[lazide]

It's a survival strategy, near as I can tell.

Frankly, even really understanding the moment is impossible, let alone something as distant as the past, or the as yet not-existing future.

That's true for the individual, and the society.

Enlightenment MIGHT come close, but the first thing in traditions that have that as an option/goal is realizing that, well, knowing things objectively/without delusions is basically actually impossible and the concept of 'us' or 'I' is basically one of those delusions. We can have FEWER delusions, and with luck we can be aware of most of them, but we can't really have zero.

So we constrict our information, scope, and framing down to what we consider useful in that moment, and the narratives come from that. Sometimes it's pretty close to 'truth' (as in, matches objectively verifiable facts with a minimal amount of suspension of disbelief, fantasy, or outright delusion), and provides useful information.

sometimes... well, it does not. Often/usually, frankly.

It requires extremely rigorous approaches to get close to anything else, and frankly the forest gets lost for the trees 99.99% of the time.

True for the individual, and for the society too.

[MichaelZuo]

> Frankly, even really understanding the moment is impossible, let alone something as distant as the past, or the as yet not-existing future.

I thought that too before, but now I'm not so sure.

Human individuals don't differ from each other that much. Sure there's a wide spectrum of physical and mental attributes such as intelligence, perseverance, confidence, etc.

But the basic motivations and behavioural patterns are close to identical, bar really exceptional outliers like Napoleon or von Neumann.

[lazide]

There was a time when I would have believed that too. It’s a probabilistic type view, which in general, on average works out to be mostly correct.

In the physics analogy, I imagine thinking of it like heat.

But, if you pick any individual, just like if you go to an individual atom, you will find that velocity, position, etc. is still impossible to predict except as probabilities on a curve. And unlike atoms, people have strong incentives to lie (to themselves and others), and a rather impressive ability to do so.

And given enough atoms/people or time, you WILL find the truly unpredictable. And you will often find the nonsensical, the self destructive, etc.

The general human motivations (or at least what we perceive them as) are also statistical averages. It doesn’t take much looking to find folks with very, very different ways of acting on them than what we’d consider normal.

Due to this fractal nature of the complexity of reality, it is a delusion thinking anyone can understand the moment. Truly, anyways.

Everything is through a lens, it has to be, or it would be impossible to comprehend at all.

[MichaelZuo]

Even someone with a large iron rod rammed through their brain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage) doesn't deviate that much from the median, at least not as much as the aformentioned examples of Napoleon, von Neumann, etc...

So it seems difficult to believe anyone currently alive and capable of walking around can be meaningfully even more different.

Of course people can claim a limitless degree of difference, but their actual behaviour is what matters, not verbal claims.

[lazide]

Huh? Phineas Gage completely switched personality, including behavior.

What exactly do you consider to be ‘degree of difference’?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_nu...]?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_female_ser...]?

Ghenghis Khan?

And that isn’t even counting the vast, unending sea of often bizarre mental illness out there.

The ones you see make a list are functional enough to cause notable damage, which fundamentally restrains them within a certain band of functionality.

The ones who are functional enough to stay alive long enough to make an impact on the world at all will restrain it at an even more outlying band.

That means you can form probabilities and distributions - but you can’t really know individuals for sure.

As anyone who’s been married to someone and had kids with them who later turned out to be gay, or cheating, or whatever can attest - good luck.

[MichaelZuo]

Yes I would classify Genghis Khan, Napoleon, etc., as probably even farther from the median adult human then Phineas Gage type oddities.

But this is splitting hairs since the main point is that the maximal case can't possibly be that much more extreme then already well documented cases.

Because only the observable actions of humans in the world is after all what we're capable of perceiving directly. And this is limited to what their body, including vocal chords, is physically capable of doing, no matter how many mental irregularities they have.

Or are you confused about something else?

It's unclear what the meaning of the rest of your comment is.

[lazide]

I’m a bit confused by what your point is, since you seem to be agreeing with me - but taking a static view?

You seem to be saying ‘the current maximal can’t be more than the historical outliers, therefore people are predictable’, while my point is that you can’t actually know that, or fundamentally 100% predict an individual (or a group, really) because those historical outliers obviously occurred and were not obvious until after they had occurred.

Ghenghis Khan existed before he conquered the largest empire in recorded history.

Von Neumann existed before he did what he did.

Einstein existed before he did what he did.

John Wayne Gacy existed before he did what he did.

And there are millions of other examples less extreme, but still important and impactful.

And the next unpredicted maximal person (of whatever stripe) will also exist before you know they are the next maximal person - in whatever direction they happen to be in.

It’s fundamental.

And we’re not even talking about the weird biological stuff - those we had innate immunity to the black plague when it ravaged Europe, or those with innate immunity to HIV being just some very basic examples.

As to your other point I guess - sure, we don’t expect to run across someone that doesn’t need air, and it’s pretty unlikely.

But for example, at some point, before life crawled out of the oceans, it would have been considered impossible to do that. But then something did. It took (depending on the theory or what you attribute causes to) hundreds of millions to billions of years for it to happen (hence my comment on time and/or population), but it did occur.

From the perspective of Groups, History is replete with examples of long tail probabilities occurring and causing major shifts. Not recognizing that they can and will happen, eventually, sets us up for failure, because we refuse to recognize them until too late.

From the perspective of Individuals, near as I can tell it’s impossible to truly even know ourselves, let alone another person. Thinking we have it all figured out is a comfortable delusion. Often it’s functional enough, it works well enough to be ok.

But ask anyone who’s been through a custody dispute and I doubt you’ll get a comforting response on that front.

I’m not saying the X-men are real or ever will be. I’m not saying everyone is a serial killer, or a Napoleon.

Using frequentist thinking when dealing with people is useful the vast majority of the time.

But if you think it’s really true all the time, it isn’t. It’s important to be aware of its limitations.

That’s all I’m saying.