Comment on Our understanding of reality might be a result of the way cousciousness works
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 1 day agoYou can survive. From knowing that eating alleviates hunger, to knowing what to say to get an idea across, to designing new high tech that improves the quality of lives. It all requires that we model reality in some form.
AnDoLiN@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Does it? Animals seem to do well without modeling reality. Can you show me across the ages that humanity in general experiences that the quality of their lives has clearly improved? And understand the question. I’m not asking you, a modern human to look back to antiquity and say “we have soap now”. I’m asking what universal human experiences have fundamentally changed for the better? We still have disease, war, hunger, heart break, suffering. We have average people living the life of fantastic luxury, and yet the desire to fill the void doesn’t seem to go anywhere. We have more stuff, we have amazing intellectual frameworks to model reality with but still, most people are very clearly unsatisfied. And the more stuff we have, the more stuff we want. The early humans weren’t fretting about getting a new smartphone, they were fretting about where to get their next meal. We fret about the meal AND the smartphone.
I’m not saying tech is bad. I’m not saying building models is bad or wrong. We have so much beauty because of it. But it’s wise to know what the end goal is and ask if the methods of getting there are actually effective.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I would say even animals have some modeling of the world around them. Like a cat knows if it pushes something off a counter, it will bang on the floor.
And more academic modeling has certainly improved lives with much less food scarcity throughout the world, and much improved healthcare. Your cellphone may not actually make your life better, but having your cancer detected and treated early certainly can.
AnDoLiN@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
May not make it better. It may. Could. Or maybe it can’t.
You are just elaborately saying “we have soap now”. But have you quantified the subjective experience of suffering between people who live now and people who lived before soap?
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
They didn’t do surveys like that back when they didn’t have soap, so we can never know. But I think healthier longevity is pretty clearly a plus. But you do you - you can refuse heath care if you think it will make you happier.