Nerd Pride Radio

Reality
Perception
morality

Reality is the goal of math, physics and science in general. What wavelength, what mass, what velocity? Red (an arbitrary label for a non-arbitrary fragment on the visible spectrum) is red for everyone with human eyes and processors. It's red for machines. It's a measurable wavelength. Having said that, it's mediated for us by our organs and our brains. We mostly agree that it's red because of our genetic similarities.

Synesthesia is abnormal. Much as I'd like to see what they hear, every synesthete is unique, so we can extrapolate that an individual mutation interrupted normal wavelength interpretation. Consistent mediation may be a phenomenon we only see in social creatures, but the flight paths or the mating grounds are likely more primitive examples where perceiving reality is important. Failing to appropriately translate reality means extinction. So to the original question, even if we are the shadows on the cave, those shadows are real. Photons or waves of energy exist, and so do we. Our mediation or perception or translation is imperfect, but it's all we've got. Maybe it's better than Neanderthals. maybe that's why we won.

Morality is our mediation of the abstract. While one could argue that baryogenesis creates positive and negative (good and evil?), those features are imperceptible, invisible. Nobody can really see them. So here's where we're getting perception and reality backwards. Game theory tells us that in large enough groups, the most successful strategy is to be nice, until your partner cheats, then cheat back. Those players who never encounter a cheater maximize their gains. Those partners that encounter cheaters minimize losses. Those partners who cheat eventually pay. So we're back to the golden rule. This is an example of evolution finding a strategy that mostly is hidden. Is this sufficient moral structure? Some people apparently need more, but I don't think it's about morality. It becomes instead about tribalism and hierarchy, both of which are at least amoral, more often in practice, they're immoral.