What if Judas didn't do it?

[Angrboda]

There's a Ted talk in which the presenter argues that "realism" or accuracy of perception takes a back seat to how our impulses shaped by perception lead to biological reproduction. I don't know that he outright says that we systematically misperceive reality, but that seems the gist. If that's the case, how would we know that Bel isn't a cat or some other absurdity. There seems some necessary poisoning of the well from which we drink our thoughts about objective reality. We'd like to believe that we can reliably bin things that aren't objectively true, but it's not entirely clear upon what foundation our confidence rests. If Descartes was right in asserting that the only thing we can be certain of is "cogito ergo sum," and I have doubts about that, then it's not clear how confident we can be of objective reality. It's probably true that no theory of knowledge can survive too much skepticism, but the resulting Goldilocks problem abandons us to a philosophical pragmatism that seems more emotionally based than rational.