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.