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There's been a fair bit of research on "depressive realism", the hypothesis that depressed people's view of reality is actually more accurate and it's "normal"

There's been a fair bit of research on "depressive realism", the hypothesis that depressed people's view of reality is actually more accurate and it's "normal" people who have a system of thinking which is efficient, but wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism I think that this may be an example of the tension between what's accurate vs. what's adaptive. There are a number of other social phenomena - like lying, exaggeration, overconfidence, risk-taking, perceptual bias, etc. - where individuals espouse views that are wrong because being wrong is more effective (in the sense of better social status or reproductive success) than being correct. Depression is likely the inverse of that: depressed people see the world accurately, but all of the mechanisms biasing toward survival involve distorting our perception of the world.

patcon 6y ago
YES. Thanks for saying this. I reflect on this a lot when I try to imagine how I should "expect" the society to tend toward some pseudo-stability... A related TED talk by Donald Hoffman has stuck with me: https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_as_it_is/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_a... > Well, I hate to break it to you, but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality but are just tuned to fitness drive to extinction all the organisms that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those perceptions of reality go extinct. Written format: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...
- Udik 6y ago
  Interesting, but what does it mean? The example of the steak makes no sense (it's a steak, not "fitness") and what does it mean to be "tuned to fitness" instead of reality? If perception of reality goes extinct, how do you reach the steak? The whole section makes no sense to me.
  - patcon 6y ago
    heh sorry, maybe it wasn't as strong a primer as I was recalling, since there's lots of noise around the message I was cherry-picking for my comment :) This one's more to-the-point maybe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgbLwn_yYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgbLwn_yYE It's basically saying at every level of existence and perception, actors that see fake versions of reality outcompete and drive to extinction actors that spend energy trying to see truth (and as a corollary, try to socialize truth). Shortcuts always win. Like not just one given level we might try to look at, like our mental heuristics, but at EVERY level. At its core, it's basically saying "truth" is not energetically favoured in systems. This gives me tons of pause for thought, in that I wonder how a truism like this might play out at the cultural level of organization, where evolution remains a force at play. I feel aware of the power of stories and lies to create simple narratives at all levels -- is this a manifestation of this sort of information energetics playing out? For e.g., the overton window being a constrained version of truth that [previously] created stability. Or the fact that democracy doesn't appear to actually function according to the folk theory we all tell ourselves, but maybe the simple (fake) story of democracy is what makes it work.[1] Or how we deceive about our own internal state in order to keep social homeostasis with others. Or that truth maybe doesn't have enough benefit to survive unless it has the cover of larger lies/deceptions to offset its penalty...? So what lies allowed the dominance of science to operate up til now, and how might we be shifting that balance within our new digital landscape? I dunno, I have some background in this stuff, but haven't been in academia for a bit, so it's a bit armchairy :) [1]: https://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240 https://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsiv...
    - Udik 6y ago
      I've watched the second video and it still makes no sense to me. "if you have an organism that sees reality as it is, competing with an organism that sees none of reality but is just tuned to what's called the fitness in the environment" The fitness in the environment? As I understand it, fitness is a property of the individuals, not of the environment. It's defined ex post as the reproductive success of an individual. What does being "tuned to fitness" mean? I imagine (but can only guess) it means something like "being served a pre-digested version of reality that maximises some signal-to-noise ratio". But that means that someone else is doing the job of actually parsing the relevant information in the environment before feeding it to an organism. The second issue I have is with the concept of "reality". Is there even such a thing? Real is what, in some sense, reflects useful properties of the environment- and it's still an approximation. Is the steak real? Or are its proteins real? Or the atoms of which it is composed? Or the chemical bounds between them? Or the quarks? Or where it came from? Or its colour? Or its relation with our digestive system? In the video he makes the example of a file: is it "real" that the file is an icon sitting in the middle of the screen? Well, for some uses it is. For others it's sitting somewhere in the filesystem. For other uses, it's a series of non-contiguous blocks. For others still, it's magnetic fields on a disc surface. For others, it's an abstract entity that can be printed on a sheet of paper or sent via email or encrypted. All these things are real, yet none really captures the ground truth of the thing, which is possibly unknowable.
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
Consider the 2x2 matrix and the two types of error in it: * Optimistic think is correct in good environment * Optimistic think is wrong in bad environment * Pessimistic think is correct in bad environment * Pessimistic think is wrong in good environment An optimistic thinker being wrong in a bad environment will result in inability to expect bad events. In our modern world, he will probably be robbed of his wealth. Since he thinks optimistically, he will keep trying and succeed to some extent. A pessimistic thinker being wrong in a good environment will chronically fail to take advantage of opportunities. While everybody else is fucking and getting rich, the pessimist is in paranoid survival mode afraid to do anything but hunker down for the worst, which never comes. Which error is WORSE is determined on average by how good or bad the world is. If you think the world is more good over time, the pessimist error is worse. If you think the world is more bad over time, the optimist error is worse. Your views might depend on where in the world exactly you live, but I consider the world to have vastly and measurably improved, forever and so far, since we began our existence on this rock billions of years ago. Therefore, I choose optimism. If I'm wrong and am robbed (which I've been!), it's still the correct play. Like when you play poker; you calculate the odds, make the play, and even if when the cards hit the table you see you could've won more with a different play, that doesn't matter, because you play the odds. The outcome of probability doesn't change the strategy!

patcon 6y ago

YES. Thanks for saying this. I reflect on this a lot when I try to imagine how I should "expect" the society to tend toward some pseudo-stability... A related TED talk by Donald Hoffman has stuck with me: https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_as_it_is/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_a... > Well, I hate to break it to you, but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality but are just tuned to fitness drive to extinction all the organisms that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those perceptions of reality go extinct. Written format: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...

Udik 6y ago
Interesting, but what does it mean? The example of the steak makes no sense (it's a steak, not "fitness") and what does it mean to be "tuned to fitness" instead of reality? If perception of reality goes extinct, how do you reach the steak? The whole section makes no sense to me.
- patcon 6y ago
  heh sorry, maybe it wasn't as strong a primer as I was recalling, since there's lots of noise around the message I was cherry-picking for my comment :) This one's more to-the-point maybe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgbLwn_yYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgbLwn_yYE It's basically saying at every level of existence and perception, actors that see fake versions of reality outcompete and drive to extinction actors that spend energy trying to see truth (and as a corollary, try to socialize truth). Shortcuts always win. Like not just one given level we might try to look at, like our mental heuristics, but at EVERY level. At its core, it's basically saying "truth" is not energetically favoured in systems. This gives me tons of pause for thought, in that I wonder how a truism like this might play out at the cultural level of organization, where evolution remains a force at play. I feel aware of the power of stories and lies to create simple narratives at all levels -- is this a manifestation of this sort of information energetics playing out? For e.g., the overton window being a constrained version of truth that [previously] created stability. Or the fact that democracy doesn't appear to actually function according to the folk theory we all tell ourselves, but maybe the simple (fake) story of democracy is what makes it work.[1] Or how we deceive about our own internal state in order to keep social homeostasis with others. Or that truth maybe doesn't have enough benefit to survive unless it has the cover of larger lies/deceptions to offset its penalty...? So what lies allowed the dominance of science to operate up til now, and how might we be shifting that balance within our new digital landscape? I dunno, I have some background in this stuff, but haven't been in academia for a bit, so it's a bit armchairy :) [1]: https://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240 https://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsiv...
  - Udik 6y ago
    I've watched the second video and it still makes no sense to me. "if you have an organism that sees reality as it is, competing with an organism that sees none of reality but is just tuned to what's called the fitness in the environment" The fitness in the environment? As I understand it, fitness is a property of the individuals, not of the environment. It's defined ex post as the reproductive success of an individual. What does being "tuned to fitness" mean? I imagine (but can only guess) it means something like "being served a pre-digested version of reality that maximises some signal-to-noise ratio". But that means that someone else is doing the job of actually parsing the relevant information in the environment before feeding it to an organism. The second issue I have is with the concept of "reality". Is there even such a thing? Real is what, in some sense, reflects useful properties of the environment- and it's still an approximation. Is the steak real? Or are its proteins real? Or the atoms of which it is composed? Or the chemical bounds between them? Or the quarks? Or where it came from? Or its colour? Or its relation with our digestive system? In the video he makes the example of a file: is it "real" that the file is an icon sitting in the middle of the screen? Well, for some uses it is. For others it's sitting somewhere in the filesystem. For other uses, it's a series of non-contiguous blocks. For others still, it's magnetic fields on a disc surface. For others, it's an abstract entity that can be printed on a sheet of paper or sent via email or encrypted. All these things are real, yet none really captures the ground truth of the thing, which is possibly unknowable.

hypertele-Xii 6y ago

Consider the 2x2 matrix and the two types of error in it: * Optimistic think is correct in good environment * Optimistic think is wrong in bad environment * Pessimistic think is correct in bad environment * Pessimistic think is wrong in good environment An optimistic thinker being wrong in a bad environment will result in inability to expect bad events. In our modern world, he will probably be robbed of his wealth. Since he thinks optimistically, he will keep trying and succeed to some extent. A pessimistic thinker being wrong in a good environment will chronically fail to take advantage of opportunities. While everybody else is fucking and getting rich, the pessimist is in paranoid survival mode afraid to do anything but hunker down for the worst, which never comes. Which error is WORSE is determined on average by how good or bad the world is. If you think the world is more good over time, the pessimist error is worse. If you think the world is more bad over time, the optimist error is worse. Your views might depend on where in the world exactly you live, but I consider the world to have vastly and measurably improved, forever and so far, since we began our existence on this rock billions of years ago. Therefore, I choose optimism. If I'm wrong and am robbed (which I've been!), it's still the correct play. Like when you play poker; you calculate the odds, make the play, and even if when the cards hit the table you see you could've won more with a different play, that doesn't matter, because you play the odds. The outcome of probability doesn't change the strategy!