 in the year-end issue, MIT Tech Review had their best stories of 2021. One of them is titled, our brains exist in a state of controlled hallucination. Was written by a neuroscientist and a philosopher out of Sussex, University of Sussex. And he says, the entirety of perceptual experience is a neuronal fantasy that remains yoked to the world through a continuous making and remaking of perceptual best guesses of controlled hallucinations. You could even say that we're all hallucinating all the time. It's just that when we agree about our hallucinations, that's what we call reality. In quote, what do you say to a guy like this other than you're hallucinating, dude? I mean, that's the only response possible because there's nothing rational can be said because what does rationale even mean? There is no reality. I mean, this is the ultimate in the privacy of consciousness. People always think, oh, Ayn Rand's exaggerating. Nobody talks like that in Atlas Shrugged or whatever, or when she accuses the intellectuals or a slippy slope. If you believe this, this is what you'll end up believing. And everything she said is absolutely true. I mean, this brain-in-a-vat idea, which is old, it's not new, it's been going on for a while. Now it has the veneer of legitimacy from neuroscience. Neuroscience proves that, no, it doesn't prove anything. The whole idea of a brain-in-a-vat is absurd and nutty. But that's the primacy of consciousness. And unfortunately, you're seeing more and more and more of it. I remember in high school, it was kind of the cool philosophical thing that you, the gotcha, that prove that you're not imagining this. And I remember in like, I don't know, 10th grade or something, thinking about that, maybe that's right. And then about two weeks later going, no, that's just stupid. And then going on and never thinking about it again. And I did the same thing with solophism. The whole idea of primacy of consciousness, just, I tried out all the different variations of it. And each time decided, nah, didn't make any sense. And I wasn't philosophical, it was just, it just didn't make any sense. It wasn't much deeper than that. And then you just go on. And that's all you can say to this guy is, nah, that's stupid. But obviously he expects that I can read what he wrote, right? Which, if it's all just hallucinations, who knows what I would read. You have a shared hallucination. That's what reality is. Reality is the shared hallucination. And that's the whole thing. He claims to be trying to teach us about the brain, but all he's trying to do is justify his thought that reality is socially determined. That's right. That's right. And that's, that's, yeah, it's, and that it's all, you know, it's, they're just religionists of a different form, right? Religionist reality is determined by God's consciousness. These guys are determined by some collective consciousness that we might have that, you know, but that's just as mystical. It's just as nonsensical. Thank you. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for you, those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.