To point 3, see Peter Watts novel Blindsight [1]. In it, he makes the case that consciousness is not necessarily aligned with the fitness function; that's curio

To point 3, see Peter Watts novel Blindsight [1]. In it, he makes the case that consciousness is not necessarily aligned with the fitness function; that's curiously similar to the argument Hoffman makes that "correctly perceiving reality" is not necessarily always an improvement upon the fitness function. However, from my admittedly layman's poor understanding of QM, his "conscious agents all the way down" doesn't mesh with our current understanding of QM. That is, I've not read anywhere that current QM theory and practice postulates nothing exists until a conscious observer pays attention to it. Can someone with a physics background please chime in on what Hoffman is referring to? [1] http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm