Organisms soldier on unwittingly.  The difference between how things seem and how things really are is just as fatal a gap for them as it can be for us, but they are largely oblivious to it.  The recognition of the difference between appearance and reality is a human discovery.  False belief=getting it wrong.

Animals are embedded in instinct, hard-wired to their environment.  Humans are embedded in language, reason,… and learning is our key to survival.

Our faith (dependence upon) in the truth, is truly our faith in the truth — a faith that is shared by all members of our species, even if there is a great divergence in approved methods for obtaining it.  The asymmetry noted is real: faith in the truth has a priority claim that sets it apart from all other faiths.  — Daniel C. Dennett

To “soldier on unwittingly” is a tragic prospect.  I recall when I made notation of these paragraphs written by Daniel C. Dennett  it was the dead of winter and the out-of-doors temperature on that day was very cold.  I saw a solitary robin through my window.  I wrote in the margin “confused robin.”  The robin was not only confused, it was probably going to die in short order due to the dearth of food and the extreme cold.   Why did the robin hang around; why did it not follow instinct, the inclination of others of its species to migrate to a warmer southern climate?  What “caused” the robin to stick around?  The question as pertains to robins is a causal one.  Robins do not have reasons.  I am sure that after nightfall the body of the dead robin lay somewhere on the cold ground.

I am provoked, intrigued by the notion recently among us Americans that getting it wrong is not perceived as a survival issue, as a matter of life and death.  It’s trivialized as a difference of opinion, “you like chocolate, and I like vanilla.”  We the confused, do not see that our belief (s) serve as the frame for all of our opinions.  Belief is foundation to opinion.  Moreover  we have been insulated from the life and death consequences of our beliefs by the protective layers of our society.  

What happens when our reason fails us, when our belief is flawed, when we are sincerely wrong?  How long are we likely to get away with that?

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I rarely pay attention to anything on Fox News.  More to the point, the New York Times Daily update is the only media that I pay attention, day to day.  This morning however, I was compelled to click through to a Fox News interview by Bill Maher of former Google employee Tristan Harris.  Harris appears in the popular Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma.

Harris said of social media in general and Twitter in particular:

“The business model, so long as we’re the product which is the point we make in the film, we are worth more when we’re addicted, distracted, outraged, narcissistic, polarized, and disinformed than if we are a thriving citizen, an informed citizen of a democracy…

Another way of putting it Harris quotes Justin Rosenstein the inventor of the “like” button:

“So long as a whale is worth more dead than alive and a tree is worth more as 2x4s than as a tree,’ in this new model of this attention business model, we’re the whale, we’re the tree. We’re the thing that’s being mined.”