Did you write this with your “knows things” brain, or your “fitness maxing” brain? ;) I think, from talking to you, that we both believe in a “knows things” br

Did you write this with your “knows things” brain, or your “fitness maxing” brain? ;) I think, from talking to you, that we both believe in a “knows things” brain: we can know things, including that there are limitations to our knowledge, and certain vulnerabilities that can lead us to know wrongly. The kinds of arguments you have been making are predicated on our thoughts having truth value, as such. The “fitness machine” brain’s thoughts have no truth value, only fitness value. It does not experience “reality as it exists, at all.” As such it cannot even determine that there is truth value to its self-evaluation as a “fitness machine.” Even worse, it has no access to its objective function as a fitness maximizer, so it can’t even tell if its own thoughts are, indeed, fitness-enhancing! So yeah, fitness brain is susceptible to the “demon” scenario you described. If we want to posit that the “fitness machine” brain can indeed “know things,” we need to specify how. This doesn’t seem obvious at all to me.