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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 bzipitidoo on Friday January 31 2020, @01:01PM
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.