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The problem with this talk is that it's almost content free. He has demonstrated that sometimes we (and other animals) misperceive things, or construct in our
by mhandley 4y ago
The problem with this talk is that it's almost content free. He has demonstrated that sometimes we (and other animals) misperceive things, or construct in our heads what we expect to see. He has demonstrated via simple virtual world models that simple artificial organisms evolve to perceive things that keep us alive and ignore other things. But what he has failed to do is tell us anything at all about how our perceptions generally differ from reality. Yes, the map is not the territory - we know that. Yes, we can't directly see atoms, we know that too, though we can with our machines. But other than being a low definition representation, he has not shown any important way in which the map differs from a low definition representation of reality, except that sometimes we make mistakes. He could be right, spacetime could just be the API, but he has presented no evidence for that.
- mjburgess 4y agoWell we do see atoms, and we see them directly -- in the sense that atoms are a direct cause of our perceptions. However what "seeing atoms" means at a "given resolution" differs. There's a long history of this paranoid game: we think the stick is bent! We were wrong! We didnt see the stick at all ! (false). Ah, but damn: how is it now we know we were wrong? How is it now that, when we took the stick out of the water, we know it isnt bent? Every sceptical example ever posed has this feature: it presumes that it is possible to be right. That is quite daming to the whole project of scepticism; it is, essentially, incoherent. Without the possibility of knowing the stick is bent, our mistake was never even a mistake. The very worry of being mistaken is a worry which presumes that truth & knowledege are the ordinary background of our experience.
- foolrush 4y ago> in the sense that atoms are a direct cause of our perceptions. I do not believe this is correct in any manner, and reduces the role of cognition. Jastrow’s work focuses on this departure between one context and higher order cognition.
- mjburgess 4y agothe concepts we develop through sensory-motor interaction with our environment structure our perception so-as-to-present a certain "level of abstraction" over the environment But just as `sum([2, 4, 6])` presents `12`, it does so via directly summating `2`, `4`, `6`. That our perception is aggregating and abstracting does not mean that it isnt caused directly by those things which it aggregates and abstracts. Here, "seeing" is the `sum`, `[2, 4, 6]` are the atoms, and `12` is the perception. A case in point: a frog can detect a single photo. Is there any sense here in which a frog's qualitative sensation of a "flicker" is not directly caused by a photon? And likewise, that redness of the apple is just an abstract presentation of photons of light scattering of the atoms of its surface. The causal chain here is direct. Light does not "go via" purgatory first, we see, directly, the objects of the world.
- mbnull 4y agoThe TED talk is old and maybe not the right format to discuss details. There are long-form discussions with Donald Hoffman on Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal I can link: https://youtu.be/CmieNQH7Q4w https://youtu.be/CmieNQH7Q4w He goes into more details (it's over 3 hours…), but I am not sure his arguments are satisfying. It is really hard to prove this concept. The idea itself is very old. Plato's Cave is only one example. Also in discussion with others: https://youtu.be/EwTpdCVsttI https://youtu.be/EwTpdCVsttI with John Vervaeke https://youtu.be/bhSlYfVtgww https://youtu.be/bhSlYfVtgww with Joscha Bach