Quotes About Reality

She, like many, had always thought that mathematics did not derive its meaning from the universe, but rather imposed some meaning onto the universe. Physical

It is not that the turret clocks are running faster. What is happening is that our brains are running slower.

People used to speculate about a thought that destroys the thinker, some unspeakable Lovecraftian horror, or a Gödel sentence that crashes the human logical system. It turns out that the disabling thought is one that we've all encountered: the idea that free will doesn't exist. It just wasn't harmful until you believed it.

Pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important; what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

and Hell, after all, was not physically worse than the mortal plane.

I remembered that argument as being a turning point for me. I had imagined a narrative of redemption and self-improvement in which I was the heroic single father, rising to meet the challenge. But the reality was…what? How much of what had happened since then could I take credit for?

movies always depict love in terms of grand romantic gestures when, over the long term, love also means working through money problems and picking dirty laundry off the floor.

Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

save our emotional responses for real life.

but she can't deny the realities of modern neuropharmacology: if her brain is flooded with oxytocin every time she's training Sophonce digients, it's going to have an effect on her feelings toward them whether she wants it to or not.

Minha mensagem para vocês é: finjam que têm livre-arbítrio. É essencial para vocês se comportarem como se suas decisões tivessem importância, mesmo sabendo que não têm. A realidade não importa: o que importa é a sua crença, porque acreditar nessa mentira é a única maneira de evitar o coma lúcido. A civilização depende agora da autoilusão. Talvez sempre tenha dependido.

some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies.

As I contemplated this vista, I wondered where my body was. The conduits which displaced my vision and action around the room were in principle no different from those which connected my original eyes and hands to my brain. For the duration of this experiment, were these manipulators not essentially my hands? Were the magnifying lenses at the end of my periscope not essentially my eyes? I was an everted person, with my tiny, fragmented body situated at the center of my own distended brain.

We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all.

Albert Einstein once said, "Insofar as the propositions of mathematics give an account of reality they are not certain; and insofar as they are certain they do not describe reality.

It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn't be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.

He offered an explanation, speaking of his search for tiny pores in the skin of reality, like the holes that worms bore into wood, and how upon finding one he was able to expand and stretch it the way a glassblower turns a dollop of molten glass into a long-necked pipe, and how he then allowed time to flow like water at one mouth while causing it to thicken like syrup at the other.

The reality isn't important; what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

A company called Edgeplayer markets a digient torture chamber on the Real Space platform; to avoid accusations of unauthorized copying, they use only public-domain digients as victims. The user group has agreed that once they get the Neuroblast engine ported, their conversion procedure will include full ownership verification; no Neuroblast digient will ever enter Real Space without someone committed to taking care of it.

My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important; what's important is your belief,

For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place.

Por un momento no tuve claro si estaba soñando o despierto, porque me sentía como si acabase de entrar en un cuento, y la idea de que podría hablar con sus protagonistas y participar en los acontecimientos me produjo vértigo

Do you now understand why I say the future and the past are the same? We cannot change either, but we can know both more fully.

Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.