Sensing dark survival

I have various sense organs – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin for outward sensing; and various other ones for inner sensing eg posture and movement. They are good enough for the species to have multiplied dramatically in the last seven million years - but they have their limits.

For example, the eyes can see only ‘visible’ light. Humans cannot see the infrared or the ultraviolet. And then, within these sensory limits, there is too much going on for us to pay attention to everything.

We notice what our culture and language have taught us to notice and we fail to notice other things. It is said for example that Eskimos have fourteen words for snow and none for butterfly.

If it does not have a name does it exist? Just because it has a name this does not mean that it does exist eg God.

And then, even with the things we notice, we are selective about what is put into short term memory and then into long term memory. I lived in Zambia from 1977 till 1979. There is very little that I remember from those days. And what I remember is not reliable. It tends to be different from what I wrote in my diary at the time about being bombed, quarantined inside a cholera outbreak, and having nothing to eat but avocados from a tree in the garden.

SO – there are fundamental limits on what we can know and report about reality as it is in itself. And we are blind to those limits. But millions of years of evolution have made us this way so it must have its uses.

The function of the sense organs is to inform the brain about good things (eg ripe fruit) and bad things (eg hungry lions). The dangerous things require fast reactions. Best not to sit around philosophizing. Best to act as if “What you see is all there is.” (WYSIATI  ref Kahneman).

What you thought was a snake was in fact a piece of rope – no problems.

What you thought was a rope was in fact a snake – a slow painful death.

Evolution favors the nervy pessimist.

“Always look on the dark side of life”.