• Arkouda@lemmy.caOP
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      2 days ago

      Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring in the desert.

      Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring unicorn in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from pet it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring unicorn in the desert.

      • bitcrafter@programming.dev
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        2 days ago

        Congratulations, you have just quoted me saying that the spring might not be real, and the “might” is there because, if you are lucky, then you may very well have been fortunate enough to have come across an actual oasis in the distance rather than a mere mirage.

        The second quote is your own fabrication and has nothing to do with anything I have argued because unicorns, unlike oases, are not even sometimes really there.

        • Arkouda@lemmy.caOP
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          2 days ago

          The fact that there is word for this experience demonstrates that the experience itself objectively exists, which only serves to prove my point.

          • bitcrafter@programming.dev
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            2 days ago

            Yes, that word being mirage, which is so objectively real that you can take a photograph of it:

            In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer’s location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.

                  • bitcrafter@programming.dev
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                    2 days ago

                    I don’t doubt that someone, somewhere, has had the very real experience of seeing a hallucinated Unicorn while eating random cacti in the desert! It would be ironic if this experience ended up distracting them so much that they walked straight past the very real oasis they were searching for, resulting in a very real tragic death by dehydration.