We evolved to spread our genes better, yes, but how does perceiving reality as best as we can follow from that? Both things are kinda orthogonal I'd say.

> Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.

Everything ends, anyway. So at worst it'd be a dead end just like everything else :P And concepts like "chair" or "puredemo" or anything we talk or think about are really more concepts than tangible, discrete entities, you might also say they're made up. They can be useful shorthands, but when they take on a life of their own in our minds, when we think the symbol is the thing, that's where things get kinda pathetic, and not rarely it turns into a sort of pyramid scheme where we have to make up more shit to defend the delusions we already are invested in. Considering neuroscience, I'd even say we are willfully overriding what we discover because we like the delusion of ego better.

And considering what humanity "in aggregate" is up to, how we pollute and destroy, I would say the latest word in the effectiveness of ego to "survive" isn't spoken yet. It's not like there is this alternate Earth where people pay attention to people like Buddha or Erich Fromm we can compare ours to.

To me saying "we" have evolved to be this way for obvious reaons is like saying "this person is a heroin addict because that's obviously the best way get them going each day", without comparing them to a non-junkie in earnest. If you think not being possessed by ego means just meditating all day or doing nothing, you're wrong, from what I understand and experienced it just means doing and being without having a fake narrative in your head about it you consider to be real and super cereal. Being deeply content and at peace feels great, too, and compared to that short bursts of "ego-based" happiness seem very flimsy.

Let's say that it is an "intuitive" way to reach the same conclusions one reaches after excessive study of religions, philosophy, physics, and then social psychology to explain religions and social conditioning.

Ultimate reality is realization (a glimpse of) the fact, that the ego is not the self, and even intellect is not the self, that most of our perceptions are socially/culturally conditioned, beginning with our spoken language in the first place, and that there is no self apart from that conditioning.

Not necessarly, now our enviroment evolves much quicker than us, so sometimes our "scripts" don't tell us the best solution to nowadays problems(e.g. overeating because now you have food, tomorrow who knows).

Your mind can go off-rails, being able to slow things down (if it's more than imaginary feeling of my self) is good. You don't need everything on every time to survive. Like sleep.

Our senses does not try to perceive "regular ol' reality" precisely most of the time. As you say: our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection, but what that selects for is not precise determination of "regular ol' reality" but a narrative that is severely biased because it is economical and safer than trying to be precise.

Here are some thoughts for you:

- Have you ever walked through an area and looked at everything with fresh eyes, only to walk through it again later and have it look and feel entirely different? On second observation, you are relying severely on patterns and actually precisely observing what your eyes see as opposed to what you expect becomes harder with each repetition. You will walk the path, and afterwards insist that you did see x,y, and z, even though you may not even have looked in their direction. If you try to pay close attention, you will often notice the shortcuts: Things look different again. Unfamiliar. Details appear that you never noticed.

- Have you ever tried to draw an object from memory, and then put the same object in front of you and study each line and draw it again? Often you will see people totally change drawing style from various degree of stylized, abstracted shapes that can very well represent a quite accurate outcome, but idealized, with lines way too straight and clean compared to real life, to chaotic lines and patterns that give a far more accurate impression despite less precision. But the first view is often closer to how we see the world when we don't purposefully pay close attention to the details.

(one of my favourite examples of how poorly people pay attention, is to get a group of people to draw a sunset over the sea, and see whether the let the reflected rays of the sun start wide near the horizon and narrow, stay the same width, or start narrow and widen; "everyone" has seen sunsets with reflected light yet people so often get it wrong if they have not paid close attention to it before drawing it)

- Most of us have falsely recognised motion; believed we saw someone. Our perception is highly targeted at pattern recognition: It is safer to see a predator too much than a predator too little. So we see predators that are not there.

- How often do you notice your blind spot? We rarely do, because it gets "filled in", or "closed" in a way that means it takes close attention to notice that our apparent unobstructed field of view has a big empty spot.

- What do you physically sense right now? How long is your "now"? The shorter "gap" you try to sense, the more you will notice your sensations flitting back and forth, flickering, as you scan your "inputs" or not, rather than present some unified, lasting view. The longer the gap, the more your sensations blur into eachother. Suddenly we "feel cold" rather than observe that our toes are cold and there's a cold wind hitting our face, but our torso actually feels warm, for example.

This is what seeing reality is about: Paying attention and at least occasionally seeing past the distortions our mind adds when we're not really paying attention. We abstract, interpret, reinterpret, extrapolate, and outright invent stuff all the time that we carelessly accept as "reality" most of the day.

Some take it further and believe they can beyond our ordinary physical reality; I don't believe in that. But the inaccuracy of our perception is pretty much undeniable, and the sensations and experiences achievable just by spending time actually trying to glimpse our actual physical reality, and poking at the boundaries of our ordinary perception, are profound.