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: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:22AM (36 children)
First - is a computer simulation, as such an imperfect representation of reality. I'd love to see some proof that the simulated model is adequate or rather he's using a "car analogy" that is failing because he set it for failure.
Second, the claim of "our perceptions don't contain the slightest approximation of reality" - even if his simulation is adequate, I don't see how he can claim that the "perception of water that can kill or is safe" is not an approximation of the reality of water.
Third: "the simulation suggests we see an approximation of reality that shows us what we need to see" - even if so (yeah, human nature has limits; wow, that is deep), humans got pretty clever of measuring other attributes of the same reality, attributes that aren't essential for survival or biological evolution, but offers a platform to advance the species (by technological means) even when a good proportion of the individuals are blissfully ignorant (and pay through their nose for this [youtube.com])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:32AM (30 children)
They were competing "has an input value" against "has a (not explained how) accurate survival-relevant conclusion about that input value" - of course the latter would out-compete the former, it had to put less effort into surviving.
Maybe these so-called (by their own mothers, at least) scientists should pour cups of water on their keyboards next time, and conclude something about the wetness of water?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:44AM (29 children)
I don't see why both of you are so much against the idea that what we see/feel is not remotely 'real'. If you take LSD or mushrooms or whatever psychedelics, everything will change yet if you have a scale that measures two distorted things of the same length, the distorted scale will still measure the same distorted figures and tell you that they are of the same length. Of course! Length is a property! What is radical in thinking that there might be properties that we don't measure? If an animal is born with what we consider demented mind and has that vision perpetually, how can you say that is wrong?
I understand that you might have philosophical disagreements with what I wrote above but both of you have written your comments as if it is some science and what TFA says is pseudo-science. And that's bs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:02AM (25 children)
Because our perception is repeatable most of the time and we can name and communicate out perception between us with a reasonable degree of reliability
Compare this with the perceptions you get in altered state of consciousness and I'm sure you'll agree there a significant difference.
(If our perception wouldn't be repeatable... ahem... remember those big cats in the savannas, in those times we were just trying that fancy new fashion of walking on two legs?
Imagine where we would be if we frequently failed to see and recognize them.)
Oh, but that's not my critique, I already said that the "human nature is limited" is self-evident and incontestable, nothing profound in saying this even if you use fancy words to say it.
I'll let aside the heaps of tools that we needed to invent to extend our perception, but... look, we can't measure anything quantum (other than in a statistical way) and yet the entire matter, us included, may be just some sort of metastable oscillation of a "quantum foam". And neither can we can exclude that the entire "objective reality" that we perceive and/or measure isn't just holographic 3D spatial+time projection of something on shock-wave of a weird multidimensional white hole that just exploded.
What I'm saying is "the fact that we have an imperfect perception and understanding of objective reality does not make from them a 'virtual reality'" - it's just the approximation of reality that our set of biochemical mediated senses can do.
And this approximation is no longer related with the biological evolution, it stopped being so from the moment we started to craft tools and instruments to poke the reality beyond our biological senses.
And you don't actually need disputable computer simulations to take the above as a true or at least good hypothesis to act on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:45PM (24 children)
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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:11PM (23 children)
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
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:37PM (22 children)
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.
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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:42PM (21 children)
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
So... I see you decided to add a bit to these too :)
Let me throw my two cents worth in the same beggars pan.
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
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31 2020, @12:22AM (17 children)
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.
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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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
(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...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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 ;-)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(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.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(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
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 31 2020, @11:06AM (2 children)
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.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @11:25AM (1 child)
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)
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 31 2020, @01:44PM
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.
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.
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.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:02PM (2 children)
Sounds like your perception needs more pay-off strategy.
It dies more often and reproduces less often. That's the only wrong in evolution.
What's ignored in the story is that both perceptions see objective reality - the "pay-off" strategy just sees it in a way that gives more information relevant to survival.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:56PM (1 child)
So they both see the same reality but the emphasis is different.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @12:15AM
Sorta. One can argue they are perceiving other traits of the reality.
As in "perception of the quantity in absolute terms" and the "perception of the potential effect of the quantity trait on the survival" are two different things.
My guts are telling me that the postulated equivalence between the two is faulty, even if the model implemented on the computer would have some value.
There is a difference between the two: even if the second is a "build-in by evolution" biological capability and the first is absent to the direct perception, the human can still measure it using tools and techniques not directly derived by darwinian evolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:14PM (4 children)
That’s just a total misunderstanding of what simulations are about, their intent and their interpretation. They’re models. The modelers know this. You apparently didn’t grasp the whole fucking point that your senses themselves produce nothing more than a model of reality — and that isn’t really a controversial assertion. What”s interesting in their model of models is that a perceptual model that simplifies objective truth as it were leads to greater survival behavior. That too isn’t all that controversial if you look into the literature on cognition itself, but it is interesting.
(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
(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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:40PM
That's nice.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:31AM (6 children)
I see self-delusion in office politics all the time. Logic is squashed
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:37PM (5 children)
And when does office politics turn out well? When projects succeed, it's in spite of the politicking. The team was able to keep a lid on it. Every case of politics getting the upper hand that I've experienced ended disastrously-- the entire team deluding themselves to the max, until fired or laid off, project cancelled, contract not renewed, or the ultimate, the money runs out. Most of the time it's bitter, with everyone blaming everyone else.
You maybe do need a Goldilocks amount of delusional thinking to start a business or large project. The Goldilocks amount must be pretty small, only a little more than zero.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:32PM (4 children)
Turn our well for who?
The manager who can sell the project is often (usually?) rewarded, even if the project fails.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:34PM (3 children)
Yes, I was in one of those. The project wasn't even as good as a trainwreck, since nothing got beyond the concept stage. It was all fighting over what to do, and not actually ever doing anything. For fear of making the others look bad, anyone who actually tried to do something got sabotaged, first by having their notions shredded, and if that didn't stop them, then by literally erasing their hard drives. Needed those computers for another purpose. Sorry? Why no, not sorry, that's your fault for not following the plan (that was just altered this morning). Oh, backups? That's not allowed, you know. No flash drives allowed on the premises. And, Hell No to data transfers off site.
Management blamed all the peons and fired the lot. Didn't work, the customer left anyway, and the middle management was next to fall. Only the big boss at the top survived the fiasco. He was actually promoted to VP. But don't think he got off lightly, no. He was so stressed he developed some kind of skin condition that manifested as a terrible rash all over-- face, arms, hands, and bald pate on top. In the final meeting in which all was lost, he made a total ass of himself, tried to snow everyone with insultingly trivial nonsense a 3rd grader would see through, and was mercilessly attacked and ripped to pieces, like a bleeding whale surrounded by sharks going into a feeding frenzy. When the meeting ended, he tried to soothe his hurt by viciously snarling at a few of his peons for not having done more. Not that that could possibly remove the stench of his incompetence. To the contrary. I wouldn't call that exactly rewarding, no.
(Score: 1) by weirsbaski on Friday January 31 2020, @10:47AM (2 children)
I'm not replying to this post specifically, just to the larger-than-expected number of posts calling out some serious industry dysfunction. Where the heck have y'all been working? And are horror stories like the above a common theme? I've been working in tech for >20 years now, and the worst I've seen is someone resigning, and allegedly stealing the graphics card from his desktop box on his way out. Have I just been lucky so far?
(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.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 31 2020, @03:41PM
> Where the heck have y'all been working?
Oh yes, the trainwreck was a gig as a defense contractor. The military boys are difficult customers. They want powerful weapons that won't be used against them. They want to live by the sword and not die by the sword. They want unbreakable security that they can break. Sometimes they want stuff that looks good but they don't really care if it is good. If it is never used, doesn't matter if the quality is nonexistent. Meanwhile, a lot of people get to collect paychecks, don't have to fight, and happily vote to keep the incumbent politician who arranged the whole thing. However, that last is actually not that common. They know they're being watched for just such fraud and waste, are therefore pretty sensitive about even the appearance of same, and tend to overcompensate by demanding to the extreme. Not to mention that when they are actually called on to fight, they want shit that works.
Couple of other dysfunctional companies were edgy IT startups, one with pie in the sky thinking that didn't, of course, pan out, and the other an unfocused mess in which the boss too quickly reached for the whips when the going got tough. Cheated everyone of their pay. Fired one guy, making the firing retroactive to 3 months prior, to get all the back pay they owed him off their books. Highly unethical and illegal, but what can you do about it? That's one of those in which, if you don't like working for free, you need to pay attention to the company's finances, and get out before they run out of money. Significantly, if they suddenly change from being relatively open about the finances and go dark on all that, get out. If you're still there when they fail to make payroll, don't listen to their appeals that the turnaround is coming real soon now, if only you will continue to work for free for just one more month, just one more, and then oops, need a second month to secure that revenue that's so close they can taste it, and then, well, there's been a delay, but if you will just put in a 3rd month, they promise they'll be able to pay you. On the other hand, if you quit now, the company definitely won't make it and you won't see a thing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:35AM (5 children)
The brain has to invert the image produced by the eyes. That's kind of a biggie in the distortion field business.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:46AM (4 children)
the inversion is the easy part, consider the 3d mapping and the fact that the retina has a slower response over time than what our representation is making us believe.
We also have zero lag perceived between touch and vision, see yourself typing. But there should be one. Cool stuff.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:53PM (2 children)
Inversion is practically irrelevant... it's just something the processing network has evolved, both structurally and training since birth.
There's also the "I'm 14 and this is deep" realization that: what I see as red and blue, you might see as blue and red, but call them red and blue because that's what we've been taught since birth.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:58PM (1 child)
it's just something the processing network has evolved
Precisely like everything else in the article. Reality is determined by consensus. "Things are not as they seem", I believe the saying goes. For instance, the person that modded my previous comment "offtopic" is confused, maybe even spiteful for some reason.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:23PM
In the social reality we live in, perception is all there is.
When there was social consensus that heavy objects fell faster than light ones, most observations seemed to back that up.
In some potential future, we may discover that our methods for measuring time are complete bollocks and with a new way of looking at how to measure time we might gain additional mastery of it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 31 2020, @02:46PM
Yeah that's the bit that really blows my mind. The way we perceive depth seems impossible. Our visual field appears to be a sharp, continuous two-dimensional surface. But depth is vividly apparent right there too, as a clearly visible part of that surface, right in plain sight. Yet we know mathematically there's no space to fit that depth information on such a flat 2D surface, at least without degrading the resolution--which doesn't appear to happen.* If you deliberately misalign your eyes, the 2D surface shows a double image, but when they're perfectly aligned the brain is a master at reinterpreting that effect as depth. But what the hell does that experience of depth consist of? It's part of what makes subjective experience seem so exotic.
*I suspect in actual fact the 3D effect does correspond to a slight reduction in the sharpness and/or resolution of our mind's visual field. The left and right eye's slightly different images are superimposed in a way that's probably sacrificing a bit of visual fidelity to represent depth. Two eyes probably provide a slightly better resolution than one though, so we can't just close one eye to test this.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:21AM (2 children)
If you see too much reality as it is, you won't reproduce... :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_sex#%22Beer_goggles%22 [wikipedia.org]
CYA
(Score: 4, Funny) by MostCynical on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:11AM
Covering your arse isn't usually required for reproduction... Unless you're female, and your male partner has a tendency to.. miss
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:23PM
> If you see too much reality as it is, you won't reproduce... :D
This should be marked insightful, basically the view of the anti-natalists
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:40AM (2 children)
Everybody claiming that what we perceive is not really real should be slapped in the face out of the blue, claiming it's the fault of that clown riding the blue unicorn that the guy OBVIOUSLY hasn't perceived.
This is again, like looking at the code of a game simulation during execution instead of the game. Doesn't make sense. The true representation of the game is the game world, the one where there is MEANING. The underlying representation is not the truer truth, is one interesting, maybe vital, but ultimately IRRELEVANT implementation aspect.
So, the game world is not the implementation? of course it fucking isn't. Tautology. Is our representation good enough not to get us killed on the highway? mostly yes. Does the infrastructure tell us something about the hypothetical creator of the infrastructure? no because your research is still modeled in an impersonal and randomly behaving universe which is a system of belief that has also proven rather weak, so you probably will keep building on this interpretation like people kept building on epicycles.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:25PM (1 child)
Our brains try to use perception (our senses) to create a digital representation of an analog world. If you record (measure) a speech with two different microphones or two different cameras and play them on two different TVs and speakers they will sound and look slightly different. But the representation that our brains make (the words and meanings we interpret) for the most part are the same (close enough).
Likewise we may have ears that hear sounds differently (some people hear 'better' than others), we have different voices, different handwriting, use different fonts (the analog world is messy and has variety) but, for the most part, as long as the signals and objects receiving those signals (our senses) are within a tolerance we can filter the noise and come up with a meaningful and consistent signal.
If two people say the store is across the street with two different voices and two different people hear it with two different ears even though there is variety in our voices and perceptions we can both filter the ‘noise’ and come to the same conclusion over what’s being said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:27PM
errr ... meaningful and consistent interpretation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:27AM
So according to Hoffman, the information whether you would drown in the water does not contain the slightest approximation of reality?
I'd say it contains a 100% accurate of an important aspect of reality, which is whether it is high enough to drown in that water.
While the "reality-percepting" species did not percept the complete reality, in particular, they did not perceive sufficiently much of that reality to derive the information that the other species perceived directly. When staying in the water-height interpretation, the missing information is the own height, which could then be compared to the water level so that they could determine whether they would drown in that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:46AM (8 children)
Mea culpa, I RTFA. Seems like his points are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:14PM (5 children)
The problem with this outlook is all the electron/positron artifacts we consistently observe. The standard theories we use now explain that and predict phenomena well and subtly enough that we can find it in bizarre places such as integrated circuits and pair production in lightning.
Rather I think, if his theory is good enough to describe objective reality, then electrons/positrons will come out of it as a matter of course and the standard theories be confirmed!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:42PM
I suspect that the basic problem is that English isn't precise, but an individual often has a precise meaning in mind. So what you hear isn't what he said, and what he heard others saying isn't what they were saying.
E.g., what the hell would it mean to say that an electron was conscious? I could come up with an interpretation where that was true, but the observable differences from the default interpretation would be nil. So what's the benefit? It seems to just make the theory more complicated with things that can't be measured.
That said, better evidence of this is given by his example of what things are evolved to notice. And his claim that this doesn't reflect reality. You can assign meanings to the words such that this is a true statement, and they fall within the standard meaning used in English, but they aren't the only meanings, and other valid meanings make it a false, or even meaningless statement.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @12:05AM (3 children)
Whazza, khallow, are you succumbing to the temptation of the "If I'd win the lottery, how would I change the world?" path?
If that's not a sign of some physiological degeneration in your brain and you are doing it on purpose, here's a suggestion: start writing speculative scientific babble [wikipedia.org] kind of books. Surely there will be enough posers and congnitive-dim people in this world to consider them profound (or just willing to waste their recreation time indulging in this kind of kink) and give some of their money in exchange.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @01:05AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday January 31 2020, @01:55AM (1 child)
Sure, here I go. So, in regards with this theory as proposed by the cognitive theorist Donald Hoffman and referenced in TFA...
I would have expected khallow to show a very high dose of skepticism, to my surprise he just took one step on the path of exploring the consequences.
Now, the probability of this theory to be true (and, thus, extend or overwrite the current theories) is indeed not null. But this probability is very low**; until this probability doesn't increase, the act of extrapolating its consequences is of the same nature as thinking "what one will do with the money if the one would be to win the lottery".
----
** arguments for assessing the probability of the proposed theory to be true at "win the lottery" level of low:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 31 2020, @02:50AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 30 2020, @08:27PM
And so does quantum mechanics. But unlike this vague consciousness-all-the-way-down idea, quantum mechanics can tell us exactly what it means that an electron does not have a position, when and to what degree it is nevertheless possible to pretend it does, and what to expect when pretending that it has a definitive position is not possible. Including the case when “there is an electron” itself is a statement that is neither true nor false.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @02:46AM
And THAT, folks, is the canary in this coal mine. The mind of this person does not know what it does not know, and does not know that it lacks, and so it thinks it has all the pieces in hand to explain things, because these are all the pieces right? *big old eyeroll*
Philosophers who are not mathematicians who think that they can develop a G.U.T. from rhetoric or reframing or reperspectiving are foolish to an extreme. At least this one airs it publicly so we can know he (he's a 'he') isn't intellectually a useful source.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by zugedneb on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:16AM
These topics are treated the same as modern history in communistic country in basic education, that is, it was not present.
Instead, there was an unrivalled presentation of ancient history, not quite how we left africa, but all ancient migrations and civilisations up to roman empire...
Now, suppose that you are taking the license exam to become an _Ancienct_Alien_ (TM), who is allknowing mostly, and the examinator is not interested in your skills in reading and memorizing things.
Instead, he gives you objects from history, and you have to outline, in general, the evolutionary steps and conditions that formed them...
Please, in the comments below, tell me the evolution of the followng objects, or what level of civilisation can conjure up the objects, in case they do not exist. Also, pls tell me, if the object exists, or the role can be taken by some other entity =)
- ninjas
- darth vader
- wimmin
- jews
- agent smith
- my little pony
hints:
- darth vader: abstract presence of authority, usefule to have in the back of your head, instead of say, virgin mary, in certain situations.
- wimmin: physically weak organism, protected by stronger to raise the offspring. organism in question is batshit insane, since it had to endure evolution with having its partners and offsprings gallivanting off on different missions, and dying.
- jews: higher intellect that, and society that seems to have lost the warrior cast, and generates soft and intelligent offsprings optimal for adapting and socially hacking the civilian part of a stable society. can not survive on their own, since can not deffend territory. they seem to live in the oblivion of the fact that higher level military personnel are able to sense the awareness and intents in others, and seem also unaware of the executive order given by mister Darwin himself to protect the transcendental mind at all costs. and hence they keep lying about being persecuted and executed in mass by higher civilisations. ancient jewish sayng: hardship does not happen others. also old jewish saying: only jewish lives matter...
- agent smith: anthropomorphic personification of the "general agent" aspect of the consciousness, when the "being", that is the emo part, has been attenuated. it is present in most men, but not wimmin.
by and large, u could replace all of soft "siences" with my writings, and u would not even loose a bit =)
also, lot more rageposting potentiol with my writings =)
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Interesting) by lolococo on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:40AM
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @03:01PM (2 children)
Suppose that the approximation of reality that we need to see to survive is extremely close to how things really are?
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:53PM (1 child)
We have known for a long time that our direct observation is not close to reality. Study a bit of color theory, though there are lots of other places where this is made blatantly clear.
To be specific, we've got three different cones (except some women who have four different cones) that are "called" red, green, and blue. This is misleading. All three are generally sensitive to light, with a peak in sensitivity at a different frequency, and the "red" cone has a peak sensitivity in the orange, but is "suppressed" by the "green" cone, so a deeper red is actually seen by decreasing the green frequency. And the sensitivity varies over a range with the frequency, so brightness isn't directly observable either. (Except by the rods.) Etc. And that's an oversimplification. Different people have slightly different peaks of sensitivity. And color is determined by weighing the activation of cones that respond to several different frequencies, and different people weigh things slightly differently. There are specialty color perception charts, but you can't reproduce them on a printer or a display, because they don't use just mixes of three colors.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:01PM
I am aware of that.
Of course, our vision system is "good enough" to give us an excellent chance of survival in many novel situations. (avoid falling off a cliff at night)
I also suspect that it is closer to reality than some would like to think.
Similarly our ears. We may not have a "true" perception of the sounds in the world. That is, what we perceive in our brain through the apparatus in our ears. But I suspect it is probably pretty close to reality. So close that millennia worth of people take it for granted and don't often discover strange discrepancies from reality.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(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.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:56PM
Because what is "objective" anyway? It's a word we've defined, which isn't a satisfying thing to say; but we can't avoid being the judges of what is or is not objective reality. If there's anything that pisses me off, it's *sophistry*, such as the conversation I got into with a guy who was very intelligent, yet posited that 2+2 might not equal 4 at some time. That's useless. It pisses me off in a very deep-seated, reptile brain sort of way and I suspect that's an evolutionary advantage:
The cave-man sophist who tried to argue that the mammoth might not trample you was worthy of a spear in the back. We're just a bit more restrained about it now.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Friday January 31 2020, @11:09AM
Objective Illusion is shared. Like, if you play a multiplayer game, your perception of the game illusion is partially common to multiple players, and that allows conscious interaction.
The concept of objective nonreality is old, found in ancient Tibetan magic, Bön shamanism, for one example, and is still passed on in occult teachings of many cultural paradigms.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design