This year I saw this lecture by Daniel Bennett https://youtu.be/AZX6awZq5Z0
I am admirer of evolution, seeing first hand how it works in algorithm form to find better and better solutions.
In that lecture Dennett give overview on how, with us, next thing after DNA was created. Language, culture and large social structures. We became medium for new meta life. Ideas spreading, mutating and evolving with increasing speed and leading to us becoming from niche life form to dominating life form in 10 thousand years. A blink in a history of life.
He give many good reasons for that being the case. Especially that it explains on how to get from a monkey to Einstein. But I seen signs of it elsewhere as well. From what I read in books like Confidence Game it seems that we evolved to see a world trough human stories, we understand everything trough that, we explain non human phenomena with that. We give names to robot vacuum cleaners and explain their behaviour with emotions, as if they have those…
Give a man facts and he will argue them. Tell him a story and he will let his guard down and run it as application on his wetware imagining and evaluating it while it invisibly influences his subconscious. And then he starts to retell it…
Author even argues that for scientific method facts and fallibility are paramount, but even then a human story should run trough it to tie it all together, give it meaning and make it believable. We are creatures of belief for better or worse… Makes me cringe but I seen a lot of where it is true and is good.
There is interesting argument in that books about ability to detect lies. Aka we have none. And it make sense from evolutionary standpoint, distinguishing lies from truth is expansive. Among communities that wasted resources on doubting each other, communities that were trustful and had many lairs, and communicates that were trustful and had small percent of lairs this last one survived and that’s where we are. Trustful, unable to see is some one lies us in the face, and yet flourishing?
But same is about Bennett hypothesis. It seems we evolved to propagate ideas without ability to truly distinguish which are true or good. Because even with being attuned to spreading bad ideas as well, net result of rapid spread of ideas trough population was still positive, even when part of those were bad.
But what I wonder is… Do we have an immune system? If ideas are like viruses do we have anti bodies? May be this complexity on changing people views and beliefs is that immune system? Conservatism to true change? Something else?
