
Darkover
Archangel
- Jul 29, 2021
- 5,040
without any innate knowledge about the environment we are doomed to learn what little we can about it
we start from nothing and have to piece together whatever scraps of understanding we can manage. And even then, our perception is limited, biased, and incomplete. We're thrown into existence without instructions, forced to navigate a world that doesn't care whether we understand it or not. No matter how much we learn, there's always an infinite amount beyond our reach. It's like trying to read a book with most of the pages missing.
It's like trying to read a book with most of the pages missing because we start without context. Just as opening a book in the middle leaves you confused about what came before, we're born into existence with no innate understanding of where we are, why we exist, or what anything means. We have to piece together meaning from the fragments available to us.
Our perception is limited. The "pages" we do have access to are incomplete or distorted. Our senses only capture a tiny fraction of reality. We can't see most of the electromagnetic spectrum, hear most frequencies, or directly perceive fundamental forces like gravity. Even our cognitive abilities are constrained, meaning we can only grasp a limited portion of the book's meaning.
Biases and errors skew our understanding. If you only had random, scattered pages from a book, you might misinterpret the story. Similarly, our knowledge is shaped by evolutionary survival needs, personal experiences, and cultural influences, all of which introduce bias. What we think we know might not be the actual truth.
There's no way to get the missing pages. The universe doesn't hand us a guidebook, and many of its truths might be fundamentally beyond human comprehension. Just as a book with missing pages can leave crucial plot points unsolvable, there are aspects of reality—like what consciousness is or what happens after death—that might always remain unknowable.
The book is still being written. Even if we manage to read some pages, new information constantly reshapes our understanding. Scientific discoveries change our view of reality, but each answer raises more questions. We'll never reach the "end" where everything makes sense, because the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know.
In the end, we're left trying to piece together a coherent story from the few pages we can find, knowing we'll never see the full book.
we start from nothing and have to piece together whatever scraps of understanding we can manage. And even then, our perception is limited, biased, and incomplete. We're thrown into existence without instructions, forced to navigate a world that doesn't care whether we understand it or not. No matter how much we learn, there's always an infinite amount beyond our reach. It's like trying to read a book with most of the pages missing.
It's like trying to read a book with most of the pages missing because we start without context. Just as opening a book in the middle leaves you confused about what came before, we're born into existence with no innate understanding of where we are, why we exist, or what anything means. We have to piece together meaning from the fragments available to us.
Our perception is limited. The "pages" we do have access to are incomplete or distorted. Our senses only capture a tiny fraction of reality. We can't see most of the electromagnetic spectrum, hear most frequencies, or directly perceive fundamental forces like gravity. Even our cognitive abilities are constrained, meaning we can only grasp a limited portion of the book's meaning.
Biases and errors skew our understanding. If you only had random, scattered pages from a book, you might misinterpret the story. Similarly, our knowledge is shaped by evolutionary survival needs, personal experiences, and cultural influences, all of which introduce bias. What we think we know might not be the actual truth.
There's no way to get the missing pages. The universe doesn't hand us a guidebook, and many of its truths might be fundamentally beyond human comprehension. Just as a book with missing pages can leave crucial plot points unsolvable, there are aspects of reality—like what consciousness is or what happens after death—that might always remain unknowable.
The book is still being written. Even if we manage to read some pages, new information constantly reshapes our understanding. Scientific discoveries change our view of reality, but each answer raises more questions. We'll never reach the "end" where everything makes sense, because the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know.
In the end, we're left trying to piece together a coherent story from the few pages we can find, knowing we'll never see the full book.