Getting Deep With Philip K. Dick: In 2025, What is Reality?

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind... the matter of defining what is real — that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. And in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. Because the bombardment of pseudo- realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans — as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides. My two topics are really one topic; they unite at this point. Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland."

—Philip K. Dick

The very concept of "reality" is so muddy these days, with what we see, hear, and experience so often shaped and controlled by technology and the media. If we see a deepfaked video but never actually find out that it is a a deepfake, that video easily becomes a part of our "knowledge", our deep database of what we see as facts.

The age-old question that has stumped many philosophers, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it still make a sound?", becomes something different as we move past the quarter-century mark. As we approach 30 years of the internet being a part of the general public's lives, we have fallen into a whole new level of impatience and impulsivity, anti-intellectualism and denial. Now, when posed with this philosophical question, many would go straight to denial:

"How do we even know that the tree fell? I call b.s."

or indifference:

"This has nothing to do with my life. Trees are trees, they fall."

The decline in critical thinking ability since the rise of the internet (and more specifically, smart phones) is astounding. We place more importance and validity on social value (what we see on social media, likes, follows, etc.) and entertainment value (what distracts us, makes us laugh or cry or get angry) than what is directly in front of us. This is dangerous. This has brought us to the precipice of social collapse as we are intellectually devolving.

De•volve (verb): to gradually go from an advanced state to a less advanced state.

We evolved over time as our brains became larger and much more advanced, as we began to walk on two feet and explored the sometimes treacherous environment we found ourselves in. It is pure irony that the very same brains that developed smart technology and all of the other inventions that make our brains work less, are now deteriorating due to lack of use.

Aug•men•ted Re•al•it•y (noun): An interactive experience that enhances the real world with computer-generated perceptual information.

If the truth is so hard to find in 2025, with deepfakes, propaganda, the social media fake news machine, and AI and insidious algorithms controlling most of what we see and think, then what are we living in but an augmented reality? No need to buy the Apple Vision Pro or any other AR headset, people, because we are living in an AR nightmare. So how do we find our way through this muck and to the "real" reality? What is the red pill? Let's revisit Phillip K. Dick for perhaps what may be one of the best shortcuts to discovering reality, one bit at a time:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon