Humanity’s Cognitive Misalignment: Science was never meant to subsume Faith, Uncertainty or Wisdom.

Alignment is Joy, Misalignment Misery!

S Gradient Descent

Faith in the Scientific Method requires elevating both Uncertainty and Wisdom!

The Scientific Method is Bayesian, with Uncertainty at its core. Cumulative Wisdoms are frequently the Bayesian Inferences derived through Long Lived Experiences across multiple generations and cultures.

The Scientific Method utilizes S Gradient Descent, an algorithm with uncertainty at its heart and multiple simultaneous hypotheses as structural pillars. Evidence only functions as reinforcement for each of several competing hypotheses that align that specific packet of data. The moment one marries a single hypothesis, and seeks out reinforcement for just one specific pillar, discounting all possible competitors, the entire structure collapses.

More will follow soon about the delusions of certainty ascribed to the simplified scientific “consensus” explanations reinforced by schooling that prioritizes testing over teaching students to inference between multiple alternative hypotheses. That section will likely be called The Atheist Delusion, named after a popular book (The God Delusion) that I absolutely loved as a teenager and grew to see several glaring flaws in and negative influences from as an adult. Suffice it say, we would all be better if we learn to not cling to any -isms (belief shortcuts) including Atheism.

The 2020s are humanity’s adolescence, and adolescence is when a species discovers its own strength and uses it like a toddler with a flamethrower. Humanity appears to be a particularly temperamental toddler.

AI capabilities recently exploded. Climate and oceanic ecosystems collapse looms large. A pandemic shredded trust. Instant communication created more confusion than clarity. Humans carried a window into the sum of their civilization’s thought in their pockets, and instead of enlightenment, in many, it produced fever dreams. Algorithms pushed drama, fed on fear and reinforce bubbles that falsely promised comfort and a feeling of superiority .

The Misperception of Human Cognition

We underestimate the specific oddness of the human mind, it’s tendency to act first and hallucinate a justification after the fact, simultaneously enabling both stunning cognitive flexibility and intractable cognitive rigidity, sometimes in the same individual.

Human cognition predominantly evolved under severe scarcity and threat. Attention systems built for predators and social rank. Emotional circuits ancient, powerful, easy to hijack. Brains not built for a 24-hour casino of outrage and validation.

Meanwhile, Human consciousness (whether emergent or foundational) appears analogous to a 4D object trapped within a 3D framework, with mathematical models, spiritual stories, quantum entanglements, cosmological crises, and collective conscious synchronicities offering subtle hints of a structure difficult to measure, and impossible to reach with a “full cup” of belief.

Give a scarcity-shaped nervous system infinite stimuli, and it will treat the loudest thing as the most important thing. As Donald Hoffman proved, evolution rewards simplicity, not accuracy.

Social media architectures learned this quickly and routinely exploit primitive reward loops, the ones once tied to food, mating, safety, and status. Infinite scroll turned exploration into compulsion. Outrage turned into belonging. A notification became a pellet of social oxygen.

Worse, humans lean on nonverbal nuance to detect sincerity. Micro-expressions, tone, shared presence, a room’s temperature. Strip that away and replace it with pixels and prose, and you get a species trying to run a social reality engine while missing critical data they had come to rely on in the real world. Entire populations became vulnerable to manipulation by strangers they could not smell, could not see, could not calibrate.

The Rise of Tribalism

Humans will do almost anything to avoid feeling powerless. Thus, tribalism reemerged with a vengeance. One side claimed certainty, and clung to it for support. The harder that some ascribed certainty to one worldview, the harder that others embraced the polar opposite view. Misinformation went airborne, mutating faster than probable truths built from measurable outcomes could replicate, because such truths take time to find, lack the emotional triggers that most rapidly generate interest, and are usually allergic to slogans.

Tribalism surged in recent years, not because humans were evil, but because human neurochemistry treats belonging like survival. Algorithms amplified splitting: us versus them, pure versus corrupt, truth versus heresy and created social media bubbles offering a false sense of security, superiority and certainty.

The same cognitive machinery that once kept tribes united against predators is now tearing global networks apart. And automation to remove all sources of friction will not solve the problem. Growth arises thru effort. Work isn’t just labor. It is meaning, status, structure, pride, proof that you exist and matter. As automation accelerates, machines will replace purpose faster than humans can build new compasses.

If history is a guide, these transitions are unavoidable, and we already have many helpful tools. Using them, humanity absolutely can persevere from the coming stresses and emerge all the stronger for it. And it can do so while mitigating the second order devastation from the rapidly approaching singularity that appears to be on a brisk pace to reach us this century.

Humans live in lies, and yes that includes all of us present company included. Our subconscious, culture and classification algorithms all lie to us, often out of necessity. Simplified stories beat nuance almost every time. The most accurate take on any issue rarely makes anyone feel emotional. If it doesn’t make you feel, it bores, and often doesn’t spread.

All non Bayesian algorithms conflate repetition with reality and emotional impact with truth. The town halls of our ancestors are gone. Mass communication often lacks critical information provided through nonverbal cues, and these conflations run havoc. A belief implanted through emotional manipulation can feel like lived experience because the brain stores emotional certainty like memory, as if intensity is proof. Curiosity can displace certainty only when a person is either not weighted down by emotional reasoning or has learned to engage mindfulness techniques and switch gears to strategic thinking.

Grounding

Odds are, you frequently find yourself overwhelmed. That is the normal outcome predicted by multimodal agentic game theory. Classical game theory accounts for multiple rational human actors. It does not account for other influences and we inhabit a world ever increasingly influenced by algorithms, competing with each other to best hijack our attention and our emotions. When you find this happening to you, the next best step is to learn to quickly ground yourself back to the present moment.

There is a video that I've consistently found helpful in doing just that:

https://youtu.be/NBmuvR9QYLs?si=8Pz1GJ-0p8rYG4Sw

Watch that one video with your eyes closed.

Or, if you're not interested in watching a video, instead think through your favorite childhood locations. Now, pick one.

Picture yourself in that cherished childhood place. Close your eyes. Take long, slow, deep breaths and ground yourself there.

What do you hear there.

What do you see.

What do you smell, touch, and taste.

What is the temperature of the air. What does the light look like. What time of day is it. Is there dust in the window beam. Is there a cricket outside. Is there a fan humming. Is there a tree you used to climb. Is there a room where you once felt safe before the world became loud and managerial and strange.

Go there deliberately.

Because under all the maps, all the theories, all the models, all the dimensional speculation, all the cosmic game design, there is still this simple fact.

Attention is action.

And sometimes the wisest thing you can do with it is breathe, notice, realign, and come home to the moment you are actually in.

Security and inner peace are often more accessible through mindful meditative practice, a point heralded in The Gita some 3500 or so years ago and rediscovered in lab coats by modern cognitive neuroscience with a much bigger budget and much worse poetry. Mindful meditation, whether approached through grounding, binaural beats, deep breathing, contemplative prayer, stillness, body scanning, gratitude practice, or simple deliberate attention, teaches you to be more present and better focus your attention, direct your action, and channel your agency toward becoming the person you want to be and living the life you actually desire, not just the one your nervous system is catastrophizing about at 3:14 a.m.

When doing this, do not be waylaid by automatic negative thoughts, fears, and “realistic” negative expectations. A lot of what people call realism is just anxiety in a lab coat. Be the change you want to see, embrace the world you want to actualize, but start small. Grand visions are fine. Tiny actions are how they get docking clearance into reality.

Take long deep breaths. Meditate and focus your thoughts on loved ones. Embrace nature. Live in the present. For the physicists among you, employ the Principle of Least Action. Not as a lazy person’s excuse, but as a deep clue from reality itself. Nature seems to like efficient paths. Rivers do not hold committee meetings. Light does not file paperwork. It moves. A falling object does not moralize. It follows a path. There is wisdom in that.

To follow your path, find a method to ground yourself that works best for you. For some, it is to Box breathe. Others, it is to be mindful. Meditate. Embrace nature. Whichever method you settle on, grounding allows you to adopt the stationary-action principle. Stop thrashing. Stop feeding every panic with premium fuel. The news and social media posts that most effectively ensnare your emotions, are often the ones least deserving of your attention.

In such a world, frequent grounding is essential. And without frequent grounding, the below playlist can overwhelm you.

Playlist of Various Models of Reality

Watch whichever videos intrigue you, but do not get married to any model of reality. Use a Bayesian approach, the models you chose to learn about highlight your prior assumptions. Allow the models to compete in your mind like candidates in debate, not gods in a temple.