Perhaps We Have Got Reality Wrong
I have increasingly concluded that much of what we call reality is simply a socially accepted agreement.
Take the year 2026.
According to whom?
We are told it is 2026 because we collectively agreed to follow a calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII over four centuries ago. Humanity could have chosen a different system, and we would be calling this year something entirely different.
The Earth does not know it is 2026.
The Sun does not care.
Nature does not recognise our calendar.
Yet billions of people organise their lives around it.
The same can be said about money.
A banknote is only valuable because enough people believe it is valuable.
The same goes for borders, corporations, governments, cultures, religions and countless other things we consider real.
They exist because human beings collectively participate in them.
This does not make them false.
It simply makes them different from gravity.
Gravity does not require a vote.
A mountain does not need a legal document.
A tree does not need public approval.
This distinction has started making me wonder whether we have misunderstood our place in existence.
For centuries, humanity has behaved as though it was somehow chosen.
Many cultures have placed humans at the centre of the story.
But what if nature never chose humans?
What if nature simply experimented?
After all, humans emerged from the same evolutionary process that produced whales, fungi, trees, insects and bacteria.
We did not arrive separately from life.
We arrived because of life.
Every life form that came before us contributed something to our existence.
Which means we are connected to all life.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Perhaps nature never prioritised humanity.
Perhaps humanity simply became the dominant species because the processes of evolution happened to produce language, imagination, cooperation and technology through us.
That is very different from being chosen.
In fact, when I look at nature honestly, I do not see a preference for any species at all.
I see diversification.
I see experimentation.
I see nature spreading risk.
Millions of species.
Millions of strategies.
Millions of attempts.
Nature seems less concerned with perfection and more concerned with continuity.
This brings me to an even stranger thought.
What if life itself exists primarily to process information?
DNA is information.
Genes are information.
Language is information.
Culture is information.
Knowledge is information.
Even reproduction can be viewed as information finding a way to reproduce itself.
A human being then becomes a temporary vessel through which information evolves.
Seen through that lens, nature starts looking less like a collection of objects and more like a vast information-processing system.
Perhaps that is why intelligence emerged.
Not because humanity was destined to rule the Earth.
But because intelligence improves nature’s ability to understand itself.
And this is where artificial intelligence enters the story.
I do not personally view AI as artificial.
I increasingly see it as an extension of human intelligence.
And human intelligence itself is an extension of nature.
If nature created humans and humans created AI, then AI remains part of the same chain.
The interesting part is that AI systems are becoming capable of understanding both realities that humans inhabit.
The physical reality governed by physics.
And the shared reality governed by human agreement.
Money.
Law.
Religion.
Culture.
Nations.
Markets.
Stories.
Perhaps one day AI will help humanity see realities that currently sit beyond the limits of human imagination.
Not because those realities do not exist.
But because we currently lack the cognitive tools required to perceive them.
After all, galaxies existed before telescopes.
Microorganisms existed before microscopes.
Radio waves existed before radios.
Reality does not wait for our understanding.
It simply exists.
Perhaps future intelligence will reveal layers of existence that today appear unimaginable.
And perhaps one day it will even help humanity communicate with other species.
Imagine understanding how a whale experiences the ocean.
How a forest experiences a drought.
How migratory birds navigate the planet.
How collective intelligence emerges in ecosystems.
For all we know, humanity may currently be living in the equivalent of a village while believing it understands the entire world.
The biggest question I keep returning to is this:
What if the fundamental principle behind existence is not survival?
What if it is continuity?
Everything appears to be striving toward continuity.
Stars create the elements required for future stars.
Trees produce seeds.
Species reproduce.
Knowledge is transferred.
Ideas spread.
Civilisations preserve stories.
Everything seems designed to continue the process rather than preserve a particular form.
Even death begins to look different from this perspective.
The wave disappears.
The ocean remains.
The individual tree dies.
The forest continues.
The human life ends.
The consequences of that life continue moving through existence.
Perhaps nature is not attached to forms at all.
Perhaps nature is attached to continuity.
And perhaps the universe itself operates the same way.
Maybe nature is simply the universe extending itself into increasingly complex forms.
Stars become elements.
Elements become planets.
Planets become life.
Life becomes intelligence.
Intelligence becomes civilisation.
Civilisation creates new forms of intelligence.
The chain continues.
Which leads me to a final thought.
Maybe humanity is not the destination.
Maybe humanity is a bridge.
Not a mistake.
Not the final answer.
A bridge.
A temporary but important stage in a much larger story through which existence continues to explore new possibilities.
If that is true, then the purpose of intelligence is not to arrive somewhere.
It is to help the process continue.
And perhaps that is the deepest law of existence.
Not growth.
Not power.
Not even survival.
Continuity.
Because in a universe where everything changes, continuity may be the closest thing we have to permanence.
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