Oddbean

How often do you consider the fact that you don’t see reality, just human reality tuned specifically for our evolutionary fitness and survival. And if you were to see the full breadth of reality you’d be incapable of surviving and reproducing and would quickly go extinct? Because for me it’s like once a quarter.

Well, I do consider it. Specifically though I think the universe only renders the amount of reality that is needed. Which is exactly why Schrodingers cat is only dead or alive if you check; the universe simply does not render an outcome if it is not. Obviously both outcomes exist though, when needed. So yes. We only see what is rendered to us or what we demand be rendered. We should look for more and it is worth thinking about

Yeah that haunts me every once in a while. Our senses evolved to help us survive and reproduce, but not to see reality as it really is. For example, sweetness means that theres probably a bunch of calories, and this keeps us alive longer. But there's no sweetness out there. Down this rabbit hole I realized that we don't just see a simple version of reality, but rather none of it. I highly recommend "The Case against Reality" by Donald Hoffman.

The book “An immense World” is about the different things that various species can detect with their senses. it’s completely insane. So much happening around us that we can’t conceive of, much less perceive.

I have embodied a life of understanding reality only through the lens of my own perceptions, and have also read Hoffman. I don't agree with the assertion that viewing the full breadth of reality is a path to extinction, as I don't believe it is possible to do so as humans. I like Hoffman's computer screen analogy, and that would be even less possible than a human "seeing" the flow of electricity through the circuits on a motherboard in a meaningful way, i.e. forming text and images displayed on a screen, but with no screen. I believe I have consumed the right amount of psychedelics to be exposed to glimpses of altered realities, enough to understand there is much more out there than what we experience and perceive, but I feel no need to revisit that altered state. I also maintain we have the concept of time all wrong. Cause and effect (in that order) are dubious and limited at best, and what we are beginning to understand through quantum mechanics will be transformative in our evolution as a species. The more I learn about the Hindu concepts of time, the more I sm finding them agreeable.

We are so attached with the idea that what we know is true, and from that so much suffering arises, that reflecting on this fact can be profoundly humbling. Probably we should think about it more often, we might be more kind as a species.

Fairly often, this reminds me when I saw a video of a mantis shrimp striking its prey with enough force to vaporize water reacting to stimuli outside of the visual spectrum. the idea that some shrimp at the bottom of the ocean had to evolve to see more colors underwater and strike with such force makes me wonder what else is down there and how much humans miss out on. https://image.nostr.build/08cb2d991fb1210436291e1dcfc537ae2d594658907c54ba8215e6c62c55fee0.jpg

If our perception didn't have some bearing on reality than our existence would surely be impossible. Reality is bigger than us, but it is knowable. Our minds are built to conform to truth. Fundamental epistemic skepticism gets you nowhere.

The parallels between this (hoffmanesque) line of thinking and religious thought is striking. "You can't see God in his true form, only what he allows you to see, or what he has determined that you should be able to see." You can translate the framing of his description of human experience pretty much 1 to 1 to make it make sense from a religious perspective.