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It’s impossible to see the world as it is, argues a cognitive neuroscientist (video)

#1
C C Offline
https://aeon.co/videos/its-impossible-to...oscientist

INTRO: Many scientists believe that natural selection brought our perception of reality into clearer and deeper focus, reasoning that growing more attuned to the outside world gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, thinks that just the opposite is true. Because evolution selects for survival, not accuracy, he proposes that our conscious experience masks reality behind millennia of adaptions for ‘fitness payoffs’ – an argument supported by his work running evolutionary game-theory simulations. In this interview recorded at the "HowTheLightGetsIn Festival" from the Institute of Arts and Ideas in 2019, Hoffman explains why he believes that perception must necessarily hide reality for conscious agents to survive and reproduce. With that view serving as a springboard, the wide-ranging discussion also touches on Hoffman’s consciousness-centric framework for reality, and its potential implications for our everyday lives.


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4HFFr0-ybg0
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
I may be wrong but I think no two people see the same photons emitted from or bounced off an object nor do they see the same object at the same time. So it seems to me that no two people are going to observe reality equally. So despite the differences, the species evolves anyways.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” —WILLIAM BLAKE
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
I think Hoffman is one of those guys who had an idea, put it out there, and managed to gain a following or support. Why stop now, run with it and see how far it goes.

I think he's focusing too much on the life form/species angle. Yes, we may perceive reality much different than other organisms but I don't think we'd be the only species to choose an apple 10m away over one that's 10km away.

I ask myself all the time, at its core, is there something truly mysterious about the universe, something we may never find out about it? Many times I've come to a conclusion that of all I've witnessed so far, life itself is that one thing. Easy for me to think that life is more important than the form it takes. I don't know if there's a term for that and I'm not going to invent one because I can't prove anything as to why it might be so.

Going to sound like I think life is some tangible thing but in no way am I going to commit to that. .....Life to me makes things like species/organisms seem nothing more than a vessel(s), the one place it can exist and preserve itself. Bunch of chemistry going on that actually permits it. Not saying it's manufactured or intentionally created by some invisible entity from some other plane of existence. So I ask myself, could life exist in a non-evolving organism? I imagine it could in an unchanging world, but can't think of too many of those being around. Think how precarious that would be, one subtle change and poof, life is toast there?

What kind of entity does not need to evolve to survive? The only thing I can think of is an immortal life form. If you're immortal are you free from the constraints of an evolving organism? Or does immortality mean that as long as you're still consuming other life forms then eternal life is possible? What about the first true life form on Earth, it never evolved in the traditional existing life forms adapting to environment way but had to have been totally adapted to its environment upon creation. So for me there are only two types of life forms that don't require evolution, immortal and newest(first). However immortal would probably have had to evolve from the first.

And now we are venturing to other worlds where we've actually deposited a few life forms(microbes, tardigrades) along the way. It just seems like the natural thing for life to do.
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#5
Yazata Offline
(Nov 7, 2019 12:16 AM)C C Wrote: INTRO: Many scientists believe that natural selection brought our perception of reality into clearer and deeper focus, reasoning that growing more attuned to the outside world gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, thinks that just the opposite is true. Because evolution selects for survival, not accuracy, he proposes that our conscious experience masks reality behind millennia of adaptions for ‘fitness payoffs’

I'm skeptical.

For one thing, what does "Seeing the world as it is" even mean? Since the whole thesis seems to revolve around that idea, it needs a lot more exploration.

For another, how would awareness that isn't accurate contribute to survival?

For still another, I think that one of humanity's most important evolutionary adaptations is, paradoxically, its lack of evolutionary adaptations.

Many other animals nervous systems are basically stimulus-response mechanisms. Particular kinds of stimulation produce particular kinds of responses. Evolution adapts those for survival purposes. Most of the simpler invertebrates work that way.

Even when we get to the mammals that we might want to say are able to think, organisms seem limited to thinking about a narrowly constrained range of subjects. Food, sex, safety, comfort, that's about it.

But humans do a lot more. Your dog is in no position to even conceive of string-theory, dark-matter or DNA transcription, but humans can. Your dog doesn't read Husserl or contemplate phenomenology. Your dog doesn't write poetry or appreciate art.

So it seems to me that humanity's evolutionary innovation, or one of them at least (language is another) is that we are general purpose animals able to think about our surroundings in many different ways and then, to an extent unprecedented in the animal kingdom, adapt those surroundings to our needs. We use fire, we build structures, we wear clothes, we create social organizations, we construct machines, we create theories, art and religions.

So in that sense, I think that Hoffman is almost certainly wrong.

But... it's possible that he's groping toward what I've called the 'cockroach analogy' (which actually originated with Albert Einstein, so I was told).

There are things that we consider essential aspects of reality that no other animal species is capable of thinking about. Chemistry, physics, biology...

So what justifies our assumption that human beings have the cognitive capacity to take it all in? Might there be fundamental aspects of reality that are as far beyond our abilities as molecular biology is beyond the abilities of a dog? The mere fact that we can't think of anything like that isn't an argument that such aspects don't/can't exist. It's precisely what we would expect if we are oblivious to them.

Of course when your dog walks through the doorway instead of trying to walk through the wall, the dog is most certainly "seeing the world as it is". When the dog locates its food bowl, it's showing awareness of "the world as it is". What else would it be?

Not being able to think about everything that a perfect omniscient cognizer (a god?) could think about doesn't mean that what we and the other animals are reacting to and cognizing in our imperfect ways isn't the real world.
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