How do you know you exist? - James Zucker 

Existential crisis and chill

Anyone who has had that feeling of looking into a mirror and just thinking. This is me, i am looking at a Living human like my family but it is myself, and the ponder about how you look and Sound and it feels...off?

Sometimes when I'm in public I suddenly realise that every person that surrounds me right now has a life just as complex as my own, with thousands of events that led them to this very moment and will continue to lead them on to an unknown path no one can predict, and there are so many unpredictable paths like this. It freaks me out and fascinates me

Every time I ask myself the question in the title I'm like "what if this is someone from the outside or my own unconscious self trying to wake me up?"

I'm over here thinking... " why tf do they blink one eye at a time??"

This opened more questions than it answered!

"You can't be nothing if you think you're something, even if you think that something is nothing. Because no matter what you think, you're a thinking thing." 😂

"I doubt therefore I think. I think therefore I am." ~Rene Decartes

How do i know i'm not dreaming? Simple. I get laid sometimes when i'm dreaming.

When i was a kid i would always have a weird idea, a question that puzzled me: i wondered if there was a big secret about reality for me to find out, something that would shake the very way i perceived the world. I would often think about that, and get sad that, if such secret did exist, i had never discovered it. But then a doubt would come to my mind... What if i had already found that out, perhaps many times in fact, but everytime i did, wicked entities that controlled reality just erased it from my mind and replaced it with false memories of me doing something else except finding the truth (?) I just had no way of telling...

Sometimes i look at something for a little while and start to think is this all real? I mean that all these memories and history in this one soul and it was all prewritten is honestly beautiful and scary at the same time.

had these thoughts too, yk 'what is real?' after several existential crisis sessions and coming up with various stories i noticed that it doesnt matter what is real or not. if i give something value, a thought, then it is real to me. and that is all that matters. i am right here and i cant change that. so i just do my best with what i have with me in this moment even if it were to change or leave my reality. it doesnt matter whats real because i am still experiencing it.

What if everybody was just you from another timeline?

Sometimes I talk to people and they ignore me so hard that I begin to legit doubt my existence! I'm not even joking. .-.

1:27 to 1:28 Me when I realize there’s homework due tomorrow

Before watching this video i often think that i'm probably the only person who lives in this world and everybody is just illusions. That's why i don't really give a damn about what i do or what they think of me. Wait- i think i finally know why my life is so messed up

I comment, therefore I am.

that pic of the scientist popping up scared the hell out of me.

This is making my anxiety worse...probably shouldn't watch it 😂😂

When I have this doubt I just left one unpaid bill and someone will find me and let me know I exist. “I own, therefore I exist.”

WTF IS WRONG WITH THERE EYELIDS WHEN THEY BLINK

I sometimes know when i'm dreaming, it's really fucking wierd though.

Ever since I was a child, I just thought that the life I'm experiencing right now is me in the future writing an autobiography remembering each and every moment and one moment these memories would end and the book would be finished.

This is the best way to explain Descartes' philosophy. So smooth and nice.

if i had a dollar for every existential crisis this video caused, I would be rich af xD

Imagine when you grow old and is dying, after you close up your eyes and suddenly wake up and found out you are actually in school like around 8~9 years old and all the past & memories are just a long long dream~

It took me huge effort to understand this book.but the overall result is wonderful. It is interesting, well written, and above all it makes you think in new way.

wow. just wow. I will be mind boggled about this for weeks! good job ted ed! I love ur channel!

This video made my head hurt, therefore I am.

Once I was dreaming and I thought that I was in front of a toilet and I had to pee...............so I peed in my bed😨

one of my favourite Ted . so much sense of humour in the animation .

When you’re in pain, you know you exist.

what if life is really just a simulation

Sometimes I wonder if creatures from other galaxies are using us for an experiment

2:45 I died laughing I love the animation

Finally the video I have been waiting to watch all my life.

I love a good existential crisis in the morning

Okay okay okay.... Let me get something straight. We create our dreams... our mind creates them to be precise. The y are more like unconscious imaginations. So ... if this whole world, My life, My family everything IS a dream... then all of it is created by my brain... so that would mean MY brain created.. Einstein's Laws, Newton's Laws, and every other scientists laws that my brain will create in the future... so this means I am the intelligence of Einstein, Newton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all youtubers , commentors AND everyone else in the world... not to mention all the great movies, games, musics and other stuff too. Nah I must be real cause I ain't that smart...

Excellent analysis. Very well said.

What if we all are just sleepwalking rn and we are actually awake when we think we are sleeping. What if this is all just a realistic illusion?

this video got me thinking hard

Existential crisis coming through

I have to say this is the best Ted ed video I've ever seen

The stream of consciousness like narration made this video pure chaos and its incredible

I kinda came to this on my own as a kid. I imagined that you could shrink the world down to a stage, that someone always sets up just ahead of you to convince you the world is real but in truth it is totally different or doesn't even exist outside the stage. And then inevitably the scary thought, does the world go away when you close your eyes?

When I was a kid (aka still am and still asking) I asked my self What if this is all just a story and I'm the main actor and everybody is a pupet and I'm the only person who can think except the person which is playing the pupets and the whole world us just playing with me and everybody knows everything I think and all the secrets that I keep and all the world secrets.What if other continents and states and countries are fake and only a cover and there is only one place (here) and everybody is lying about other places. They haven't even been there because they dont exist. Which is why my parents never go any where with me. One time my doctor said that I'm sick and cant go anywhere (cause the scene of the place I was going isnt ready so we couldnt go and somebody needed to stop us so they paid the doctor.)

this was actually really relieving thanks :)

Love the music at the first and last

why do they blink one eye at a time

You always exist if you can exist. The question is a fallacy itself. How do you know you exist? Through your senses. How do you know your senses are real? It doesn't matter. They are as real as fake, even if they are fake. Confused? Look, let us say you are in a dream. That means your senses are part of the dream. Your body is part of the dream. The world, and universe is part of the dream. Thus, what you describe as a reality, is only a dream to someone observing you with senses outside of the dream. Inside the dream however, where you are forever trapped (or perhaps till death) it IS real. As real as reality is real, to YOU. No one can disprove it being real, because the definition of real is inside the dream. Thus, dream or not, it is real. Same thing with existence. Existence is defined within the senses that you have. It doesn't matter if they don't exist. If they don't exist, they don't exist to someone observing you, from some other reality. But for you, you exist, and your senses exists within this existence that defines it, so it is real, even if it isn't.

This one was brilliant! Wow!

I think about this all the freaking time. I am glad I am not alone on my theories!

Just smack yourself in the face. There, you're real.

When i'm bored, i go to my garden, dig up a hole, burry myself, then i slowly coming out, and pretending i'm a carrot.

Thank you for putting me into an existential crisis

The animator deserves high praise!

If you lived in a virtual reality long enough, your mind would begin to consider it reality.

In the words of the immortal (literally) Bill Cipher, "THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM THE GALAXY IS AN ILLUSION BUY GOLD BYEEEEE!"

Love the animation!

dealing with depersonalization and derealization these feelings of not being real are intensified by a thousand. this video managed to bring it down to a more manageable 100 lol. thanks for this. gonna share with others who suffer from the same thing.

That's really all it boils down to, we can imagine ourselves to be flying around a room with no body, but we can't imagine not having a mind. For all we know we could be a bunch of brains in jars connected to a virtual reality, and all of our senses are simulated. But questioning our existence gets us no where, and if it was true it's unlikely we brains in jars can change it. So go out and enjoy your imagined lives, before you're imagined out of it.

1:06 to 1:14 actually happened to me once I spent the night normally, except for the fact that I was able to find a movie that I made up myself. The dream was actually so vivid, it even showed me getting ready for bed and dozing off..... I actually forgot what really happened the night before.

beautifully put

I love these videos because they are so deep..

Haven't watched the video but I have a feeling it's going to trigger my anxiety

I know i'm real because i have to pay Taxes and Bills.

I have ALWAYS known that I am dreaming when I am dreaming. Never had to pinch myself in a dream to check, I just know. This benefits me to shape my dreams the way I want "while" dreaming as I have always been conscious of it.

When I was little, I had these same doubts: is everything around me real? Am I the only thing that's real? Because I couldn't be thinking about this if I didn't exist, right? I told my dad about this, and he explained to me about Descartes and the same doubts he had. From then on, I started thinking that reality wasn't limited to our perception of it; it is far greater, but our perception is limited. That's what we live off: our perception of the world around us, even when it's not all there is. And knowing humanity, we will keep trying to push those limits further.

This video does a terrible job of summarizing Descartes conclusion. Descartes concludes that even if he is being deceived, he must exist first before he can be deceived. "But surely I exist, if I am deceived. Let him deceive me all he can, he will never make it the case that I am nothing while I think that I am something."

Courage the cowardly dog😍

man idk why i searched this.. although this video is interesting, I feel sick to my stomach thinking about existence because some things you cannot answer..

"Only insane people would deny they exists" Greek Philosophers : Am I crazy?

anyone get a feeling of fearfulness that overpowers them once they realize theyre existing and freak out ?

I listened to the last part three times, and it actually makes sense. Wow, life seems so real all of a sudden.

When I was a child I would often think about how maybe nothing exist because I didn’t understand how anything would exist instead of just nothingness, and then I would feel really empty for a while. It’s such a deep sinking feeling that wiped out all thoughts and emotions. Life suddenly seemed weird and out of place. It’s so hard to explain but I’m sure a lot of people have experienced this? Not that I understand everything now. I just don’t care anymore lol.

When i saw the thumbnail. I thought “well. Existential crisis”

you have the most interesting, informative video channel on RU-vid.

Once my teacher told us that one of us is dreaming this whole worls . He was joking. He said that i am dreaming this. I was panicing so I started to cry.

My brain literally stopped responding and crashed while watching this video.

so good!

This is one of my worst fears. Not actually being alive. Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe this is someone else's dream. Maybe one day I will wake up being 7 again and go through my whole life again. Maybe I'm in a coma...

When you think about it, how can anything exist? The universe was created from nothing, but humans have decreed that you can't make something from nothing. So how did we go from nothingness to the entire universe? Furthermore, life. Life started (atleast on earth) as single cell organisms. But how did they come to exist? Why do atoms work the way they do? Why do/ did they form perfectly structured lifeforms? These are the questions I've been wondering since grade 7.

Ted-Ed's philosophical videos give me an existential crisis

i was haunted by this question from when i was young... thanks for answering it.

Well, I'll get the tinfoil hats...

I had this question, when i was 6-7 years old. Then i stumbled upon the matrix...then i went paranoid for a while.

The end is really wholesome

the only ted-ed video that created more questions without answering any

Maybe even my thinking is part of the illusion?

This is really interesting. The brain is complex enough to create delusions so real that sometimes we can't tell the difference between them and real life; and we call these dreams. Even when 'awake' everything we experience is just the brain's way of interpreting its environment. We interpret vibrations in the air as sound, so we hear. We interpret electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths as light, so we see. If one brain alone can do this imagine what an even more advanced computer could do. It could simulate an entire world and run basic programs simultaneously (what we know as our minds)..... What I'm basically saying is that we're living in the MATRIX!!!

I think it's amazing the power of thought. I would love information on how the positive psychology started and with who

Thanks dude this helped

You can't prove that you're not going to wake up one day and be like, "Oh yeah, that was a cool dream." and only remember your "real" life AFTER you wake up. Similar to how you think your dream is real until you realize you're dreaming and wake up.

So I think therefore I am ...... What? What am I? A computer code? A rat in a coma? An energy based life form with a mental illness? What?

sometimes when i look in the mirror it just hits me like i don't even feel like myself and i think "wow this human is really me" and my mind is blown like whaaat how is this even possible

Watching this video with earphones and then 1:40 just shows up. My heart almost got out hahaha

Sometimes when im dreaming..i know im dreaming..

omg that picture of the evil doctor put the freak out of me

Oh my god this is mind blowing!!!!!!

this is really reliving:)