Solipsism is a rabbit hole and once you go down, it can be difficult to find your way out.
Solipsism is an extreme form of skepticism. A little skepticism is good but too much can be disabling.
It is kind of like an addiction, first you have to want to change.

But to think that the universe exists only in my mind, just affects me a certain way. — Darkneos

What is it about solipsism that affects you?

If I only exist in your mind, then why don't I know who you are or where you are?
How can someone else teach you something new, if only you exist?
I witnessed something happen when I was 15, how come you don't know what it is, if I only exist via you?
Solipsism is nonsense! So if I only exist via you, then why is the 'me' part of you, that is convinced solipsism is bullshit, not as convincing to you, as the 'you' part of you that thinks solipsism has value?
You can rationalise solipsism out of all relevance to your life.

Darkneos,

What do you think of this? Go to top of thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14113/solipsism-and-universal-mind

Solipsism doesn't sound that bad to me. It means I wrote all of Beethoven's string quartets, directed all the great movies, and was the seminal (and only) figure in the development of Quantum Physics. I had no idea I had that sort of range. :wink:

As an atheist, I have some attraction to your view of solipsism Tom, as it would mean, Jesus, Mohamed, and all those messiah's were just in my sorry, YOUR head. As is all human suffering, even the suffering I, sorry again, YOU, don't know about. It's all just in your head, so the antinatalists need not have posted here at all. Oh wait, I forgot again, all antinatalists, are in YOUR head!! :halo:

:joke: :cool:

I would actually be way more comfortable with universal mind than being the only one around.

Just based on @Tom Storm's great view of solipsism, can the world now blame you for coming up with Donald Trump? Perhaps having a wee giggle at what solipsism would make YOU responsible for would help you realise that even though, it remains unfalsifiable, but so is god, infinity and nothingness, solipsism IS utter nonsense and not something that should ever have the power to affect you in the way you suggest in your OP.
Kill the idea DEAD, once and for all!

What is it about solipsism that affects you? — Tom Storm

Being cosmically alone (potentially). That all I love and care for isn’t real because they’re just mental projections. It’s scary. I can imagine hugging my dogs or future husband tightly and begging and pleasing inside my head for them to be real. It’s that horrible for me.

It’s why I ask if it’s unprovable because that at least makes it better, a little. It just become a matter of belief.

Until one day I was on Quora and thought someone ended up proving solipsism true. But I can’t remember what they said or if it was true but in the moment (I think so at least) it felt like a death blow to me. I’ve been carrying this all this time. But if solipsism is truly inherently unprovable then he is wrong and no one can. But I haven’t been able to shake that day and I’m not going to plumb solipsism stuff on Quora because I’ll get triggered again.

It’s devastated my ability to interact with people as I’m always holding back from caring all the way. I can’t just let go and feel, there’s always this wall between me an life and I desperately want to break through. But it just feels like a fight I’m losing.

There aren’t enough “really”s I can fit into a sentence to express how much I want to be rid of this, it’s truly heartbreaking

Thanks for clarifying. I guess it is just one of those fears that you either have or don't have. Is there something which helps manage it?

No. It’s followed me every day. Something just felt unreal ever since I read about it. I’ve turned to so much but nothing has been working.

That’s why I’m seriously hinging on it being unprovable because then I can let go of what that poster said.

I don’t want to keep “playing pretend” with everything and everyone around me. It’s too mentally taxing. I play video games but I can’t keep escaping into them all the time.

You might be suffering more from the effects of social isolation and rumination than from a philosophical belief.

Solipsism has no empirical consequences. To associate a particular type of experience with solipsism is to misunderstand it.

Interesting and I feel for you. It sounds exhausting. Also sounds like there's a lot to unpack here but that's beyond the scope of this kind of site. Dare I suggest counselling?

Perhaps one solution for this is to accept life may be solipsistic but you can still be happy or unhappy, even if it is a type of dream. Maybe you can make it a lucid dream. Make it fun, embrace the appearance of reality and the beauty in the 'phoney' details, enjoy the ride, give it your best. But don't try too hard.

Though philosophy doesn't offer mathematical theorems which can be checked by a computer, solipsism has basically been proven wrong (or absurd or confused.) Here's are few dialogues that
may or may not help.

***
--It doesn't make sense for us to doubt whether there is something for us to be right or wrong about in the first place.

--Is there a world outside me I can be wrong about ? I don't know. I better be careful and not assume too much. I wouldn't want to get this wrong. Wait a minute ! <enlightenment>

***

--It doesn't make sense for us to use logic and concepts to a argue against the bindingness or publicness or force of logic and concepts.

--But how can you make such a bold claim ? Prove it ! Wait a minute! <enlightenment>

***

Everything is up for debate except that there is something that we can be wrong about. To be debate this is to assume it. The minimum epistemic situation that makes sense is a [at least virtual] plurality of persons subject to the same logic/language and together in a world that they can be right or wrong about. Being-together-in-a-world-with-others-in-a-language cannot be sensibly challenged. Any challenge only makes senes in just that minimal situation. The plurality is virtual because you can be the last man alive, while still experiencing the 'force' of logic and the meaning of words as self-transcending. The solipsistic nightmare is an ego trip which deludes itself that it assumes nothing precisely as it assumes unwitting an obsolete historically contingent metaphysics. In other words, it's some weird stuff that went in like poison through the ear. Why is this self so taken for granted? As if one knows what one even means by 'self'?

it is entirely solipsism. Especially that post on that day that “proved it true”.

I could let it go as a maybe yes or no if not for that post. But I can’t remember it or find it.

I can’t do that and I tried counseling but it didn’t work at all.

I can’t treat it like a dream or a lucid dream. That would just make it worse. Nothing could be worse knowing you’re alone and everyone around you is hollow.

I…didn’t understand a word of it.

It’s devastated my ability to interact with people as I’m always holding back from caring all the way. I can’t just let go and feel, there’s always this wall between me an life and I desperately want to break through. — Darkneos

Life is terrifying. Love is a great act of courage. Solipsism might even be tempting as an escapist fantasy. You mentioned playing video games. Is there an analogy between video games and solipsism ? Is solipsism the fantasy that nothing is real so there's no love to win or lose, no actual danger ?

When I was younger, I had some great friends with whom I could talk about just about anything. This was my substitute for therapy. But I'm under the impression that these days young men are lonelier than ever. The culture has changed. More people are living lives of quiet desperation, which fucking blows. So (as someone else mentioned) maybe think of this as essentially a social issue. Maybe seek counseling, expand or create a friend network. I wish you well. And we can talk more about the philosophical issue too, if you want.

Then you appear to be stuck. Sorry.

I…didn’t understand a word of it. — Darkneos

That's OK. It's a compression of Wittgenstein and Heidegger and various other difficult philosophers. But it's the mainstream 20th century jailbreak from the Cartesian cage.

I want to love someone that would love me back but I can’t do that with solipsism. I can’t make friends with solipsism. Even therapy didn’t work because we can’t really shake it.

The one thing I can think of is if he did prove it on Quora, why post it on a forum or thread answering a question? It doesn’t make sense because if you do prove it there’s no one to prove it too. But posting it means you want others to see it so you’d be invalidating it if you shared it right?

Also I was googling and found this, would these be good arguments against it?

https://carm.org/about-philosophy/what-is-solipsism-and-is-it-true/

Some of the arguments you linked to are related to those I provided. So I'd say that yes there are some decent points made there. One approach that may or may not be helpful is to really think and read about what the hell a self is supposed to be in the first place. In my opinion, one of the big virtues of philosophy is that it wakes us up to the fact that we mostly don't know that we don't know what we are talking about. We use inherited words in the standard ways and think with them without really feeling them or digging into to them. What is this self that thought to be alone with itself ? How does this self 'know' that it is a self ? That's part of what's assumed without question, even in an attempt to question radically. Language is the given, but language (I claim) is necessarily worldly and social and self-transcending.

The part about this is that I have to wonder if I was mistake that what I read was proof. Googling it showed nothing, no site no author that proves solipsism is true. So the likelihood that some random user on Quora proved it in three sentences seems unlikely.

The other part is that solipsism is extra skepticism so I don’t think you can prove it true. I mean you’d have to answer where you got the language to be able to think of it, but further when you doubt everything but that you definitely exist you don’t have anything you can use to support your point.

IMO you would need utter omniscience to prove solipsism true and that’s never gonna happen.

you’d have to answer where you got the language to be able to think of it, but further when you doubt everything but that you definitely exist you don’t have anything you can use to support your point. — Darkneos

These are good points. The more you think about, the more it falls apart. And who is this 'you' who 'got' the language in the first place ? The self tends to be understood as the unity of a voice, as a locus of responsibility for what that voice claims. What does it mean to be a self ? Why do we care about being right or wrong ? What law do we obey when we try to make a case for or against solipsism ? The self is maybe something like a fusion of giving a damn and responsibility for what it says and does ---and responsibility means memory and having a past. Giving a damn means wanting something, avoiding something. So we already have a world and...

The part about this is that I have to wonder if I was mistake that what I read was proof. Googling it showed nothing, no site no author that proves solipsism is true. So the likelihood that some random user on Quora proved it in three sentences seems unlikely. — Darkneos

But if you cannot even remember the details of what this idiot on Quora posted as a proof that solipsism is a fact, then there must be more to your predicament. Perhaps you have created this 'enemy' for yourself and poured too much of your psyche into it. Most of us create our own hell.
You can defeat it completely. Have you ever tried stuff like putting the word solipsism on a pillow or punch bag and punch and kick the f*** out of it every time the word or concept comes up in your mind and bothers you? I have done stuff like that in the past and it really helped. I have also (during times of trauma in my twenties) sat in my bed at night, wide awake and mentally battling with whatever physical and psychological horrors I had managed to manifest in my life at that point.
I always had three voices, which I called me. myself and I.
One was very rational and 100% positive but did have to fight and got very tired doing so sometimes ( I think it was my cortex). Another 'influencer' was just scared and full of the 'flight' and 'panic' instincts and the third voice was forever changing sides in support of one of the other two voices. (I think this was my R-complex and limbic system). My cortex(myself) completely won, in the final analysis. Me and I eventually diminished in influence and would still always be present but accepted myself as the best voice to pay most attention to......... and we all lived happily ever after! ...... well, not quite but I did destroy the most negative aspects of my thinking that was plaguing my life at the time.
As I said, you can defeat such, if you get angry enough at yourself, but not a destructive anger. An anger that is utterly determined to choose life and refuse to live it as a curse.

I’ve tried such things before but it didn’t work. But the fact that I can’t even be sure if it was true, or what he said or who said it, undermines it a little. I just have a feeling I was totally certain that he proved it, which now seems less strong the more doubt I have about that day. There was a lot of emotions that day, and I have been totally certain and been wrong, and my memory isn’t perfect.

Could someone explain this point from the link, I’m not sure I understand how it disproves it:

If the mind is all there is, then he cannot know if his mind is all there is since what he knows is a projection of his own mind, which he cannot validate is the only mind in existence. It is assumed. But the assumption cannot be validated. Therefore, his solipsism is in doubt.

Once you consider that there are several problems that arise that are one the same level with solipsism, in terms of being irrefutable by reason, you can mitigate the impact.

One cannot refute strong skepticism. Nor the idea that we live in a simulation, nor can you refute the multiverse, or refute the idea that we are inside the dream of another person and so on.

Multiply the scenarios as you like, and then you can begin to see solipsism lose its importance in terms of impact - if anyone can make up a scenario, an infinite amount of them, out of thin air, how likely is that scenario to be right? Exceedingly small.

That’s true. I mean philosophy has many things like that. But the point is to challenge our certainty and keep us honest. I don’t think they’re meant to be taken seriously.

You’re right I can’t refute simulation or multiverse. There is no way to test the simulation from inside it as all of it could just be part of the simulation. With solipsism I think the only way to know that it is is by what it’s not. IE I could only know this is all in my head by knowing what is not that. But you could never know, so you could never test, because you can’t escape your point of view.

Buuuuuuut then I read stuff like the second Quora link and I backslide all the way down into thinking denying solipsism is delusional. That and getting over how sticky that day of mine was. Though my theory as to why that sticks out is that it was Halloween and it was the day after I told my parents I my car needed a new engine because I didn’t change the oil and it was over $5,500 to fix. I was pretty depressed that day. I was also browsing ways out of solipsism like usually and had strong reactions to anything that didn’t say it was nonsense