January 16, 2016

The universe is very, very big. The human mind is very, very small.

Even thousands of human physicists operating in perfect parallel processing mode are going to be blind to anything but the boldest outlines of reality. Even our most speculative explorations of reality are colored by our own evolution. Anything that doesn't matter to the propagation and survival of beings such as ourselves, beings made out of meat, all survivors, every one of us, by billions of years of natural selection, all these other aspects of the universe are essentially invisible and inaccessible to us.

Consider yourself. Every one of your ancestors, as far back as you wish to go in the story of life on earth, survived to reproduce.



Forget any lottery. You are a winner of the biggest lottery ever played.

But one consequence of this evolution is that we don't see the universe as it *IS* we only see the forces that most matter to our propagation as living beings. You are a larger mammal. Gravity can easily kill you. Elephants are even more aware of gravity than we are. Jumping is never an option for elephants. Jumping is death.

Anyone who doesn't look at the universe from that meaty perspective is considered a crackpot, and usually that assessment is correct. Yet I've met some brilliant mathematicians and physicists who are very clearly solidly grounded and celebrated in the realities of their chosen fields of study, who sometimes appear to be quite insane whenever they are pushing the limits of what is known, and what *CAN* be known by creatures such as ourselves.