Why Humans Cannot See Reality Directly — and Why Games Replace Truth

This paper argues that humans and institutions do not fail to track reality because of bias, ignorance, or moral weakness, but because reality exceeds what bounded systems can stably evaluate and coordinate around. Under finite energy, time, and measurement constraints, selection must occur before full evaluation is possible. As a result, direct routing by truth becomes infeasible and is lawfully replaced by proxy systems. We formalize this process as invariant substitution under measurement opacity and show that when evaluation cannot close at decision speed, systems admit only two stable regimes: proxy capture, in which compressed proxy metrics are optimized to restore stability, and vertigo, in which proxy refusal produces persistent instability. No third stable equilibrium exists under opacity. Restoration requires structural changes to visibility and correction, not moral reform. The account provides a unified explanation for status hierarchies, institutional persistence, narrative dominance, and contemporary concerns about artificial intelligence, reframing them as consequences of bounded selection rather than failures of reason or ethics.