Fit or Lucky?

Evolution implies our existence is predicated on our fitness to the environment. While this is true it becomes harder to understand as we look at man's adaptability.

One of our staying powers comes from creating an insulating environment. In simple forms: tools, clothes, houses etc. but in the extensible form social networks with institutions with conceptual language tracing and enhancing this progress.

In the process of "insulation" we create a "free zone" where our conceptual-emotional systems are loosened to create and experiment unencumbered by natural forces.

This freedom has bivalent effects, as we are also free to build non-adaptive versions of the world in the "free zone." Combined with our penchant for acting on belief we risk lasting if not fatal negative interactions with reality.

How Sparse is My Valley?

What do we really know. Learning can happen in so many ways - even without our "knowing" it. We experience and assimilate a vast array of inputs that influence us in ways we can't explain.

One of the main modes of "learning" is through the perception of a "reality" delivered to us via authority. That could be your parent, teacher, or more insidiously, channels that have an "air" of authority like news commentators and celebrities.

This all makes for a world stage in your brain that projects untested beliefs on to day-to-day interactions. It is the basis for decisions and actions that may differ widely from the material world. These challenges can be a lesson in their own right or add to the statistics of the Darwin Awards.

Life on the Inside-Out

We are in constant relation and interaction with our environment - especially since we are our own intimate environment!

Making sense of the world depends more on our internal states than on the world itself. Our interactions are "made up" of steams of expectations and projected "perceptions" that get interpreted - as if in real time - as if reality.

But the essential nature of this interaction is that we are "making stuff up" to approximate a world which we can't possible interact with in toto. Allowing us a way to navigate and negotiate our way. Our "Good Regulator" only needs to be "about right" within a margin of error that leaves us at least alive - if not smarter.