Determining Real is more than a common philosophical pastime. It is actually a vital part of our decision making ability. Prediction, from a model of reality, allows us to act in a timely manner, not after the fact. If that model is too separated from reality, then our actions are poor and we may not survive. Mostly a rough model of real is good enough, but what got really wild is when we started comparing our models and testing them against reality.
The Universe is big. It is so amazingly big… Actually, Douglas Adams said it well. “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

We can’t actually comprehend the true reality of the universe. From the scale of how big it is, to how tiny the smallest things we have found are, and how they all work together. We see a tiny slither of the electromagnetic spectrum that we call “visible light”, hear only a small part of the sound frequencies, and can only really know about what is happening in our immediate surroundings. Compounded on top of this, we can easily be fooled by both others and ourselves.
We don’t live on the mega scale of galaxies etc, or in the nanoscale scale with subatomic particles. We live in the middle level, the human scale. While our understanding of the universe gets a bit fuzzy at the limits of what we can measure, most of what we do interact with here in the human scale is well understood by our body of science [Link].
The landscape of what humans have learned and determined to be fairly accurate is massive. In every field of knowledge there are areas of specialisation, and within each of those is yet another layer or two of specialisation. A world expert in one of these fields knows more about it than the vast majority of every other human being, and knowns next to nothing about the whole field of human knowledge. On top of this, we humans keep learning more things every day. Learning both what might be, what probably is and what likely isn’t.
The point to this is – no single person can comprehend all of what the universe is, what the world is, or even the tiny bit we call human knowledge – because they are so big and we are finite humans.
So how can we possibly what is real? Following are some guides to help you in determining real.
- The Reality Heuristic
- Step 1 – The World is Well Known
- Step 2 – The Null Hypothesis
- Step 3 – The Average is King, Beware of Confirmation Bias
- Step 4 – Occam’s Razor and Einstein’s Warning
- Step 5 – George Box – ‘Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful’
- Step 6 – Carl Sagan – ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’
- Step 7 – The World is as Already Amazing Without Having to add Magic
- Step 8 – Know your Cognitive Fallacies
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The Reality Heuristic
These are a set of steps to consider when you are trying to figure out what is probably real and what is probably fiction.

Step 1 – The World is Well Known
We live in this world, here and now. The past has been, and we cannot change that. Those who don’t study the past are doomed to repeat it, so learn from it, and let go. (If you can’t let go, you may need some therapy to help you with that [Trauma]).
I want you to understand three versions of reality.
Objective Reality, What we Base our Perceptions On
Objective Reality is what really is. We don’t know what it truly is, but it is what is Real with a capital R, and True with a capital T. We try to get as close to that as we can, approaching Real and Truth, knowing that we cannot truly get there. The universe is vast and complex, and quite beyond our true comprehension. While our scientific devices have got good at knowing about the universe beyond what our mortal human senses can detect, they only get us closer to Real and True.
We must assume that Reality is effectively unchanging. While it is possible that a moment ago the entire universe could have just come into being, that makes our entire lives, memories and predictions completely useless. To make any sense of the universe requires us to assume that the Real Universe has existed for a long time and has a consistent set of rules. It won’t just completely change in the next instant.
By being methodical in our fact finding, honest with ourselves and our results, we can move our understanding of reality closer to Truth, which gives us a better understanding of Real. The best tool we have for that is the Scientific Method, where ideas are tested in a rigorous way to determine the truth of an idea / model.
If we accept false information, or fail to do some due diligence, we can get further away from Truth. Some people will claim to have done the research for you, but didn’t. They may have genuinely tried, but failed to grasp the basic principles of rigor and did bad science, or they are con artists trying to part you from money and safety for their own benefit. Pseudo Science (literally false science) is the attempt to use sciency sounding words and concepts to convince you that what is false is real. A common tell for this is that the person’s claims go against the consensus of science, especially if they are not a specialist in that field.
Since we can only get closer to Truth, but never get there, then anyone who claims to truly know Real and Truth is lying, either deluded, or trying to con you. An expert can have a high level of confidence in what they think is accurate due to the study, research and experiments that they have done, but they also know the limits to that knowledge and should be able to explain that to you.
Consensus Reality, What We Agree is True
This is the world that we all, or most of us, agree on. I may not see exactly the same chair that you do, but we both agree that it is a chair. If I put enough things on it, we might agree that it is currently more a table than a chair.
There are different levels of consensus. Scientific Consensus is where most of the experts in the specific field agree that this is the best representation of Scientific truth we have. There will always be some who disagree, but unless you are that expert, the wise person defaults to the consensus opinion of relevant experts. “Relevant” is an important word here, as people who have expertise in another area are only able to give regular opinions on a matter outside of their field, which does not well compare to the expert opinion and knowledge of the relevant expert on their own field.
To understand that, most people have an area of speciality. Perhaps that is as mechanic, or a master of spreadsheets, or someone who is excellent at cleaning houses efficiently. Recall a time that someone who has no real knowledge of your area gave you advice on the things that you are good at – it becomes rapidly clear that they have no idea about your area of knowledge and they sound kind of foolish. That is what you sound like when you talk outside your area of expertise, and to the experts, experts in other fields talking about their field sound like this.
A take away here is:
- If there are five people in the room, and only one person is seeing the person in the corner, the odds are that the person in the corner isn’t there and is an hallucination.
- If your trusted friends don’t think the situation at the pub is scary, but you do, then you likely are experiencing an anxiety attack.
While a useful tool, there are limits to this, as covered below in the Null Hypothesis and Extraordinary Claims section.
Consensus Reality is the Average of people’s understanding of the world.
Personal Reality, What you Experience
No one knows your life. No one truly knows you. No one has experienced what you have experienced.
People can know a great deal about your life, but they don’t know as much as you do.
People can know you very well, but much like Objective Reality, they don’t really know the true you. Then again, you don’t either. Also keep in mind, the true you changes from experience to new experience – you are dynamic, not static.
People may have experienced similar things to you and mostly get what you went through, but it will never be exact. Nor do you really know what someone else experienced.
Your personal experience is your own, and you can no more know the mind of another than they can truly know yours. And that is okay.
You can have a different opinion than others, because your experience was different to theirs. Your experience is not going to be completely different though. If you are in the room where something happened, then everyone in that room experienced that something from different present perspectives (as we aren’t in the same four dimensional space-time) and past perspectives (understood through each person’s different past). But I won’t be describing a knife attack while you describe a birthday party at the same time and place (unless it is a murder mystery birthday party).
While my opinion and specific details may vary from other peoples, if my view radically differs from everyone else’s, then I need to take a look at consensus reality and check my facts.
Step 2 – The Null Hypothesis
The Null Hypothesis effectively assumes that there is no useful connection between events unless there is good evidence to show that there is. Aka, the world is average on average, and any anomaly should be treated as suspect until good evidence shows it is real.
When a new thing happens and we think it is related to another thing, we often start trying to prove that they are connected. Instead, start off assuming their isn’t a real connection between a new thing and the old, and look for evidence that this is the case before you start looking for evidence that it is connected. This is a way to stay sceptical of claims, but not become a denier. A denier refuses to see the good evidence that shows them that they are wrong and only looks for evidence that they are right (confirmation bias).
Speaking of being a good sceptic, let us look at “special pleading”. By default, most things are not connected. If you have to have an elaborate explanation for how a thing is connected to another thing, then it likely isn’t. The elaborate series of links to explain a thing is called “special pleading”, and while not always wrong, when not aligning with a lot of research it is often wrong.
Technically speaking, the Null Hypothesis is a mathematical tool to first assume that two things are not related to each other. That is, one does not affect the other and vice versa. If testing shows that one does indeed affect the other, then they are connected in some way and that relationship should become clear as you examine it. It is another way of trying to avoid mistaking correlation for causation, or attributing agency or purpose behind coincidence.
Step 3 – The Average is King, Beware of Confirmation Bias
Most of the time, what is happening is a repeat of what has happened, on average, before. We tend to notice the things that are unusual more than we notice what is usual.
Each of us develops a model of the world. From that model, we make predictions about what is going to happen. When that model is correct, we don’t really notice it, unless we had a good reason to suspect we might be wrong. We tend more to notice when our model is wrong, and that can set us to pausing, waiting, trying to fix the model, and then making changes (grief, dealing with change).
Our model of the world is created in the idea of what is average. The sun has risen every day so far of my life, and so I expect that it will rise again tomorrow (yes I know that the world spins, the sun rising is an illusion of perspective), because so far its average is excellent.
A form of average that we instinctively use is the Normal Distribution Curve. This looks like an upside down U with curved tips going off to zero on 1 side and infinity to the other, kind of like a hump. The most likely thing to happen is at the top of the hump, the next most likely to either side of that, and so on until we get very unlikely things at the far ends. The power of this form of average is incredible and I’ll cover that another time.

Because we notice the things that break our model of average, and we don’t notice things that fit nicely, we over represent in our minds how often the unexpected happens. We will additionally highlight any model breaks that seem threatening as those really need our attention, but that leaves us with a faulty impression of how often we are in danger. Sometimes, though, we really are in danger, and we need to do something about it.
Confirmation Bias is when we give too much credence to the unlikely because that fits the faulty model we have been making based on noticing rare unusual events and missing the common usual events. A classic example of this is people noticing when both people act oddly and there is a full moon. This creates the faulty impression that people act oddly more often when there is a full moon, than when there isn’t. There have been lots of excellent robust studies to check this common idea out, and it is not true. This erroneous idea is formed by forgetting or ignoring odd behaviour when there is no full moon, interpreting the full moon as a several day event, and interpreting people’s behaviour as odder during a full moon when the same behaviour is deemed less odd during a non-full moon time.
Step 4 – Occam’s Razor and Einstein’s Warning
In Philosophy, a Razor is a system that allows you to eliminate (or shave off) unlikely explanations and avoid unnecessary steps. Thus, Occam’s Razor.
William of Occam – ‘The simplest explanation is usually the best one’
William of Occam created a principle for trying to work out which of multiple options was the most likely to be accurate. William created a Principle of Parsimony, which most lay people know as “The simplest explanation is usually the best one.” Here, simple means “with the fewest steps that properly explain the thing”.
Put simply, if you have two explanations for a thing, and one needs extra steps to make it make sense, then the one with fewer steps is more often correct. BUT if the one with fewer steps skips important explanatory and evidence steps, then the one that properly explains the thing, even though it needed more steps, is the better explanation.
I’ve said “usually” and “often” a few times here. It is important to know that Occam’s Razor doesn’t promise the ‘simplest is best’, it points out that often it is, sometimes it isn’t. Due diligence is needed.
Einstein’s Warning – ‘but not too simple’
Albert Einstein loved simplicity and elegance. He worked hard to make his physics and math as simple and elegant as possible, and still do the job of describing the world.
Einstein’s Razor is often paraphrased as “make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
What he actually said was “The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”
Step 5 – George Box – ‘Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful’
George Box, a British statistician, working on quality control, time-series analysis, design of experiments, and Bayesian inference
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”, George E.P. Box, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces
Remember what I said about Object Reality is Real but beyond our understanding? All of our science and all of our personal understanding of the world are mere models of Objective Reality. They are all wrong, as they only model what is complex in a way that we can comprehend. So long as they model is useful, we can use it, but we need to keep in mind that it is not actually Objective Reality.
Isaac Newton created a model of physics back in the 1600’s that we still mostly use to describe how physical objects move. Albert Einstein created a more specifically accurate model with his General Relativity. We often don’t need Einstein’s physics for everyday calculations, because Newton’s is good enough for most things, even though Einstein’s is a bit better.
All of our models have limits of accuracy. So long as the model is useful in getting us mostly the right answers most of the time, it is good enough. Don’t discard the model just because it isn’t perfect, but do replace bad models with better ones.
Step 6 – Carl Sagan – ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’
Carl Sagan reworded Laplace’s principle “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” with the catchy “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. [Source: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences by Patrizio E. Tressoldi]
Keeping in mind Step 1, that we know the world fairly well. We have an excellent scientific knowledge of what has been shown to be real and true, and the scientific method continues to push that real and true towards Real and Truth by testing the idea and gathering evidence to find the simplest accurate explanation.
A claim that goes against that consensus of scientific knowledge (scientific consensus) and your expectation of a standard Consensus Reality is extraordinary.
The person who makes the claim has the burden of proof to show it is true, unless that is the Scientific Consensus
If most of the majority of the world agrees that this object here is called an apple, then Bob’s claim that it is actually an orange should be met with Scepticism. I’m using a capital ‘S’ their to refer to the proper use of the word, where Scepticism follows the evidence, which is generally the consensus of experts, rather than one’s own personal belief or outright denial of any evidence. If Bob claims that the object is actually an orange, it is upon Bob to give extraordinary evidence to outweigh the current evidence that it is an apple. If Bob does not, then we can dismiss his claim.
Step 7 – The World is as Already Amazing Without Having to add Magic
The world is pretty remarkable. Knowing how a rainbow works doesn’t take away from the beauty of a rainbow, or how amazing it is that our brain pieces together millions of dots of reflected light to create the rainbow illusion.
People often want to add some kind of magic back in, some explanation less helpful but seemingly more profound that understanding the science behind a thing. Frequently they will say “understanding has made the world boring” or “you are making the world less amazing with your explanation”. Sorry if this is you, but really, the more you understand about the world, the more amazing it is.
Some are looking for a static origin point to pin their understanding of the world on. Some people are searching for god.
The Thing About God
The idea that there are powerful beings called gods (or just one powerful being called god and a bunch of angels), has been classified as an idea that has no practical predictive power, so it isn’t considered to be scientific.
The definition of a god is a being that is more powerful than a human, that transcends human comprehension, and can change the rules of nature as it sees fit. Even when a god fits into a hierarchy of gods and must abide by some kind of god rule set, they are rules that we mere mortals do not properly comprehend. As such, if these being truly exist, as they can just change any rule the we think we have worked out, they effectively invalidating trying our ability to make accurate predictions. Because these beings are beyond our comprehension and able to modify the rules of nature as we known them, we cannot apply science to them, and if they change the rules of nature, we would have failed to model the world.
On macroscopic experiments, the bit of reality that we live in and are affected by, our experiments are very, very, very consistent. We still do get some odd results when we are exploring the fringes of the nanoscale and the cosmic scale, but neither of those areas affect how my life, or yours, unfolds. That may change certain future technologies, but has no real effect on what happens to you today.
For the sake of argument, let us say that such beings are possible and might be present. If they are present, with the amount that we scientifically now know about the world, we would have detected their tampering with the laws of nature. That is, certain experiments would consistently fail. Yet we have not detected such things. If such beings do exist, this indicates that they don’t make changes to the world, and thus to your life. If they do, you are probably the only one, as tampering in how nature works in a general sense would be scientifically detected. If this is true, it seems odd. Why would a being of this much power and ability be only concerned with you, and no others?
Perhaps the god only acts in very minor and subtle ways, so minor and subtle that they can’t be detected. If that is the case, such subtlety is not only undetectable, but also would make no real difference to your life. What is scientifically likely to happen to me next will look the same whether a subtle god interferes, or does not. Effectively, scientifically, if a subtle gods changes of the rules results in the same prediction happening, then the presence or absence of that god makes no real difference.
You certainly have the right to believe in what you want to. Science has not proven that your god isn’t real, science has shown that your god is not affecting the world in any detectable way – and the ability to scientifically detect changes from the expected model have get very darn good.
Step 8 – Know your Cognitive Fallacies
The easiest person to fool is yourself, the next easiest is someone who thinks they already know the answer
We fool ourselves all of the time. It takes humility to recognise that we filter our memories, perceptions and expectations based on what we want, what we fear and what we expect. It is useful to occasionally take a fresh look and think “what else could be true?” and then follow that up with “how can I test that?”
It takes humility to recognise we don’t know everything and that what we think we know may be wrong.
Being wrong is human. To insist on continuing to be wrong is foolish. I applaud people who discover that they are ignorant and do something about it. I pity those who are wilfully ignorant. I dislike those who wilfully lead others to become more wrong.
When we think we already know the answer to something, or how something will come out, we need to reserve a bit of awareness for the possibility that we are wrong, that we can learn more, or that we may need to adjust. Those who close their minds to knew information and possibilities are fooling themselves.
Do not mistake that as tipping out wisdom, logic, reason and scientific evidence. Keep in mind that extraordinary claims part from Carl Sagan – the more extraordinary the claim, the greater the evidence needed to substantiate that claim. Once we receive that sufficiently great evidence, we need to be able to adjust to the superior model.
Logic and Logical Fallacies
Logic is a mathematical process to work out how valid something is through correct reasoning. Formal Logic is the study of deductively valid inferences, also called logical truths. From a premise, a logical argument is created to show a result. If done correctly, Formal Logic is always correct. Informal Logic is similar to Formal Logic, but we accept that there may be exceptions to when this logic may be wrong. Informal Logic is often the heart of where people use faulty logic to try to prove their claims.
Common Informal Logical Fallacies
Cognitive Biases
To use logic correctly, we need to know what the premise is and understand the logic that shows our result. Often we fool ourselves with an internal bias, or we accept someone else’s bias.
Common Cognitive Biases