Background Processes

"There is no deep reality" - some physicist[1]

Okay so... I think deep reality[2] *might* be knowable by the mind if we're sufficiently sensory deprived (like in an ideal sensory deprivation chamber). But whatever we come to know vanishes the specious moment we open our eyes or use any sensory apparatus, since it whiplashes us back to hard reality as we're able to immediately perceive it.

Descartes personified this problem as the Deus Deceptor ("Evil Demon")[3], claiming that it kept standing in the way of him knowing deep reality. This description was apt, but of course it got him into trouble with the Protestant church, which interpreted it to be a demon stronger than the creator God ("the Creator"). I think Descartes was so frustrated by the cleverness of the Creator, who was able to to design a reality so impressive on the senses that it's almost impossible for humans to "get around" using the mind, that he called the Creator a demon, ascribing malevolence to the entity for creating such a convincing reality.

So Descartes' Evil Demon was a completely subjective designation–reflecting his own frustrations as a philosopher/scientist who was otherwise trying to understand reality beyond the senses. Fast forward and we see The Matrix, which doesn't personify reality per se, but instead depersonalizes it with descriptions that make it more like a VR simulation, following the popular brain-in-a-vat analogy[4].

Still, the idea is there. That is, reality is a VERY persistent illusion[5], so persistent that quantum physicists are searching into the super small "gap" between reality being and not being. Between sub-atomic particles existing and not existing (and even existing and not existing at the same time!). But there's a gap there, to be sure. A "space" between events in our timestream. And what goes on there is beyond anything measurable. Observable, even. Pure, infinite chaos... where stuff happens that shouldn't happen because they *must not happen*.

It would be funny if we could perceive the "hitch" in events that generate world volume[6] in spacetime. But then, for a Planck moment, we'd see behind the stage; behind spacetime. Like a hitch in a film strip, where someone splices in another film (let's call it the "real film") between every other frame. We'd see (and not see) both at the same time.
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1. Eight ideas of "quantum reality": http://www.commonsensescience.org/quantum_reality.html
2. Can Science & Theology Find Deep Reality?: http://www.closertotruth.com/series/can-science-theology-find-deep-reality
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
4. Brain in a vat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
5. "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
6. World line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line