Its premature to say anything
Its now been widely recognized that we hallucinate our realities. For those not familiar, a good example is when our eyes see things, its actually perceived through our eyes as upside-down but its our minds that change it to right side up.
This process and things like it is what our mind does constantly with the data input it receives from our senses.
Though this truth exists we still believe that we are experiencing reality but our perception of it is conjured up in our minds. This notion is incomplete.
For a good perspective on this lets compare our selves to a dolphin. Sonar is basically how a dolphin perceives the world around it, is it accurate yes but would we call that a clear perception of reality when we compare it to something like our eye sight. Which is full of color with shadows and tones. Sonar if judged fairly is nothing more then a pale version of reality.
This being the case one might say that perception of reality is entirely in the perceivers ability to experience it. While being accurate to the perceiver there are lvls of reality and we may be at a low lvl of it.
Yes, instrumentation enhances our data acquirability, but more on this later.
The Accurate Fallacy
Our perception of reality is nothing more then predictability, which is best guesses tested against time.
An example, when you pick up a plastic cup for the first time your mind records its weight. The next time you pick it up and it weighs heavier your mind looks for a differentiator.
Aha! When there is something in the cup it adds weight. Then your mind tests this theory (or best guess) in the future, and it turns out accurate. Every time the cup is full it weighs more and whenever its empty it weighs less.
This then becomes a truth, this is also how we progress and how facts are determined and generally how we navigate reality.
While being our only way to navigate and to experience, this method may be extremely inaccurate to actual reality.
The kicker
Another example.
Back in the day “up” was whats on top of you and “down” was whats below you. That was how we related to gravity, gravity was a force that pulled everything down.
Then new info came in and we realized the world is round and we are drawn towards its mass.
Was the initial perception wrong? Well lets take a second look.
That fact of up and down worked for them and was accurate in navigating their reality. Yet it was factually false and with further data and more in the playing field it become inaccurate in its predictability. (There can and probably are many instances where we will never know because the truth will never show up in a change to predictability)
This may very well be the case for us now, that all of our perception and time proven facts may be predictably correct but factually false.
As well as what was mentioned earlier that we may also be perceiving what we can based on our ability to detect and perceive. With so many parts and layers of reality inaccessible to us and to it we are as blind as a (sonar) bat.
Staying in the frame of everything with progress will figure itself out. Lets jump to instrumentation getting very very advanced and allowing us to detect things and add data input to our perception of reality. (Btw we do this already with things like radar, sonar, and X-rays we get more data input with which we try and translate to accuracy and predictability.)
Though the idea is to get to the next lvl which comes in the next paragraph.
The Detection Chain
Lets look to an example of something that has no detectible interaction with our reality. Except in one tiny little massive way.
Light goes right through it, and it has seemingly no detectible effect on anything going through it. In fact the only way we know it exists is because the world doesn’t make sense with out it.
Dark matter is a conclusion of missing mass and energy needed to make our theory of gravity make sense.
Another reason this example is a good one is because between dark matter and dark energy they are an estimated 95% of our universe. These estimates are just from the known effects on our gravity. (What about the parts that don’t effect our gravity)
Now we came to this conclusion through a gap in our predictability. Once we learn more about it and it joins our predictability factors we can gage things that interact with it. We can do this through noticing its changes and understanding its predictability. This can lead to more discoveries of data that interacts with data we previously couldn’t interact with, which… on and on.
Not to freak anyone out but there can be species that are entirely invisible and undetectable in a physical sense to us currently.
This is going to blow your mind
We “also” only perceive things the way they relate to us (or something else) but we can’t see things for what they actually are. One more time for the money, “We cant see things for what they actually are”. (There is no way to advance this or get better at it unless a 3rd party who truly sees things for the way they are…)
After reading the past few paragraphs you might have noticed that the way we perceive things is based on predictability. Predictability is how things play out when interacting with something else.
In other words we know things by there attributes. Like this ball is red, its bouncy, its lite.
These attributes once discovered, are what define it and give it its identity to us.
Can we say this is the reality of what it is?
To a leaf you are carbon monoxide because thats the part of you it can relate with.
Another example would be like saying your mother is only a mother. She is also a woman, a sister, a daughter, and an aunt.
We are defining things btw they relate to the things that relate back to us. Besides subjective it is probably extremely off on what reality actually is.
To get super tripy, you relate to yourself with attributes as well.