The " gods honest" truth about why humanity struggles in the way you described .
Is because a single human experience is a tiny sliver of Information compared to reality itself.
Just like how you misunderstanding and therefore belive evolution is false and that one false belief leads to all kinds of misunderstandings and pricing things wrong.
This is what human beings have been doing.
Our tiny ape brains misunderstand.
Misunderstanding leads to conflict and violence.
This is why the world is as it is.
Misunderstanding.
Why do people act like idiots the more technology they get?
It's because tech is a tool not a crutch.
Technology is a responsibility .
Not to be used lazily
Just like yourself claiming to even be thinking about things like truth and history.
Yet you never googled dna and researched it?
You haven't found out that human evolution is the most proven thing there has ever been?
It's because your just googling some dude in his basement video camera " documentary" and he tells you there is no evidence
Yet if you read a middle school biology textbook and seen the true verifications you would be embarrassed.
We all misunderstand like this and subsequently
The world looks as it does.

 

For human evolution to be false,
We would have to have been born into a type of reality for which any individuals specific narrative has the power to retroactively alter history itself.
We were not born into that world.
In this reality , there is a way things work .
The whole idea of " truth"
Means " not fiction"
Not a imaginery narrative taking place in your thoughts.
But " the way things actually work"
.
There is so much evidence for human evolution we can develop medication by testing it on animals.
We can take a price of dna and catch a criminal
The dna keeps a record of every single mother before all the way back .
This is why it was proven 15 years ago every human being alive today came from Africa .
Evolution being true is like the sky is blue.
An that has zero to do with fossils
Now when you add in the fossils in that's just a interesting bonus that old bones show us humans developing from animals.
Just Google hominid fossils there is millions of them.
Thousands of " missing links"

 

Let me say first, I am agreeing with you.
And I think your first sentence was the best one.
"How the hell can someone belive they care about truth and history, yet think evolution is not true?"

And because you seem like someone that likes to research stuff and enjoys finding the real facts...
The analogy you used of "Evolution being true is like the sky is blue" made me smile a little, because actually the sky ain't blue.
Fun fact:- "Blueness and all colour sensations are visual experiences manufactured entirely in our brains. There is no colour outside of brains - the universe is actually colourless".

And I'm now going out for a walk under a lovely blue sky.

 

Evolution is just fractals.

 

Here is the thing.
" The sky is blue."
Is a particular phrase , a shortcut to mean.

" In the way human beings attribute color as a concept itself through the functioning mechanisms
We apply the phrase " X concept is Y color"
Where the association is identified as color ALWAYs being a description of the way we actually detect color in reality."

You honestly think that I thought the sky " wassomething" called blue?
That's what your telling me your brain understands Everytime a person says
" Hey nicca check out my camo green coffee cup"
You instantly jump to making assumptions that said friend is making assumptions about the actuality of the object?
Rainbow polish for clown shoes.

The truth is a healthy functioning brain comprehends that the semantics of color description is a always 100 percent talking about how the eyes detect color.

 

This is no joke their right it truly for real is actually fractals in the true sense.

 

Thanks for that intriguing hint; it led me on a nice exploration.
Here's a postcard... The chaos theory of evolution

 

This thread has been going for ten days now and I notice that these types of threads seem to (generally) draw more traction than music threads.
It's like they bring out the best and worst of us, like they hit a nerve!
It's very interesting!

 

Hi, I'll start by saying "I am sincerely NOT trying to find an argument here"

I am having 'some' difficulty fully undersanding what you've written and so I am probably guilty of misunderstanding you.
So, sincere apologies if that is the case.

All I am trying to do here is draw attention to a very subtle fact about our reality, and to do so I will contest just a few of the words you used.
You said...
"the way we actually detect color in reality" and "always 100 percent talking about how the eyes detect color"

and my point is that...
Eyes cannot 'detect' colour because there is no colour to detect. There is no colour 'in reality' anywhere other than in our brains.
Eyes detect light at specific frequencies. That information gets converted to neural impulses. Eventually our amazing brains say "what the hell am I supposed to with that" and our brains 'invent' colour as a truly amazing solution.
Another one of evolution's mind boggling achievements.

I just think that's interesting.
I repeat - I'm not looking for an argument - just discussing an interesting bit of our world.

 

As far as "the sky is blue because we perceive it as blue" is not a spectrometer able to measure the visible wavelength that we identify as sky blue and ascribe it an accurate set of numerical values, thus defining it with precision. A thought experiment I present here would be to say (in very loose terms so bear with me) an immensely powerful solar flare caused everybody on Earth to perceive the sky as red. Now let's say coalminers deep underground return to the surface and the sky is still blue to them. 99% of the population swear it is red, they know it is red, they can see it with their own eyes! Majority rule says we must now say the sky is red and the miners are wrong. Lingering effects from the historical solar event mean that within two generations nobody will see blue sky. However can we not look to the spectrographic data and still state categorically that the sky has not changed? It is us.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2019

This reminds me of Social Conditioning.
The elites can propose lie after lie through media propaganda, education and political persuasion. After a generation or 2 these lies become truths in the minds of the masses.
Enlightened and aware people can point out these lies and they will be berated and mocked for saying such things!
The truth is still the truth even if 99% of people don't believe it!
We live in an upside down crazy landscape and our reality has been distorted for many generations that we have to research this reality and peal back the layers of illusion to get anywhere near the truth!

 

I like your thought experiment. (Huge number of complicating factors packed into there though) I'm definitely onside with your conclusion... "can we not look to the spectrographic data and still state categorically that the sky has not changed? It is us."

'Spectrograph data' = 'brute facts about light wavelengths'
'What colours we perceive' = 'more arbitrary than we think'.

Reminded me of a closer to home thought experiment that everyone can do easily.
See the Rubik cube below.


Look at the center square on the top face. Assuming we're all the same species (monkeys in pants) I'm guessing you will say that it looks brown.

Look at the center square on the front face. I'm guessing you will say that it looks yellowy orange.

Now if only we had notsoloud's spectrograph to point at those two squares. A great second best is easy, just use your favourite graphics utility and cut out those two squares. Put the two cut out versions side by side preferably on a white background.

You already know the punchline, they are exactly the same!

Optical illusions like this one are far more than just cute entertainment, and they are not 'tricks'. They are just fabulous illustrations of how our brains say, "I'm in charge here and colour is my invention, and in this consciousness I'll paint bits of the world whatever colour seems appropriate or useful."

===

A 'must read'... 12 Famous Artists With Synesthesia
Duke Ellington’s statements on how his synesthesia affected his music:
“I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it’s one color.
I hear the same note played by someone else and it’s a different color."

Synesthesia is not just a vivid imagination, it's part of the perception process for people who experience it.
I AM JEALOUS!

---
Edit: had to re-host picture after tinypic host disappeared.

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2019

I agree with all that - but I'm (sometimes) less pessimistic.

Personal Reality - versus - Social Reality - versus - Brute facts
It always matters which we're dealing with.

Personal Reality
I might change my personal reality of whether strawberry tastes better than chocolate or the other way round. I might think guitars are nicer than pianos or the other way round. That's my business - no-one else's - my opinions are all that matters.

Social Reality
Social reality is a breeding ground for delusion, propaganda, lies, etc. but it's absolutely essential and still more positive than negative, it's not always about lies. Maybe a community genuinely believes that spending money on hospitals is more important than spending money on schools. Maybe ten years later 'they have changed their minds' and now believe the opposite. So they really have changed their Social Reality of what is important to spend money on. Opinions and persuasion are all legitimate. I don't mind someone 'trying' to persuade me to change my politics - they might even succeed.

Brute facts
Brute facts are not negotiable. Reality ain't listening to our 'opinions'.
If 7 billion people believe the moon is made out of cheese, then 7 billion people are bloody stupid.

and as an afterthought...

Species Reality
I think bats might actually create visual experiences based on what they collect in their ears!
i.e., they don't just know where the walls are because of their sonar, they might 'see the walls' with their ears.

 

did you get the munchies?

 

I get the interesting semi-philosophical debate behind, but "the sky is blue because we perceive it as blue" is accurate enough.
If we are to discard all the things that we only "perceive as" we end without 90% of the dictionary.

 

Haha. Don't be. I am a synaesthete. It's just normal to you when you've had it all your life.
But when I watched a talk on TED about 8 years ago, an Indian neuro-scientist called Sri Ramahansa or something described it as almost like a damaged brain with faulty wiring! He discovered how to eliminate phantom-limb syndrome with a mirror-box; so who am I to argue?!

But around 15 years ago I was lucky enough to know this guy in the TED link below, as he was testing his new cyber-tech around the town I was living in. We definitely concurred on our viewpoint; and interestingly I'm colour-blind as well, and from an early age I witnessed my brain re-wiring itself to accomodate (as Neil's brain did after a while of being a 'cyborg'). This was due to being shouted out for apparently being stupid! "Not that one, you idiot! Are you colour-blind, or what?!" etc. So I have always been able to tell you what colour is what, but I can only do 2 of the 50 colour-blind tests with the coloured dots and the numbers! Because it's about context, as the Rubik's cube experiment above shows. There are maybe one or two scenarios where I might see a colour wrong in life.
Although I 'see' music differently to some, being colour-blind and short-sighted has also meant that my ears are more efficient generally, to make up for that weakness, I believe.

So enjoy the vid below; it's amusing, and especially for musicians. I 'see' music, just different to Neil in the vid.

https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color?language=en

 

I love what you wrote above, except for the bit about telling me not to be jealous

Thank you so much for that link. That's one of the best links anyone has pointed me to in ages.

Anyone else that enjoys that link is sure to be entertained by the links below.
All three of these are gems. "entertaining and enlightening"

[1] A superb 1st hand account of experiencing Synesthesia
Synesthesia and What It Has Taught Me - Melissa McCracken

[2] A wonderful presentation that shows how our brains are
- awesome
- and totally flawed
deal with it
TEDxUSC - Al Seckel: [Y]Our Mind's Eye

[3] and one from the Indian neuro-scientist you mentioned above, V S Ramachandran (he is brilliant!)
3 clues to understanding your brain

 

I agree.
I am not one to discard stuff generated by brains as 'unreal'
But I always like to recognise the important difference between...
- that which exists even if human brains had never existed. (light, atoms, planets, gravity, vibrations in air)
- that which exists solely because human brains create and maintain it. (colours, money, love, politics, music)
The light is 'real'; it exists even if brains do not.
The colours generated in brains are also 'real', but they exist only in brains and would not exist without brains.

 

I agree and I disagree.