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Reality vs Working Model
Re: Philosophical question -- DO2L Post Reply Top of thread Forum
Posted by: Artem ®
07/24/2003, 22:17:38

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"So many people believe in so many different Gods. Does that mean they all live in different worlds?"

We all really "live" in different worlds. The "working model" of reality differs from person to person, often very significantly, because it's built on a very limited information received from our imperfect senses and is then analyzed by far from perfect brains to get an impression of the world. We constantly use stereotypes and other heuristics to jump to conclusions that defy evidence. This allows our mind to construct a "good enough" model of reality wihtout too much effort and use it for getting around in the world. Faith in god(s) is just an example of a conclusion of one of these "good enough" heuristics. Coupled with confirmation bias (which really just picks one model and ignores evidence contradicting it) we are faced with each person "living" in a different world, some worlds including god(s) some not. That is our observed reality.
Actual reality is probably unique. I say probably, because we don't really know, we can only use Occam's Razor guideline to justify this conclusion.

So my answer would be:

Yes, we all live in different worlds, if we define life by what we observe. If we define life by the absolute reality, then it is difficult to say, but most likely we all live in the same world, even though our perception of it is (often radically) different from person to person.




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