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Reality Is a Shared Hallucination—And It’s at Risk of Collapsing, Scientist Claims
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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That headline is cringe to it's core, but that aside, who would possibly be an opponent of this concept? I thought it was just universally understood that our individual senses can lie to us and that collective reality with repeatable experimentation is our only source for basis in fact.
FFS as a species we've been recording this same conversation towards this same conclusion for thousands of years.
Nobody discovered fuck all with this assertion.
EDIT: I shouldn't have come on this strong, my apologies, it's perfectly fine to study and reiterate this work and it's good that they're tying it to modern historic examples.
Headline is so wrong that i have to downvote. Reality is NOT a shared hallucination. Reality is what it is regardless of our thoughts about it.
True, but the caveat is that we have no way of knowing what that reality looks like other than through our interpretation of it. We can't do anything about "true reality" because we have no way of proving anything about it without relying on said thoughts. Like for example, we really like the scientific method for "proving" reality, but it only works assuming that the "true reality" follows the same logical principles we adhere to. Is there really a cause-effect sense in "true reality" or is it just our biased interpretation that the universe follows natural logic rules?
That's like saying that there are facts and alternative facts.
No. It's like saying there is visible light and invisible light. Which is true, there's ultra violet and infra red, but you don't know that because you've seen it. Your can't see infra red, that is the point, your model of the world is based on words, not on 'reality'.
Just because we can't see it doesn't mean we can't observe it and characterize it. This line of thinking is so limited because it only considers our senses in how they're applied directly.
Is reality actually what we experience? Who knows. Does it matter? Not really, I'd argue. There are provable facts underlying the reality we experience which are true regardless of an individual or even a collective's perception of them. Gamma rays exist without you perceiving them. But they are provably true. Their effects can be measured. They can be observed. If they couldn't, then we would never know they exist and thus they'd in essence not exist for us. But would that matter?
Thank you. That was exactly what I tried to express, though I did focus on perception in my reply, I must admit.
Reality is reality. The Earth revolves around the sun, whether earthworms know it or not.
I can understand most of your point, but that last part is just weird. My model of the world is not based on words. It's based on observation and perception.
Good for you bro