Aug 16, 2023 09:37 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 16, 2023 10:32 PM by C C.)
However, adjectives like "real" and ideas like "reality" were originally abstracted from the represented world outputted by the brain (or whatever noumenal counterpart). It thus seems a misuse to apply them to an ultimate or non-represented manner of existence that we will never have direct access to.
Something is "real" if it is inter-subjectively valid, if the cognitive systems of other people (and animals) are rendering _X_ in a similar way, and interacting with it also. Another standard for "real" is if you can't control or manipulate _X_ by thought or desire alone.
Affairs in a non-represented or prior-in-rank level are just practical speculations or dogma, at best, or personal/cultural preferences. As Kant mentioned in PTAFM, even the world as science or physics depicts it belongs to the phenomenal world, not the noumenal stratum. Hoffman concludes that himself in the way he refers to evolution. (A potential exception to all this "unknowability" is if we really are in a computer simulation -- but that indulges in a recursive fallacy of explaining a situation by repeating the same situation.)
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https://youtu.be/UWHYThrfRYU
VIDEO EXCERPTS (Donald Hoffman): We've made the rookie mistake of assuming that our headset VR, our visualization tool -- is the final reality. It's just a rookie mistake. It's like someone who's played Grand Theft Auto for so long they have no idea there's a reality besides Grand Theft Auto. We're like that right now.
If you just look at your face in the mirror, what you see directly is just skin, hair, and eyes. That's all you see, and if you looked inside -- if someone opened your skull up, you just see neurons and so forth. But what you know firsthand that you cannot see is your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, your love of music, your mood.
It's all in VR experience. No physical object, including my body, is conscious -- strictly speaking. My brain isn't conscious because my brain in fact doesn't even exist unless I render it right.
So if I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, I've got the steering wheel in front of me. I'm holding the steering wheel. If I look to the side I no longer render the steering wheel, and there is no steering wheel. When I look here I render it and now there is a steering wheel.
The same thing is true, strictly speaking, of neurons and brains. They're there when you render them, they're not there when you don't. It's a VR system, you render objects in space and time as you need them, because they're part of your visualization tool. And then you garbage collect them, you delete them, when you don't need them. Your life, in my life right now, we're in a simulator -- a space-time simulator.
[...] I know what I'm doing under a space-time description, but I don't know in ultimate reality what I'm really doing. It's just like the VR player. When they turn the steering wheel in Grand Theft Auto, they know what they're doing, In the language of the game, I'm turning a steering wheel, but what they're really doing in terms of the super computer -- which in that metaphor would be the deeper reality -- they're toggling voltages and magnetic fields and circuits.
[...] All they see is a turn of the wheel. That's their notion of cause and effect -- trivial. The real cause and effect is trillions of voltages getting toggled in fractions of a second. It's much more complicated, So when I talk evolution, I'm only going to be talking about assuming the headset. I'm within the framework of the headset, because evolutionary theory is only a headset theory. It's not a theory of consciousness beyond space and time...
Donald Hoffman: "Nothing you see is real"
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UWHYThrfRYU
Something is "real" if it is inter-subjectively valid, if the cognitive systems of other people (and animals) are rendering _X_ in a similar way, and interacting with it also. Another standard for "real" is if you can't control or manipulate _X_ by thought or desire alone.
Affairs in a non-represented or prior-in-rank level are just practical speculations or dogma, at best, or personal/cultural preferences. As Kant mentioned in PTAFM, even the world as science or physics depicts it belongs to the phenomenal world, not the noumenal stratum. Hoffman concludes that himself in the way he refers to evolution. (A potential exception to all this "unknowability" is if we really are in a computer simulation -- but that indulges in a recursive fallacy of explaining a situation by repeating the same situation.)
- - - - - - - - -
https://youtu.be/UWHYThrfRYU
VIDEO EXCERPTS (Donald Hoffman): We've made the rookie mistake of assuming that our headset VR, our visualization tool -- is the final reality. It's just a rookie mistake. It's like someone who's played Grand Theft Auto for so long they have no idea there's a reality besides Grand Theft Auto. We're like that right now.
If you just look at your face in the mirror, what you see directly is just skin, hair, and eyes. That's all you see, and if you looked inside -- if someone opened your skull up, you just see neurons and so forth. But what you know firsthand that you cannot see is your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, your love of music, your mood.
It's all in VR experience. No physical object, including my body, is conscious -- strictly speaking. My brain isn't conscious because my brain in fact doesn't even exist unless I render it right.
So if I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, I've got the steering wheel in front of me. I'm holding the steering wheel. If I look to the side I no longer render the steering wheel, and there is no steering wheel. When I look here I render it and now there is a steering wheel.
The same thing is true, strictly speaking, of neurons and brains. They're there when you render them, they're not there when you don't. It's a VR system, you render objects in space and time as you need them, because they're part of your visualization tool. And then you garbage collect them, you delete them, when you don't need them. Your life, in my life right now, we're in a simulator -- a space-time simulator.
[...] I know what I'm doing under a space-time description, but I don't know in ultimate reality what I'm really doing. It's just like the VR player. When they turn the steering wheel in Grand Theft Auto, they know what they're doing, In the language of the game, I'm turning a steering wheel, but what they're really doing in terms of the super computer -- which in that metaphor would be the deeper reality -- they're toggling voltages and magnetic fields and circuits.
[...] All they see is a turn of the wheel. That's their notion of cause and effect -- trivial. The real cause and effect is trillions of voltages getting toggled in fractions of a second. It's much more complicated, So when I talk evolution, I'm only going to be talking about assuming the headset. I'm within the framework of the headset, because evolutionary theory is only a headset theory. It's not a theory of consciousness beyond space and time...
Donald Hoffman: "Nothing you see is real"
