Encountering Reality: a Mind Bubble

Encountering Reality: a Mind Bubble May 4, 2015

child blowing planet bubbles

Deleted from something else I’m writing, but thanks to having a blog, it doesn’t go onto the cutting room floor. Whether it should or not, of course, is an entirely different question…

My personal motto is “I’m more rational than you.” Not always true, but it annoys enough of my friends when I say it, that I like to repeat it from time to time. Now, my little assertion is grounded in some assumptions I’ve found helpful in my life, and so I am sharing them here.

I believe the world follows patterns. And while the very small and the very large parts of the universe are seriously weird, the part we occupy follows pretty consistent patterns. And of those consistencies, as Philip K Dick observed “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” And, with that, I’ve found the best way to discern what that is in much of the ordinary things of life, is by applying Occam’s sharp razor to all claims about what is happening in this world. That is when given a complicated explanation and a simpler one, the simpler one is probably the one to go with. Not always, but enough of the time to be a really good rule of thumb.

This bit of advice is free. So, take it our leave it, as you wish…


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