The brain receives almost no input, maybe none at all.

[axiom]

13 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Ah, but all of that adaptive evolutionary biology involved sensory experience of the world external to the brain!

This is correct. However, evolution is a process which favours fitness, and these evolutionary adaptations are thus tuned to fitness, and not to truth. Over time, this results in less truth and more fitness, except in cases where truth and fitness are isomorphic / overlapping. That's the key point here. Sensory data captured from the outside world has never been veridical because the neurological overhead and energy associated with constantly pulling in "truth" is counterproductive for survival. 

This being the case, the brain has always filtered out almost everything. Its modelling is very likely to be inherently flawed, not just in terms of its biological structure but in terms of its ongoing activity.

This next part is a leap, but it's my working theory: I would say that when the brain is on DMT, the increase in cortical error recognition is a sign that a veil has indeed been lifted, and that the brain is suddenly recognising that the world it thought to be real was in fact just a pale imitation of the world tuned to fitness.

This would not feel so intuitively correct if the DMT realm had little cohesion about it, but as we know, people experience broadly the same thing: a crystalline and supremely technically sophisticated alien world that "feels more real than real". That is, more real than regular waking reality, and teaming with entities that seem excited to see you and keen to communicate with you.

Edited June 11, 2022 by axiom

[Gesundheit2]

11 minutes ago, axiom said:

However, evolution is a process which favours fitness, and these evolutionary adaptations are thus tuned to fitness, and not to truth.

This seems to suggest that there is an objective truth out there somewhere that the brain is actively trying to avoid looking.

At least, that is if I'm using your lens correctly 

[Oeaohoo]

12 minutes ago, axiom said:

This is correct. However, evolution is a process which favours fitness, and these evolutionary adaptations are thus tuned to fitness, and not to truth. That's the key point here. Sensory data captured from the outside world has never been veridical since the brain primarily utilises survival-promoting data to update its modelling. In other words, the neurological overhead and energy associated with constantly pulling in "truth" is counterproductive for survival. 

I would just say that the distinction between fitness and truth is ultimately unreal. Survival and fitness are included within truth; the ways in which limited organisms adapt to their environment imply the truths of that environment. After all, bad adaptations won’t work. They are therefore false, wrong, untrue.

This is one of the ways in which Darwinian evolutionism is part of the program of contemporary nihilism. It overlooks the fact that even the so-called “survival of the fittest” is part of a divine order.

19 minutes ago, axiom said:

So this being the case, the brain has always filtered out almost everything. Its modelling is very likely to be inherently flawed, not just in terms of its biological structure but in terms of its ongoing activity.

This isn’t a flaw, it’s basically the purpose of the brain. It would be very difficult to operate in the ordinary world if you were constantly being bombarded by an infinite panoply of spectral multi-dimensional emanations of truth!

You could say it is a flaw as far as the pure pursuit of truth is concerned, but like I said I think this is a false notion. Everything is truth!

[axiom]

1 minute ago, Gesundheit2 said:

This seems to suggest that there is an objective truth out there somewhere that the brain is actively trying to avoid looking.

At least, that is if I'm using your lens correctly 

Yes, sort of. Imagine if you had to keep redrawing the background of an animation for each frame. Much easier to just draw it once and focus on the moving parts.

Even then, after some time you may decide to design a function which handles some of the moving parts automatically - such as the leaves on a tree gently rustling in the breeze. 

Leaves rustling in the breeze don't pose any obvious survival threat for the vast majority of the time, so the brain neglects to pull in the actual data and instead runs its "leaves rustling" module, incorporating just enough random movement to maximise realism, keeping the overall model cohesive.

The extent of this automation may run so deep that the experienced world is almost entirely divorced from reality.

[ZzzleepingBear]

On 2022-06-06 at 9:21 PM, axiom said:

So, when mystics say that the world is imaginary, mainstream science is actually today more than 99.9% in agreement.

The problem with this conclution, is that you may not know what will be classified as imaginary since such a statement is a value statement based on will.

The mystic sees past the material appearences despite that there is a bodily attachment that needs to be sustained for survival of the body. While a scientist may see the material as the fundamental ground for there to be the choice to call anything or everything imaginary.

So the mystic may see the world as illusory. And the scientist may see the mind as illusory. Both are valid from a perspective of choice. And what they may have in common is the reference to call someting imaginary. To call something imaginary, is merely a hint to direction until a final conclution can be pointed out.

[axiom]

15 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

The problem with this conclution, is that you may not know what will be classified as imaginary since such a statement is a value statement based on will.

The mystic sees past the material appearences despite that there is a bodily attachment that needs to be sustained for survival of the body. While a scientist may see the material as the fundamental ground for there to be the choice to call anything or everything imaginary.

So the mystic may see the world as illusory. And the scientist may see the mind as illusory. Both are valid from a perspective of choice. And what they may have in common is the reference to call someting imaginary. To call something imaginary, is merely a hint to direction until a final conclution can be pointed out.

It's fun to find clues scattered within the dream.

[ZzzleepingBear]

3 minutes ago, axiom said:

It's fun to find clues scattered within the dream.

True true.

[Nitrobest]

However, evolution is a process which favours fitness, and these evolutionary adaptations are thus tuned to fitness, and not to truth.

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