Simulation Hypnosis (part 1 of 3).

Simulation Hypnosis (part 1 of 3). How do we know we're not in a virtual world? 1) is this the real life or are we dreaming? 2) is this life real or simply an illusion? 3) is our knowledge of the world real or a mere shadow of that reality? China Part 1 of 3: Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s parable tells that one day, having fallen asleep, he dreamt that he was a care-free butterfly happily doing butterfly things, & yet when he awoke, there he was, a man. Q: how can he know that he is not a butterfly dreaming that he is a man - or a man dreaming that he is a butterfly? Epistemically, as a photographer, I'm interested in some of these philosophical questions, as confronted by the likes of Zhuangzi’- and in the western canon, the Rationalists such as René Descartes and Spinoza V's the Rationalists such as Hume and Berkeley who in turn have questioned the very nature of reality through innate knowledge, thinking, and through experiences, to come to know better how is it we can be sure we're not in a virtual world? How do I go about articulating these three core questions? Taking to the skies looking for answers, I became a butterfly at 0-36,000ft, outside this sealed portal, my window. How can I know beyond reasonable doubt that I'm not in augmented reality? Perhaps photography can help unpick these age-old conundrums, ones that go back to (certainly) Aristotle and likely further back than that.