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The problem here is that the concept presented isn't scientifically rigorous as applied to human consciousness and perception. One, fitness simulations are redu
by keithwhor 10y ago
The problem here is that the concept presented isn't scientifically rigorous as applied to human consciousness and perception. One, fitness simulations are reductive by design and trying to draw analogies from them to explain complex subjective phenomena is a stretch. Two, we need a testable hypothesis - I haven't seen one presented here.
It's an interesting concept, but the author provides us an example - an organism responding to a fitness function optimizing for Y resource where X < Y < Z doesn't distinguish between X and Z, just that X and Z are both "bad" - reducing complex quantities to binary outcomes. To then suggest physical reality could be "hidden" in these sorts of reductions without an analogy or testable example just seems philosophical.
The best supportive example I can come up with is - we obviously don't see "reality." Visible light, for example, is only a tiny fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Our ability to perceive and differentiate wavelengths in this range has been selected for. But language and formal logic --- abstract relationships, mathematics --- seems to be something we've discovered that describes a Universe of relationships we can't possibly entirely perceive. But we still utilize this reality, as we've incidentally discovered the rest of the EM spectrum by its interactions with other aspects of reality we can measure and the ability to describe abstract relationships (language).
So I guess I'm a bit confused, and I admit ignorance here --- my 2c here is an off-the-cuff response to the article provided without digging deeper. Is the argument there are rules and laws of the Universe we can't possibly understand or perceive (physical constants, relationships)? If so --- that's plausibly true, but if something doesn't interact with the Universe in a way we can measure, it may as well not exist. Or is the argument that the way we describe and interpret the Universe (language, logic) is inherently flawed because it's been developed or "discovered" based on selection for the ability to use language between extreme quantities of "language resources" we can't possibly measure? The latter is interesting, because it's perhaps a unique perspective on mental illness and drug hallucinations / delusions (schizophrenia, LSD) but still not testable.
Just musings. Neat philosophically. Would like to see something concrete here, but seems to be a prime candidate for circular reasoning - we can never test this hypothesis because we can never know what is, by definition, unknowable to us.
- pixl97 10y ago>Is the argument there are rules and laws of the Universe we can't possibly understand or perceive (physical constants, relationships)? No, probably not. But instead that our filter biases make us miss most of that invisible universe. Which brings us to the point, what else are we missing? We did not know of most of the universe until we invented the scientific method to overcome the biases of our own mind. > The latter is interesting, because it's perhaps a unique perspective on mental illness and drug hallucinations / delusions (schizophrenia, LSD) but still not testable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel A term coined by the inventor of LSD, and it seems unlikely it's a coincidence.
- tamana 10y agoHofmann invented LSD, not Leary or Hoffman