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dmckeever's picture

Is hallucinating evolutionarily beneficial?

In response to many of the posts here, I am not disturbed by the fact that we are not experiencing the world as it "truly exists" because frankly, I am existing happily without that knowledge. I am able to interact with others sufficiently and appreciate the world to an extent with which I am happy. But, I too am curious as to why our brain creates images and fills in gaps in the world that exists. How is it beneficial to our existence? There must be some evolutionary benefit/significance for it to have survived so many years of development and change. Maybe everyone should think of it this way: our bodies generally know what is good for themselves, whether we agree or not. So, maybe the world as it is is not something we can handle. Maybe there is too much input for our nervous system to take on and this act of creating almost hallucinations is actually a filtering process. Maybe, just maybe, we aren't meant to see reality because we just can't take it. And maybe, we can be happy with what we know and what we have because "why fix what ain't broke?"

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