The metaphysical vertigo induced by asking whether reality exists independently of our perceptions, and if so, what we can possibly know about it. This is philosophy's oldest headache: the world seems real, but everything we know about it comes through senses that can be fooled, a brain that interprets, and language that shapes. The Hard Problem isn't solipsism—most people agree something exists out there. The problem is that we can't climb outside our own consciousness to see reality raw and unmediated. We're forever looking through a window smudged with our own fingerprints, trying to describe the view.
Hard Problem of Objective Reality "We're all arguing about politics, but the Hard Problem of Objective Reality is that none of us are experiencing reality directly—we're experiencing neural interpretations of sensory data filtered through trauma and cable news. Maybe chill out a little?"
by Dumu The Void February 23, 2026
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