Blog/2024-08-27/Comprehension is Enough

When I was a child, I remember reading a lot of books about "the supernatural". Ghosts and stuff like that. And to some extent I believed in their existence. There was no evidence of their existence, of course, which made them all the more alluring.

If I could prove that they existed, I would have won a big battle for us all. A key discovery would have been made. So, even though I was scared running into a room as a 11-year-old I would have the "there's a ghost here" line ready to go should I encounter one. If I could simply know before I died, it would be good. If I could show everyone, that would be amazing.

This felt so important to me that I didn't even care that much whether the ghost would kill me. I would have won even if it did, if I could prove that they existed. The fact that simply yelling that there was one wouldn't prove anything wasn't quite apparent to child me.

The belief that discovery for everyone else would be a sufficient trade for my life wasn't something taught to me. Perhaps the strongest influence could have been from stories like that of Lawrence Oates - sacrificial in the pursuit of some greater goal.

This makes me wonder if that's a built-in concept to some of us humans. The notion of discovery and sharing being sufficient for a life. I can easily (in an evopsych sense) hypothesize why this might be advantageous - it's just Kin Selection. It's clear it isn't the case for everyone, but now that I know it's part of me - I like it as part of the narrative for my life.