SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 Friday January 31 2020, @12:52AM (16 children)
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".
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)
Oh, I'd say - backing up OP - that it has a LOT to do with success in mating/procreation.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Pssst... the universe doesn't care of what the mites think about. Take it in conjunction with my remark to the next point:
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)
You should check your anthropocentrism at the door.
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
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)
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)
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)
Which is yet another factor in favor of the importance of the squishy non measurable metrics which dominate life.
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.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 01 2020, @01:23AM (8 children)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.)
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.
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.
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
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.
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