this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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But what if you're just imagining or dreaming that you're doubting..? How do you even know you are the thing that's doubting..? "You" could be a spurious Boltzmann brain, randomly manifested out of quantic chaos, in a state resembling that of a person doubting their own existence, for a mere Planck instant before dissolving back into the chaos from whence you emerged...
Guys stop. "Doubt" is starting to look funny
Semantic satiation
In the grand scheme of things, a human lifespan is in the same ballpark as a Planck instant when considering an infinite universe. That doesn't mean either are insignificant in their own context though.
Time can be infinitely subdivided For all we know, billions of entire universes could be created and destroyed within ours in an instant. Our own universe could be as insignificant as an atom in some higher level universe. We can't know that. But what I do know, is that I exist in this moment, and that's enough for me.
Slightly related is the anthropic principle, or the "observation selection effect", which is nicely summarized by this analogy:
The takeaway I get from this is that it's important to appreciate the time we have, since everything comes to an end eventually.
Yes, all you know is that something exists. And for the sake of argument, we call that 'you'.
I could be any of these things, but I would still be