Degrees of reality:
I have made no serious study of this, but perhaps this will inspire a better mind than my own. Not only are there varying realities, but it might be possible to rank them in order of credibility. There are, of course, multiple dimensions along which reality can be measured. Here are a few suggestions:
1) Consistency. A narrative must be telling the same story at all times; scripture scores only fairly well in spite of the fact that many of us believe “every word.”
2) Simplicity. If it is utterly beyond our ability to comprehend, it still may be true. I just watched a short video about crows. A man, in an effort to scare them away from a small town, was hired to attack them with his hawk. H crow is very smart as animals go, and they quickly learned that a hawk is bad news. Likewise, somebody who hurts crows will draw their ire, and they will scold him. But the falconer explained that the crows were unable to comprehend the two working together. Even though they saw him bring the hawk and release it, and saw to carnage the hawk occasioned and properly hated and feared the hawk, they never got upset with the hunter.
3) Adherence to natural law. Most of us believe in a religion of some sort or the other, and many religions incorporate tales that are in conflict with the natural order. We tend to believe our own set of acceptable miracles and scorn all others. The more the tale seems to be free of supernatural events, the more plausible it is.
4) Position on spirituality. There is of course a difference between the spiritual and the miraculous. If by chance you accept that humans can get in touch with the divine, then that conflicts in no way with natural law. If you believe that this will let you meditate, now you are in violation of natural law and lose points in plausibility.
5) Innocence of motive to exploit. If the government wants you to comply with a regulation benefiting a special interest group, or pay your taxes or fight in a war, you will regard that possible motivation as weighing against their believability.
Let’s try some examples:
“Fantasia” Walt Disney made a movie by that name that purported to illustrate some things a person listening to pieces of music might imagine. For me it is at the limits of believability. Anything less believable is simply abstract and for me lacking in information. Of course “Fantasia” has to be among the most beautiful things humans have ever created, just not the most plausible. There are various segments that are mutually inconstant, it can all be remembered but defies logical analysis, is rather pessimistic about spirituality and was clearly intended to impress you enough to come back or to send others to buy tickets in theatres.
YouTube
Now this one is really fun. All sorts of things are said by all sorts of people. Some verge on the totally mad and yet seem to supply real information, like thy did their homework. You get to watch the clip and then consult your skeptical editor and wee how much you believe.
Then there is mainstream science.
This ought to be rock solid, but the best journals report extensive misbehavior. Somebody reported that half of all scientific articles are retracted or disproved in something like 30 years, so you are on shaky ground if you claim to believe all science and only science. I think the most prestigious journals really do have a better batting average.
The articles I cite.
Generally the studies I draw on to explain my basic point are based on massive data. In this corrupt age those who know (and shouldn’t) say that you can commit voter fraud but cannot generate a landslide. I presume they mean the US. Landslides have been manufactured elsewhere, if I am to believe old news stories – newspapers being IMHO somewhere between YouTube and science. Similarly in science, you can fudge small data sets, but really big data sets demand attention. The Large Hadron Collider found the Higgs bozon with the confidence of 5 standard deviations. That’s only pretty good, since it might have been anywhere in a large range. There was a study they told us about at Harvard where somebody tried every treatment of ulcers he could come up with, more than a hundred. Licorice turned out to work with a confidence of p> .01, which is to say there was less than one chance in a hundred of it turning up by chance. It was never considered a rational treatment. But that degree of confidence is publishable.
Think about it. St. Petersburg is not Tampa. I’ll prove it by dropping a rock in St. Petersburg. It will not land in Tampa. After twenty trials we can conclude that they are different cities at a confidence of p> .0000001. And we can run that up to p>.000000000001 with only twenty more trials. Now I’m convinced that they are two different cities, which of course I’ve known for years as I have driven between them. So honest science is an honest attempt to get at the truth, but it always seems to be pushing against the limits of plausibility.
Then there is my own work.
I planned my set up, my observations and my record keeping, critical occasions were verified with informed witnesses, my numbers are huge. I believe this more than I would believe my own casual observations or any observation that did not include me as witness. While I was writing this, I ran an errand. When I stopped at the store, there was a bunch of little birds bathing. They were going through all the motions of birds in a bird bath and throwing up little clouds that looked like water. I recalled that there was no artificial source of water there, and it had not rained for quite a while. When I investigated, it turned out that they were bathing in dust, but their antics were so perfect that the place really looked wet to me. Casual observations can be simply wrong.
You could make your own observation.
The fact that my experiment worked for me and is above reproach does not do you that much good. You’d be more prepared to believe me if (and I guess is might actually happen) I could get it properly published in a mainstream journal. You’d need to do it yourself. Since we are talking about the survival of humanity, it seems to me you should be prepared to run it yourself so long as it is not more expensive or time consuming than say a regular weekend game of tennis or golf. Well I hope, say within a year, to give you something that easy and cheap to try. It will take only a few months putting in about an afternoon a week. That may never happen of course. Once they suspect that what I am finding in the particular measurements I am doing, the whole playing field willmay change. For now, drop me a note (Yes I still check info@nobabies.net from time to time.) Maybe I can clue you in while it’s still possible. But be prepared to feel a bit lonely since you will then become a member of a group with fewer members than the billions on earth who blindly believe otherwise … you know: seven or fewer.
There have been 98 visitors over the past month and YouTube as rolled “Babies Triumph over Evil” 277 times.