LessWrong (30+ Karma) Snippets on Living In Reality
9 snips
Nov 26, 2025 Dive into the fascinating comparison between social reality and fictional worlds like Harry Potter! Discover how our perceptions shape coherence in social narratives. Explore the tension between physical reality and the constructed stories we live by. Hear an intriguing anecdote that highlights how people often focus on the impressiveness of social interactions rather than actual content. Learn about the differences between virtual and augmented reality, and how emerging tech, like LLMs, creates its own coherent worlds, drifting from reality.
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Social Reality As A Fictional World
- Social reality is a constructed world much like a fictional universe, built from text, speech, and shared imagination.
- It defaults to matching physical reality but diverges where people invent coherent shared narratives.
Overhearing Social-Impressiveness At A Conference
- The narrator overheard attendees at a conference focusing only on speakers' social impressiveness markers instead of their substance.
- That moment illustrated people sometimes perceive only the social world and not the underlying object-level content.
Claiming Reality By Choosing It
- Choosing to live in physical reality grants you stronger claim and access to it compared to those who escape into social worlds.
- The narrator frames reality as a home that expands when others retreat into fiction.
