Great quote.

I've always liked this one:

"I substitute your view of reality for my own."

This is true in so many ways. The world as I see it, is not what it is: at most, it is reality, as perceived by my senses, processed by my brain. Which are different from someone else's.

So even if that underlying reality is the same (the simplest assumption), then your view & my view of it are different.

This holds even in science: if 2 scientists take a measurement from the same object, using 2 different instruments, what they're recording is not the object's state, but its effect on the instrument measuring it. Worse: not even that, but the state of that instrument, as perceived by the scientist's senses & processed by their brain. Worse: that processing converted back into words, or writings, and perceived by someone else hearing or reading those.

Now of course science is extremely good at making such measurements match. 2 Scientists may read the same instrument, or each other's. One may take the scientist out of the equation by having the instrument record directly. But in this case it's 'the instrument's view of reality' that it records. You have replaced a scientist + their instrument with an instrument alone. An experiment may be set up such, that [whatever is measured] & instrument measuring it, are considered to be the same. But it doesn't do away with the fundamental problem: reality passing through layers & layers of filtering and perception.

That is: if underlying reality is the same for all of us. Occam's razor would say so, and it seems very likely, but again this is fundamentally an assumption.

That said: what most of us can agree on after objective measurements using well designed instruments, photographs, comparing notes etc, is good enough for me. When I walk through a forest & smell the air, feel free to perceive that forest in whatever is your view of reality. Just don't try to convince me that forest isn't there or doesn't have a smell. I'll see a doctor when I think my eyes, nose or brain isn't working properly, thank you very much!

Sometimes - as in science - many of those people are trying to understand it in good faith. The output is still subjective in the sense that it's filtered through the limitations of human perception and cognition. But it's reliable and consistent for most humans.

Sometimes - as in politics, religion, and economics - "reality" is a story told by actors with vested interests, usually promoted for their own benefit.

The Great Heresiarchs of Phantaz agreed that the binding of men to Earth was such that the rational mind would allow one to be free of it, and to defy even gravity if such was the desire.

Confirmed in the correctness of their philosophy they walked as a group off the great cliff of Meresyp.

Unfortunately their ideas did not die with them, for ideas are immortal whereas men are not.

Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind.

This mind is, by default, full of illusions, full of a particularly biased view of the world and the content of that view does not go away when we stop believing in it and looks to us just like reality.

This is the whole point of meditation, but even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others.

In short the statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated and on that level beliefs are not a category of concern anyway. It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.

We can safely drop "biased" from the quote, because an unbiased view is a mirror. A useless thing.

> statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated

Science is not a reality, it is one more view of a reality. It is easy to see if you look at the history of science. Scientific beliefs come to be replaced by others. Phlogiston is not real, it existed as a scientific belief, but ceased to exist when the belief was debunked.

> the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.

Yes, we cannot talk about reality without being observers of reality. We cannot talk about reality itself, we talk about beliefs/illusions/whatever.

> even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others.

I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real.

> the observer cannot be removed

Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?

I agree with your second point, but not with the first point. How is it impossible? Just sit and observe. _That_ is certainly possible. So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be?

> Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?

No, it only means that observations cannot be made without an observer.

Something special enough so I would feel an urge to use a special word to describe it.

It’s literally a statement ABOUT the observer-world interface. In general, assuming anything from Dick is pedestrian is kind of foolish.

Said mind is not only created by the genes.

Which fundamental things cannot get scientifically investigated?

For example what is the purpose of the universe? Is this the only universe? Is it a simulation? Is everything predetermined?

If it would be, we could scientifically test for the limits of the experimentation model. You can say, all of science is doing this effectivly. So far, no flaws have been found. If there were flaws, then within our models, so we adapt them, systematically approaching reality.

Now sure, if there would be an allmighty god, we would have no chance proofing him or her, that is tautological. But if it would be "just" aliens of a higher level, doing rat lab experiments with our universe, we could figure that out eventually.

You’re still accumulating risk though. You don’t know when a false belief will lead yo to make a consequential error, and also false beliefs could lead you to adopt faulty attitudes or ways of thinking that could lead you towards false beliefs in consequential ways. Or you could propagate such false beliefs to others, which may be consequential for them.

What you‘re suggesting about a false belief is an „unknown unknown“ so again the criteria of the quote is pretty useless in practice.

No, it simply means that you will start to build on a flawed premise and will run into the limitations of your knowledge sooner rather than later. Being informed about the world allows you to make better decisions and to reach further in the achievement of your goals. That is why the scientific method is so successful and why science and not obstinacy has driven us forward further in the last 500 years than in all of the preceding millennia together.

You could of course say that he failed to disbelieve in them, and that if he'd succeeded it would have gone away, but I suspect PKD could no more choose to disbelieve in the famous "pink space laser" than he could disbelieve in having a nose in the middle of his face.

Funny thing is that it seems to apply to intersubjective phenomena too. For example, a "limited liability corporation" is made entirely out of shared delusions of people, but is a real thing under this quote, in the sense that it remains even if you or I stop believing in it. However, if sufficiently many people stop believing at once, it will go away.

(And so will things like money, rule of law, or civilization.)

The ideas that "homosexuality is perfectly ok" (in some societies) or "homosexuality is horrible and those who practice it must be punished or even murdered" (in some other societies) are shared "delusions" (aka "ideas" or "opinions"), though these ideas usually also result in actual laws (written in books). So I guess you could say that peoples' shared "delusions" (ideas) about how a society should operate are then codified and written down in the form of laws to be used to enforce those ideas on others.

If we make the hard distinction with subjective experiences vs. objective observations, then I suppose love isn't real. But there are still people and animals doing actions that objectively count as love regardless of their subjective experience of it. I suppose it again depends on the definition. Like, if you had a bunch of robots programmed to act with deep affection towards each other, does that qualify? I'm not sure.

In this manner, love is real because the consequences are real.

If I stop believing in love, and you experience love, then clearly love has not gone away when I stopped believing in it, unless I’m missing something?

Doesn't that mean you are living in a real reality? That comma is not going anywhere.