4 Questions That Will Make You Question Reality

Reality. What does that word mean to you? Does it refer to your everyday existence? Is it something which is tangible and to be experienced? Or is reality something else entirely? Is it a virtual construct of our overly excited monkey minds? Let's find out, shall we, in our video which asks four questions that will make you question reality. 4. Who are you? The field of neuroscience has been described as the last frontier in space, and although it is still in its infancy, we are beginning to understand more about the human brain than ever before. But when humanity unravels the complex processes behind consciousness, decision-making, and behaviours, what does this mean for our sense of self? Beneath every single thought you've ever had, every single dream you've experienced, every action you've ever performed, there is a chemical process responsible for it. We seek out certain foods and actions like sex because too little dopamine makes us depressed, yet too much causes addiction to the action which generated it in the first place. Glutamate helps learn and retain memory, but this can make us agitated in high doses. And high levels of HVA, which is produced when dopamine is broken down, are now thought to be one of the major causes of psychopathic behaviour. Everyone's brain contains a different balance of these chemicals, and a variety of factors can influence the exact composition of your brain. The nature versus nurture debate is still trying to figure out whether such compositions are genetically predetermined or affected by our experiences. But one interesting crossover between the two has even discovered that historical trauma experienced by your ancestors can affect their offspring's genetic makeup, meaning that nature and nurture may be inseparably intertwined after all. But regardless of which has the most influence, when we further understand how and why these factors affect the human mind, we'll reach a crucial moment in history. Because then we can begin controlling our brains to a more advanced degree than we do today. And when this happens, does the idea of a personality go straight out the window? After all, couldn't we simply manipulate the mind of an anxious person to create a more affable comedic personality type? How about that jerk-off neighbour who never says hello when you pass him in the street? Surely he could be fixed to make him a tad jollier. And what would it mean to be fixed? What are the most desirable personality traits? A workaholic isn't always a good thing. Being forthright isn't always a bad thing. Without sadness, we'd lose many great works of art. Without psychopaths, where would the horror movie industry be? Which personality types are the right ones? Obviously, if we could choose, we'd want to do away with the most destructive personalities. And this means we could end up ridding the world of dangerous criminals, or at least reducing their numbers. But how far do you go with this? Where is the cut-off point between a good and bad personality? And who gets to decide? But to return to the initial question of the reality of the human self, we have to ask a question which seems less hypothetical by the day. If our brains can be so easily manipulated, as we've seen it can be through electrical pulses and chemical treatments, then who is the true you? Behind all these chemicals and your genetically inherited makeup, what is your real personality type? Is there even such a thing as a real you? When you consider the fact that 95% of human decisions are made subconsciously, and the rest are so clearly affected by exterior forces, the idea of free will becomes a little less believable. As does the notion that you, me, your Aunt Sally, and your best friend Steve possesses anything close to what could be called a definitive individual personality. So the question, who we really are inside, may not have a fixed answer. Number three, why is my reality the right reality? As well as forming a personality type out of a random assortment of chemicals, the human brain is also capable of creating its own subjective social realities by perceiving events and individuals in a way which pleases it the most. This is why some people dislike certain religious groups and others think they're hunky-dory. It's why some are in favor of gay marriage and others believe it causes hurricanes. Humans create their own social realities every single day thanks to some influential psychological quirks known as cognitive biases. Cognitive biases can make you warp facts and twist knowledge into your own version of reality, and there are many stark examples of this to be found in everyday life. The framing effect describes how humans react to certain choices when presented with either a loss or a gain, and more often than not, humans are drawn more to a riskier option if a negative frame is presented, with positive frames causing you to avoid risk. This was demonstrated in the recent EU referendum in the United Kingdom, where the Leave vote won by 52% to 48%, with a campaign based almost entirely on fear. A victory despite the fact that the Leave campaign was seen as risky, with no real plan in place regarding how the UK could operate after leaving. The positive benefits of leaving the EU were mentioned by those in favor, but they took a back seat to claims that jobs, power, and money would be lost if Britain did not depart the European Union. The margin's slim victory also clearly demonstrates how some people can view the concept under similar circumstances and still come out with entirely different viewpoints. Obviously, you have to take a person's life experiences, circle of friends, and media influence into account, but each of these comes with inbuilt biases too, including cognitive bias, which makes you seek out information to back up your current opinions, and illusory correlation, which makes humans perceive a relationship between two unrelated events. There's that gay hurricane thing again. And even though some things are easy to prove and disprove, other situations are a little more complex. Today you've got people arguing whether the gender pay gap exists, whether there are too many welfare spongers, and whether micro-aggressions are the worst form of racism ever. Who is to say which reality is the truth? Is this even measurable? Can anyone objectively analyze someone else's social reality? Or do we all live in our own permanent social reality, one which is impenetrable to anyone but ourselves? 2. How the heck am I alive? This next entry is a little lighter than the rest because my brain is tired and I'm trying to figure out how biased and racist all my relatives were over Christmas. But have you ever considered the astonishing reality of how you exist through everyday life? How complex it is. How you've even survived the last 24 hours, let alone made it to whatever age you are now. Let's start with the past 5 minutes. If you went to take a whiz, you could have slipped and cracked your skull upon a wet floor. 10 minutes ago, you could have plugged in a toaster, only to be killed by the faulty wiring some poor Chinese kid botched because his lunch break was about to start. And how the bejeebus did any of you survive the commute this morning? Think about your route to work, people. If you're a driver, you've just hurtled down the highway in a 2-ton metal can filled with combustible liquid, entrusting your life to all the people who designed and built the vehicle you were in, the road you drove on, and the stop signs directing traffic. You also had to trust yourself not to have a lapse in concentration or a mental breakdown while in control of your vehicle, while also relying on thousands of other psychotic, hairless, over-caffeinated apes and motorized bomb carts all doing the same. This pyramid of responsibility underpins our entire reality. Every day, we place our lives into the hands of thousands of others who have enabled not only the existence of our world today, but also the worlds which kept our parents, grandparents, and ancestors safe too. If mitochondrial Eve had decided it was a good idea to poke a prehistoric bear with a stick just for fun one afternoon, your bloodline and that of everyone today could have been snuffed out before humanity even left the caves. If you sit back and look at all the things that could have gone wrong in human history, it makes no sense that you, I, or anyone gets to experience reality today. The sheer number of minute decisions taken to get you here is astonishing. And that's before we even consider all the random occurrences and the junk going on in your body which needs to work right just to keep you in good working order. Eh, well, it's a good job that none of this is real. Probably. And at number one, is this all a game? Elon Musk knows a thing or two about technology. At least I hope he does. Has anyone actually looked inside a SpaceX rocket or a Tesla car? Could be just a bunch of cats taped together in there for all we know. But let's assume for a moment that Elon does know what he's talking about and that he understands the potential for technology to change and manipulate our lives. Does this mean he might be right when he says humanity almost certainly lives inside a simulation? Are we the playthings of a superior race? Have they seen and influenced all the weird stuff I've been doing when I thought nobody was watching? This theory originated in the first millennium, with ancient Indian and Chinese philosophies first posing the question. However, interest in the idea of simulated existence has increased recently due to the progress humanity has made in the field of virtual reality. Just a few decades ago, we were taking control of a yellow pixelated ball to escape the attentions of equally pixelated multicolored ghosts. But today, we're on the cusp of creating fully immersible three-dimensional environments. So is it really so hard to believe that one day virtual reality could become indistinguishable from real life? The technology either does or will shortly exist that can create images with higher resolution than the human eye, audio with more depth than our ears can comprehend, and sensations which feel as though you're actually putting your hand in a moist bowl of tapioca pudding. So if we continue on this technological trajectory, will we one day create a virtual reality so believable that someone could be born inside it with a conscious mind and remain unaware of true reality throughout their entire lives? Musk believes so, as he feels that because humanity has the potential to one day create advanced simulations, it is therefore almost inconceivable that we ourselves are not living inside a reality created by a superior race, because it's highly unlikely that we were the first to achieve this. In fact, he pegs our chances of being at the top of this virtual reality food chain at one in billions, and I do not like those odds at all. And the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab has undertaken a number of experiments whose results have been so far inconclusive. But while some proponents of simulated existence are worrying that we could be approaching the point where our simulation is turned off due to our current technological advancements, Elon Musk is a little more blase about the situation. He's discussed this topic at length, so much so that Musk and his brother have agreed that whenever they're in a hot tub together, they will not talk about simulation theory, because in his words, it really kills the magic. Wow, I guess now we know why Elon wants a self-driving car, so he can Shazam his siblings in the backseat? And that's our list. Has this video collapsed your brain into a pile of useless goop? Are you now so entrenched in misanthropic existentialism that you just want to stay inside and forget the world exists? Super! While you're doing that, please watch our recent video on the most shocking acts of mother nature. There's a monkey war in everything!