a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily
Oh I fully agree, we’re trying to process a world of instantaneous communication, rapid transportation, industry and production and complex political lines drawn between 8 billion people… with a brain designed for surviving the ice age. This is why we’re all having so many mental health problems, this is why suicide is a climbing epidemic. Our brains are trying to help us survive a world that it has no tools inherent to it to navigate.
Ice age brain has no idea how to handle having access to billions of different voices at once, it will naturally retreat to what feels most safe and makes most sense, no matter if it’s connected to reality or not, because the brain doesn’t want a logical, sensible world, it wants a story that connects how you feel to what’s going on around you. The story doesn’t even have to make sense, just slap some wrestlemania villains and heroes into the mix and we have crack cocaine to the brain’s desire to simplify the world around us.
But I have to blame us because we’re the only thing that can save us. No help is coming. AI or aliens or Jesus are not going to appear suddenly and guide our whole species to a better place. We HAVE to start taking responsibility for our world, or what will be left of it in the coming decades.
Oh I fully agree, we’re trying to process a world of instantaneous communication, rapid transportation, industry and production and complex political lines drawn between 8 billion people… with a brain designed for surviving the ice age. This is why we’re all having so many mental health problems, this is why suicide is a climbing epidemic. Our brains are trying to help us survive a world that it has no tools inherent to it to navigate.
Ice age brain has no idea how to handle having access to billions of different voices at once, it will naturally retreat to what feels most safe and makes most sense, no matter if it’s connected to reality or not, because the brain doesn’t want a logical, sensible world, it wants a story that connects how you feel to what’s going on around you. The story doesn’t even have to make sense, just slap some wrestlemania villains and heroes into the mix and we have crack cocaine to the brain’s desire to simplify the world around us.
But I have to blame us because we’re the only thing that can save us. No help is coming. AI or aliens or Jesus are not going to appear suddenly and guide our whole species to a better place. We HAVE to start taking responsibility for our world, or what will be left of it in the coming decades.