I’ve commented on this topic as well as off-shoots on my new blog http://rezyourmind.blogspot.com Feel free to comment. Thanks

This will probably the first and last time it will happen XD

Depends on your level of consciousness

“I think our reality *always* depends on agreement with what we perceive, and has no other basis. It’s just a question of whether we can stop agreeing or not.”

If you mean agreed upon by society then yes. If you mean on an individual level then no. There are all types of things taking place that are reality but are not agreed upon by society or scientific community. You cant put something in that box if you dont have the capacity to.

Since reality is fluid and constantly changing its difficult for most people to see or comprehend. But the universe has certain rules, patterns and things tend to happen in certain ways.

Science, religion, art – all paths lead to the same destination. Its a matter of perception and capacity.

There are all types of magical things taking place because Second Life exists. will you preceive it? maybe . .maybe not

Actually, he found out several weeks after he dissolved the partnership.

“But consider, had she not made it so very obvious to him, wouldn’t she still be his lady love?”

Since he left her weeks prior for unrelated reasons, no.

“Changing his perception of her utterly destroyed his belief in the world in which she was – she.”

Might’ve done, at that.

“And once he ceased to believe in her, she really did cease to exist, for him.”

Wouldn’t that have been nice?

Interesting essay nonetheless.

However, this kinda feels like looking for philosophical wisdom in GTA:San Andreas.

Maybe it’s because I still look at SL as a game with all real players in it is why I don’t get into drama or get bent out of shape when something doesn’t work and am not upset by all the money I’ve spent on a series of 1s and 0s over the years.

Sure I’m on it a lot…but I also spent a ton of time on GTA:SA as well as a lot of time drinking! I have an addictive personality!

It seems to me that a lot of people treat SL the way that one would if the real world was unlivable because of some apocalyptic event rendering the outside world barren and dangerous to live in. They can’t go outside because of the radiation so they stay in their pod using the internet to prove to themselves that there was a world out there.

However, it’s not. It may be SOCIALLY barren and dangerous for many of the people that choose to immerse themselves in SL but how much of that is the person’s own fault?

Anyway, I think people should take out of these times the fact that none of SL is real simply because it could go away if the Lindens stop believing in it. They’ve already stopped believing in parts of it.

And afterall, Ginko is going away because people stopped believing in it, too!

Regarding that Philip K. Dick quote – do you know how to *really* stop believing in something? If you stumble over the breakfast table in the morning, are you actually capable of not believing in it? What *would* happen if you truly stopped agreeing it was there?

I can tell you I’ve done that sort of thought experiment where, to my own perceptions, the table was gone, or the wall behind it, or the car in front of me, completely gone from my view. And then proceed to stumble into it because my *body* didn’t quite manage to disagree with its presence.

Nicholaz Beresford wrote:

“The worst thing I ever did to that immersion, did to my SL experience, was starting to work on the viewer from an open source perspective. There is nothing that not only pokes holes into the fabric reality, it completely rips it apart. It turned the experience into a program and into bits (in both meanings of this word), and I guess this is the reason why the Lindens, who are working on the plumbing side of SL day in and day out, have lost most of their sense of what SL means to the inhabitants.”

I get this same feeling from following all the scientific exploration being done in areas such as quantum physics, and neurology, especially the studies in how the brain really combines all our incoming sensory information and derives some sort of coherent perception from it. The closer you plumb the depths of how the “real” universe is constructed the flimsier it looks. The reality of any given subatomic bit depends utterly on it having interacted with some other entity, without that it literally doesn’t exist in any particular state.

A lot of thought about the universe these days has it that the whole thing could really be nothing but a simulation built entirely from information. We perceive it as real because we agree it is real, and have no way of stepping entirely out of the simulation. In many ways SL is simply a miniature version of this.

Here’s a thought experiment for you: What if you were to tie every single one of your sensory channels into SL, so you didn’t thereafter experience anything back out in the “real” universe. Then remain like this for several hundred years, as your memory of there being anything else but SL faded away. Would you believe any more that you had a self separate from SL? What if someone came up to you and tried to convince you that your avatar is not your real self, or real body? Remember, your every perception is dependent on SL as a conduit. Could you possibly come up with any “proof” that SL was nothing but a simulation?

I think our reality *always* depends on agreement with what we perceive, and has no other basis. It’s just a question of whether we can stop agreeing or not.