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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the perception-is-all-there-is. dept.

Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman argues that evolution has cloaked us in a perceptional virtual reality. For our own good.

The idea that we can't perceive objective reality in totality isn't new. We know everyone comes installed with cognitive biases and ego defense mechanisms. Our senses can be tricked by mirages and magicians. And for every person who sees a duck, another sees a rabbit.

But Hoffman's hypothesis, which he wrote about in a recent issue of New Scientist, takes it a step further. He argues our perceptions don't contain the slightest approximation of reality; rather, they evolved to feed us a collective delusion to improve our fitness.

Using evolutionary game theory, Hoffman and his collaborators created computer simulations to observe how "truth strategies" (which see objective reality as is) compared with "pay-off strategies" (which focus on survival value). The simulations put organisms in an environment with a resource necessary to survival but only in Goldilocks proportions.

Consider water. Too much water, the organism drowns. Too little, it dies of thirst. Between these extremes, the organism slakes its thirst and lives on to breed another day.

Truth-strategy organisms who see the water level on a color scale — from red for low to green for high — see the reality of the water level. However, they don't know whether the water level is high enough to kill them. Pay-off-strategy organisms, conversely, simply see red when water levels would kill them and green for levels that won't. They are better equipped to survive.

"Evolution ruthlessly selects against truth strategies and for pay-off strategies," writes Hoffman. "An organism that sees objective reality is always less fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees fitness pay-offs. Seeing objective reality will make you extinct."

Since humans aren't extinct, the simulation suggests we see an approximation of reality that shows us what we need to see, not how things really are.

Meanwhile, European researchers say Objective reality may not exist. At least, on the subatomic scale.


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:37PM (5 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:37PM (#951163) Journal

    And when does office politics turn out well? When projects succeed, it's in spite of the politicking. The team was able to keep a lid on it. Every case of politics getting the upper hand that I've experienced ended disastrously-- the entire team deluding themselves to the max, until fired or laid off, project cancelled, contract not renewed, or the ultimate, the money runs out. Most of the time it's bitter, with everyone blaming everyone else.

    You maybe do need a Goldilocks amount of delusional thinking to start a business or large project. The Goldilocks amount must be pretty small, only a little more than zero.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:32PM (4 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:32PM (#951286) Journal

    Turn our well for who?

    The manager who can sell the project is often (usually?) rewarded, even if the project fails.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:34PM (3 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:34PM (#951481) Journal

      Yes, I was in one of those. The project wasn't even as good as a trainwreck, since nothing got beyond the concept stage. It was all fighting over what to do, and not actually ever doing anything. For fear of making the others look bad, anyone who actually tried to do something got sabotaged, first by having their notions shredded, and if that didn't stop them, then by literally erasing their hard drives. Needed those computers for another purpose. Sorry? Why no, not sorry, that's your fault for not following the plan (that was just altered this morning). Oh, backups? That's not allowed, you know. No flash drives allowed on the premises. And, Hell No to data transfers off site.

      Management blamed all the peons and fired the lot. Didn't work, the customer left anyway, and the middle management was next to fall. Only the big boss at the top survived the fiasco. He was actually promoted to VP. But don't think he got off lightly, no. He was so stressed he developed some kind of skin condition that manifested as a terrible rash all over-- face, arms, hands, and bald pate on top. In the final meeting in which all was lost, he made a total ass of himself, tried to snow everyone with insultingly trivial nonsense a 3rd grader would see through, and was mercilessly attacked and ripped to pieces, like a bleeding whale surrounded by sharks going into a feeding frenzy. When the meeting ended, he tried to soothe his hurt by viciously snarling at a few of his peons for not having done more. Not that that could possibly remove the stench of his incompetence. To the contrary. I wouldn't call that exactly rewarding, no.

      • (Score: 1) by weirsbaski on Friday January 31 2020, @10:47AM (2 children)

        by weirsbaski (4539) on Friday January 31 2020, @10:47AM (#951720)

        Yes, I was in one of those. The project wasn't even as good as a trainwreck, since nothing got beyond the concept stage. It was all fighting over what to do, and not actually ever doing anything. For fear of making the others look bad, anyone who actually tried to do something got sabotaged, first by having their notions shredded, and if that didn't stop them, then by literally erasing their hard drives. Needed those computers for another purpose. Sorry? Why no, not sorry, that's your fault for not following the plan (that was just altered this morning). Oh, backups? That's not allowed, you know. No flash drives allowed on the premises. And, Hell No to data transfers off site.

        Management blamed all the peons and fired the lot. Didn't work, the customer left anyway, and the middle management was next to fall. Only the big boss at the top survived the fiasco. He was actually promoted to VP. But don't think he got off lightly, no. He was so stressed he developed some kind of skin condition that manifested as a terrible rash all over-- face, arms, hands, and bald pate on top. In the final meeting in which all was lost, he made a total ass of himself, tried to snow everyone with insultingly trivial nonsense a 3rd grader would see through, and was mercilessly attacked and ripped to pieces, like a bleeding whale surrounded by sharks going into a feeding frenzy. When the meeting ended, he tried to soothe his hurt by viciously snarling at a few of his peons for not having done more. Not that that could possibly remove the stench of his incompetence. To the contrary. I wouldn't call that exactly rewarding, no.

        I'm not replying to this post specifically, just to the larger-than-expected number of posts calling out some serious industry dysfunction. Where the heck have y'all been working? And are horror stories like the above a common theme? I've been working in tech for >20 years now, and the worst I've seen is someone resigning, and allegedly stealing the graphics card from his desktop box on his way out. Have I just been lucky so far?

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 31 2020, @01:01PM

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday January 31 2020, @01:01PM (#951738) Journal

          I've tried asking fellow workers how common this kind of dysfunction is in IT, and it was about 50-50 or 40-60. Expect a wide margin of error because of the small sample size.

          A bit more than half of IT worker were much like you-- in the same position for over a decade, in a functioning environment with a large majority of reasonable people. There are always a few bad apples, but they can't do much, and have to behave themselves. If you have a job in such a happy situation, keep it!

          The rest were in dysfunctional environments. When people are stressed and scared-- scared of losing their jobs, losing that paycheck and seeing their lives fall apart, things can very easily turn ugly. When management announces there will be massive layoffs, that every small team is going to be downsized by one or two members, there will be blood on the floor right away because the desperate won't wait for the hammer to fall, and quickly start trying to cut their fellows' throats. Getting another job is highly uncertain, better to fight for the one you have.

          You also have management who really believes that slaves are more reliable than free workers. And that by holding guns to people's heads, the stressed and threatened-to-the-max can reach deep down and perform miracles. Slavedriving managers don't put it that way, but that's what it amounts to. Lacking formal, legal mechanisms to enslave workers, they use more fragile ways, such as pressuring workers to get themselves financially upsidedown. Create a condition of financial indentureship. I know of several cases in which a manager leaned on an employee to buy a new car and even a new house. I've heard them evaluate individual workers from a viewpoint of how likely they were to quit, how big of a "flight risk" they were.

          It's difficult to continue to do competent work when desperate managers are screaming threats at you, demanding that you go faster, do even more, and expressing their doubts about your competence, judgment, honesty, work ethic, etc. Every least misstep is seized upon as evidence that you're just screwing around. If you refuse to get reckless and cut corners that should not be cut, because, you know, it's extremely dangerous or illegal or both and more, they complain bitterly about that too. They won't themselves walk off a cliff, but you're disobedient and traitorous if you refuse their orders to walk over the edge yourself. They will gaslight the hell out of you, if you let them. Takes practice to build up a thick skin to take that kind of crap, and strong nerves to call them on their threats and wild exaggerations, thereby putting your job on the line. You also simply must have some reserves of cash to handle the abrupt loss of your job, should matters come to that. There are situations best handled by simply walking out, or they may follow through and fire you no matter how much that act is the equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot.

          As just one example, one time at a company with which I am familiar, a bad problem was discovered in the product. The manager, Joe, rushed to see the chief engineer, Merle, and actually asked him to "stop the line". Stop all production of product, until this problem is fixed. Idle an entire factory and its dozens of workers, indefinitely. Merle handled that one by throwing the request back in Joe's face. "Joe wants to stop the line!" Ah, but Joe didn't. Joe wanted Merle to stop the line. When Merle put it that way, Joe backed down hurriedly. While the problem was bad, it wasn't so bad as to justify a shutdown. The units produced with the flaw were fixed in the field, or held in storage at the factory until fixed.

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 31 2020, @03:41PM

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday January 31 2020, @03:41PM (#951798) Journal

          > Where the heck have y'all been working?

          Oh yes, the trainwreck was a gig as a defense contractor. The military boys are difficult customers. They want powerful weapons that won't be used against them. They want to live by the sword and not die by the sword. They want unbreakable security that they can break. Sometimes they want stuff that looks good but they don't really care if it is good. If it is never used, doesn't matter if the quality is nonexistent. Meanwhile, a lot of people get to collect paychecks, don't have to fight, and happily vote to keep the incumbent politician who arranged the whole thing. However, that last is actually not that common. They know they're being watched for just such fraud and waste, are therefore pretty sensitive about even the appearance of same, and tend to overcompensate by demanding to the extreme. Not to mention that when they are actually called on to fight, they want shit that works.

          Couple of other dysfunctional companies were edgy IT startups, one with pie in the sky thinking that didn't, of course, pan out, and the other an unfocused mess in which the boss too quickly reached for the whips when the going got tough. Cheated everyone of their pay. Fired one guy, making the firing retroactive to 3 months prior, to get all the back pay they owed him off their books. Highly unethical and illegal, but what can you do about it? That's one of those in which, if you don't like working for free, you need to pay attention to the company's finances, and get out before they run out of money. Significantly, if they suddenly change from being relatively open about the finances and go dark on all that, get out. If you're still there when they fail to make payroll, don't listen to their appeals that the turnaround is coming real soon now, if only you will continue to work for free for just one more month, just one more, and then oops, need a second month to secure that revenue that's so close they can taste it, and then, well, there's been a delay, but if you will just put in a 3rd month, they promise they'll be able to pay you. On the other hand, if you quit now, the company definitely won't make it and you won't see a thing.