people that write blogs aren't real. as a challenge, can you definitively prove without a doubt that the small things you observe (people, trees, buildings, whatever else) are actually real?

i don't mean real in the social sense - like genuine or authentic - i mean undoubtedly existing and materially present in reality, the opposite of an observable facade.

what is real?

the phone you're currently holding, or whatever other device you're reading this on, how do you know it's real? is it because you're holding it in your hand or looking at it with your eyeballs? in other words, one of your senses is telling your brain that something is there, and that you need to acknowledge that it's there? if the nerves in your hand didn't work, or you were blind, would your phone or screen cease to exist?

let's say no

they do continue to exist. is there any definitive way of proving this? well let's say you have a friend whose nerves and eyes work, and can tell you undoubtedly:

you ask your mate: is this phone real?
your mate says: yes bro the phone is real, i can literally see it

well okay, but is that proof? your mate is observing the phone or screen with their eyes which, in other words, means one of their senses is telling their brain that something is there. say your mate is also blind, they also now wouldn't be able to confirm the phone exists for you, but would the phone or screen cease actually to exist?

at this point, it becomes clear that we generalise a sort of recursive reasoning for justifying things are real:

the phone in my hand is real because i can feel it. if i can't feel it, then i can see it. if i can't see it, then surely someone else can see it. if someone else can't see it, then surely another person could see it. if no one can see it, surely someone else could hear it when it makes noises. if no one can hear it...

but imagine - if no one can see it, feel it, or hear it... is it real? does the phone cease to exist?

let's say yes

it does cease to exist. what does that mean? it would insist that, culturally, we classify something as real through observation. if a thing can't be observed, it stops existing because we can't observe it. in this sense, observation is either:

1. direct - through our own individual senses
2. conferred - by proxy through others individual senses

but if we think a little deeper about this - if simply observing something necessitates existence, doesn't that feel a little flimsy? if we all magically lost our senses overnight, does that mean reality ceases to exist? that doesn't feel right.. it feels more accurate to say everything we previously saw/touched/heard (observed) ceases to exist, but we collectively still exist. but as what?

macrocosms & microcosms, plus whatever other cosm

have you heard of the microcosm-macrocosm theory of reality? it posits that we are actually a big thing looking through the lens of a small thing, observing many other small things who are actually fundamentally the same big thing as us.

despite the eli5 toddler-esque explanation and my juvenile illustration, this sort of makes sense. when your lenses "observe" something, they are building a representation using your nerves and brain and constructing it be interpreted there. but the interpretation is shared amongst a macrocosm. we agree that leaves are green, bark is brown, and the sky is blue because our brains construct a representation that we both agree on (ignoring different languages, labels, historical naming of things, etc). if suddenly the microcosm stopped being observed, like we lost all our senses, does reality stop? or must there be some kind of macrocosm that enabled the observation in the first place (which we all still share).

so, only two possibilities exist here:

1. the microcosm is all there is, and if we stop observing it, all of reality stops [yawn, who wants to believe that?]
2. there is a universal fabric we all share that enables observation and allows us to collectively construct an observable microcosm that we call reality [way cooler]

unfortunately, possibility 1 is fundamentally untestable.

conclusively, everything

reality is pretty convincing. if you never stumbled upon this post, or magically thought of these ideas yourself (much more likely, i know you're really smart), you'd be living in ignorant microcosmic bliss. you're now aware that whatever you observe is a construction in your mind because of your senses. you're also definitely aware that if you stopped observing this reality, whatever enabled that observation in the first place would continue to exist. there is a lot more to discuss here, but we should let it marinate.

anyway, the problem with this kind of thinking is that it's totally impractical. how will this help me do my job? how will this help me feed my family. sorry, i don't have answers to that - i am just a boy. but what i do know is that writing blogs exists in the microcosm, and so people that write blogs aren't real.