Shadows 🌒
"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."
—W. B. Yeats
> godspeed | lazy science
Over an epic timeline of human thought, we've come to know a lot about knowing.
But we seem to forget all about it over and over again.
- The ancient philosopher Plato hundreds of years ago described a reality beyond our perception in the "Allegory of the Cave."
- Philosophers and scientists today often call it "objective" reality, as opposed to the "subjective" reality we individually experience.
Do we need to fully grasp objective reality if subjective reality is enough to keep us alive? Perhaps we don't want or need to seek truths beyond our perception. 🤔ðŸ’
We can choose instead to rely more on our intuitive, automated minds to make decisions. We can decide it's easier not wonder about things.
We can decide it's easier not to wonder if what we're thinking is fully the truth as it can be known to us.
But by making such a decision, we invite conformity. And conforming is something humans do by nature, unless we consciously choose another path.
Subjective reality feels like objective reality to us. I feel like my reality is your reality.
But feelings aren't facts.
We don't grasp that most of the 35,000 decisions we make each day occur in our intuitive, automatic, or unconscious minds.
That means we can't consciously, objectively, and easily "see" our decisions and investigate them for reason.
Respected psychologist Daniel Kahneman dubbed this shadowy area of the mind "System 1." Consider how many tasks you perform throughout the day "without even thinking about it," as we say.
In a 2017 interview, Kahneman said we feel as if our conscious, System 2 minds are the "real," conscious us.
But instead of watchdogging our behaviors, System 2 has a dark impulse of lazily rationalizing and endorsing whatever our fast-thinking intuitive mind is already telling us to do.
Now imagine that this entire cognitive process I'm describing is laughably and frighteningly prone to error.
- next time "Can we prove love is everything by proving love is meaningless?"
- listening Big Business "No Vowels"
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