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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: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:45PM (24 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:45PM (#951177)

    and we can name and communicate out perception between us with a reasonable degree of reliability

    That depends entirely on what you are perceiving, and which groups you are communicating between.

    If you are talking about perception of concrete measures like mass, length, etc. we - at least as a species - have settled on a fairly non-contentious set of standard measures that work for us; although, if you try to discuss something like sound intensity with a species like dolphin or beluga whales they are liable to swim away in a mixture of frustration and boredom with our simple ideas about the relevant dimensions of sound intensity.

    If you are talking about things that actually matter more in day to day social interactions, like integrity, leadership, and most important: the relative value of things - those are very much perception based quantities that have little agreement across even closely related different groups of humans.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:11PM (23 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:11PM (#951385) Journal

    If you are talking about things that actually matter more in day to day social interactions, like integrity, leadership, and most important: the relative value of things - those are very much perception based quantities that have little agreement across even closely related different groups of humans.

    I argue those are things that don't pertain to objective reality, being things totally outside the perception of any organism or technological construct one would be able to use.

    As such, they don't fall into the context of our discussion.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:37PM (22 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:37PM (#951405)

      I'd argue that the objective - subjective dividing line is, itself, subjective, and therefore it is not possible to strictly define the context of this, or any, discussion.

      being things totally outside the perception of any organism or technological construct one would be able to use.

      Ah, but... if you measure the amount of resources, time and effort devoted to measuring physically concrete things as opposed to measuring things like perception of value, personal affinity, etc. you should find that much more effort, energy and resources are expended on the latter.

      And, regardless of the inability of humans to file away a platinum rod or isotope of Cesium that serves as an absolute reference for monetary value (although gold did serve somewhat well for a couple of centuries), moral character, likability, etc. that has not stopped the species from placing even higher value on so-called quantities like: social fit in an organization, ability to judge character, influence peers and customers, etc. as well as building elaborate, if usually flawed, technological constructs with which to aggregate and evaluate these so-called measures. I have a report from a psychological testing center in Virginia which is paid thousands of dollars a day per person to execute exactly these kinds of evaluations.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:42PM (21 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:42PM (#951465) Journal

        I'd argue that the objective - subjective dividing line is, itself, subjective, and therefore it is not possible to strictly define the context of this, or any, discussion.

        Note that I didn't use 'objective', much less 'subjective'. I just used 'pertaining to objective reality'.
        Like in 'get rid of humans as observers, do those things still happen?'
        Like in 'Of course the bear still shits in the woods, even if there's nobody to peep on the act' - aka the 'principle of existence of an objective reality' - which is a postulate that Mr. Donald Hoffman still assume true at the base of his theories

        Ah, but... if you measure the amount of resources, time and effort devoted to measuring physically concrete things as opposed to measuring things like perception of value, personal affinity, etc. you should find that much more effort, energy and resources are expended on the latter.

        So... I see you decided to add a bit to these too :)
        Let me throw my two cents worth in the same beggars pan.

        And, regardless of the inability of humans to file away a platinum rod or isotope of Cesium that serves as an absolute reference for monetary value (although gold did serve somewhat well for a couple of centuries),

        I argue that "monetary value" is a mis-construct. The objective reality doesn't care that you received $0.02 to dig a hole, it's only the hole and the energy you spent in the process that matters.

        Sure, you can fall into the trap of saying "the value of the stuff I give you to blow the $0.02 hole in the ground is $x", but that information is useless in terms of the energy expenditure, time required to dig that hole, the effects that hole will have in the area it was created, etc. That monetary value measures nothing of the absolute reality, can tell nothing about the past evolution and offers no predictive value for the future.

        So, why the hell would I want to use a useless and misleading metric to compare two things that barely support comparison, if at all? What's the value of that? (and don't you dare answering to this question in monetary terms - I already thought of it and, as such, the surprise and humoristic value of doing so will be null)

        (large grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31 2020, @12:22AM (17 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31 2020, @12:22AM (#951499)

          why the hell would I want to use a useless and misleading metric to compare two things that barely support comparison, if at all?

          I certainly don't "want to" for myself, however, for roughly the first 14 years of my life - my straight A school average and top 1% test scores had me being called "moron" and "idiot" by my more typical peers. After that I slowly started to perceive and understand more and more of what was important to them as opposed to just what I was "supposed" to learn from school. Since modern urban/suburban life and work is dominated by social interactions rather than mastery of the physical and natural world, understanding how these squishy barely measurable things interrelate does make life both easier and more pleasant. Even in the natural world, understanding how farm and prey animals "feel" makes working with them (aka killing them for food) much more rewarding, and even possible vs impossible/dangerous - to a lesser degree similar concepts can be attributed to plants and gardening.

          However misleading they may be, some metric - even if slightly misleading - is much better than none at all when you are aggregating "personal perception" type data from large groups - larger than you can personally meet and evaluate for yourself - a number that I have heard pegged around 200 by several fairly successful people "skilled in the art" of working with / extracting value from moderately large groups of variously talented people.

          What's the value of that?

          Well, for one of the people I refer to, his personal lifestyle includes a mountaintop home, a couple of helicopters (etc.), a private island, and basically the ability to do whatever the fuck he wants, when he wants, how he wants, with whom he wants. And... having visited him a couple of times at work and home, for me, I have decided that I actually prefer my limited life and lifestyle as opposed to his rather driven, success (whatever that means) oriented ethos. Now, if I had lucked into early success similar to him I too would have acquired a large estate with lots of toys and parties and no regrets, but hope I would not spend so much of my time "servicing" people who only give me more of what I already have plenty of.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @12:52AM (16 children)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @12:52AM (#951516) Journal

            I certainly don't "want to" for myself, however, ...

            However misleading they may be, some metric - even if slightly misleading - is much better than none at all when you are aggregating "personal perception" type data from large groups - larger than you can personally meet and evaluate for yourself - a number that I have heard pegged around 200 by several fairly successful people "skilled in the art" of working with / extracting value from moderately large groups of variously talented people.

            Careful with the application of the "X-number of people can't be wrong" shortcut. The most notorious (for me) effect of it could be seen in the "Home prices never go down" example of "can't be wrong".

            Well, for one of the people I refer to, his personal lifestyle includes a mountaintop home, a couple of helicopters (etc.), a private island, and basically the ability to do whatever the fuck he wants, when he wants, how he wants, with whom he wants.

            It can be important (or not, it's a subjective choice) for the context of life-style of some individuals, but as sure as death and taxes it bears no relevance in the context of assessing whether or not "Seeing objective reality will make you extinct".
            If bowing to irrational social constructs is a survival strategy, you are free to play the game (and survive a little longer), but don't fall into the trap of generalizing the life-style choices of the mites on this blue dot as the laws of the nature.

            Remember that "don't anthropomorphize nature, you upset her when you do it"? It's a warning for those willing to step on the vane path of "humans as the measure of everything in this Universe": diverge with your mental constructs from the objective reality far enough and the laws of the objective reality will prove you wrong in painful ways.

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31 2020, @01:16AM (15 children)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31 2020, @01:16AM (#951529)

              it bears no relevance in the context of assessing whether or not "Seeing objective reality will make you extinct"

              Oh, I'd say - backing up OP - that it has a LOT to do with success in mating/procreation.

              If bowing to irrational social constructs is a survival strategy, you are free to play the game

              In the Western world individuals have a limited degree of freedom to choose how much they play the game, or not... in China (according to the propaganda and ex-pats I have met, at least) the penalties for not playing the game much more quickly escalate to imprisonment and death.

              life-style choices of the mites on this blue dot as the laws of the nature.

              Perhaps - however, the mites on this blue dot are subject to and must overcome these "squishy imaginary social values and forces" if they are ever to escape the blue dot and directly experience a wider universe. The uncertainty and complexity of these type of forces are likely a strong determinant in the Drake equation and thereby lessen the incredulity of the Fermi Paradox.

              diverge with your mental constructs from the objective reality far enough and the laws of the objective reality will prove you wrong in painful ways.

              Certainly so-called objective reality (or, at least, our most reliable-to-date imaginings of it) deserves solid respect. However, the rather overwhelming power of social reality must also be recognized and respected, and of the two, it seems to me that social reality is the one more determinant of so-called individual success outcomes in life, procreation, and therefore evolution.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @02:14AM (14 children)

                by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @02:14AM (#951567) Journal

                Oh, I'd say - backing up OP - that it has a LOT to do with success in mating/procreation.

                I think we are hitting a terminology ambiguity here. Like in "We are talking together but we understand each other separately" (grin).
                Unfortunately, I don't have time now to get to the point of making sure we designate a common and specific enough meanings to the terms we need.

                Perhaps - however, the mites on this blue dot are subject to and must overcome these "squishy imaginary social values and forces" if they are ever to escape the blue dot and directly experience a wider universe.

                Pssst... the universe doesn't care of what the mites think about. Take it in conjunction with my remark to the next point:

                Certainly so-called objective reality (or, at least, our most reliable-to-date imaginings of it) deserves solid respect. However, the rather overwhelming power of social reality must also be recognized and respected, and of the two, it seems to me that social reality is the one more determinant of so-called individual success outcomes in life, procreation, and therefore evolution.

                I argue that the two as so orthogonal one with the other (at least in the Westernilzed society) that you can make a choice one each of the dimensions independently one of the other (i.e. you won't be burned on stake today if you choose to consider either of the "The light speed is maximum" or "The Universe is electric")

                True, if you choose to dedicate time/energy in one, the other or both, the two concerns will be intermixed in your case (by the simple physical/chemical/biological constrains that any human has - no infinite capacity of processing and limited in the time available for that processing).
                This fact still have no bearing on the objective reality vs biological fitness problem (no, I'm not moving the "objective reality and exticntion" goal post. I'm trying to inject the meaning I was using for the "extinction" side).

                --
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @02:39AM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @02:39AM (#951587)

                  You should check your anthropocentrism at the door.

                  Pssst... the universe doesn't care of what the mites think about.

                  Bullshit! Saying that humans are somehow independent of the universe is bullshit. We are animals, we exist within this universe, and the parts of this universe which are human (or even animal and interacting with humans, or arguably even plant or microbe and interacting with humans) sure as fuck care of what the mites think about.

                  Unless you want to try invoking dualism, in 2020?!

                  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @03:13AM

                    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @03:13AM (#951612) Journal

                    the parts of this universe which are human... sure as fuck care of what the mites think about.

                    Touche. Ambiguity well pointed.

                    Everyone, try to be more specific in your posts, we have an enraged pedantic AC among us.
                    I'll sure try to keep this in mind, the amount of <strong> s/he uses is over my levels or comfort.

                    --
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31 2020, @03:17AM (11 children)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31 2020, @03:17AM (#951614)

                  objective reality vs biological fitness problem / objective reality and exticntion

                  Well, if I stayed as firmly rooted in objective reality as I was up to ~age 14, I strongly suspect I may never have procreated. Like religions that shun procreation - extinction soon follows, whereas religions which promote it (ala Roman Catholicism) tend to flourish - and in a competitive environment thereby extinguish those which promote it less effectively.

                  You might move out of the soupy mess of genetic Darwinism and rather look at competitive sport like maybe motor racing... while the data driven math nerds definitely lend advantage to the teams they support, the "seat of the pants" drivers with passion and feel are also an essential component of winning teams, particularly in wheel to wheel racing where, again, it is not one man vs nature, but more man vs man (or the occasional token woman driver) than anything else. Me, I don't risk my life in wheel to wheel racing, I drive in solo time trials which still have injuries and rare deaths, but at least there the variables are mostly objective: you, the car you prepared, and the road (and occasional crossing wildlife) rather than some mostly unpredictable idiot you don't even know. However, solo time trials attract precious little sponsorship or fandom or audiences, whereas the wheel to wheel competitions are followed and supported passionately by millions.

                  The universe may be indifferent to both, but the side with social support is the side most likely to make a difference in the universe, assuming the mites ever make it off of the blue speck in numbers sufficient to spread across space like they have spread across the tiny habitable zone of the surface of one tiny speck out of thousands...

                  --
                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @04:13AM (10 children)

                    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @04:13AM (#951643) Journal

                    assuming the mites ever make it off of the blue speck in numbers ...

                    Heh, a big if. Won't happen in my lifetime, I can't let it be a factor that influences my life decisions (as I can't let the way others ignore the Universe decide that I should do the same).
                    All I can say "Until that bif If happens, the entire Universe, except for a negligible part of it, will be indifferent to what the mites think or do".

                    ---

                    BTW, I have strong suspicions that our makeup (based on matter/substance) is a big enough factor to the humanity "as we know it" never being able to leave the Earth.
                    The level of energy/power required to be faster than the timespan on which the biological matter can resist the decay is too large for anything that uses matter to manipulate that energy/power.

                    --
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31 2020, @03:13PM (9 children)

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31 2020, @03:13PM (#951789)

                      Won't happen in my lifetime, I can't let it be a factor that influences my life decisions

                      Which is yet another factor in favor of the importance of the squishy non measurable metrics which dominate life.

                      The level of energy/power required to be faster than the timespan on which the biological matter can resist the decay is too large for anything that uses matter to manipulate that energy/power.

                      We've already shown that it's possible on small scale, but just like colonization of the sea floor (which is even harder, in many ways)... it's more a matter of that squishy "collective will to do so" than it is any particular concrete "law of nature" that's stopping us.

                      --
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                      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:23AM (8 children)

                        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:23AM (#952108) Journal

                        We've already shown that it's possible on small scale

                        Can you please remind me when this happened and how big/small was the scale?

                        --
                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:31AM (7 children)

                          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:31AM (#952158)

                          Can you please remind me when this happened and how big/small was the scale?

                          Anywhere from one to a dozen people have been living continuously in LEO for up to a year at a time for many decades now - that's more than enough time in micro-gravity to get to Mars.

                          There was that handful of three man missions to the nearest neighbor, land, return safely, all that jazz.

                          The various "Biosphere" projects demonstrating long term sustainability of closed micro-ecosystems.

                          Even long term submarine missions are a kind of demonstration in principle that we can live in artificial environments long term, if we choose to, and most of them don't crack up and go horror movie on themselves.

                          7+ billion people on the planet, plenty of volunteers for just about any mission profile you can dream up, and even if 99% of them aren't up to the task, that still leaves more than enough to man (and woman) the early missions.

                          Oh, and don't forget: Matt Damon - Space Pirate - grew those potatoes ;-)

                          --
                          🌻🌻 [google.com]
                          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:55AM (6 children)

                            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:55AM (#952206) Journal

                            Anywhere from one to a dozen people have been living continuously in LEO for up to a year at a time for many decades now

                            Don't delude yourself mate, that's picnic in you own backyard, not even getting out from your neighborhood.
                            The level of energies required to travel between stars in reasonable times is some orders of magnitude higher - our best to date is less than 1day-light away, after 40+ years since departure.

                            If one would be to considers intergalatic travel...

                            --
                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:14PM (5 children)

                              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:14PM (#952396)

                              The level of energies required to travel between stars

                              Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Let's get to Mars first, eh? I'm not even concerned about the logistics of interstellar travel until we can demonstrate the collective will to support the establishment of Moon/Mars colonies.

                              And, yes, the Space shuttle / ISS missions are puny, weak sauce, timidly cowering inside the magnetosphere... real men put it out there for the solar wind to rip through - and I think that's going to be the real challenge for all these things. When we establish practical methods to shuttle people safely from LEO to LMO and back, interstellar is just scaling up that tech to run a generation ship that gets there when it gets there.

                              The most amusing part of these kind of thought experiments are the early interstellar ships that will probably be passed by ships launched a generation later, again, if we can hold the squishy politics together long enough to do that.

                              --
                              🌻🌻 [google.com]
                              • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:55PM (4 children)

                                by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:55PM (#952454) Journal

                                Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Let's get to Mars first, eh?

                                We were talking about how much the rest of the Universe cares about the blue dot and what the humans can do to make the Universe care more.
                                Getting to Mars doesn't change much the equation.

                                --
                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                                • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:43PM (3 children)

                                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:43PM (#952531)

                                  Getting to Mars doesn't change much the equation.

                                  Control of fire changed the equation, as did control of nuclear fission/fusion, and orbital and extrasolar propulsion capability. Colonization outside the original biosphere, that's another level still, and a necessary step on the path to making more than a speck of difference in the galaxy.

                                  If you want to get philosophical about the Universe's indifference, even after we dominate the Milky Way, that's just one of ~100 billion galaxies. Also... timescales, our ascendance from powered atmospheric flight to extrasolar probes has been virtually instantaneous on the universal timescale. Going from soup in the ocean to where we are now did take a noticeable amount of time, but we have the potential to dominate (the habitable parts of) the Milky Way within ~1,000,000 years, or about 1/4,000th of the time it took to get from ocean goo to here, if we truly break that pesky boom-bust cycle that civilization seems so prone to.

                                  --
                                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                                  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 02 2020, @08:55PM (2 children)

                                    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 02 2020, @08:55PM (#952846) Journal

                                    Control of fire changed the equation, as did control of nuclear fission/fusion,

                                    Being a bit pedantic here, but the control of nuclear fusion is still due. For some 50 years or thereabouts... which may give you a hint about the validity of extrapolation in regards with technological progress.
                                    One may argue we, the humans, managed to pick the low hanging fruits in regards with energy control and, as we started to climb the levels of power that a biological being can safely control, the rate of technological advances slows down.

                                    For example:
                                    - in re fusion reactors, one of the big problems are those pesky high energy neutrons - hard to control using fields and making the substance based shielding brittle over time. May be sufficient for solar system exploration (assuming we get to control it) but not for interstellar manned flights.
                                    - we didn't get to the point where we use even fission reactors for space propulsion - and we 'control' the fission for 80+years.

                                    --
                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 02 2020, @09:29PM (1 child)

                                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday February 02 2020, @09:29PM (#952861)

                                      control of nuclear fusion is still due

                                      That depends on your definition of control - agreed that using it for constructive purposes is a ways off, but Putin can order up a nuclear fusion event anywhere on or near above the surface of the Earth within 90 minutes, or so we're told.

                                      Also to consider: Og the Neanderthal probably cooked his deer over a campfire, but it wasn't until Samuel Watt's steam engine in the 1800s that "controlled fire power" really took off as a widespread economic engine driving technology (unless you count guns as economically beneficial - like nuclear ICBMs, that's kind of a matter of perspective w.r.t. which end of the barrel you are on.)

                                      a hint about the validity of extrapolation in regards with technological progress.

                                      Agreed, Ray Kurzweil is an idiot in that regard, however... extrapolations also miss quantum leaps forward, which, like large asteroid strikes, happen at quite unpredictable intervals.

                                      but not for interstellar manned flights.

                                      That all depends on how much patience you have. Even at Voyager 2 speeds, we can be at Alpha Centauri within 75,000 years. Kick that up with readily achievable propulsion tech and I wouldn't be shocked to shave that number to 10,000 years or less. Sounds dreary dreadfully long, onboard society may well break down in that time, assuming "Hypersleep" remains bullshit... Still, with the will to act, at those kinds of speeds the Milky Way could be ours in less than 0.1% of the time we think our Sun has remaining.

                                      we didn't get to the point where we use even fission reactors for space propulsion - and we 'control' the fission for 80+years.

                                      Again, that squishy political crap comes into play... launching large chunks of hot isotopes, particularly in a starring role like the engine, on full disclosure missions gets a lot of backlash in the funding department. The tech is there, fission powered ion engines have a lot of potential (pun intended), what's lacking is the will to deploy and further develop it.

                                      --
                                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
                                      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:07PM

                                        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:07PM (#952884) Journal

                                        Even at Voyager 2 speeds, we can be at Alpha Centauri within 75,000 years.

                                        Actively use anything nuclear at these time scales and, with the current technological level, expect the cargo to reach destination as a genetic mush.
                                        Not that not using it guarantees otherwise, a single supergiant fast X-ray transient [wikipedia.org] will achieve the same effect. And the longer you travel in space, the higher the probability to get unlucky.

                                        The tech is there, fission powered ion engines have a lot of potential (pun intended), what's lacking is the will to deploy and further develop it.

                                        Agreed, lotsa potential, but I'm skeptical that only the will is what's missing.
                                        Low specific impulse, especially when you consider some megatons of useful cargo to be moved between stars will come to play nasty in the execution - like anything from theory to practice.
                                        Specifically, add to the mass of that cargo the mass of the propulsion and we are speaking about something that's a bit difficult to scale up with today's capabilities (the rocket equation applies to the ion engines too).

                                        Maybe it will become doable starting from the asteroid belt, assembling the whole starship in a very shallow grav well, but we are so far from there. Not only one needs to find the materials and extract them (heck, plenty of energy required for that extraction too), but it will take collaboration at... (umm, can't use global, can I?)... solar system scale, when we barely manage to survive a low level of collaboration at Earth scale. (getting starship manufacturing in the asteroid belt to work will highly likely require self-sustaining mining posts. As they become self-sustaining, guess what will be their first 'political' reaction?)

                                        --
                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 31 2020, @11:06AM (2 children)

          by acid andy (1683) on Friday January 31 2020, @11:06AM (#951722) Homepage Journal

          the 'principle of existence of an objective reality' - which is a postulate that Mr. Donald Hoffman still assume true at the base of his theories

          I need to brush up on my Hoffman, but as I understand it he's attracted to a type of Idealism [wikipedia.org] where subjective consciousness may be the primary form of existence and everything else may be constructed from it.

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          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @11:25AM (1 child)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @11:25AM (#951725) Journal

            Mr. Donald Hoffman

            Just in case you didn't notice, he is the cognitive psychologist the TFA is about (don't try to find him between the classics)

            but as I understand it he's attracted to a type of Idealism [wikipedia.org] where subjective consciousness may be the primary form of existence and everything else may be constructed from it.

            Ummm... maybe, but it doesn't seem likely to me. At least not as a strict form of idealism.
            He still assumes an objective reality which is reflected (better or worse, in term of evolutionary fitness) by senses. It's a bit far from the idealist ontological position, which takes the mind/spirit as the primary cause.

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            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 31 2020, @01:44PM

              by acid andy (1683) on Friday January 31 2020, @01:44PM (#951756) Homepage Journal

              Just in case you didn't notice, he is the cognitive psychologist the TFA is about (don't try to find him between the classics)

              Well he's too recent to be considered a classic but I came across him popping up between modern philosophers like Dennett and Chalmers in my quest to explore the philosophy of mind.

              Ummm... maybe, but it doesn't seem likely to me. At least not as a strict form of idealism.
              He still assumes an objective reality which is reflected (better or worse, in term of evolutionary fitness) by senses. It's a bit far from the idealist ontological position, which takes the mind/spirit as the primary cause.

              Yeah I'm not especially convinced by what little I've heard of Hoffman's philosophy, however I do find his ideas extremely thought-provoking. His bit about our perceived reality being optimized for survival at the expense of accuracy, to the extent that he suggests it's so inaccurate as to be "wrong" is certainly interesting but so far what he means by "rightness" or "wrongness" hasn't been completely clear to me and I'm not even sure if he'd completely made up his mind on that, beyond open-ended speculation and clickbaity phrases.

              He still assumes an objective reality which is reflected (better or worse, in term of evolutionary fitness) by senses. It's a bit far from the idealist ontological position, which takes the mind/spirit as the primary cause.

              Yeah, I find Idealism a slightly strange philosophy because, unless Solipsism is true or my sense of understanding the world is all an illusion, we can still build artificial sensors, machines and instruments to measure the objective reality and perform repeatable scientific experiments on it. The information represented in that repeatable behavior is what constitutes objective reality to me and that part of it is almost certainly real as far as I'm concerned. If someone wants to claim it's not real, then they need to clearly define what "real" means to them to prove to me that they're not just playing linguistic games.

              I suppose a strict Idealist might say that this so-called reality of repeatable physical experiments is just a high level abstraction from the true stuff of only mind underlying it, a bit like how biology, organs and bodies are just high level ways of classifying arrangements of quarks (or are they?).

              For me the distinction becomes important if and when the high level stuff can be replaced with something different. That's the acid test. If Idealism were true, perhaps you could build a wildly different objective reality on top of it instead of this one we all know and love to hate so well.

              --
              If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?