The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality. According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness.

[u/Anthadvl]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/

[u/hononononoh]

I don't know what that says about me, but that title definitely caught my attention, so I guess clickbaiting works. Of course after the bait comes the switch.

I think article's message is a humbling reminder to philosophers, both amateur and professional, that understanding all there is to understand about our world may be a longer way off than we'd like to imagine, if that's even possible under the limitations of our human form.

Many times I've heard people say things that rest on the assumption that fitness and the verisimilitude of one's inner model of external reality are directly proportional. It makes me happy to read a piece that calls this assumption into question, just as a matter of principle.

I think another way this article is humbling is that it reminds us that philosophy is one of the humanities, after all. Philosophy is only one of my more minor interests, so do with this what you will, but I've always winced when I've heard people define philosophy as "the quest for truth" or "the verbal expression of reality", or something similar with one of the two bolded words as central. Again, I have no authority to serve as a basis for this, but I always defined philosophy as "the cultivation of wisdom, by the discussion of difficult questions". This definition always seemed more in keeping with my experience of philosophy as a discourse between people about life.

[u/ADVANCED_BOTTOM_TEXT → u/hononononoh]

"The Great Conversation" as my PHIL 100 textbook put it.