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Isn't Hoffman's argument pretty mundane? The conclusion seems pretty obvious; we only see light in a certain (relevant) spectrum, we only taste certain (releva

Isn't Hoffman's argument pretty mundane? The conclusion seems pretty obvious; we only see light in a certain (relevant) spectrum, we only taste certain (relevant) chemicals, we only hear sounds in certain (relevant) frequencies, etc., because it doesn't help us (and in fact distracts us) to perceive more information. Also, it seems like a big aspect he's missing is that within each relevant spectra, we've gotten pretty well tuned to reality. And that's simply because oftentimes, fitness is highly correlated with perceiving reality. For example, seeing all physical objects realistically is important for survival, since if you can't see perceive certain physical objects, then predators/prey may take advantage of the failure (e.g., zebras blending in with tall grass). Is there some greater point I'm missing?

earljwagner 10y ago
So, in other words, "Man is the measure of all things" – Protagoras "We see things not as they are. We see things as we are." attributed to Anaïs Nin
- pixl97 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel Nothing like a little LSD to give a little insight to the world. The mind isn't a learning device, it is a filtering device. Much along the same lines of "The web is a collection of everything we know. Still you'll be lost if you don't use a search engine to filter everything you don't want out"
- hprotagonist 10y ago
  and let's not forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
- grondilu 10y ago
  Also Democritus: "By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void." or: "We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democritus https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democritus
  - dTal 10y ago
    Pretty heady, enlightened stuff for 2400 years ago.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >"We see things not as they are. We see things as we are." attributed to Anaïs Nin No. We see things as they are observable through our senses. We're working with noisy and incomplete information, but still information that ultimately comes from the world rather than from us.
patcon 10y ago
I seemed to get a bit more from his TED talk than I did from the article. I think the main thrust is an attempt to show that not only do we not see reality (which I think many people would agree is probably true), but that in the vast majority of evolutionary simulation models, perceiving reality is actually a disadvantage. The new angle seemed to be the experimental data from computer models.
keithwhor 10y ago
I asked the same question. My gut reaction is that this is just something that seems philosophically appetizing on the surface but breaks down when you start asking questions. "We should view genes, not organisms, as the fundamental unit of propagation. They optimize for their own survival, not necessarily the organisms." --- this is an insight. A testable hypothesis being, "altruistic behavior that seems detrimental to organisms clearly exists, detrimental to the organisms survival. Perhaps this behavior propagates because genes that encourage this type of behavior ensure survival of other copies of themselves within other organisms in the population." I'm having a hard time discerning A) the exact insight here and B) whether or not there's a hypothesis to go along with it.
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  > "We should view genes, not organisms, as the fundamental unit of propagation. They optimize for their own survival, not necessarily the organisms." --- this is an insight. Richard Dawkins wrote a book on just that. "The Selfish Gene" (~1970). However, recent epigenetics discounts just the gene as the sole 'unit' of propogation.
  - dTal 10y ago
    Note that even The Selfish Gene mentions memes as another, possibly competing replicator towards the end.
  - keithwhor 10y ago
    Yeah, that's why I brought it up. Should have made the reference more clear. :) Dawkins had an insight and shared it with the world. I'm not sure this pop-sci article is the same magnitude of revelation or what, if anything, is actually there.
wahern 10y ago
I think what you're missing (if anything at all) is that Hoffman is playing word games. Reality and perception are heavily overloaded words. For example, you interpret perception in terms of excitations from spectral stimuli. For Hoffman's theories to make sense (i.e. applying the Principle of Charity), we need to define perception in terms of a mental model of the cause+effect relationship among physical things. Both of are you admitting that our modes of perception discard relevant information, which could cause us to make wrong deductions. But we need Hoffman's more encompassing definition to allow us to say that perception is intrinsically and irredeemably at odds with reality. The problem is that were he strictly correct, Hoffman would never be able to make the statement in the first place. The false reality isn't absolute if you can deduce that there exists another reality. And like with cryptography, that little chink in the armor plus applied logic is often all you need to tear down the wall. Clearly humans are capable of seeing past the immediate false realities our brains construct, permitting us to examine indirect realities (which may or may not be the same thing as "objective reality", whatever that's supposed to mean). Which suggests that there isn't a single "reality" that we perceive as humans; there are different levels and dimensions of perception and "reality" which we could identify with similar rigor, and clearly Hoffman's assertion cannot apply to them all equally. And the assertions are obvious trivialities if he's referring to the basic mental models we construct in our daily lives. To put it more concretely, science and math allow us to see past our immediate physical senses and mental modeling, at least in so far as they allow us to make predictions which we can and do subsequently verify. That much is clear, and that destroys Hoffman's argument in as much as it relies on handwaving about genetics and evolution. The rest of the argument would appear to just rest on ground well trodden by various philosophies of epistemology, semiotics, etc. And that's a quagmire I'd personally prefer to stay clear of because it's not at all clear we understand what the relevant questions are. I never studied semiotics, but I think we could all do better to keep in mind that words are funny things, and just like the way we perceive physical reality, we tend to subconsciously fill in the gaps (or assume they're filled in) to construct reasonable interpretations of theories. Reading summaries of Hoffman's ideas my first thought was that he's relying on special definitions of overloaded words. Which suggests 1) his theory, if sound, only makes sense within his unique conceptual framework and thus the conclusions don't mean what they superficially mean, and 2) there are a lot of obscured, hidden premises that are either wrong or speculative. Pedantism is a virtue, not a vice. When someone says that being overly pedantic is not constructive, my first thought that is that 1) yes, that's a good assessment, but 2) if it's possible to be overly pedantic (but still reasonable) then the fact it's being unproductive is more a reflection of a lack of substance in a discussion. If people can point at meaningful problems with interpretation of words and phrases, that suggests the discussion is built on sand. Similarly, unless a hypothesis is testable and falsifiable, people should put little stock into it. Hoffman's notions are so abstract (literally, semantically) that my instinct is to turn and run. Which isn't to say he might not be on to something, but untangling the mess is probably more effort than discovering anew whatever useful insight lay beneath it all.
bbctol 10y ago
His point is really that perceiving reality may not be correlated with fitness that well. It's a shame this work has been taken up by a lot of pop press philosophizing, because the actual research is quite interesting, and the philosophical surface layer is mostly not Hoffman's fault.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>And that's simply because oftentimes, fitness is highly correlated with perceiving reality. It's more than that. Building a whole range of fit animals whose brain-design is approximately correct in-general ends up being much simpler and easier than custom-building a highly fit but generally wrong brain for each animal.

earljwagner 10y ago

So, in other words, "Man is the measure of all things" – Protagoras "We see things not as they are. We see things as we are." attributed to Anaïs Nin

pixl97 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel Nothing like a little LSD to give a little insight to the world. The mind isn't a learning device, it is a filtering device. Much along the same lines of "The web is a collection of everything we know. Still you'll be lost if you don't use a search engine to filter everything you don't want out"
hprotagonist 10y ago
and let's not forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
grondilu 10y ago
Also Democritus: "By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void." or: "We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democritus https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democritus
- dTal 10y ago
  Pretty heady, enlightened stuff for 2400 years ago.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>"We see things not as they are. We see things as we are." attributed to Anaïs Nin No. We see things as they are observable through our senses. We're working with noisy and incomplete information, but still information that ultimately comes from the world rather than from us.

patcon 10y ago

I seemed to get a bit more from his TED talk than I did from the article. I think the main thrust is an attempt to show that not only do we not see reality (which I think many people would agree is probably true), but that in the vast majority of evolutionary simulation models, perceiving reality is actually a disadvantage. The new angle seemed to be the experimental data from computer models.

keithwhor 10y ago

I asked the same question. My gut reaction is that this is just something that seems philosophically appetizing on the surface but breaks down when you start asking questions. "We should view genes, not organisms, as the fundamental unit of propagation. They optimize for their own survival, not necessarily the organisms." --- this is an insight. A testable hypothesis being, "altruistic behavior that seems detrimental to organisms clearly exists, detrimental to the organisms survival. Perhaps this behavior propagates because genes that encourage this type of behavior ensure survival of other copies of themselves within other organisms in the population." I'm having a hard time discerning A) the exact insight here and B) whether or not there's a hypothesis to go along with it.

0xfeba 10y ago
> "We should view genes, not organisms, as the fundamental unit of propagation. They optimize for their own survival, not necessarily the organisms." --- this is an insight. Richard Dawkins wrote a book on just that. "The Selfish Gene" (~1970). However, recent epigenetics discounts just the gene as the sole 'unit' of propogation.
- dTal 10y ago
  Note that even The Selfish Gene mentions memes as another, possibly competing replicator towards the end.
- keithwhor 10y ago
  Yeah, that's why I brought it up. Should have made the reference more clear. :) Dawkins had an insight and shared it with the world. I'm not sure this pop-sci article is the same magnitude of revelation or what, if anything, is actually there.

wahern 10y ago

I think what you're missing (if anything at all) is that Hoffman is playing word games. Reality and perception are heavily overloaded words. For example, you interpret perception in terms of excitations from spectral stimuli. For Hoffman's theories to make sense (i.e. applying the Principle of Charity), we need to define perception in terms of a mental model of the cause+effect relationship among physical things. Both of are you admitting that our modes of perception discard relevant information, which could cause us to make wrong deductions. But we need Hoffman's more encompassing definition to allow us to say that perception is intrinsically and irredeemably at odds with reality. The problem is that were he strictly correct, Hoffman would never be able to make the statement in the first place. The false reality isn't absolute if you can deduce that there exists another reality. And like with cryptography, that little chink in the armor plus applied logic is often all you need to tear down the wall. Clearly humans are capable of seeing past the immediate false realities our brains construct, permitting us to examine indirect realities (which may or may not be the same thing as "objective reality", whatever that's supposed to mean). Which suggests that there isn't a single "reality" that we perceive as humans; there are different levels and dimensions of perception and "reality" which we could identify with similar rigor, and clearly Hoffman's assertion cannot apply to them all equally. And the assertions are obvious trivialities if he's referring to the basic mental models we construct in our daily lives. To put it more concretely, science and math allow us to see past our immediate physical senses and mental modeling, at least in so far as they allow us to make predictions which we can and do subsequently verify. That much is clear, and that destroys Hoffman's argument in as much as it relies on handwaving about genetics and evolution. The rest of the argument would appear to just rest on ground well trodden by various philosophies of epistemology, semiotics, etc. And that's a quagmire I'd personally prefer to stay clear of because it's not at all clear we understand what the relevant questions are. I never studied semiotics, but I think we could all do better to keep in mind that words are funny things, and just like the way we perceive physical reality, we tend to subconsciously fill in the gaps (or assume they're filled in) to construct reasonable interpretations of theories. Reading summaries of Hoffman's ideas my first thought was that he's relying on special definitions of overloaded words. Which suggests 1) his theory, if sound, only makes sense within his unique conceptual framework and thus the conclusions don't mean what they superficially mean, and 2) there are a lot of obscured, hidden premises that are either wrong or speculative. Pedantism is a virtue, not a vice. When someone says that being overly pedantic is not constructive, my first thought that is that 1) yes, that's a good assessment, but 2) if it's possible to be overly pedantic (but still reasonable) then the fact it's being unproductive is more a reflection of a lack of substance in a discussion. If people can point at meaningful problems with interpretation of words and phrases, that suggests the discussion is built on sand. Similarly, unless a hypothesis is testable and falsifiable, people should put little stock into it. Hoffman's notions are so abstract (literally, semantically) that my instinct is to turn and run. Which isn't to say he might not be on to something, but untangling the mess is probably more effort than discovering anew whatever useful insight lay beneath it all.

bbctol 10y ago

His point is really that perceiving reality may not be correlated with fitness that well. It's a shame this work has been taken up by a lot of pop press philosophizing, because the actual research is quite interesting, and the philosophical surface layer is mostly not Hoffman's fault.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>And that's simply because oftentimes, fitness is highly correlated with perceiving reality. It's more than that. Building a whole range of fit animals whose brain-design is approximately correct in-general ends up being much simpler and easier than custom-building a highly fit but generally wrong brain for each animal.