The other day a friend and I were talking about Last Thursdayism -- the hypothesis, impossible to disprove, that the universe sprang into existence last Thursday. You may think you have memories (and mementos) from before last Thursday, but those artifacts were of course manufactured.
Taken to its logical conclusion, you get "this moment-ism." It is equally impossible to disprove, but we have an even stronger intuitive notion that it's false. But of course this intuition, too, cannot constitute evidence of its falsity.
So we're left with this unprovable (and awfully unnatural) hypothesis which seems to have no practical use. What's the point?
One thing it can do is draw attention to the possibility that there are "facts" about your reality that are not as easily provable as you (very strongly) think. A small result of this realization might be that you drop some assumptions about other people's intentions. A bigger result is that you discover that you're painting all of reality out of nothing. You might catch yourself red-handed, in the act.
This hypothesis is of course absurd, which is why most of us will never spend the time engaged in a practice that might demonstrate it to us, full in the face. Then again, we might catch glimpses of it in non-ordinary experiences (dreams, psychedelic states) and start wondering....
Taken to its logical conclusion, you get "this moment-ism." It is equally impossible to disprove, but we have an even stronger intuitive notion that it's false. But of course this intuition, too, cannot constitute evidence of its falsity.
So we're left with this unprovable (and awfully unnatural) hypothesis which seems to have no practical use. What's the point?
One thing it can do is draw attention to the possibility that there are "facts" about your reality that are not as easily provable as you (very strongly) think. A small result of this realization might be that you drop some assumptions about other people's intentions. A bigger result is that you discover that you're painting all of reality out of nothing. You might catch yourself red-handed, in the act.
This hypothesis is of course absurd, which is why most of us will never spend the time engaged in a practice that might demonstrate it to us, full in the face. Then again, we might catch glimpses of it in non-ordinary experiences (dreams, psychedelic states) and start wondering....
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