Our Brains Run Caveman Software

Philosophy students learn about "necessary beings"—entities that must exist, that ground all of reality. Theologians claim God exists necessarily. Metaphysicians argue that certain truths have to be true in all possible worlds.

It's all wishful thinking dressed up in technical language.

Consider nothingness. Not empty space—actual nothingness. No matter, no energy, no space, no time, no laws of physics. In that state, there are no rules. Nothing enforces "ex nihilo nihil fit"—from nothing, nothing comes. That principle only describes how our universe operates. It's not a metaphysical constraint on whether universes can exist at all.

So there's no logical problem with something springing into existence uncaused. The universe doesn't need a reason to exist. Causation is a pattern we observe within reality, not a requirement governing reality itself.

When someone asks "why is there something rather than nothing," they're smuggling in assumptions. They're treating this as a question with an answer, implying there's some framework outside reality that could explain reality. But there is no outside. "Something vs. nothing" exhausts all possibilities. You can't step beyond that to ask why one obtained instead of the other.

Reality just is. It's not necessary. It's not caused. It bottoms out at brute facts—things that obtain without explanation. The demand for something deeper is a psychological need, not a logical requirement.

The comfort people derive from necessity arguments is transparent. An uncaused universe means no ultimate purpose, no cosmic plan, no guarantee things make sense. So they invent frameworks where God necessarily exists, where meaning is built into the fabric of reality, where their existence serves some grand design.

But comfort isn't truth. The universe doesn't care about your need for existential reassurance.

This matters because these necessity arguments don't stay in philosophy seminars. They become justifications for moral hierarchies, political structures, who deserves rights and who doesn't. When people claim their beliefs reflect necessary truths rather than contingent preferences, they're claiming authority they don't have.

Your caveman software craves certainty, purpose, cosmic order. It evolved in an environment where believing the chief speaks for the gods promoted group cohesion. That software is still running. It's generating the same outputs—just now with more elaborate rationalizations.

Your brain was designed for tracking prey across savannas, reading subtle social cues in a small community, and surviving immediate physical threats. Instead, you're using it to manage email, navigate corporate hierarchies, and process information from thousands of weak social ties.

The earliest known cave paintings made by our species—Homo sapiens—are more than 40,000 years old. If we could give those ancient humans the benefit of modern nutrition, hygiene, and medical care, they would look just like us.

But we don't just share their physical appearance. More importantly, we share the same type of brain. The software their brains were running is the same software we're running today. That caveman software served them well. They lived in tribes of at most 150 people—small enough that everyone knew each other, large enough to thrive together in a harsh world.

We're still running that same caveman software. But we live in a radically different environment, and we're maladapted to it.

Anxiety saved our ancestors from lions. They had to assess whether a rustle in the grass was just the wind or a deadly threat. That survival software is still running in us, vigilantly scanning for danger. But it's not saving us from lions anymore—it's causing us to stress out over spreadsheets and email notifications.

Forty millennia is an enormous span of time compared to a human life. But it's only a flash in evolutionary terms. Those prehistoric cave painters are separated from us by just 2,000-3,000 generations.

And here's the real tragedy: this environment we're maladapted to is our own making. It's the society humans chose to build for themselves.