What's Real?

What is reality?  What is real?

Consider an event, for every person who witnesses the event there is a unique perspective/interpretation of that event and sometimes these perspectives don't agree.  There must be some SINGLE TRUE narrative of the event, differing perspectives cannot both be true.

Fast Forward to 3:20  -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoCqftOYHX4


Humans tend to have difficulty at discounting something they know to be false.  (The implications of this for politics and things like global warming are mind bending.  In this study, the source of the information discredited the information and there was still bias.  What happens when the opposing viewpoint discredits the information?  Would it reinforce the bias and make it worse?)

So when people are raised with, say, religion; they have difficulty ever getting out of religion, even though someone can COMPLETELY destroy the logic of religion, the people will still believe something they know to be false.  This doesn't even account for the other benefits of religion - social interaction and status... much more, that make it extremely difficult to stop believing.

I know I am human.
I know humans make mistakes.

I know humans who are incompetent assess their capability much higher than it actually is.

The only thing that can be concluded is that, no matter what I think I know, no matter what I think my skills are, no matter how good I think I am, I can never be certain of what I think I know to be true, real.

That is why we have the scientific method - a way of discerning the truth from fiction (so long as it remains objective).  So we can say with some degree of certainty that things that come from science are probably more accurate than things that don't come from science.

The only thing that I can conclude is that we are foolishly arrogant.  We are petty and incompetent.   We run this world like we have absolute knowledge (just listen to any politician speak) and we elect leaders who present this absolute knowledge with the best production value (or who holds the most popular absolute knowledge).  Human beings would rather be told they're right than to hear the truth, so this world could be run on delusions, lies and deceptions; and there is nothing any ONE person can do about it.  90% of this world believes in religion.  The path of converting a theist to a non-theist is an amazingly difficult and personal endeavor.  What of all the other delusions they hold about the world we all share?