What is anything?

Question

What is anything?

What is a homosexual? What is red? What is infinite? What is a question?

Anything and everything on this planet is controled by perspective, if 99% of the world had the perspective that aliens existed. It would be a fact. If only 1% did, it would not. Perspective dictates everything that is, was and ever will be.

There are an infinite number of dimensions due to the fact that there is an infinite ammount of actions & reactions to be taken at any point in time, by any person. Which are influenced by there life, seeing as how no two people are exactly alike, this allows there to be an infinite ammount of choices to be acted or not acted upon.

If through our actions and non-actions we create a path ahead with an infinite ammount of choices off of that path, and then more off of the paths, off of the path. Then there is infnite infnite. Which begs the question....

What is perspective? is it something we believe because of our lifes choices, or is it something else ?

Answer 1

"if 99% of the world had the perspective that aliens existed. It would be a fact. If only 1% did, it would not."

No.

If 99% of the planet believed in something, maybe you'd have to pretend to believe it in order to survive. However, it does not make it true.

At one point, most people on Earth believed the Earth to be flat. This did not make the Earth flat. At another point in history, most people believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Those who spoke against that got in lots of trouble. So people had to go about their business pretending that the Earth was the centre.

That did not make it so. Ask Galileo.

Of course, there are times when 99% of the people turn out to be correct and the 1% turns out wrong.

The premise that "perception is reality" has long been a staple of political analysis and even in that field, I belong to the 1% (or more) who disagree.
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I will grant that the meaning of words is influenced by the manner in which words are perceived. A hundred years ago, a person who was gay was to be sought; often invited at parties involving important people, that person caused the others to be joyous. Now, the word gay means something else. You rarely see a gay person invited to pose next to a presidential candidate.

However, words used in scientific contexts will be given very precise definitions (even when the word has a more general sense when used in everyday life). For example, in the human eye, the L-cones are sensitive to long wavelength photons (approx. 640 nm to 470 nm, with a peak around 580 nm). If our eye perceives light that only affects the L-cones without affecting the M-cones or S-cones, then we call this color "red". (1)

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I don't have a definition of infinity. However, I can show one of its strange properties;
Take all the numbers 1, 2, 3,.... all of them. There is not a finite number of them (if there were, then there would exist a number "n" such that "n+"1 is not a number).

Let us remove the odd numbers, keeping only the "evens": 2, 4, 6, 8...; you'd think that we have only kept half the numbers.

We can show that there are exactly the same number of "evens" as there are of all numbers. Take any number and multiply it by 2, you get an even. If there were less evens, you'd run out of evens before using up all the numbers.

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What was your question again?

Answer 2

Barrett, fact is what is true. That can be discerned either by one's own experience or someone else's. If 99% of the people thought aliens existed, it wouldn't be a fact. It would be a fact only if we have strong evidence to think so.

If you look at Merriam-Webster's online, it lists two meanings for perspective (as a noun):
The first is our mental structure of the world.
It ought to be based on evidence. But many a time, its also based on man's fertile imagination, which includes belief. One has to see for oneself if his/her perspective is clouded by belief and prejudice or not.
The second is the ability to see clearly, which is to see things without belief and prejudice.
Thus, experimentation is the way to see if a perspective is valid. Of course, one can act based on current evidence only.
When you have a perspective, why must belief play any role in it at all?

The brain is our organ of cognition and and of necessity, we know 'anything' as a mental image. One may worry if 'its all an illusion', but it works. For eg., how do you know you are looking at your hand? Well, if it looks like a hand, feels a pinch and can lift a pencil (experimentation), you are good to go.

Answer 3

99% of the world thought the world was flat and some smart dude figured it out that it was round

Answer 4

Just because you believe something is so does not make it so except in your own perspective view.....

Answer 5

Just shadows on a cave wall...according to Plato.

Answer 6

Reality is that which does not disappear when you stop believing in it.

Answer 7

Huh?

Answer 8

I think that your posting answered the question, "What is an idiot?"

Answer 9

What is the point of this?

Answer 10

what?