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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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:21PM
I'm only basing this on the article summary.
It seems like the finding is reasonable and makes sense, but the title and summary is really dumb and doesn't at all represent what they are seeing. Rather, I'd say the finding (which is less click-bait and less surprising) is that, "creatures are primed to use information in a results-oriented practical way."
For example, if you look at the raw sensor data for an airplane in flight, it's basically meaningless numbers. If the sensors say "we are falling fast, and will hit the ground in 30 seconds," it's much easier to know what to do. Likewise, if you know abstractly there are 20 units of water, who cares? If you know that "this much water will drown you," it's easier to know what to do.
If they really wanted to prove that "An organism that sees objective reality is always less fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees fitness pay-offs," the experiment SHOULD have compared a creature which truthfully saw the water level against one which saw a fictitious water level based on its own internal needs. That would be comparing objective vs non-objective reality.
But the rule of clickbait, I guess.