{"id":41021,"date":"2024-02-12T20:52:01","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T20:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41021"},"modified":"2024-02-12T20:52:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T20:52:03","slug":"the-case-against-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41021","title":{"rendered":"The case against reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"top\" \/>\n<p><em>by Donald Hoffman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If TMS impairs activity of V4 in the left hemisphere, then, as the person watches, color drains from the right half of the world: if they look directly at a red apple, the right half of the apple fades to gray. Turn off the TMS and red color seeps back into the right half of the apple. If TMS stimulates V4, then the person will hallucinate &#8220;chromatophenes&#8221;\u2014colored rings and halos. With this, you can pour colors into consciousness, or siphon them out of consciousness. &#8211; p.11<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The correlation is systematic: nearby points on the gyrus correspond to nearby points on the body, and regions of the body that are more sensitive, such as the lips and fingertips, occupy more real estate on the gyrus. Stimulate the gyrus near the middle of the brain, and you feel it in your toes. Slide the electrode along the gyrus, stimulating at ever more lateral points, and the feeling, with a few exceptions, slides systematically up the body. &#8211; p.11 <em>Sounds like sensori-motor impulses, as with mental images.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are impressive applications of NCCs- Equally impressive is our utter failure to understand the relation between NCCs and consciousness. &#8211; p.14 <em>NCCs are only correlates, or better said only parts of more complex processes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What false assumption bedevils our efforts to unravel the relation between brain and consciousness? I propose it is this: we see reality as it is. &#8211; p.17 <em>Another false assumption: consciousness not only happens in the brain but also in the world. It is an interaction.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Evolution by natural selection entails a counterintuitive theorem: the probability is zero that we see reality as it is. This theorem applies not just to taste, odor, and color, but also to shape, position, mass, and velocity-even to space and time. We see none of reality as it is. The reality that prompts you to create an experience of a tomato, the reality that exists whether or not you see a tomato, is nothing like what you see and taste. &#8211; p.20 <em>OK so is this reality accessible somehow, in which case we should ackowledge the existence of a God&#8217;s eye view? Or is it not, which begs the question why should we care about it anyways?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If space and time exist only in our perceptions, then how can anything within space and time, such as neurons and their activity, create our consciousness? &#8211; p.21 <em>Maybe because thinking that neurons and their activity are in space in time is a fake assumption as well? But not very useful\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reproductive success depends on collecting fitness points. Beauty tells us what and where they are. &#8211; p.23 <em>Sounds like beauty should essentially be defined at the level of a species. Quite unlikely.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which gives the lie to the idea that beauty is a whim of the beholder. To the contrary, it is the consequence of unconscious inferences within the beholder, inferences that were crafted over millennia by the logic of natuial selection: if the inferences too often delivered a verdict of hot when they should have said not, or vice versa, then the beholder would too often prefer mates who were less likely to raise healthy offspring. In this case, the beholder&#8217;s misguiding genes, and their faulty inferences, would be less likely to pass into the next generation. In short, if genes get beauty wrong, they tend to go extinct This is the pitiless logic of natural selection. &#8211; p.24 <em>Sure there might be a tendency (statistical mean), but we should also expect a lot of variance at the individual level.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to standard accounts of evolution, payoffs can vary wildly while the true state of the world remains fixed. It follows that seeing truth and seeing fitness are two distinct strategies of perception, not one strategy seen in different lights. &#8211; p.55 <em>Fitness is what drives some visual cues to be effectively picked up at an individual temporal scale, or potentially at the scale of a species? Are there limits set by evolution to the visual structures that may be potentially picked up?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our own senses, for instance, don&#8217;t perceive oxygen; indeed, we didn&#8217;t discover oxygen until 1772. Instead, our senses report fitness: we feel a headache if there is insufficient oxygen, and lightheaded if there is too much. Likewise, our senses don&#8217;t perceive ultraviolet radiation; indeed, we didn&#8217;t discover this radiation until 1801. Instead, our senses report fitness: we feel sunburn if we receive too much ultraviolet radiation. &#8211; p.63 <em>Beside fitness, we feel its gradient. But are oxygen or ultraviolet radiations real or not? Assuming they are, we can study fitness relative to their concentration or gradient, which is useful. In other examples, the result of the study might depend on the scale of interest: we know we should not eat mold, but we may also look at it closely, scratch it, inspect it under a microscope. Is this getting clother to reality or not? If not, should we care?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The structures of fitness payoffs, which shape what we perceive, differ from the structures of objective reality with high probability. Again, this is no support for solipsism: there is an objective reality. But that reality is utterly unlike our perceptions of objects in space and time. &#8211; p.65 <em>So objective reality is unknown. Alright, we agree. But then what? Why not rely instead on inter-subjective reality? Then fitness still plays a major role compared to truth!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The key insight of the theorem is simple: the probability that fitness payoffs reflect any structure in the world plummets to zero as the complexity of the world and perception soars. Chaotic effects prevent precise prediction of the specific perceptual systems that will prevail. &#8211; p.69 <em>The test is too binary: animals interact with the world over time at different scales. They may even LEARN to see more accurately (e.g., shepherds, scientists, artists) assuming inter-subjective reality.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The language of space and time, of physical objects with shapes, positions, momenta, spins, polarizations, colors, textures, and smells, is the right language to describe fitness payoffs. -p.77 <em>Really? No distinction between what is directly seen and what is indirectly measured?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, there is no need to posit any physical object, or a space time, that exists when no one observes. Space and time themselves are simply the format of our interface, and physical objects are icons that we create on the fly as we attend to different options for collecting fitness payoffs. Objects are not preexisting entities that force themselves upon our senses. They are solutions to the problem of reaping more payoffs than the competition, from the multitude of payoffs on offer. &#8211; p.81 <em>How do you precisely define an object then?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I see icons of beetles and bottles, not objective truths. But my icons reveal a fact about fitness that the beetle s icons do not\u2014humping bottles won&#8217;t make baby beetles. Because my icons inform me of fitness, not truth, my critique of unfit beetle bumbling can be apt and yet presume no god&#8217;s-eye view. &#8211; p.87<em> If everything is an icon, then what explanatory power to they bring to the table? I thought that the idea of an icon was that of a sensory shortcut, one that can be studied on closer inspection, scientifically (i.e., when not engaged in activities like those that have shaped us throughout evolution).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our prowess with diseases, spacecrafts, and cameras is impressive. But prowess is just prowess, not truth. We have become better masters of our interface. But as long as our theories are stuck within spacetime, we cannot master what lurks behind. &#8211; p.92 <em>What happens when we access what lurks behind? We get a more complex icon\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quantum theory and evolutionary biology so interpreted, together weave a remarkably consistent story. Quantum theory explains that measurements reveal no objective truths, just consequences for agents of their actions. Evolution tells us why: natural selection shapes the senses to reveal fitness consequences for agents of their actions. &#8211; p.100 <em>But these are NOT the same agents and actions! When going up the scales, quantum effects disappear (wave function collapse).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Current theories of perception often disagree about which true properties are reported, and about how the reports are generated, but they all assume to be true what physicists have discovered to be false\u2014that objects in spacetime are fundamental. &#8211; p.116 <em>Spacetime does not have to be fundamental. It is a common ground for all living creatures. I thus don&#8217;t see why we should deny it when studying their perception of the world!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A surfeit of fitness information can be compressed to a feasible level using symmetries. &#8211; p.121<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Donald Hoffman If TMS impairs activity of V4 in the left hemisphere, then, as the person watches, color drains from the right half of the world: if they look directly at a red apple, the right half of the apple fades to gray. Turn off the TMS and red color seeps back into the &#8230; <a title=\"The case against reality\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=41021\" aria-label=\"Read more about The case against reality\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[621],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41022,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41021\/revisions\/41022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}