Does reality really exist (episode 1)?

Virtual reality, augmented reality, “deep fake”, “generative AI”… technology blurs the lines and seems to be challenging the foundations of our understanding of the world. If an image generated artificially in a few seconds seems as real as a shot taken by a professional photographer, what can we still trust?

I have no desire to conclude the essential debate concerning the framework that should be established for the extraordinary technological advancements in these emerging fields, but maybe it’s time to revisit one of the favorite questions of philosophers over the centuries: what is reality?

For once, let’s set aside Plato and his allegory of the cave, and instead focus on to more contemporary works (though, for my younger colleagues, the 20th century is hardly more recent than the 4th century BC). To delve further into the subject at hand and explore many other avenues of thought, I can only recommend reading works such as Paul Watzlawick‘s “How real is real?“ or “The Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to Constructivism)“, a collective work edited by the same author.

Let’s return to our concern about the threat posed by the possible manipulation of reality. Implicit in much of this debate is the assumption that there is an objective reality that can be grasped with varying degrees of accuracy by our senses and our reasoning. It’s as if our perception and our minds were merely the passive elements that enable us to capture a reality that belongs to everyone. In this conception of the world, if a misunderstanding arises, it’s because the perception is biased, disturbed by noise or because the brain that receives and stores the result is either deficient or acting in bad faith. It’s as if, for a better understanding of the world, all we had to do was increase our “cognitive resolution” from 16 to 32MP. “Reality”, on the other hand, is one and indisputable. Let’s leave it as it is.

But… what if I told you that reality is nothing else than a permanent, shifting construction, a trick our mind is constantly playing on us? What if I could prove to you that even with objective and simple data, your brain couldn’t help but add its own flavor to an otherwise non-negotiable content? I’m not even referring here to optical illusions or other disturbing deceptions of our fallible senses (speaking as a color-blind), but rather to a raw exercise of acquiring basic information through the reading of a ridiculously short text.

Give it a try here.

If all reality is constructed, does the concept of “virtual” reality still make sense? Aren’t our brains already constantly serving up “augmented” reality? If so, how does this influence our consulting and communication practices?

Stay tuned…