-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.6 Jul 2004

No. Now read the following very, very carefully before continuing to bang on like an escaped nitwit with a saucepan stuck over his head.

"Reality", as zodiac said earlier, is simply a word referring to all things that exist. To say that something is real is simply to say it exists, nothing more. To say something is unreal is to say it doesn't exist. Reality is the collection of things that are real -- that is what it means.

Do you accept this? I'm sure you're going to think you don't. But shut up for a minute, and read this.

You're claiming that if "humanity ceases to exist", i.e. if all humans die, then "so too would reality." Now there are TWO SEPARATE reasons why this is absurd, which if you're going to argue about you're going to have to address separately.

1. If all humans died of poison, the universe would not stop existing. This has been a subject of philosophical argument for centuries, so I'm not going to insist one way or the other. If you want to think the universe would stop existing, great.

2. Reality is a set. It is the set of all things that exist. Now if you know your elementary set theory, you know that no set can contain itself. Therefore reality does not contain itself. Therefore reality is not a "real thing" -- It is not something that you can say "exists". The idea that reality could exist or cease to exist is just wrong-headed. But according to you, "reality would cease to exist". This is trivially a paradox.



Actually, the stupidest thing of all is that none of this has anything to do with quantum physics or scientific revolutions. Thanks!