All illusions are unreal, but some are useful.
CorporateNature metaphor series, No 127
STORY 1: SOUND OF MONEY PAYS FOR SMELL OF SOUP
A beggar once sneaked into the kitchen of an inn and held a piece of bread over a pot of soup, hoping that the vapour of the soup would give flavour to his bread. The innkeeper caught him, accused him of stealing and demanded that the man pay for a soup. As the beggar had no money, he was brought to the local judge, Nasreddin Hodja. After hearing the story, Nasreddin Hodja decided to pay the innkeeper himself ... with merely the sound of throwing several coins on the table. It seemed like a fair deal: the sound of money paid for the smell of soup, one illusion for another.
A beggar once sneaked into the kitchen of an inn and held a piece of bread over a pot of soup, hoping that the vapour of the soup would give flavour to his bread. The innkeeper caught him, accused him of stealing and demanded that the man pay for a soup. As the beggar had no money, he was brought to the local judge, Nasreddin Hodja. After hearing the story, Nasreddin Hodja decided to pay the innkeeper himself ... with merely the sound of throwing several coins on the table. It seemed like a fair deal: the sound of money paid for the smell of soup, one illusion for another.
STORY 2: HOW A BUDDHIST SEES THE MOON
According to Buddhism, reality (dharma) exists but the unenlightened individual can only see it as an illusion. To practice mindfulness is to catch a fleeting glimpse of what is behind the veil of this illusion - the essence of reality. Buddha uses an apt analogy to explain this concept. Imagine the Moon (reality itself) and a reflection of it in a shallow puddle (our attempts to look at reality as it is). While the Moon is always in the sky, its reflection in the puddle remains only until the water evaporates.
STORY 3: IS LIFE A COMPUTER SIMULATION?
Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom goes even further than the Buddhists. He proposes that reality itself could be an artificial computer simulation. Bostrom argues that computing power in the future will be much greater than what it is today, and that future generations may use this power to run detailed simulations of reality. Given enough computing power and an adequate scientific understanding of "consciousness", it is possible that these simulated realities could include conscious beings. Thus, Bostrom surmises, if any sophisticated civilisation is able to and decides to run such a simulation, our own reality is quite likely a computer simulation itself, created by someone else.
CONCLUSION
Each of us faces illusions on a daily bases: from dreams at night, to the computer in the office, to a movie in the cinema. To paraphrase the famous statistician George Box: all illusions are unreal, but some are useful. Is looking at the Moon in a puddle one of the useful ones?
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| Virtual reality headset (image source: Wikipedia) |
