As they say "ignorance is bliss", until it isn't.

My friend too philosophical and metaphysical. IMO, the answer is much more simple than that. The great insights and advances you allude to, were great, but not unprecedented or unexpected.

Most knowledge is on a continuum. Multiple people are on the same continuum stream. Some arrive there sooner than others. Perhaps due to heightened intelligence, fortune of being in the right place at the right time, or other unknowable, but explicable causes. Regardless, these individuals must have been a receptive vessel or they would not have made the next step to greatness.

One example is Darwin. Darwin much influenced by Charles Lyell and Carolis Linnaes. His opportunity was living in an age where exploration and Natural Histiry was on the ascendance. His gift was his superb power of observation and pulling disparate pieces of evidence together and fashioning them into a larger, more encompassing picture. But Darwin was not alone. A few years following Darwin, Wallace returned from a similar circum-global trip. He came to the same conclusions as Darwin without ever seeing Darwin's work, as Darwin had not published yet. In fact Darwin and Wallace presented on the same night to the Royal Society of London. Had Wallace presented first we might be saying Wallacism instead of Darwinism.

The point being, that most significant discoveries are part of a larger intellectual trend that is moving in that direction already. All built upon the knowledge of scientists that came before. Of course it takes a receptive and compatible vessel to recieve the new information and move it to the next level.

The same is true for Einstein, Newton, and others attributed with great discoveries. This is not to diminish the uniqueness and intellectual perspicacity of these great individuals. But it's not some ethereal secret of an unknown force or altered reality. Simply a special person with the acumen to understand what was before him/her andmove forward with it.

@t1nick

“But it's not some ethereal secret of an unknown force or altered reality. Simply a special person with the acumen to understand what was before him/her andmove forward with it.”

I was not meaning to imply such a thing, that special advanced people learn some ethereal secret. But flashes of insight come from somewhere, and those flashes would not come except for deep conscious awareness, a phenomenon of profound mystery.

Einstein has this to say:

“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.”

@WilliamFleming

IMO those flashes of insight are no so inexplicable as one would think. Take a logical, aware person with some scientific training that is skilled at observation and recognizing patterns and put them in a situation where they use thes cskills.

Place them in a time when knowledge has lead the field to a point where previous work has laid the foundation of understanding and ready for a significant advancement. Movement to the next level remains within reach through good scientific procedures and observation.

Provide them this accessible knowledge and place them in a situation whereby they can apply this knowledge and be able to freely experiment with this knowledge, realizing that they are not the only participant engaged in this endeavor and activity. Probabilities tells us that one of these individuals will make the necessary connections and advance the knowledge to the next level.

Sure its conscious awareness, but not so mysterious as a flash of insight that comes from out of the blue. It is part of a logical continuum whose foundation is lain and it becomes the next logical extension.

I am curious . .do you hold fast to this
"Our perception of reality is just an illusion, and I think the illusion is less real than a shadow world"
When crossing a congested roadway?
When deciding to leave your house by the door or third floor window?
When deciding to eat food (if it is an illusion why bother right?)

You are as faithful to your idea of Maya as most are to deities.

@Davesnothere I’m not saying there’s no underlying reality. To survive we have to follow the rules and methods that we have. If you are playing chess you have to obey the rules and watch your moves or you’ll get killed quickly. But we know that chess is an arbitrary reality. In our daily lives, what we experience are symbolic icons only. A map of Texas is not Texas.

In moments of contemplation we can enjoy the luxury of metaphysics, but there’s not time for such thoughts normally.

Donald Hoffman explains it well IMO.

@WilliamFleming I think illusion is a very poor choice of term for that, as it lends it the credence of being completely false, which could not be true or we would not be talking at all, we would never have survived the evolutionary process.

I do not see that same data the same way, at all. YES, we are all living in the presentation of our minds, what data it gets from the environment is rendered to our mind as perceptions. That does not make the perceptons mirages, or illusions. It makes it a model, a highly functional model of our environment.

This whole line of thought seems like a deepity to me.

@Davesnothere I had to look up “deepity”

Maybe “illusion” is not the best word, but I really don’t think that our perception is a model of reality. According to physics reality is made out of quantum fields. Have you ever seen a quantum field?

Hoffman uses the analogy of a computer screen desktop. Click on an icon and certain things will happen, but the icons are not models of anything. The icon for agnostic.com is a stylish, flowing “A” that looks like a University of Alabama insignia. Agnostic.com itself is an online forum that looks nothing like that symbol, and is in a totally different and higher order of existence.

@WilliamFleming " According to physics reality is made out of quantum fields. Have you ever seen a quantum field?"
The same is true of Molecular reality, atomic reality, and sub atomic reality. Since we evolved to survive IN this reality, what was of benefit to see and survive evolved.
Simply because we cannot sit here and see the globe does not mean the world is flat, because we cannot see germs does not mean they do not exist, or worse "nothing else is real at all".

A model is not an illusion, an illusion is like a mirage, a FALSE appearance. I would not call our model false, or we would never have survived.
It is an incomplete Model, for if we could see the quantum, we would have likely been eaten by Lions while distracted by the awe of that.

Icons are symbols. They are not tangible things but representations of a program. In our reality Lions have teeth, if those were an "illusion" Lions would starve. I do not think that makes Quantm reality "valid, true and real" and gross material reality therefore an Illusion.

It means we only percieve a part of reality, and that imperfectly.

Imagine inverting that Idea. A person who only sees the quantum, but not gross reality. Would they not be in an institution screaminng "I'm not insane! You are all blind!"

@WilliamFleming Perhaps you and I are both standing outside the cave, but looking in different caves from that psoition, and disagreeing on what we see?

@Davesnothere A model is not an illusion unless you mistake the model for reality. How many people realize that the world they perceive is nothing but imaginary symbolism?

You say that icons are not “things”, but according to physics, the concept of a thing is merely a convenience of thought that helps us survive. Particles of matter turn out not to be things but interactions. Space as we think of it is only a mode of thought. Time doesn’t exist at all.

The imagining of symbolic icons is the very reason that we are able to survive. Our sense-world is imaginary, and if you take the images to be real you are deluded.

“As Wheeler put it, “No space. No time. Heaven did not hand down the word ‘time’. Man invented it. . . . If there are problems with the concept of time, they are of our own creation . . . as Einstein put it ‘Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live.’ ”30”

— The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
[a.co]

@WilliamFleming "You say that icons are not “things”, but according to physics, the concept of a thing is merely a convenience of thought that helps us survive."

I see two realities in our shared reality
Conceptual reality (the land of dreams and imagination)
and
Practical reality (the physical, tactile reality we can present)

All things exist in conceptual reality, dragons, faries, Gods of all sorts, intergalactic ship and jedi.
They do not exist in practical reality, there is no evidence for them.

It seems to me that you have conflated one with the other to some extent. If it was complete you would be dead, because you would disallow our models as illusion.

This whole mode of thought seems to me a big wish think, where the idea of things being grander, somehow connected, somehow eternal via conciousness is the hope, for which these notions seem to you to hold water.

They do not to me.

It makes me wonder if your inputing a value you want into the data you see, because you like that idea.

@Davesnothere I don’t think I am doing any such thing. (Of course if I thought that was what I was doing I would quit)

All I’m doing is quoting scientific opinion and proven facts, accepted by physicists since the days of Faraday and Maxwell. Your practical reality is good and useful for survival, but just a small amount of contemplation reveals it to be an imagined world divorced from ultimate reality. Such things as fairies, dragons, etc. are even farther removed from reality, being only dreams of dreams.

Something is being detected, but it is radically unlike what we imagine, and its nature is beyond our wildest dreams.

@WilliamFleming This what I am on about friend
" just a small amount of contemplation reveals it to be an imagined world divorced from ultimate reality."

Exactly what is ultimate reality? A scientific unknown, or your ideas from hinduism?
Why do you assume there is an "ultimate" reality rather than just a reality?
"Something is being detected, but it is radically unlike what we imagine, and its nature is beyond our wildest dreams."
SO?

Because we have discovered Quantum, dark matter, dark energy . . .SO What? WHY does that imply an "ULTIMATE" at all. As we sit here we do not see many spectrums of light, but we survive because we do not need to see them to survive.

MORE evidence for anything does not indicate any "ultimate"
That is a philosophical idea, that if there is less there must be more, and if there is more there must be a set of all. Which we cannot now percieve, nor do we need to to survive.

So what is the actual value of such a line of reasoning other than how it makes you feel about reality?

Why asssume ultimate equals better? If ultimate is totality, complete, and we could see it, we would be blinded by ultraviolet and see less.

So I fail to see why you assume some ultimate, which is both more complete and better than how we percieve now.

@Davesnothere

“Exactly what is ultimate reality? A scientific unknown, or your ideas from hinduism?
Why do you assume there is an "ultimate" reality rather than just a reality?
"Something is being detected, but it is radically unlike what we imagine, and its nature is beyond our wildest dreams."
SO?“

It sounds like we agree. You are absolutely correct—there’s only reality itself and the “ultimate” label is redundant. The aspect of reality that is NOT ultimate is only an illusional dream-like world of symbolic icons. SO?...If we agree on that why are we arguing?

“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.” Albert Einstein

@WilliamFleming "It sounds like we agree. You are absolutely correct—there’s only reality itself and the “ultimate” label is redundant. The aspect of reality that is NOT ultimate is only an illusional dream-like world of symbolic icons. SO?...If we agree on that why are we arguing?"

LINGUISTICS -- the ever changing nature of words, both as to a definition and as to how they are used, the same reason we spend so damn long on terms in every Philosophical conversation. The way you presented your arguement made it seem to me other than how you intended it.

and were off . . .

True, very similar allagory.

@t1nick Similar, not the same. In the elephant tale it is their blindness and the size of the elephant which causes confusion.
Thus it is a metaphor both for humans and socities lacking the full breadth of knowledge to make a truly sound judgement on reality.
In the Cave, it is society which teaches the youth to stay in the cave and watch the moving pictures, and it is only those who question society, who think critically, that are able to remove the chains and leave the cave (Society), and thereby see beyond society to the wider reality of the world.

@Davesnothere

True. Good clarification.

Both are blind. Elephant by physical impairment, cave by circumstances. The projections on the cave wall are artificially enlarged due to the fire creating shadow projections of captors. So percieved to be giants. Captors do not have a true feeling for the actual dimensions of their captors or captors real world.

Then when you tire of philosophy, turn your reading to Stephan Jay Gould for an evolutionary scientific discussion of alttuism.

Its makes for an interesting lesson with students. Of course you can't bind them up so they can't move (darn, lol), but you do a rough illustration and makes for a good dialogue.

Thanks. I have a copy of the Republic, but I'll take a look and see how wiki interlrets.