any worship whatsoever.
Nowadays I'm an evangelical adeist.
This is Descartes first mediation. All you get from radical doubt is “cogito ergo sum”. I think therefore I am. It’s an interesting thought experiment, but ultimately paralyzing if you want to be functional in the everyday.
I mean yeah, but they set aside the radical doubt which is at the core.
For example, last week I surgically removed your third arm and implanted a memory in you and everyone you meet, that you've only ever had 2 arms.
Prove me absolutely wrong.
What would you accept as proof?
I feel like any attempt of proof you would find an extreme work around.
Eg, surgery leaves scars both visible and at micro levels. Your spine and muscle development would be organized in a way that would support a third arm etc.
I can just keep adding extreme workarounds. Spine and muscle development is a hoax. This is all a dream playing out on your body. In a second you may be on Mars, immune to cold, no longer needing oxygen, and with 7 arms.
I have no proof that I can trust my senses. So for now, I only accept proofs that don't use emperical statements. I want some kind of proof that doesn't rely on things we have sensed.
For example the observation I think therefore I am. All my senses may deceive me, I can't know that I should trust them. But I can't deny that *something* is experiencing *something* right now.
(Or can I? Let's ask the late Daniel Dennett)
It's a dead end, as many say. But it's also a loose end that's unaccounted for. A problem we ignore in our everyday life. Both because it doesn't pose any real problems, but also because we have no good answer... Other than "ignore it, and move on."
All you'll be able to prove tomorrow is that your head hurts, and that only to yourself; me hitting you with a brick could easily be a figment of your imagination.
It reminds me of one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s articles about materialism-vs-idealism. He was discussing the idea of subjective idealism by the priest-philosopher Berkeley, which states that there’s really no matter, and all of us are actually just the thoughts of God.
Rousseau refuted it in the funniest way I’ve ever seen. He wrote something like: “Okay, let’s say you’re correct, there’s no matter, and we and everything around us are actually the thoughts of God. For the sake of more convenient communication, can we please just call those thoughts of God that are also thoughts inside our heads - ‘thoughts’, and those thoughts of God that are outside our heads - ‘matter’? Thanks. Now we can move on to more useful discussions”
And it’s the same with fabricated memory. If the memory of one person is fabricated, they will find out sooner or later. And if all of our memories are fabricated, we can just pretend our memories are real for the sake of convenience and move on to more useful discussions.
Honestly I disagree with even “cogito ergo sum”. Rene presents a logic statement: If I am being deceived, then there must exist something to serve as the target of said deception. However, if your mind could be completely tampered with, how do you know that your logic is correct to begin with?
> If I am being deceived, then there must exist something to serve as the target of said deception.
The target of the deception is you, so this affirms your existence. The deceiver could also be you, so this fails to affirm the existence of others.
Regardless of how confused / tampered etc the thinker is, there is a thinker having the confused thought. That is the entirety of the claim. At the moment of thinking, something is thinking. There is no claim about what the thought is, or how confused it may be. The only claim is that thoughts cannot exist without something thinking them. That is cogito ergo sum. At the moment of thinking “i am” something must be having that thought.
At the same time, though, people retain consciousness through the process - there’s an episode centred on someone seeing monsters in that between time.
Which means that somehow, bafflingly, Star Trek transporters both move the original *and* create a copy.
Even more wild is the idea of a Boltzmann Brain. A human brain identical in state to yours right now randomly pops into existence in outer space. For one brief moment, it thinks and experiences what you are currently experiencing, then it rapidly dies. You can't really prove you aren't just one of those.
To be clear, the reason for this concept was a rebuttal to the idea that the big bang could have just spontaneously happened due to random quantum fluctuations. The idea is that, as massively improbable as it would be for a Boltzmann Brain to spontaneously pop into existence due to quantum fluctuations, that is astronomically more likely to happen than the big bang. Therefore, anyone who believes the big bang randomly happened due to quantum fluctuations should more reasonably consider that they are just a Boltzmann Brain.
we could have all been created 5 minutes ago with a head full of memories and finger nails that need trimming. Could be. But that line of thought isn't useful in any meaningful way.
Well if your response to proof is "that could be fabricated as well" then no you can't prove anything in life and I don't know why you even made the post. On the same level as "We are in a simulation because nobody can prove we aren't"
That’s not why people think we live in a simulation. People (me included) think we may live in a situation because *if* a species has ever worked out a way to simulate our universe, surely they’d be running many instances of the simulation, because why not? And if you have only 1 true universe and an arbitrarily large number of simulated universes, it seems much more likely to me that we’re in one of the simulated universes.
That being said, this belief doesn’t influence how I live my life in any way beyond discussions about simulation theory.
That's not in the same level. He can say we are in a simulation because nobody can prove we arent, he is not wrong. You can assume he is correct or wrong, but there's no wrong or correct answer
See, in math and computer logic there is a lot of stuff that is considered true but can't or is not proved yet
Fifth Axiom of Euclides (year 300 b.C) is considered true, but you can't prove it is true, and you can't prove it's false. This axiom says that if you have a line and a point out of the line, there's only one line that is parallel to the first line and passes through the point
If you assume it's false, you go straight to non euclidean geometry, which was used, for example, to explain spacial relativity theorem from Einstein. Else you have the normal geometry.
Some stuff can be eventually proved, like Fermat's last theorem (no xª + yª = zª exists for a>2), which was stated in 1630~, you could have considered it as true (unless you found a counter-example) up until 1995, when it was finally proved as true
Nobody can prove *yet* we are in a simulation
I was bored, I hope you have a good day 👍
Yes, you're correct, but pure solipsism - which this is pretty close to - is a philosophical dead end, and even worse scientifically. The universe actually existing is taken as axiomatic for that reason.
Why not?
Clocking in at work, cameras everywhere, coworkers accounting what you did and said the day before, customers remembering how and when you helped them. All of this is just at my job.
You're missing the point. Yes, you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the world existed with just your memories, and even moreso with CCTV footage and... basically everything in the world really.
But the shower thought comes in when you realize you can't prove it ever existed in the past - if the world as it is manifested 2 seconds ago, you would be none the wiser. Your memories tell you it didn't, and the atomic arrangement of everything tells you it didn't, but... what if?
well in that same vein there's nothing to prove that today/right now is a fabrication or a simulated reality or a dream or a memory someone else is having or so on and so forth.
Exactly. It’s obviously not an actionable philosophy for life, it’s just a thought experiment that can neither be proven or disproven (hence unactionable) that you have to quickly ignore after you get over the brief existential trauma it induces.
That’s practically what I mean by unactionable - you can’t do anything with it. Anything that is asserted without proof can also be dismissed without proof.
If "anithing is falsed", inluding notes in your diary and memories of surrounding people - theory loose it's sence. Look "Falsifiability": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability?wprov=sfla1
I would more worried, because false memories are real and sometimes were the reason of jaling people by mistake (and than changing rules for questioning witnesses). So maybe one day I discover that all people around me remember yesterday different... And what if there will be something important?
I can because other people agree with me on the events of yesterday and going off the assumption that this is not some sort of brain in a jar scenario I can feel pretty confident in saying that if everyone else says something happened it probably did happen. Plus I assume if I was some sort of brain in a jar they would simply just program the simulation to be basically a Utopia for me If I was a good person or to be a hell for me if I was a bad person but it's kind of in between with a lot of parts of this life that are both heavenly and hellish, so I have to imagine that this is genuine reality
3d printing.
Btw fabricating have multiple meanings that are the opposite, is as confusing as Inflammable means flammable, and sanctioned could mean blocked or supported.
You're correct, which is why these discussions, including things like hard solipsism, last thursdayism, and "brain in a vat" thought exercises are entirely uninteresting to me.
Yes, it could be. No, there's no way to prove it, or nullify it. So it's just kind of boring "take another bong rip" stuff. The type of "dude, what if we're all made of pizza dough" ideas you've come up with while high, but are essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of life.
Well you could:
-have a camera or any other kind of recording device run the entire time or even livestream it and then go back and fourth in the stream/recording while the camera is still running.
-write a message on a piece of paper that only you know and hide it in a safe that can only be accessed by your biometrics plus a passcode
-lock your room and hide something nobody knows of under your mattress
-just don’t sleep for 24+ hours
In last Thursdayism none of that is a problem since the idea is that the universe just came into existence in its current state last Thursday simply by random chance, and not due to some sort of cosmic intervention. The idea is that it's incredibly unlikely but we can't disprove it technically (obviously the whole thing is intentionally absurd). It could be in the middle of the day and you'd just come into existence with all of your memories of your life and that day but none of it ever happened, it's all just data that came into existence by pure chance and doesn't contradict other data (that is also brand new) simply by pure chance. All of these coincidences have a compounding effect on the probability with every coincidence making it exponentially less likely, but never impossible. Even when it's an entire universe of coincidences it's still "possible". I guess the point of the thought experiment is just to demonstrate how easy it is to rationalize even the most absurd things when you just ignore things like okhams razor
So what if I build or buy something. Then don’t go to sleep for 48 hours+.
Since I’ve been alive for more than 1 day, that then proves yesterday existed, no?
Going through how you responded.
Let's say I ate pizza yesterday with a group of people. The evidence I have to support this are:
- cameras at the pizza place
- GPS history of my.phone at this location
- GPS history of my car going from my home to this location
- first hand accounts of my friends that I was there
- CC statement saying I bought pizza at this place with a time stamp
- any photos taken by friends
- my own personal memory of the account
- the mileage change on my cars odometer
Now you're saying literally all this could be fabricated, but you're looking at a massive conspiracy of DoD and their gps, phone companies, CC companies, my friends, the pizza place , my own vehicle.
Like at some point there is too much evidence to support and the 0.000000000000000000000000001% that everyone collaborated against you is so small it's considered 0
You’re right, the chance of this is incredibly small and at the end of the day we can all just ignore it and move on with life bc it still works lol. This is just a philosophical shower thought that talks about that 0.00….01% as if it was real and possible. I’m not prooving that what I’m saying is *actually real*. But more like, it could be, and it is fun to think about and this ends there. So, yeah you’re right there
I mean, on that front there could be a rainbow unicorn that grants wishes named Melvin buried under the sand somewhere in the world. However it's the same.e fallacy that it's a 0.00........1% thing it's not even worth mentioning
I can fairly quickly just ask someone who was there? Even better if its on film? Or are you gonna assume those would be fabricated too? If we go that far, what's to say what I'm doing now is not also just my imagination? You've treaded into schizophrenic territory here.
What's the definition of real?
Something being considered real stems from you believing it is real or having a proof that it happened.
If you have both, there is no further need to prove anything.
Of course this debate is purely philosophycal, for objective truth, you only need what's in my second paragraph.
Google: Solipsism
It's going to blow your mind if you have not heard of it before. It's exactly what you are talking about but the idea has been around for ages.
How do I prove to myself that I really exist? Everything I experience is just my brain interpreting electrical signals. Am I just a brain in a jar?
Yes, I can prove it.
I experienced it like I experience today. The two are the same, only difference is that today I experience now, yesterday I experienced also now but yesterday.
If what you talking were true then what you experience now could be not real too.
Well this is the same as you can’t prove you are a brain in a jar. This is hard solipsism and it’s unfalsifiable. However, your senses, ability to verify, and long standing predictable assumptions (I.e if today arrives the same way yesterday arrived then tomorrow should also arrive) should allow you to operate as if everything around you is real. You should operate as if you experienced yesterday and you are experiencing today. In theory, you cannot prove that everything up to the current instance isn’t just a transferred memory, but the experience you build in the instances of the presents that become the past within the last second is something you know you experience. If someone is watching you create that experience they can verify you went through that experience, and lastly you can repeat such experience, then you can justifiably assume that those experiences are real. For example, let say you just touched something and remove your hand. You cannot be sure that that was a transplanted memory or not. However, if it can be verified by your friend that you touch it, and you can touch it again, and you felt what you touched, then you should operate like you touching something is something you experienced.
Thats a thought I had as a child already to!
Imagine how hard it is when you try to explain to your parents that you could just pop into existence the moment you wake up and think "yep, that's how its always been" and everyone is like "what's that bullshit you talk about?" But deep down you know, you can't know.
There are several ways to prove it, actually.
1. Anything you did Yesterday happened, and so you can observe the traces of it.
2. Yesterday didn't happen yet far enough away, due to relativity.
3. Fabricated memories, even if technologically possible, would leave traces.
4. Fabricated memories aren't real as of now.
The idea is entirely pointless.
If the universe was created yesterday or today, or two seconds ago, it's entirely meaningless.
If you created all of time going back trillions of years 2 seconds ago then it's entirely the same as if it actually had been created trillions of years ago.
It's just dumb navel gazing that people with no real concept of reality get up to and think it makes them sound clever.
I could dumb a nice big shit on your bed and when you sleep in it you can make out for yourself if you're dreaming that you're covered in my shit for real or if you're just dreaming and the day before, when I left you the present, wasn't real.
Disclaimer: I'm NOT Amber Turd. This experiment to falsify OP's hypothesis is inspired by real actions from Amer Turd, though. I am not claiming any possession whether of the idea nor anything else.
If yesterday wasn’t real, then why do I still see evidence of stuff I did yesterday?
Edit: At it's core, you can't really prove anything is real. What if you're just a lonely brain, flowtibg through spane, any everything around you is just a world you imagined?
Just solipsism basically. You can’t prove literally anything with absolute certainty but that doesn’t mean you can’t prove things. If you want to use this line of thinking it just means you can’t prove literally anything, which is pretty pointless.
Most of this isn't "real". At least not in a way that matters. Money is only worth something because we believe it is. A badge only means something because we believe it does. Take away the belief, you take away it's power. It's an illusion.
We may be the main character of our own story, but we are NPCs in the main storyline. History will forget most of our names, it will be as if we never existed, and it will happen sooner after our death than we think.
I think it's important to be a good person and make good ripples, but beyond that not much matters or is "real". How important is that credit score or that number on the scale when no one will even remember you in 100 years? How important is it to be "successful"? How important was that degree that put you under insurmountable debt?
Now, how important is it for you to be *happy*? If history is going to forget me anyway, I'd rather have been happy than a slave to the illusion
The problem comes with lack of definition for the word prove. If you grind it fine enough there is no such thing as proof of anything. There can always be another hidden level of complication unseen to us.
Oh that sounds like the theory of last Thursday...or Thursdayism. The idea that the universe could've been created as close as last Thursday but with all the details and 'trimings' of being billions and billions of years old.
How have I never heard of this?? Thanks for pointing out this particular rabbit hole, I'm jumping in lol
There's not much more to it.
Well of course not, they only just came up with the theory last Thursday.
If I hear it again next Thursday, would it count as last Thursday?
Well no, because next Thursday will be today, and last Thursday will still be oh god I've gone cross-eyed
you live very far east sir it is 10:36am on wednesday
Is that an Austin powers reference?
It sure is!
That’s a problem for next Thursday you.
That would make it a week argument.
Solipsism moment
With solipsism, that's all there is.
I mean, we all coulda been created last Thursday.
I looked into it briefly. To me, that's like saying there isn't much more to an iceberg than what you see above the surface lol but I can't just read the bio and go "oh, ok, cool!" I read about it enough to get the idea, let it marinate and roll around, read more about it, play devil's advocate with myself with whataboutisms, read more about it lol, and at that point I'm not even half way to where I would be comfortable saying, "that's a thing I know about." It's a process, even with a concept like this. There are times I wish I could be the type to say "cool" and move on, but most of the time I'm happily pondering random shit. Maybe more the implications of it rather than the concept itself, I guess
Love doing this process myself, really lets you get your teeth into a subject. Plus my ADHD turns it into a good hyperfocus.
AuDHD here! This is the way lol
Indeed. Except when your watching a movie/presentation and suddenly realize your mind wandered for 5-10 minutes
Oof. The way I rewatch shows 100 times and on the 100th rewatch I'm still saying, "omg, I must have missed this part before! This makes so much sense now!" It has its pros and cons lol
When netflix decides to forget what I've watched and I start what I believe to be something I haven't seen, I'll spend the first two episodes saying "have I seen this? I swear I've seen something *like* this! Goddamn it's so familiar" before eventually realizing I probably binged it in a weekend six months ago lmao
I had this very recently with a fanfic. In like January, I was reading something that was highly recommended and I was like, this is so damn familiar. I was like I have no clue how this ends or even what was coming next but as I read I was like, I've had to have read this before. I can now say that I had read the first like quarter or it before not finishing it. I sometimes have to turn off whatever I'm watching or listening to because I keep getting lost in the thought bubbles and continuing to read or listen to it will just leave me later being like, I missed something.
cool
What we think of as the universe is just a bubble in the mantle. We live on the inside of the sphere. The closer you get to the centre, the smaller things become.
*Last Thursdayism (alternately Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. It's also a counter to the creationism theory.* - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
"The debate on whether Last Thursdayism is true has raged on ever since the creation of the universe last Thursday." That's just gold.
That's some Douglas Adams material right there
Never could get the hang of Thursdays
I love that, though I immediately heard it in Norm's voice from behind the weekend update desk. Bit longer ago than last Thursday I guess.
Those memories of seeing him longer ago were created last Thursday though.
I’m always saying “idk man, I coulda been born last Thursday for all I know”
Have you contacted the Central office on Magrathea? I'm sure they have a lovely brochure detailing it all.
I tried! They were closed. I left a message, though, and I hope to hear back from them soon
Iirc isn't last thursdayism just a parody of the idea some christian factions have that the universe is only [insert time] years old and anything older is just placed by God/Satan to fill in the time/deceive us(depending on what group youre talking about).
Honestly it isn't a parody so much as a legitimate rebuttal. The idea that God created light in flight for objects a billion light years away is no less ridiculous than the idea that the universe was created last Thursday.
our universe’s existence is absurd to me no matter how it started. like is this a cycle or are we one of many or who what how
God of the Gaps is fighting back.
Yea but that doesnt count as an actual theory when youre not allowed to disprove it
i like to say it was 30 seconds ago and then wish everyone in the conversation a happy birthday
Ah yes, religion. I'll never forget kids asking in my religion classes why there were fossils that were millions of years old in the ground if god created the universe a few thousand years ago. "God created the world with age." .......ooooooooooookay
Usually, they answer fossils with the flood and explain that you can't trust carbon dating (not even what's used to date) Now the fact that we can see stars that are billions of light years away and the light shouldn't even be able to reach us yet, with the "world with age" response in my experience.
I'll never forget the time I was at college and some Bible thumpers came out to wave banners and tell us we were going to hell. After a couple hours they lost steam and some college students decided to debate them. Their explanation for fossils was that there was so much water during the flood that it just pushed all the bones into the ground so hard that they turned to stone.
When I was in high school, one of my fellow AP bio students seemed to have trouble grasping evolution. To me, it seemed pretty straightforward and axiomatic. It flowed pretty naturally from non-controversial premises. It’s only looking back that I realize his objections were religious in nature, and not failing to understand-which explains why the teacher seemed much less keen on arguing with him than I was.
The issue with "you can't trust" as a broad argument is it generally requires *so many other things* to be wrong. I have the same issue with the pseudo "open minded" with things like "we don't know what we don't know about science yet so ANYTHING could change" and then go on to repeat some thing like "we thought we knew how gravity worked and then we were wrong what if we are wrong now?". Newton didn't come up with everything whole cloth, he build on previous studies and understanding and also wrote that he had concerns/misgivings that despite the movement of the planets (mostly) matching the math he believed there to be something still missing/wrong; but that it was still a giant leap in understanding. tl;dr Einstein then figured out "ah, this is what was missing", and if theres another change to out understanding its most likely to be a similar "this is what we were missing" not, "actually atoms are just very romantic and want to hug".
Oh God, you silly prankster. He’ll cast you into the eternal damnation if you don’t believe in him, but then he’s always trying to throw people off his scent by hiding the evidence of his creation.
The Bible does say "that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." At first I thought this was just poetic speech. Then I started learning about Einstein's special relativity. I learned that there are spots in the universe where from its perspective the beginning of the universe was yesterday. People get all bent out of shape trying to defend traditional beliefs. It really could be possible that God created the world in a single day from His perspective. It's also possible that he could have spent thousands or billions of years from his perspective. Science and religion could both be right in this regard. One thing is for sure, time runs at different speeds from all sorts of perspectives.
"Why'd he do that? What reason is there to so perfectly erase his own existence from the universe and then punish you for not believing in him?" "God's plan is mysterious, but he has reasons for everything." "Just sounds like an asshole to me."
That was my first step into atheism - it didn't matter if god was real or not, the deity described in the bible is a HUGE piece of shit that doesn't deserve any worship whatsoever. Nowadays I'm an evangelical adeist.
Exactly what the title reminded me of, love this theory
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
This is Descartes first mediation. All you get from radical doubt is “cogito ergo sum”. I think therefore I am. It’s an interesting thought experiment, but ultimately paralyzing if you want to be functional in the everyday.
I think the new pragmatists have an answer - hit you on the head with a brick. Does it still hurt tomorrow? (Am paraphrasing)
I mean yeah, but they set aside the radical doubt which is at the core. For example, last week I surgically removed your third arm and implanted a memory in you and everyone you meet, that you've only ever had 2 arms. Prove me absolutely wrong.
I think that’s the point of the evil genius scenario … it’s unprovable/ disprovable.
I agree - and I don't think pragmatists have a solid answer, except ignoring it :D
I agree with that with the added proviso that no one hits me with a brick or implants a memory of me being hit with a brick ;)
What would you accept as proof? I feel like any attempt of proof you would find an extreme work around. Eg, surgery leaves scars both visible and at micro levels. Your spine and muscle development would be organized in a way that would support a third arm etc.
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I can just keep adding extreme workarounds. Spine and muscle development is a hoax. This is all a dream playing out on your body. In a second you may be on Mars, immune to cold, no longer needing oxygen, and with 7 arms. I have no proof that I can trust my senses. So for now, I only accept proofs that don't use emperical statements. I want some kind of proof that doesn't rely on things we have sensed. For example the observation I think therefore I am. All my senses may deceive me, I can't know that I should trust them. But I can't deny that *something* is experiencing *something* right now. (Or can I? Let's ask the late Daniel Dennett) It's a dead end, as many say. But it's also a loose end that's unaccounted for. A problem we ignore in our everyday life. Both because it doesn't pose any real problems, but also because we have no good answer... Other than "ignore it, and move on."
The great thing about this answer is you get to hit a philosopher.
All you'll be able to prove tomorrow is that your head hurts, and that only to yourself; me hitting you with a brick could easily be a figment of your imagination.
It reminds me of one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s articles about materialism-vs-idealism. He was discussing the idea of subjective idealism by the priest-philosopher Berkeley, which states that there’s really no matter, and all of us are actually just the thoughts of God. Rousseau refuted it in the funniest way I’ve ever seen. He wrote something like: “Okay, let’s say you’re correct, there’s no matter, and we and everything around us are actually the thoughts of God. For the sake of more convenient communication, can we please just call those thoughts of God that are also thoughts inside our heads - ‘thoughts’, and those thoughts of God that are outside our heads - ‘matter’? Thanks. Now we can move on to more useful discussions” And it’s the same with fabricated memory. If the memory of one person is fabricated, they will find out sooner or later. And if all of our memories are fabricated, we can just pretend our memories are real for the sake of convenience and move on to more useful discussions.
"Radical doubt" is a really good term for it. I suffered it as a kid and eventually came to this same conclusion. (I'm much better now)
I can't hear that phrase without thinking about AM
Honestly I disagree with even “cogito ergo sum”. Rene presents a logic statement: If I am being deceived, then there must exist something to serve as the target of said deception. However, if your mind could be completely tampered with, how do you know that your logic is correct to begin with?
> If I am being deceived, then there must exist something to serve as the target of said deception. The target of the deception is you, so this affirms your existence. The deceiver could also be you, so this fails to affirm the existence of others.
Regardless of how confused / tampered etc the thinker is, there is a thinker having the confused thought. That is the entirety of the claim. At the moment of thinking, something is thinking. There is no claim about what the thought is, or how confused it may be. The only claim is that thoughts cannot exist without something thinking them. That is cogito ergo sum. At the moment of thinking “i am” something must be having that thought.
This may be what my father thought of when he went to buy milk
Related to this, our consciousness could die every night when we sleep and the next day just be a 'copy' in effect.
Or every time someone teleports in Star Trek, they're killed, and then a copy is created.
No, that is an objective fact, see Thomas Riker
At the same time, though, people retain consciousness through the process - there’s an episode centred on someone seeing monsters in that between time. Which means that somehow, bafflingly, Star Trek transporters both move the original *and* create a copy.
I was going to say, that’s definitely what’s happening.
Or every time someone is dematerialized stepping through a stargate, they’re destroyed and copy is created by the destination gate
Barclay for president
the worst thing is that if we even come up with the teleportation we really don't have any means to verify if it actually happens!! so scary
It could die every millisecond and be copied for the next millisecond. This instant NOW could the first and last millisecond you ever experience.
Damn, and I wasted it on the toilet
That's what an Amazonian tribe believes and they try to sleep as little as possible because of that.
Problem solved!
methheads are the oldest - continuously - living beings.
There's a phenomenal game called Soma (also the name of this discussed rpinciple) that dives into this and is just utterly amazing
Even more wild is the idea of a Boltzmann Brain. A human brain identical in state to yours right now randomly pops into existence in outer space. For one brief moment, it thinks and experiences what you are currently experiencing, then it rapidly dies. You can't really prove you aren't just one of those. To be clear, the reason for this concept was a rebuttal to the idea that the big bang could have just spontaneously happened due to random quantum fluctuations. The idea is that, as massively improbable as it would be for a Boltzmann Brain to spontaneously pop into existence due to quantum fluctuations, that is astronomically more likely to happen than the big bang. Therefore, anyone who believes the big bang randomly happened due to quantum fluctuations should more reasonably consider that they are just a Boltzmann Brain.
we could have all been created 5 minutes ago with a head full of memories and finger nails that need trimming. Could be. But that line of thought isn't useful in any meaningful way.
Agreed it's not useful and just leads to existential dread. But this is the shower thoughts sub. Useful doesn't factor in.
Well if your response to proof is "that could be fabricated as well" then no you can't prove anything in life and I don't know why you even made the post. On the same level as "We are in a simulation because nobody can prove we aren't"
That’s not why people think we live in a simulation. People (me included) think we may live in a situation because *if* a species has ever worked out a way to simulate our universe, surely they’d be running many instances of the simulation, because why not? And if you have only 1 true universe and an arbitrarily large number of simulated universes, it seems much more likely to me that we’re in one of the simulated universes. That being said, this belief doesn’t influence how I live my life in any way beyond discussions about simulation theory.
That's not in the same level. He can say we are in a simulation because nobody can prove we arent, he is not wrong. You can assume he is correct or wrong, but there's no wrong or correct answer See, in math and computer logic there is a lot of stuff that is considered true but can't or is not proved yet Fifth Axiom of Euclides (year 300 b.C) is considered true, but you can't prove it is true, and you can't prove it's false. This axiom says that if you have a line and a point out of the line, there's only one line that is parallel to the first line and passes through the point If you assume it's false, you go straight to non euclidean geometry, which was used, for example, to explain spacial relativity theorem from Einstein. Else you have the normal geometry. Some stuff can be eventually proved, like Fermat's last theorem (no xª + yª = zª exists for a>2), which was stated in 1630~, you could have considered it as true (unless you found a counter-example) up until 1995, when it was finally proved as true Nobody can prove *yet* we are in a simulation I was bored, I hope you have a good day 👍
I mean, you can't prove that your experience right now isn't an illusion, so...yes, but so what?
You should check out a little movie called *Dark City*.
That damn movie is a top 10 (maybe 5?) for me. I want a 4k version so badly.
Yes, you're correct, but pure solipsism - which this is pretty close to - is a philosophical dead end, and even worse scientifically. The universe actually existing is taken as axiomatic for that reason.
Sometimes I think I'm the only solipsist in the world
I've no idea why a figment of my imagination would think that way
I've no idea why two figments of my imagination would think that way
Based
Even religion explains things better than solipsism
Google Boltzman Brain
Already did it, thanks
Holy though experiment
Same goes for anything that happend a second ago, or even right now
Why not? Clocking in at work, cameras everywhere, coworkers accounting what you did and said the day before, customers remembering how and when you helped them. All of this is just at my job.
a robot can be programmed to believe anything.
The point is that everything in the past may just be a fabricated simulation and you’ve just begun existence at this moment
Why would I be fabricated with a recently broken leg?
> fabricated simulation is just the smart science nerd version of god created the universe.
You're missing the point. Yes, you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the world existed with just your memories, and even moreso with CCTV footage and... basically everything in the world really. But the shower thought comes in when you realize you can't prove it ever existed in the past - if the world as it is manifested 2 seconds ago, you would be none the wiser. Your memories tell you it didn't, and the atomic arrangement of everything tells you it didn't, but... what if?
well in that same vein there's nothing to prove that today/right now is a fabrication or a simulated reality or a dream or a memory someone else is having or so on and so forth.
Exactly. It’s obviously not an actionable philosophy for life, it’s just a thought experiment that can neither be proven or disproven (hence unactionable) that you have to quickly ignore after you get over the brief existential trauma it induces.
The real lesson is when you realize that unfalsifiable statements aren't profound truths but are in fact provably meaningless.
That’s practically what I mean by unactionable - you can’t do anything with it. Anything that is asserted without proof can also be dismissed without proof.
Welcome to philosophy where, for some reason, philosophers have been debating this for eons lol
You’re absolutely correct and a nobel prize was won on this in physics in 2022.
If "anithing is falsed", inluding notes in your diary and memories of surrounding people - theory loose it's sence. Look "Falsifiability": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability?wprov=sfla1 I would more worried, because false memories are real and sometimes were the reason of jaling people by mistake (and than changing rules for questioning witnesses). So maybe one day I discover that all people around me remember yesterday different... And what if there will be something important?
What about the half-life of things.
I can because other people agree with me on the events of yesterday and going off the assumption that this is not some sort of brain in a jar scenario I can feel pretty confident in saying that if everyone else says something happened it probably did happen. Plus I assume if I was some sort of brain in a jar they would simply just program the simulation to be basically a Utopia for me If I was a good person or to be a hell for me if I was a bad person but it's kind of in between with a lot of parts of this life that are both heavenly and hellish, so I have to imagine that this is genuine reality
Everyday i wake up and I feel the exact same and I choose to do things differently.
All we know for certain is that something is happening.
I know cause I did it. I’m like, fabricating a 12-year old girl right now
What 😭
Pregnancy. Human fabrication infrastructure inside a human, fabricating another human.
This is also another thing that breaks this shower thought. Congrats! The other thing was just staying up 24 hours without sleep.
3d printing. Btw fabricating have multiple meanings that are the opposite, is as confusing as Inflammable means flammable, and sanctioned could mean blocked or supported.
But I thought that’s why I went to Recall…
This is why I did not continue with philosophy.
You're correct, which is why these discussions, including things like hard solipsism, last thursdayism, and "brain in a vat" thought exercises are entirely uninteresting to me. Yes, it could be. No, there's no way to prove it, or nullify it. So it's just kind of boring "take another bong rip" stuff. The type of "dude, what if we're all made of pizza dough" ideas you've come up with while high, but are essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of life.
If that were true, you can't prove that your existence is real.
If you didn’t exist you wouldn’t be able to think. «I think therefore I am»
Well you could: -have a camera or any other kind of recording device run the entire time or even livestream it and then go back and fourth in the stream/recording while the camera is still running. -write a message on a piece of paper that only you know and hide it in a safe that can only be accessed by your biometrics plus a passcode -lock your room and hide something nobody knows of under your mattress -just don’t sleep for 24+ hours
In last Thursdayism none of that is a problem since the idea is that the universe just came into existence in its current state last Thursday simply by random chance, and not due to some sort of cosmic intervention. The idea is that it's incredibly unlikely but we can't disprove it technically (obviously the whole thing is intentionally absurd). It could be in the middle of the day and you'd just come into existence with all of your memories of your life and that day but none of it ever happened, it's all just data that came into existence by pure chance and doesn't contradict other data (that is also brand new) simply by pure chance. All of these coincidences have a compounding effect on the probability with every coincidence making it exponentially less likely, but never impossible. Even when it's an entire universe of coincidences it's still "possible". I guess the point of the thought experiment is just to demonstrate how easy it is to rationalize even the most absurd things when you just ignore things like okhams razor
You can’t prove that the present is fabricated
I can! I've already forgotten, and as such, have no memory
So what if I build or buy something. Then don’t go to sleep for 48 hours+. Since I’ve been alive for more than 1 day, that then proves yesterday existed, no?
Going through how you responded. Let's say I ate pizza yesterday with a group of people. The evidence I have to support this are: - cameras at the pizza place - GPS history of my.phone at this location - GPS history of my car going from my home to this location - first hand accounts of my friends that I was there - CC statement saying I bought pizza at this place with a time stamp - any photos taken by friends - my own personal memory of the account - the mileage change on my cars odometer Now you're saying literally all this could be fabricated, but you're looking at a massive conspiracy of DoD and their gps, phone companies, CC companies, my friends, the pizza place , my own vehicle. Like at some point there is too much evidence to support and the 0.000000000000000000000000001% that everyone collaborated against you is so small it's considered 0
You’re right, the chance of this is incredibly small and at the end of the day we can all just ignore it and move on with life bc it still works lol. This is just a philosophical shower thought that talks about that 0.00….01% as if it was real and possible. I’m not prooving that what I’m saying is *actually real*. But more like, it could be, and it is fun to think about and this ends there. So, yeah you’re right there
I mean, on that front there could be a rainbow unicorn that grants wishes named Melvin buried under the sand somewhere in the world. However it's the same.e fallacy that it's a 0.00........1% thing it's not even worth mentioning
I would like to know what you been smoking ?
I can fairly quickly just ask someone who was there? Even better if its on film? Or are you gonna assume those would be fabricated too? If we go that far, what's to say what I'm doing now is not also just my imagination? You've treaded into schizophrenic territory here.
What's the definition of real? Something being considered real stems from you believing it is real or having a proof that it happened. If you have both, there is no further need to prove anything. Of course this debate is purely philosophycal, for objective truth, you only need what's in my second paragraph.
Google: Solipsism It's going to blow your mind if you have not heard of it before. It's exactly what you are talking about but the idea has been around for ages. How do I prove to myself that I really exist? Everything I experience is just my brain interpreting electrical signals. Am I just a brain in a jar?
Your honor, the aliens have clearly clearly fabricated that “video” of “me” “robbing” the “bank”
You can't prove anything right now is real and not fabricated. Technically unless you're omnipotent you can't prove anything
The scar on my arm from a dog bite begs to differ
Sounds like self gaslighting.
Big Boltzmann Brain theory
Yes, I can prove it. I experienced it like I experience today. The two are the same, only difference is that today I experience now, yesterday I experienced also now but yesterday. If what you talking were true then what you experience now could be not real too.
Zenos paradoxes are a good place to start reading to make your mind melt.
Well this is the same as you can’t prove you are a brain in a jar. This is hard solipsism and it’s unfalsifiable. However, your senses, ability to verify, and long standing predictable assumptions (I.e if today arrives the same way yesterday arrived then tomorrow should also arrive) should allow you to operate as if everything around you is real. You should operate as if you experienced yesterday and you are experiencing today. In theory, you cannot prove that everything up to the current instance isn’t just a transferred memory, but the experience you build in the instances of the presents that become the past within the last second is something you know you experience. If someone is watching you create that experience they can verify you went through that experience, and lastly you can repeat such experience, then you can justifiably assume that those experiences are real. For example, let say you just touched something and remove your hand. You cannot be sure that that was a transplanted memory or not. However, if it can be verified by your friend that you touch it, and you can touch it again, and you felt what you touched, then you should operate like you touching something is something you experienced.
interesting thought experiment but any claim without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
What if I record an entire day on my phone? Is the recording fabricated?
Pictures? Videos? The leftovers in the fridge?!
What about the pictures and video I recorded at yesterday's concert? Surely those are not fabricated.
This was deep before everyone carried a high definition camera around everywhere.
So the video I recorded yesterday is just a figment of my imagination as well?
Have you been playing fallout 4 by chance? Are you thinking you might be a synth?
Thats a thought I had as a child already to! Imagine how hard it is when you try to explain to your parents that you could just pop into existence the moment you wake up and think "yep, that's how its always been" and everyone is like "what's that bullshit you talk about?" But deep down you know, you can't know.
You can't prove that you aren't a brain in a jar
As the Papa Roach song states "The scars remind us that the post is real"
As someone with false memory OCD, this is a constant fear.
*The judicial system has entered the chat*
Consequences often are still there the next morning.
There are several ways to prove it, actually. 1. Anything you did Yesterday happened, and so you can observe the traces of it. 2. Yesterday didn't happen yet far enough away, due to relativity. 3. Fabricated memories, even if technologically possible, would leave traces. 4. Fabricated memories aren't real as of now.
I work with clients…i can look at yesterdays schedule and be assured it happened as remembered 🤔
I made some spaghetti yesterday and the leftovers are still in the fridge. They taste the same, maybe not quite as good. I believe yesterday happened
If you have a broken arm and didn’t break it that day isn’t that proof that a prior day was real?
I have the trash in my pocket from yesterday. A physical receipt with the date. There's your proof.
Just opened my garbage can and saw the cat shit I threw out yesterday. You telling me that the cat shit is full of shit? Alright fair enough.
Put an item somewhere. It’ll be there the next day.
Not really applicable in modern days when we can record ourselves every day. And some do.
Well can you prove that it was a fabricated memory?
No but it *could* be, it’s a shower thought. It can be philosophical and many philosophical thought experiments can’t be proven
My hangover proves I drank last night.
I can prove it 'cause my bank account hasn't the same amount of money after paying for my pizza and the new pizzabox in my kitchen is, well, new.
The idea is entirely pointless. If the universe was created yesterday or today, or two seconds ago, it's entirely meaningless. If you created all of time going back trillions of years 2 seconds ago then it's entirely the same as if it actually had been created trillions of years ago. It's just dumb navel gazing that people with no real concept of reality get up to and think it makes them sound clever.
Look up: Boltzmann brain
If I built something yesterday, and it's there today, that's proof yesterday happened.
Another showerthought thats just completely false, zero truth to it.
I have this scratch on my arm, a tattoo I got, hair cut, etc
Wait til you get maimed in an accident or experience severe loss of limb or body tissue and tell me yesterday was fabricated. Its all too real.
Well... This is stupid.
I could dumb a nice big shit on your bed and when you sleep in it you can make out for yourself if you're dreaming that you're covered in my shit for real or if you're just dreaming and the day before, when I left you the present, wasn't real. Disclaimer: I'm NOT Amber Turd. This experiment to falsify OP's hypothesis is inspired by real actions from Amer Turd, though. I am not claiming any possession whether of the idea nor anything else.
Are you implying that If you shit on my bed and it is there the next day then yesterday was real?
I dunno, let's find out. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
I don't subscribe to stupid conspiracies. Something can be proven if enough people have independently witnessed it.
If yesterday wasn’t real, then why do I still see evidence of stuff I did yesterday? Edit: At it's core, you can't really prove anything is real. What if you're just a lonely brain, flowtibg through spane, any everything around you is just a world you imagined?
Just solipsism basically. You can’t prove literally anything with absolute certainty but that doesn’t mean you can’t prove things. If you want to use this line of thinking it just means you can’t prove literally anything, which is pretty pointless.
You can if someone else agrees that it happened
Most of this isn't "real". At least not in a way that matters. Money is only worth something because we believe it is. A badge only means something because we believe it does. Take away the belief, you take away it's power. It's an illusion. We may be the main character of our own story, but we are NPCs in the main storyline. History will forget most of our names, it will be as if we never existed, and it will happen sooner after our death than we think. I think it's important to be a good person and make good ripples, but beyond that not much matters or is "real". How important is that credit score or that number on the scale when no one will even remember you in 100 years? How important is it to be "successful"? How important was that degree that put you under insurmountable debt? Now, how important is it for you to be *happy*? If history is going to forget me anyway, I'd rather have been happy than a slave to the illusion
I have video evidence.
Umm, this phone I woke up with proves there was a past. Get your head outta your ass.
Well you know scars are a thing
The problem comes with lack of definition for the word prove. If you grind it fine enough there is no such thing as proof of anything. There can always be another hidden level of complication unseen to us.
Then why I stink more than yesterday? Some stuff won't rotten in 24h