Tag: reality

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Motion Sickness

Posted on by Jinavie

Why do we get motion sickness when we are riding a moving vehicle?

Our sense of balance relies on an elaborate system. Our eyes give us visual information about head position and if it is moving in relation to our surroundings. Our inner ear contains delicate tubes (vestibular system) that act as gyrometers, indicating if our head is tilted or moving. Our brain synthesises the data from these two systems to know where we are in three-dimensional space and how we are moving within it.

The problem is that these two systems give conflicting information sometimes. For example, when you read in a car, your vestibular system senses that you are moving, but your eyes tell your brain that you are still. Conversely, when you watch a fast-paced action movie or playing a virtual reality game, your eyes will sense movement but your head will feel no movement.

When your brain receives conflicting information, it becomes confused; which information should it trust? The brain assumes that one of them must be wrong, possibly because you have been poisoned. The sensory mismatch results in nausea and you may start to vomit because the brain tries to get rid of whatever “poison” may be causing the problem.

In essence, motion sickness is caused by a mismatch between what the brain perceives and expects versus the reality.

Similarly, we can experience a form of “mental motion sickness“. Our brains are designed to predict the future, but the side effect of this is that we tend to form idyllic, simplified expectations. A good example is our tendency to hang our happiness on a future moment.

When we are unhappy or going through a hard time, we are prone to thinking that changing something will result in happiness. Some people change jobs or escape to another city (the “geographic solution“). Some people eagerly await for a holiday or for a deadline to be over. Some people start or end a relationship. We expect a drastic change in the future, even though the reality is that most things in life take time to change and happiness is not a switch you turn on, but a steady state that you build up to.

Eventually, when we realise that we are still unhappy, our brains become confused why reality is so different from our expectations. It makes us nauseated and want to reject our reality, frustrated that we are still miserable. But reality will not change just because we will it to.

The only solution is to manage our expectations. We need to accept that change happens gradually and that changing our environment will not necessarily change our headspace and perspectives. Our miseries will not disappear without us trying to improve our wellbeing. Instead of expecting a magical fix, we need to be mindful of our reality and find peace with the fact that it is okay not to always be okay.

We have evolved to improvise, adapt to and overcome changes and challenges. So instead of wallowing in self-pity that things did not turn out as expected, we must accept that things are as they are and keep fighting on to find our inner peace and happiness.

Posted in Life & Happiness

Photography

Posted on by Jinavie

When the camera was first invented, it revolutionised the practise of capturing the moment. In the past, people would have to write or draw descriptively to portray something that happened. Nowadays, we can capture the essence of a moment with the click of a button.

But of course, photos are not a perfect representation of reality. What you see on a photo depends on numerous settings (such as the exposure, aperture, shutter speed), the photographer’s artistic direction (composition, lighting) and also the use of technology for post-processing. By tweaking these elements, a photographer can exert some creative license over how the photo represents its subject.

For instance, a photographer may decide to crop a photo to make a scene look more chaotic by removing negative space. They may choose to reduce the exposure to make the atmosphere seem more moody and grim. The shutter speed may be slowed to better represent movement and the passage of time. In short, a photo can easily be “manipulated” to distort the reality it is attempting to capture.

However, another interpretation would be that photos show the reality that the photographer really experienced. Reality is not purely objective because we all experience the world differently. Our perception of reality is affected by our emotions, our other senses and our past experiences, such as nostalgia and trauma.

The person with whom we are in love with appear brighter and more radiant than in reality, because our emotions affect our senses. Food may appear more colourful and richer when they smell amazing. Pain and suffering can make it feel as if the colours in the world are more washed out.

To better represent how we felt at that moment, we could increase the exposure to give the subject a “glow”, we can adjust the contrast to make the food look more appetising and we can reduce the saturation to make a picture seem more faded and sombre.

Photography is more than just a recording, but a way to capture intangible moments that we see with our minds and our hearts.

So look back on photos that you have taken and photos that have been taken of you: what emotional filter has been applied to those photos?

Posted in Life & Happiness

How’s The Water?

Posted on by Jinavie

Two young fish are swimming along when they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says:

“Morning, boys. How’s the water?”.

The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes:

“What the hell is water?”.

This is a humorous analogy that writer David Foster Wallace told at the beginning of his commencement speech to Kenyon College’s graduating class of 2005. Although it is short, it can be unravelled to reveal many important guiding truths regarding adult life.

Much like the younger fish, many of us are not aware of the “water” that surrounds us. Although we live in it, reality is hard to process because it is made up of so many different layers of complexity. To make it easier to live our lives, our brains protect us from being aware of our reality, much like how people are not aware that they live in a simulation in The Matrix.

Even when we are aware that we are swimming in water, we keep asking ourselves “What the hell is water?”. We search desperately for the wise, older fish who can enlighten us – someone who can teach us what water is.

Many of us will be swayed by countless teachers, mentors, gurus, politicians and religious leaders who tell us to follow them to learn what water is. Many of us will firmly believe that we have grown up to become the older, wiser fish, and fight stubbornly against others who have different views on what water is. Some us may even choose to ignore that the water exists at all.

At every stage of our lives, many of us fall in the trap of believing that we have things “figured out”. Teenagers will rebel against adults, thinking that they will reinvent the world. Young adults will believe that now that they are working members of society, they are entitled to their “educated”, “mature” opinions. The middle-aged believe they have been adults long enough that surely they must have gained enough experience and wisdom on the way. And if we don’t feel confident that we know what water is, we seek the answer from those who claim they know it.

In short, we are always searching for the answer, or claim to have the answer. But that is not the lesson to take away from the parable of the fish in water.
It is not the answer that is important, but the question.

It is hubris to think that we can possibly understand how the world works completely within our lifetime. Instead, we should continue questioning what water is. Otherwise, we are just pretending to be enlightened, all the while becoming dimmer as we shut off our ability to learn and see things from a new perspective.

Consider the countless complexities that make up our reality: physical laws of the universe, the historical context, political climate, shifting cultural norms, societal pressures, chaos theory, our connections to other people… Even if you were to make sense of all this, you will never understand the reality that other people live in, as believing in only your reality stops you from being empathic and compassionate. Remember that water is a great environment for fish to live in, but a person would drown if left underwater.

This is why the parable does not tell the story of the older fish teaching the younger fish what water is. Instead, he is asking them how the water is. He is encouraging them to be aware of the context they live in and to keep question it and learning about it, while he himself stays curious as to how other fish experience the water.

So, how’s the water?

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Three Types Of Responses

Posted on by Jinavie

In his book Praise of Escaping (“Éloge de la fuite”), physician Henri Laborit suggests the following. When a person faces an ordeal, they face three options. The first is to fight against the ordeal, the second is to do nothing and third is to flee from it.

Firstly, fighting against a challenge is a very natural behaviour. These people are not hurt by the ordeal because they turn the attack into a retaliation. But this attitude has a problem. Continuous attacks and retaliations result in a vicious cycle. An aggressive person ultimately will be stopped by someone who is stronger than them.

The second option involves not doing anything in the sense that you act as if you hadn’t been attacked by pushing down the resentment. This is the most widely accepted attitude in modern society. Scholars call this behavioural inhibition. People with this attitude have the want to punch their opponent in the face, but swallow their anger as they recognise the risk of being retaliated against and entering a vicious cycle. And so, the punch that did not land on the opponent hits themselves instead. This may even show as medical conditions such as stomach ulcers, aches, or other psychosomatic symptoms.

The third way of escaping can be done through different ways.
Chemical escape: Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, stimulants, relaxants, sleeping pills. All of these can soften or erase the pain from external attacks. By using these substances to forget everything and knocking oneself out, the ordeal will pass. However, because this kind of escape weakens your sense of reality, people who use this method lose their ability to live in the real world.
Geographical escape: Moving from one place to another endlessly. Some people shift their problems by changing jobs, friends, lovers and the places they live in. It doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but they feel a little better and gain energy from changing the environment they are in.
Creative escape: Transforming your anger and pain into film, music, writing, painting, sculpting etc. Some people take the things they cannot dare say in the real world and have characters in an imaginary world say it instead. By doing this, they feel a sense of catharsis. People who like to watch characters in movies and books take revenge against those who have wronged them also fit into this category.

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(from The Encyclopaedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge by Bernard Werber)

Posted in Science & Nature

Silence Of The Trees

Posted on by Jinavie

A timeless philosophical question goes like this:

If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

This may sound absurd, but the question hangs on the definition of sound. Is sound the physical phenomenon of vibrating particles forming a soundwave, or is sound the sensory information that we perceive by converting said soundwave using our hearing system? If you accept the first definition, then yes, the falling of the tree will generate energy that pushes on the air particles around it, causing a soundwave that if someone were to hear it, would sound as a “thud”. But if you accept the second definition, then that tree would not have made a “sound” per se because no one was around to perceive the soundwave. Following this logic, a sound cannot exist without a recipient to hear it.

As simple as this may seem at face value, the riddle explores some deep philosophical and scientific issues.

The most obvious one has been discussed: the definition of sound. But then one must question what would happen if a tape recorder was running when the tree fell. Can a machine hear, even though it cannot “sense”? Is the sound we hear being played from the recorder the same as the sound that was originally made by the tree?

Following on from this thought, how do we know that the sound you hear is an accurate interpretation of the actual soundwave? It is common knowledge that the brain frequently modifies the senses to change what it sees and hears, as seen in various illusions. Furthermore, the brain can generate sensory information without any input, known as hallucinations. You assume that your hearing is flawless and accurate, but in your mind, it is almost impossible to know for sure that the sound you heard is “real”. Taking this further leads in to the massive debate of “what is real?” and “is reality real or is it a product of our mind?”.

A more fundamental question is this: if no one was around to hear the tree fall, does it matter if it made a sound? A pragmatic philosopher might say “no”, as whether the tree made a sound or not makes no difference to your life. However, a scientist may say “yes” as the tree did fall and a soundwave was generated. Whether a person was around to observe it is irrelevant as it does not change the fact that something real occurred. Then what effect does observation have on reality? How do we know that trees make the same sound when we are not around to hear it?

This is a crude dissection of the vast number of questions the riddle offers, but it shows how such a simple thought experiment can be an effective tool to engage your critical thinking. If you do not fully understand the philosophy discussed, at least you can take away the fact that you can use the excuse of “sound is only a perception, I did not hear you, therefore what you said did not happen” when someone tells you to do something.

Posted in Science & Nature

Cow Modelling

Posted on by Jinavie

There is a farmer who is unhappy with the milk production from his dairy farm. To rectify this, he writes to the local university asking for advice. A theoretical physicist responds to the request and visits the farm. He then takes many measurements such as the size of the cow and proceeds to do some calculations. After finishing all of this, he tells the farmer: “I have a solution, but it only works for spherical cows in a vacuum.”

The point of the joke is that in science, models are frequently used to simplify reality. Because there are infinite amounts of variables, it is impossible to predict anything unless the scenario is simplified through certain assumptions and removal of factors. For example, many physics principles make assumptions such as not accounting for air resistance. Occam’s razor states that if you shave away all the complex details, the simplest answer remains. But perhaps we oversimplify some things?

Posted in Life & Happiness

Success

Posted on by Jinavie

If you ask a hundred children what their dream is, not a single one would say “I want to be successful”. But as children grow up and enter society, society advises them that dreams do not feed them. And so, children slowly lose their innocence and dreams and choose to chase success instead. Why? Because success will feed them and give them a secure future. It is uncommon to find a middle-aged person who has achieved their childhood dreams. The majority judge their dreams as unrealistic, put them away in a corner of their mind and sacrifice happiness to earn more money to feed the family. The child who wanted to become a painter who put the world on a canvas follows her parents’ advice and becomes a lawyer. The child who wanted to become an astronaut is working into the night at a bank so that he will be promoted. They devote themselves to work and strive to succeed. But when they are at their deathbed, the only thing they are left with is regrets.

In life, there is no success or failure. The only moment you will know whether you led a successful or failed life is when you are at your deathbed. No one else can judge whether you were a success or a failure. Whether you were rich, poor, famous, average, lived long or died prematurely, you were a success if you can end your life with this thought: “Yeah, I lived a happy life without regrets”.

Live without regrets.

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Posted in Philosophy

Spoon

Posted on by Jinavie

In the film Matrix, a scene shows the protagonist, Neo, talking to a bald child in the Matrix who can bend spoons. The child can bend and straighten the spoon at will just by looking at it. He then passes the spoon to Neo and asks him to try. Neo stares and stares but nothing changes. The child then says:

Child: “Do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead only try to realise the truth.”
Neo: “What truth?”
Child: “There is no spoon.”
Neo: “There is no spoon?”
Child: “Then you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

This philosophy, while sounding rather simple and nonsensical, can be applied to modern day life in so many ways.

For example, as people mature, they have a tendency to lose the creativity and innocence of their inner child. They find that reality is too harsh and cruel and one must follow the strict rules of society to survive. They feel as if they are trapped in a box, unable to escape forever. This pessimistic view of life and the world restricts their ability to be happy. These people have not yet realised the truth.

There is no box. 

Free your mind and the rest will follow.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Nirvana Fallacy

Posted on by Jinavie

Humans have a tendency to think in a black-and-white manner, leading us to fall into the trap of the Nirvana fallacy. This is when one compares the real world to some perfect yet unrealistic alternative, causing reality to pale in comparison. Thus, it causes us to believe that many things are not worth doing as they are insignificant compared to this alternative.

For instance, the notion of the drop in the ocean means that we tend not to do altruistic things as we believe that it will not make much of a difference in fixing poverty or cure the world of cancer. Not only does the fallacy apply to how we see the world, but it affects day-to-day life too. People are so afraid of not being able to achieve an ideal, perfect future so ironically they do nothing. This is a major reason procrastination happens, as the person believes that if they do something now, it will be inefficient. They then plan for a perfect opportunity to start doing work, and a vicious cycle begins. Thanks to this way of thinking, people often miss out on a great job opportunity or a lovely girl or a chance to change their life just because it was not perfect and did not live up to their expectations.

In fact, people often fail to see the small steps and only see the big picture. So if someone tries to make an improvement (e.g. going on a diet), others will ridicule that person by saying that going to the gym every week is not going to turn you into an Adonis, ergo it is pointless.

The Nirvana fallacy is also useful in debates. One can create a false dichotomy (that is, a black-and-white argument) and compare someone’s argument to an unrealistic argument. When someone makes a suggestion, you can attack it by pointing out one flaw and show how it is clearly not a perfect solution (even better if you provide an example of the argument failing). This will automatically disintegrate their argument. For example, if someone proposes a new idea, you may point out how someone may abuse the new system or provide a case when a similar idea failed. However, be warned that this method can easily be rebutted with common sense, so one must use it in a convincing way and distract the audience from the fact that it is absolutely ridiculous.

(The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, click for larger image)

Posted in Science & Nature

Dimensions: To Infinity And Beyond

Posted on by Jinavie

So far we have covered 6 dimensions: point, length, width, depth, time, alternate universe and travelling between possible futures being the key feature of each. Hopefully, you as the reader have caught on to the pattern of dimensions so far: point (0D) -> line (1D) -> branch (2D) -> fold/point (3D) -> line (4D) -> branch (5D) -> fold (6D)… This pattern of point/line/branch/fold continues past the 6th dimension. Therefore, the 6th dimension acts quite similarly to our 3D world in that we can assume it to be a point.
The 3rd dimension was a point in time. So what could the 6th dimension be a point of? The answer is infinity.

It was mentioned that the 5th dimension carries all of the possible alternate timelines that are created from a certain point. In the 6th dimension, these branches fold up to meet so that we can travel freely between every point. Therefore, the 6th dimension is a point that contains every possible timeline – where anything that can happen in the universe exists. This is infinity.

But by definition, infinity encompasses everything as there is no “end”. Then has our journey ended? In a fascinating turn of events, it turns out that we can not only ascend to the 7th dimension, but there are still 3 more dimensions to travel through.
By now we know that as the 6th dimension was a “fold/point” dimension, the 7th dimension must be a line connecting different 6D points (infinity). How can there be more than one infinity? Actually, infinity is only as great as the initial conditions from whence it was born – the Big Bang. In terms of universes, these initial conditions are the laws of physics such as gravity, the speed of light and hundreds of other constants. For example, gravity is 9.81ms-² in our universe. But if this value was off by even 0.0001, our entire universe would be completely different. Ergo, our universe and all the timelines that have and will form depend on the Big Bang. This also means that there can be many other “infinities” with different laws of physics. The line that these infinities lie on is the 7th dimension.

A good analogy for this is genetics. People’s lives have different outcomes depending on their choice, actions and random chance, but they cannot escape their pre-programmed genes. For example, it is not expected that a boy will (naturally) grow into a woman or sprout wings and fly. But if they were born with two X chromosomes or born with the DNA of a bird, this life would be possible.

Now let us follow the basic pattern to move to the 8th dimension. Here, the 7D line branches to meet yet another point of infinity (6D). And yet again, we can bend these branches through the 9th dimension to jump from one universe to another.

Lastly, we can take all of these branches and folds that encompass all possible timelines and all possible universes and draw it as a single point in the 10th dimension. This one point is the relative and absolute “everything”.

But what now? It is impossible to reach past the point of “everything possible”. This means that we cannot jump up another dimension as no other 10D point exists to be connected to. Ergo, the highest possible dimension is 10D and this is the basis of string theory. The 10th dimension is where the so-called superstring vibrates to form the subatomic particles that are building blocks of every matter in our universe.

As mind-boggling a journey it was, if you were able to follow through from the start, we have travelled from a single point that occupies no space to another point that encompasses all things possible in our universe in all possible timelines. We have zoomed out to the point that there is no longer a box to “think outside of”.

Can one ever reach that point where one knows everything that was, is and will be? To know every piece of knowledge that is the absolute yet relative truth? Although we cannot physically jump through dimensions, our minds can keep rising up to raise our level of understanding and enlightenment higher and higher. As we only live in the 3rd dimension, we have no less than 7 more dimensions to explore and understand. Only when we have reached the 10th dimension can we say that everything possible has been discovered.

Until then, anything is possible.

(This post is part of a series exploring the concepts of dimensions. Read all of them here: https://jineralknowledge.com/tag/dimensions/?order=asc)

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