Epistemology and Deep Evolutionary Time

 Knowledge would be easy if nobody lied.

 

 The species is called homo sapiens, the wise ape. This is incorrect. It should be called homo hypocritus, the deceiving ape.

 Homo sapiens have IQs much higher than what's needed for ecological dominance. Humans have huge brains due to a dynamic almost identical to the one causing moose to have huge antlers. It's like sexual selection, although not precisely that. Intraspecific competition. 

 At some point the homo genus obtained total ecological dominance. Random and therefore nonselective factors aside, the only significant cause of death was other members of homo. Generally, if your band could kill the next band over, it would have already done so. This means not only was all meaningful competition conspecific, it was members of your own band or family. Your band had a set territory and thus set food revenue, the only question was who it would be distributed to.

 With the advent of throwing, a hominoid generally couldn't relieve the pressure by killing his competitor and taking his food. Throwing means duels become nonstandard. Instead, the band would gang up and safely kill the would-be murderer. Preferentially deleting your own family members is generally not good for the spread of your genes, and consequently bands that executed murderers would flourish, while bands that broadly tolerated murder have all died out. Within the bands that flourished, some other way of defeating one's rival had to arise.

 Solution: lie. Homo hypocritus tricks his "friend" into unjustly handing over more than his share.

 Deadly throwing is known to be at least two million years old. (For perspective, fire and cooking is ~four million.) Ever since then, the primary conflict in the homo genus has been verbal. Two million years of selecting for the most deceptive liar, with only total destruction of the tribe (Communism) as a stop.

 Evolution has unlimited intelligence, but it is very slow. When a new problem arises, evolution reliably picks a terrible solution. Often as if it's deliberately choosing the very worst solution that can possibly be said to address the problem at all. Indeed that has happened in this case.

 Evolution solves the problem of liars using brute force computation. Sheer cognitive power. The individuals try to be smart enough to see through a lie, producing a linear hierarchy. Everyone smart can lie to everyone dumber, and nobody dumb can lie to anyone smarter. Everyone in the hierarchy is fully committed to lying. Every homo hypocritus society is less than an inch away from losing contact with physical reality entirely.

 No conscious human impulse considers physical truth. They are all focused on social truth. Everything that naturally seems plausible is only in reference to what will effectively defraud your conspecifics. Although this does focus your energy on successfully defrauding them, it also makes you vulnerable in turn. Anyone who understands what you find plausible can produce plausible rhetoric and fool you. You might even think they're helping you defraud those lower down in the cognitive hierarchy.

 Put another way, homo hypocritus is inherently uncomfortable with truth. The truth is the set of things which the homo can't use to defraud its conspecifics. Even the language itself is tuned for misdirection rather than clear and concise communication. ("Stoic." "Epicurean." "Dogmatic.")

 The truth is the set of things which reveal the lies by which homo hypocritus obtains his daily bread. He instinctively avoids the truth and instinctively attacks and shames anything which reliably leads to the truth. 

 Homo culture is about assembling a set of lies which nevertheless, by coincidence and accident, produce useful artifacts. E.g. planting seeds not because seeds grow but because the zodiac constellations need to be honoured through sacrifice of last year's grain or whatever. Truth is robust; lies are not, and yet homo consistently chooses to use lies as foundation for technology.

 Worse, homo hypocritus actively selects against those who dislike being lied to. The lies are ubiquitous and being fooled by high IQs is unavoidable. Getting stressed about it is counterproductive. Further, in addition to being able to trick you into giving them stuff, the high IQs can trick the rest of the tribe into shooting you to death if you notice the scam and complain.

 Result: You actively enjoy being lied to. Evolution's first solution actively encourages you to hunt for parasites and give them your blood. You demand lies and feel upset and deprived if you don't receive them, strongly motivating you to seek them out.

 If you want to know the truth, you must transcend humanity.
 Many religious traditions have deprecated the body, declaring it filthy and profane. This is because these religions are natural human behaviour. In other words, lies. They must declare up to be down, and black to be white. Inherently in conflict with physical reality, they instead elevate social reality.
The body is holy, and the natural mind is profane. The natural mind is the enemy.

 To learn epistemology is to wage war on the human mind and defeat it utterly.