Imagine hiking to the top of a mountain.
You can't just "hike a mountain" like you can "take a step".
It's a process.
There's a series of actions that are completed "so that" eventually you will have successfully "hiked a mountain".
This consists of 2 parts:
the immediate actions, and
the ultimate intent
For an action to occur, you always need both.
You never have action without motive. There are no thoughtless or pointless actions.
While we often say this rhetorically, to imply that the actions achieved nothing, there is always an intent. Even if the details of the intent are poorly understood.
As with hiking a mountain, when the intent is large, you often have a 3rd intermediate part:
Immediate Actions - the series of steps and turn-by-turn directions that get you up a mountain and back
Intermediate Plans - coordinated trail segments that guided you for periods of time along the way
Ultimate Intent - to get to the top of the mountain and back safely
This is true for navigating physical space as well as for navigating time.
At the "immediate" scale, our biology can see, touch, hear, and act in real space and time. Everything is immediate, and so our body has evolved to be able to to sense and react with a fair amount of ease and accuracy.
When things are immediate, you can:
Feel the temperature in the room
See the furniture in the room
Smell a flower nearby
Taste the coffee you just made
Hear your breathing
However, once we start dealing with places and times that are NOT immediate, our direct senses are of no help.
For things are NOT immediate, you can't:
Feel the temperature of your upcoming vacation to Rome
See the furniture in the all the other rooms
Smell a flower that you'll buy tomorrow
Taste the coffee you haven't made yet
Hear the breathing of someone in the next building
When something isn't immediate to our sense, we fill the gap with our imagination.
But, our imagination is generally pretty poor.
Most people need to be able to be shown something to imagine it.
That's why we've invented:
Stories
Phones
Weather Radar
Pictures
Video
Calendars
Clocks
Schedules
Writing
Books
Training
These all help bridge gaps in our senses and imagination, that are beyond their capabilities.
It works together like this:
Senses are primary
Imagination backs them up, and fills gaps
Theories and Methods help create new ways to expand our senses
Tech enables these, so that we can effectively expand our senses and imagination, overriding our limited imagination
All Tech is dependent on Theories and Methods. For example:
Thermometers need Temperature and Degrees
Rulers need Space, Feet and Inches / Meters and Millimeters
Books need Stories and Language
Clocks need Time with Seconds/Minutes/Hours/Days
Without first an effective theory/method & then effective tools, we are simply left with our biological default: dealing with our immediate needs as they come up, while losing sight of how they impact our larger plans and ultimate intentions.
There are no exceptions.
No matter how smart or clever or strong a person is, without underlying theories, methods, and technology, our immediate actions are completely ineffective at impacting larger plans or intent, except by pure accident.
Operating purely on our natural talents and instinct, without with the aid of theories and tech, prevents us from:
Planning ahead
Anticipating
Analyzing
Improving
Understanding
Achieving anything beyond our biological limits
Storing information
Data mining
That's why science and technology exist, to help fill this gap that our biology and imagination are ill equipped to fill.
While our biology is generally pretty resilient, our imagination isn't, and so our information is at particular risk if we try to 'do it on our own' or 'think for ourselves'.
Reality is too big.
Any information you learn or tool you use is borrowing from the effort of people who came before you, while inheriting the benefits and flaws in their work.
Without them, all we have are our imagination, and an infinite list of things that COULD be true. And no way to distinguish that infinite list of what we COULD IMAGINE TO BE, from the short list of what IS.
Intent can broadly be a variety of things.
However, luckly, like the rest of the universe, life has a simple and consistent structure, and so there is one underlying 'ultimate intent' that guides all actions.
Historically, science has called this simply "natural selection", "Darwinian evolution", "passing on DNA", or "survival of the fittest".
This has always seemed confusing for a lot of people to grasp, so we've broken it into 2 Types, that hopefully make it easier:
Environmental Dominance (Physical Fitness & Well-Being of its self)
Imagined Environmental Dominance (Informational Fitness & Well-Being its self)
Environmental Dominance
This is closer to the classic 'natural selection' and Darwinian evolution, which don't necessarily predict individual behaviors, but rather how well something performs in their environment (ie. the outcomes of that behavior).
So, this involves only 2 variables:
The physical qualities of something
How they actually perform in their environment (how well they 'fit'... 'fit-ness')
This can be equated to standard 'performance metrics' for athletes, computer chip speeds, facial recognition programs, whatever.
It's always a performer, and an area of performance. If you can find a performer that 'fit's an area of performance / environment well, you can also find other areas / environments where the don't perform well.
Classic examples are a fish in water or a monkey in a tree. Each is well-fitted for their environment, but poorly fitted for the other.
The biological imperative, the inescapable programming of our biology, is ultimately to achieve environmental dominance. Survival is implicit, since you cannot be dominant if you don't exist.
Now, there's an incredibly large amount of variations that a creature can be, and an even wider number of environmental conditions they can face.
But, in all of them, our primary goal isn't simply to survive, but to dominate.
However, behavior is not always in line with this. Which is where the second version comes into play.
It also helps expand the definition of 'self', to make the equation of dominance and behavior simpler.
Imagined Environmental Dominance
Now we've already
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