Saturday, 9 March 2024
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In the seventh chapter we talk about physical reality, social reality, and where emotions fit in this.

They way we see and hear things is not how they exist in the physical reality. How we see the physical reality is made by how our sensory organs pickup the raw input such as air pressure and wavelengths of light. Other animals, the more different from us, might see physical reality completely different, or have more sensitive senses that can pickup things we can't, invisible to us. And that's just the start, how our sensory organs convert input to electric signals for our brain to process further. How we process these signals is dependent on the wiring, as we've talked about before. How the brain filters, dissects and categorises based on previous statistical learning, its experience.

We might see an apple and say it's red, but in other parts of the world, they may say it looks brownish, because they've learned to dissect the rainbow color spectrum differently. This reminds me of the viral internet sensation of the dress where people couldn't agree on the colors of the dress. And I guess that's because how physical reality looks is determined by the observer of it. To think that how we observe physical reality is how it exists in its true form is called 'naive realism'.

Having this understanding, we can better notice and recognise how our social reality, like applying mental concepts like cash to paper, builds another layer on top of reality. It becomes a normal part of our reality that we don't question, at least not without effort. Some animals have the ability to have collective goals like ants, and some primates can collectively see an object as a tool for a basic function. This is called 'collective intentionality'. But humans with their ability to construct purely mental concepts, that comes together with the ability to use language, can take collective intentionality to the next level. An idea like what is money can be one reality for one person or one reality for a billion people. If you look around you, you'll see that most of our lives concerns social reality. It can be easy to get lost in.

This imaginative capability we have, is why I think sandbox games keep their relevancy for long. With our imagination, we can apply anything to the same set of blocks. Is this why we as kids can roleplay seamlessly from one reality to another? And as we get older, our brains become hard wired to roleplay a particular reality? But what if your brain doesn't follow along the rest? Could that be why the last time I felt normal was in preschool? Why, as we grew older, I found it increasingly difficult to play along? Was I left behind in a reality we once shared together a long time ago?

Moving on from my melodramatic questions, in my last writing, I wrote about how one should value authenticity. It slowly dawned on me how idealistic and naive that is to say on its own. To elaborate, in another writing, I wrote that I'm keen to agree that due to the many innate facial configurations there may be innate emotions more complex than affective feelings. But if we view this response as a true representation of how I felt about it, it'd not be an authentic representation. Yet I decided to express myself like that, because I decided to approach it practically, and take additional factors into account, rather than just how I felt. The first factor was an understanding of that I could be mistaken, especially with my limited knowledge, supported by personal experience of having delusions of mine shattered in my face. The second factor was a desire to be pro social by finding common ground, stemming from a belief that in this context that preserving social vibes was more important than having to agree on all details. The third factor was a desire to be liked by both sides stemming from fear, that may be based on something I have more difficulty knowing. I think the first factor is very reasonable, the second factor is more debatable, and the third factor I'd prefer not be an influence. You could also say the second and third may have something to do with each other, and this is still quite a shallow rationalisation, but you have to start somewhere. The third could be valid if the fear was based on physical harm as having a gun to your head. I forgot where I was going with this but in short, instead of having an idealistic approach of being authentic. It may be better to consider the underlying forces of why one decides to express themselves in the way they do. Are they a service or a disservice? In the name of authenticity, you could be spurting out whatever you feel like. It is better to start with the lowest level of your foundation. Like is it better to work together and share or work alone and take? How do you respond to opposing forces? What truths are made of how to base behaviour and morals? These questions themselves lack lots of nuance, but I think they can help to give a direction, a starting point. In short^2, it's probably good to take a pragmatic approach and use idealistic ideas as guidance?

I got sidetracked, and I'll continue that, I do what I want, you can't stop me. But it reminded me that I want to look more into philosophy. I don't know a lot about it at the moment, there's someone called plato and at some point, caves are involved. I have heard about the phrase or debate about whether the end justifies the mean. In the grandest context, my impression has been yes, but in practice, you're not an all-knowing god so how could you possibly know all the side effects that may show up later that makes the means not accomplish the end anyway. And how could you know what the true representation of the end in a verifiable way, isn't that playing god as well? Unless this phrase is used in a context, perhaps pure math?, where we can quantify the means fully and verify the end, it seems like a pointless question. So anyone claiming to have found or to know the means or the end in absoluteness in the most all-encompassing context, may be safe to disregard in search of less confusion, unless an uncertain certainty is more important than conflict? Maybe I should pursue a degree in yaponomics?