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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: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:27PM (3 children)
As controversial as those points may be, the "Show me that your model is a good enough approximation of the modeled" and "Show me the limits over which your model diverge too much from the modeled" are things that everybody involved in modeling need to answer before communicating results. Even more so if the modelers make extraordinary claims based on the modeled results.
I've seen none of it.
Oh, really? Feel free to provide clearer explanations for all the 3.
I have a hunch "their intents" are... umm... quite curageous [soylentnews.org] in respect with the size of the mental jump one needs to take to accept their intentions. I'd feel safer if, instead of a being asked to jump, I were to be taken step by step and every step looked upon to make sure it's not a false one.
Just don't forget to place veracity above interesting. I have no problem otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:53PM (2 children)
You're still expressly missing the point -- "approximation of the modeled" often is not the intent. Simply demonstrating that an evolutionary development *could* favor an extremely abstracted cognition of the environment is interesting. That *YOU* don't find that interesting is not a deficiency in the model. It's a YOU problem.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:35PM (1 child)
I can concede to "it's interesting" with the note that "interesting" has. by itself, no value.
It can be "interesting" in so many ways, like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:40PM
That's nice.