Reality and Fantasy, a discussion.

[Mytical]

The one thing I do have trouble with, with these discussions is the quotes. Before long we get pages of quotes before we get to anything new. That, and it always seems to get personal when quoting. So, I respectfully bow out of the discussion. Personally I thought it was an interesting conjecture into the realm of what reality and fantasy was..have fun

[theLuckyDragon]

@Corribus
If you had the possibility of completely disproving the existence of everything people refer to as 'fantasy', of giving thorough scientific explanations to each and every 'paranormal' phenomenon, would you do it?

[Elvin]

I have a feeling he would If only to remove counter arguments and prove the should-have-been obvious.

[Mytical]

Lets look at this from another angle, to try to get it back on track (without all the quotes I hope). Lasers. When lasers were first mentioned, it was in a sci-fi book (ie fiction). Now the majority of people dismissed it as impossible and went about their 'real' lives. Somebody, stopped and actually thought. "Hey why wouldn't this be possible?" and they did it. Maybe not as effectively as some stories has it, but real and concrete.

Science and scientist do not know it all. There are things that can not be explained by science, even if they are unwilling to admit it. Imagination and creativity should go hand in hand with scientific research.

[Jolly Joker]

The thing is, with his attitude (beg your pardon, Corribus; it's not polite to talk about people in the 3rd person. Feel spoken to directly) there would be no fantasy - no stories at all, in fact, because even if he would invent them he wouldn't tell them in earnest and believably. He'd ruin the story by ending it with: "Of course this is all pure imagination. We have no proof for things like that to exist or to have ever existed."
And asked by a child a couple thousand years ago in a starry night, Dad, what are they?, he might have said, well, I don't know, instead of, that, my son, are the souls of the dead twinkling in all eternity to us and spend us some light, or something like that.

The trouble with science is, it doesn't say anything about the why. For example we can measure the speed of light - but do we know WHY it is that fast? Could it be double as fast or half as fast? Why is everything so big? And that's exactly what CHILDREN want to know: WHY.

[okrane]

Let me point out that the lasers you see in science fiction movies are nothing like the real lasers scientists use. They probably just share the same name... Moreover before fiction writers ever pondered upon the existance of such things, theories existed about the functioning of such devices and the writers obviously knew about them, and used them to create their SciFi stories.

Actually lasers will never be used as weapons in the future. This impossibility comes from the simple energy conservation law...

This brings me to my point. Fantasy, as you beautifully present it as a source of creation and so on, is nothing like that. In the majority of cases fantastic stories, events and characters are just a revamping of our own world. Take Tolkien, by some one of the most skilled fantasy writers who entirely created new worlds: his creation is too similar to our reality... the human mind cannot go further that its limits. You see elves, fairies and all that, but they are nothing but humans with slightly different characteristics.

And I can show you this in any fictional fantastic creation ever done. Time travel, which you all gave example, it was first mentioned in H.G. Wells' Time Machine (there is a 2002 film) after the apparition of the Theory of Relativity which Einstein completed a few years later.

What I am trying to prove is that human mind is really unimaginative, and its fantasy is no source of inspiration for scientists but the other way around.

Science and scientist do not know it all.

Science is about DOING things, not knowing... and scientists that have accomplished breakthroughs are pretty imaginative I should say.

This brings me to my second point about the barrier between reality and fantasy:

*Reality is what we can test it exists: if there is no way of knowing an item by the means of our senses, or knowing an affect this item is producing again by the means of our senses, then it doesn't exist for us... because there's no point in its existance.

Reality is relative, because other observers can maybe notice the item.

And so, until this supposedly existent item makes an influence upon me as observer I therefore conclude that it does not exist. Of course, fairies can exist for an alien on mars but as it doesn't influence me, I cannot even think about its existance...


To sum up the points here, because that's what I find essential in my post:

1) Scientific theories usually influence Science Fiction and not the other way around.
2) The Human Mind has trouble creating something utterly new i.e. even the most creative people cannot create something completely unconnected to this world
3) Reality is relative to the Observer - so in our talk about reality and fantasy we must absolutely keep this in mind.

@JJ and his why

You talk about why is it not double or half that... well, keep in mind that it is all relative: we have chosen a scale in which to represent things, as a numerical system so and scaling of the whole process would give out the same results, would it not?

Everything is so big?... I say it's pretty small...

Secondly: Have you ever heard of Hawking's Anthropological Principle: it is like that because we are here and we ask ourselves why... if it were different we as humans would not have existed and there would have been no one to ask these questions

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I think the illogical thing is presuming that you absolutely know that every person who has ever seen a ghost/faery/elemental is delusional or misintrepreting what they have seen.

why is that? is it better one way than the other?

It would take an omnicient/omnipresent person to say that none who claimed to see a ghost/faery actually saw what they thought they saw.

It is making the proposition "Ghosts/faeries/paranormoral experiences are not real" and then throwing out all evidence that does not agree with that proposition and labeling the people as delusional or unable to intrepret the facts as good as you can when you actually weren't there when the events happened. And then saying "oh, there's some other explaination for the film and recordings because such beings don't exist."

GOW

[Mytical]

In ways I agree with your assessment, but there are exceptions. First, not all creations in fantasy are humanoid. Some are creatures and things not of this world. The griffin, manticor, and various other creatures have been used from time to time. True, most are just collections of creatures merged, but the inventive way they are merged is the interesting phenomenon. I concede on the lasers, perhaps somebody somewhere was working on such a thing. However, sci-fi is about what maybe possible down the road. At the time that lasers were used, nothing even close was around, and though they may never achieve what was mentioned, it spured many a reserch. As have teleporters, tri-corders, and many other yet to be achieved things. So when you say science influences sci-fi, yes yes it does, but sci-fi influences scientific research as well. My point is that what we may find impossible today, may not be the case down the road. As a vulcan would say. "Nothing is impossible, just very highly improbable."

[okrane]

It is really interesting to watch old sci-fi movies, picturing the future, and the technological breakthroughs that currently are reality. Have you ever watched old films about the future in which the plot was taking place in the year 2000 or so? I have watched a few and I think it can give a good insight upon how close or how far of reality we were back then...

Sure, fantasy can add a certain use to our development but I think it has a more spiritual value. It makes us dream, and leave even for a moment our own world in order to see some magnificent things that otherwise we would never encounter. I believe this is the actual importance of fantasy...

[Elvin]

It's this inventive way that makes fantasy familiar yet different. The point is not to make something totally unrelated and if it is to an extent it usually has something intriguing about it. People do love references just as they love the feeling of a brave new world to explore.

I suppose a reason for the direction the conversation took was the edge of reality and fantasy as some things are regarded as fantasy by default at least by some people. I don't believe in faeries but I know that out there happen things that cannot be explained. Maybe not at the moment but I digress.

It's that attitude that 'it cannot be happening or it has a logical explanation' that kills fantasy and the interest of what is around us. Sure I'm interested to learn how some things work but it's that mystery about them that creates it.

[Jolly Joker]

@ Okrane
I think you are not consistent. Yes, scientists, especially ground-breaking ones, ARE imaginative, a lot more imaginative than your point number 2 is allowing. And there are many interesting fictions that are indeed rather imaginative. Stanislaw Lem, a scientifically very versed writer of fiction has written a lot of very imaginative stuff; Solaris is well-known, the story about the human try to make contact with a completely different life form. I could cite others. Daniel Galouye has written remarkable stuff as has Phil Dick, Jack Vance... the list is long.
NATURALLY all fiction somehow has the human pow in it; it wouldn't be interesting otherwise, because, and here I agree partly, reality is in a way relative and if there was no connection to humans at all the fiction would be irrelevant.
However, relativity has it's limits. We've been killed by germs and virusses for a long time whether we were able to see them or not - we could see an effect. The real question behind all this is whether we'll be able to absolutely follow things to the ground. The "real" (as in "reality") reason for a thing to happen. As long as you note an effect the reason for it has to be as real as the effect WHETHER YOU FIND ONE OR NOT.

Now about the why and your answer. You miss the point. It's not a metter of Scaling it's a real why: why is gravity getting less with the SQUARE of distance (and not linearly or triple or quadruple or whatever else? MUST it be so? Or would there be other possibilities? And about the big; it's certainly bigger than anyone can really imagine which does seem to be "too big for you" as a map we'd like to play on and not see only a tiny little square of.

Oh, and yes, I read universe in a nutshell and a short history of time. Pretty interesting, and of course he is right there. However, that still leaves the question whether EVERYTHING has to be necessarily as it is (necause otherwise we wouldn't exist), and if so.... WHY?

Lastlly, mathematics is probably the most imaginative fiction ever, since it's not based in "reality" (or made with "reality" in mind), As such it's probably the most advanced fiction as well... so advanced in fact, that not many people can understand it fully.

[Gaidal Cain]

The thing is, with his attitude (beg your pardon, Corribus; it's not polite to talk about people in the 3rd person. Feel spoken to directly) there would be no fantasy - no stories at all, in fact, because even if he would invent them he wouldn't tell them in earnest and believably. He'd ruin the story by ending it with: "Of course this is all pure imagination. We have no proof for things like that to exist or to have ever existed."

Which of course is not relevant to a good fantasy (or myth/fairy-tale/whatever). They aren't primarily intended to help us understand the world, they are intended to help our "soul"- be it to help us live a more moral life, or just to offer some escapism or hope. That's partly where this big debacle about creationism comes from: the people who preach it has gotten so used to the idea that the only purpose for a tale is to explain "scientifically" how the world works that they cannot see that it was never the point of their myths. The point about Genesis isn't that God created the world in six days, it's that there is a benevolent god who did that and that's why the world exist (a view that's much easier to accept at the same time as the notion about Big Bang, as that only tells the how, not the why)

[okrane]

However, relativity has it's limits. We've been killed by germs and virusses for a long time whether we were able to see them or not - we could see an effect. The real question behind all this is whether we'll be able to absolutely follow things to the ground. The "real" (as in "reality") reason for a thing to happen. As long as you note an effect the reason for it has to be as real as the effect WHETHER YOU FIND ONE OR NOT.

well, yeah, that's what I was saying... if I can observe it or its effects ... what's inconsistent about that...

Now about the why and your answer. You miss the point. It's not a metter of Scaling it's a real why: why is gravity getting less with the SQUARE of distance (and not linearly or triple or quadruple or whatever else? MUST it be so?

Because if it were linear planets would be too close to stars for life as we know it to exist, and if it were quadruple they would be too far.(from Stephen Hawking).

It is like it is, and the question *why* has no meaning here simply because we are a part of the system and a part cannot know the whole. Furthermore, every hypothesis about the answer to such a question would be impossible to verify, mainly because we are part of this whole, and so, if we cannot observe it... it does not exist. Therefore this question is meaningless.

I think a better approach to this dilemma is to consider that there are infinite sets of laws by which Universes govern, and there may exist other Universes that are different, for no particular reason. But as we cannot test the existance of such thing, we cannot consider them reality.

MUST it be so

it IS so...

Lastlly, mathematics is probably the most imaginative fiction ever, since it's not based in "reality" (or made with "reality" in mind), As such it's probably the most advanced fiction as well... so advanced in fact, that not many people can understand it fully.

But still maths reflect our own reality

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Actually lasers will never be used as weapons in the future. This impossibility comes from the simple energy conservation law...

Are you quite sure that lasers aren't being used in the US "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative as well as in other military applications?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/782696.stm
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug ... wars1.html
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestc ... 70208.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e13129.htm

This brings me to my point. Fantasy, as you beautifully present it as a source of creation and so on, is nothing like that. In the majority of cases fantastic stories, events and characters are just a revamping of our own world.

What I am trying to prove is that human mind is really unimaginative, and its fantasy is no source of inspiration for scientists but the other way around.

To sum up the points here, because that's what I find essential in my post:

1) Scientific theories usually influence Science Fiction and not the other way around.
2) The Human Mind has trouble creating something utterly new i.e. even the most creative people cannot create something completely unconnected to this world

I have to disagree with you. Imagination/fantasy/fiction comes before theories and inventions. The inventor has to dream up his inventions before he can implement them. That is not to say however that science and sci-fi don't influence each other.

*Reality is what we can test it exists: if there is no way of knowing an item by the means of our senses, or knowing an affect this item is producing again by the means of our senses, then it doesn't exist for us... because there's no point in its existance.

Reality is relative, because other observers can maybe notice the item.

And so, until this supposedly existent item makes an influence upon me as observer I therefore conclude that it does not exist. Of course, fairies can exist for an alien on mars but as it doesn't influence me, I cannot even think about its existance...

I think reality is absolute as far as whether or not an item exists. I may or may not observe an item though the item does exist. The item may not be real to me in the sense that I have not yet discovered it but it does exist whether I acknowledge its existance or not. My conclusion that the item does not exist does not influence the actual existance of the item.

I am aware that observed measurements of the dimensions of an item may change depending on the relative positions and conditions of the observer to the object. Like length, mass, and time as per the theory of relativity.

GOW

[Mytical]

Myths, legands, and folk tales are not really about escapism, or not all are. They also provide wisdom, guidence, and a moral in many cases. A lot this is missed because more then a few people see it as just : good guy wins, evil guy looses. This is not so in some of the folk tales my ancestors have passed on to me. They teach things such as caution, how to spot possible dangers, and patience.

I have asked, what do you think reality is. What do you think fantasy is, and when do you think they become blurred. A few have answered that, a few still have yet to.

[Jolly Joker]

Lastlly, mathematics is probably the most imaginative fiction ever, since it's not based in "reality" (or made with "reality" in mind), As such it's probably the most advanced fiction as well... so advanced in fact, that not many people can understand it fully.

But still maths reflect our own reality

It's not intended to - pure byproduct and proof of the fact that science borrows from imagination, since mathematics is PURELY imaginative.

Furthermore I don't think your point is solid. As long as you cannot explain the reality you live in FULLY it is possible that things are influencing it that are beyond our ability to prove their existance. An example for this would be dark matter - or any other thing assumed to explain certain effects.
So as long as we have no full explanation for everything (and this might indeed be impossible to reach) we definitely KNOW that more exists than we see, which makes your sentence "if we cannot observe it it doesn't exist" simply wrong, I think.

[okrane]

if we cannot observe it it doesn't exist

...it doesn't exist... for us, at this time, by our knowledge. Wrong it would be to start inventing the existance of stuff without any basis whatsoever.
Dark energy, for example: a decade ago it did not exist, not it does - we don't know much about it, but we have a hint that something is causing what we observed, therefore something must exist there that's causing it.
However, if there are no such causes i.e. effects we can observe, we simply cannot admit the existance of something.

The subtlety you are missing is that what exists is RELATIVE. Reality is relative. So from now on when you and I will state that something exists we will also have to state for whom it does exist.

So I will rephrase the statement you quoted:

If we cannot observe it it doesn't exist for us

I do not believe we will ever get a full explanation of what is out there. We know that there are other things out there we don't know about. We are open to discovery, yes, but until they are uncovered, from the point of view of the reality I defined, they do not exist, i.e. they are not a part of our reality. They may exist but we cannot base any reasoning on this type of hypotheses.

Science is not about knowing. Science is about DOING: experimenting, validating theories and creating innovations.

[Ethric]

Not only is science about knowing, science the word actually means knowledge. Of course you can't obtain knowledge without doing something, even if it's just sitting down to really think things over like the philosophers did.

[Jolly Joker]

Okrane, why do I have to repeat everything?
If we don't have a full explanation for everything WE KNOW THAT MORE THINGS EXIST THEN WE CAN OBSERVE!!! Therefore those things DO exist. Not only that, they have ALWAYS existed - Dark Matter as an idea has always existed, it just was named differently and diffusely because the gaps between the islands of knowledge were bigger.
There are even philosophs who see the highest reality in the IDEA, mind you.
Another thing. If there was no "objective" (as opposed to relative) reality there was no way to explore it "scientifically", that is, objectively.

[okrane]

Therefore those things DO exist.

What are those things?

Dark Matter as an idea has always existed, it just was named differently and diffusely because the gaps between the islands of knowledge were bigger.

How was it named?

There are even philosophs who see the highest reality in the IDEA, mind you.

the idea of WHOM? - ideas imply human beings, mind you

Another thing. If there was no "objective" (as opposed to relative) reality there was no way to explore it "scientifically", that is, objectively.

How can you say there exists such a thing as an objective reality? EVERYTHING is subjective, because the only way of knowing reality is our mind and our senses . Of course because all humans have a somewhat similar perception of our surroundings we admit to call what the majority of us perceive, objective.

Of course we can come back to classic examples that have been stated here about mad men who have not the same perception of reality as all of us, or even a better one: do Colors exist for a person born blind?

Science itself, is very subjective... it is based upon our subjective observations and ideas about the world...

Again, I repeat myself too... we don't know it all, so we conclude that there MAY exist things out there, but we cannot include them into what we consider real, because there is no reason to. And I repeat the definition of real I wrote a few pages back:

Something is real if we can observe it or observe a cause it produces.

@GOW

I have to disagree with you. Imagination/fantasy/fiction comes before theories and inventions. The inventor has to dream up his inventions before he can implement them. That is not to say however that science and sci-fi don't influence each other.

He has to dream them up, of course, but because he is a scientist he knows what he can dream about. For example: as I talked about the time machine... prior to the 19th century nobody ever talked about this, because there was nothing to hint people something of this sort. HG Wells wrote about this because of the scientific breakthroughs in the late 19th century that unfolded some of the aspects of time. Prior to that, great writers like Shakespeare were writing about ghosts because that was the actual level of knowledge of the era.

I think reality is absolute as far as whether or not an item exists. I may or may not observe an item though the item does exist. The item may not be real to me in the sense that I have not yet discovered it but it does exist whether I acknowledge its existance or not. My conclusion that the item does not exist does not influence the actual existance of the item.

This is where I go a step forward and say no, reality is not absolute. If something exists, it must exist for an observer, otherwise how can you state it exists? Fate, intuition, make-belief? You saying that it is absolute, you imply that it exists an observer to which all these things exist, and you place yourself in his shoes. But as I see you are accustomed to the theory of relativity you should know better than that and only judge from your perspective.
You can say that it *may* exist or not, i.e. in your perception of the world this is possible or not, but without you(and mankind in general) actually witnessing the existance of an item, what is the point if it truly existed or not.(i.e. it exists an observer to which this item exists)
Again... it is a matter of DEFINITION. I rule out the things we cannot test because they are irrelevant for our reality. I find this the most natural way to define the existance of certain aspects of this universe, because there is no point into taking into account things that do not influence us in any way.