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>>True joys only derive from the reality.

Well a dream is as real as things get.

The whole problem is really in describing reality. Ask any lucid dreamer and they will explain you than the key to lucid dreaming is to constantly question your current state(are your dreaming or not?).

And after some time it just doesn't matter. Because every thing is just a electrical impulse to your brain. If your brain is sent a signal to treat hot as cold. You will hold a hot iron in your hands and be perfectly OK with it. The reality of things 'hot being hot' doesn't change, nothing changes but your perception of things.

If you ponder deep enough when you dream this is what happens in a dream too. You are perceiving things. Whether they are real are not, is as useless argument because your knowledge of it is the way your brain is telling you about it and not what it actually is.

I've had inception like dream within dream, losing lucidity while dreaming inside the dream and there after. In stages like that its difficult to say what is reality and what isn't. The safest way is to not do any thing harmful or dangerous. In fact I didn't know of it until I woke, it was then during a usual dream recall that I got a surreal feeling that I had woke up from three levels of 'reality'.

You know those days that are totally normal, the routine, what you do for a period of time in your life to just reach to the next level? OK, I had a 4 level deep dream, in which I dreamed that I woke up. I did in glaring detail what I would do, when I actually wake up, including the stupid things like opening the fridge just remember what I was about to do. I didn't notice that I dreamt until a single detail made me curious and I instantly woke up, before I could notice what it was. However this was the 3rd level of the dream and much more realistic than the 4th level. I'll skip the 2nd level, but in the 1st level of the dream I could not find a single thing that made me curious, heck I even did what I would do, if I were suspecting that I was "dreaming", like washing my face with icecold water, phoning to someone I know, asking someone to pinch me. Unfortunately the pain and everything else was realistic so I kept dreaming that I actually woke up now and was somehow fooled to become relieved by that matter. After my routine day (which of course includes brushing teeth, washing face, shower, going out, taking a bus ride, going through the city and such random stuff) I turned back home and was just about to think about the day, when I noticed something was wrong. I couldn't remember what a professor said (you'd think that's normal, huh, haha?). And In the glimpse of an eyeblink I woke up again. This time I was really awake, but couldn't believe it for several weeks until I gave up finding out what's real or not, hoping to be really awake. Everybody who had a very very long dream taking years (in detail), knows that when dreaming there is no time limit. A second can be an infinity in a dream.

After "waking up" into what I think is reality, I experienced a single difference between dreams and reality. In every dream that I woke up, I could see myself from the top and then immediately when my dreaming self opened it's eyes I started seeing things through that perspective .

>> Is sleeping inside a dream possible? If not, that could be a trustable way to find out if one is a dream or not. Much more reliable than a ring ;)

All I can say is I'm a little jealous. :)

I hope some day I dream at such deep levels.

I hope you do not. How will you find out that things are real or not?

It makes you really skeptic and a little more cautions, but also open to risk than you would usually be. Maybe a good attitude for an entrepreneur, but all your logic and fear induced by that logic mostly fades away at some times. That's when you think it could be a dream subconsciously, at that time you start doing things you never would. It's twisted, it could also make you overly cautious, because you start valuing real life as something more wonderful than you thought, a unique thing, something you are deadly afraid of losing control of. The worst is: "What if you understand your multi-level dream as bad as you understood Inception?" Just like some friend of yours who had trouble getting Matrix in example. Could that mean you see draw a pattern and believe reality is the 5th dream? Could that when you really wake up, make everything make appear surreal? Would you try to jump from a window or do something to find out if you're dreaming?

The question that reality is a dream is supported by the Simulated Reality Hypothesis and that is also factor that makes this film a great one. Because there is no answer to that question. You could wake up when you die, or you could die. Using stochastic maths and game theory would suggest to die, but that speaks against everything that makes a game, a dream or life out. Playing is winning. Not playing is losing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

It's always this argument that comes up, and it always seems like bullshit.

First off, yes, our brain offers us an interpretation of the outside world, but no, that's not 'its' interpretation. We are it.

Second - dreaming is not as real as things get. Yes, our perception determines how we react to the world, but it does not actually change the world on its own. In a dream, our perception is expressed as actual physical changes to the structure of what's around us. In other words, in life, I can imagine a house on fire, but it's still standing - whereas in a dream, that bitch burns to the ground.

Third - whether or not I'm dreaming does matter (and the way you try to explain that doesn't really make a ton of sense). If I shoot myself in the face in a dream, I wake up. If I shoot myself in the face at my job during the day, it's a bit different outcome.

Fourth - I can ponder what is in a dream, and I can perceive what is in a dream. This does not carry the same weight as perceiving and pondering the world around me. At most, the dream perception is just fancy navel gazing, it's introspection at its finest (or worst depending on your view). Whereas perceiving and pondering the world around me can directly impact how much I have to eat today, whether or not I get hit by a car, or whether or not I'm on fire.

The argument that dreams are the same as reality because our brain offers interpretations of both has always, to me, seemed to be the 'whoa man, check out how big my hands are' type of stoner bullshit from college. Arguing that our dreams should carry as much weight as our interaction with the world around us has always come across as just a miserable person's way of saying that they're not happy with where they're at in life, but that's okay because it's all about how we interpret the world around us.

I didn't intend for that to be as hateful as it came across. I've read it three times and can't make it any less hateful. Take it for what it's worth.

You didn't get the point I was trying to make. The whole point is the term 'real' is difficult to define. You seem to have definition of the term real, as to some state of wakefulness. But how did you come to that conclusion? How do you know that you are not dreaming at this point in time?

You might simply be treating a level of wakefulness as real.

This is exactly what happens when you have dreams within dreams. You wake up to level, which you think is real. Until you wake to another level and so on.

No, no I didn't.

The term 'real' isn't that hard to define. It consists of everything that exists when I cease to exist. It is everything around me that keeps going when I stop going.

Therefore, awake, asleep, on drugs, it doesn't matter. My perception of the world is just that, my perception. The world exists whether I'm here or not. To argue that reality is dependent on your own personal perception is one of the most egotistical and self-centered things I've ever heard.

Again, the 'everything and nothing is real' argument just comes across as sophomore existentialism, nothing more.

So what is reality? Are sure sure it is realy real? And where is the difference between dreaming you lived 70 years or really living them? You will nver know the difference.

We all create ou own "reality" out off faulty perceptions and memorys.

"Playing a game" is a bad example because it is hardly compareable to the complex illusion we really ( ;) ) live in. The dream world of inception however is as complex as as the "real" world (at least from a humans point of view).

Sorry but you are sailing into a philosphical ocean with only a inflateable animal as support.

Well I'm going to back him up, and blaspheme the memory of George Orwell for good measure.

Sanity is socially-defined. So is reality, at least human-eudaimonic reality. Basically, imagine we live in the Matrix, and you get out, but you're the only one who does get out or ever can get out. Do you live in reality?

In the scientific sense, yes: causal arrows run from your reality to ours.

In the social sense, no: you live in total isolation, have an utterly meaningless life due to lack of social relationships, and quickly go insane from the extreme solitude. (I mean that literally: solitary confinement of human beings causes measurable damage to mental and neurological health.)

Given multiple possible realities, the one that's going to make you sane and happy is the one where everyone else lives, or at least enough of a peer group to keep you sane. Thus, if you break out of the Matrix, you should focus on building Zion.

If we're talking about real-world, non-hypothetical real-life versus, say, World of Warcraft, it's pretty damn obvious that you can have better and more meaningful relationships with more people in real life, and that living almost entirely in real life does much more to support your physical and mental health than living in WoW. We can therefore obviously conclude you should stop playing WoW right now and go out in the healthy sunshine.

Just like your mom used to tell you, but way mind-screwier.

There is a book called "Finite and Infinite Games" that you should read. http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1...

It's really metaphor for life.

I think many people will live out their entire physical lives in advanced holodecks of the future. I think that would be perfectly reasonable.

The notion of escape is pretty terrifying to a jailer.