What would you believe in the face of the unbelievable? For example, how would you react if you discover suddenly that you can fly. Before today flying was impossible, but now you can do it. Something you were convinced of is wrong and you have to decide whether it’s that you can’t fly or that you are not prone to hallucinations.
In fact you already know how you would react, because it happens in your dreams. Have you ever dreamed you could fly? If so, did you infer that you must be dreaming? Some do, and then wake up. (Poor them.) Others just go on flying.
Are you irrational to believe you can fly?
Maybe you aren’t fooled by flying dreams or maybe you’ve never dreamed of flying. But crazy things happen in everybody’s dreams. What is the craziest thing that happened in your dreams that you nevertheless accepted as the way the world must work since after all it’s happening right before your eyes?
Cheap Talk 
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September 15, 2010 at 9:52 am
Itai
There is a nice Hume quote about this: “‘No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.”
September 15, 2010 at 11:29 am
Peter
There is another alternative, which I have experienced:
Infer that you are dreaming, and continue to enjoy the dream.
September 15, 2010 at 11:34 am
Dataset
Well, I once had this crazy dream in which an outstanding theoretical economist tried to convince me that we do the exact same reality-testing in dreams that we do when we’re awake. But then I convinced myself that this couldn’t really be happening, so I woke up.
September 15, 2010 at 11:59 am
woodka
A lovely description of the psychotic experience — it’s totally a waking dream. Fun for the psychotic at times, not so much for everyone else they are dealing with…