
The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality (2016) - bookofjoe
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421
======
olavk
While an interesting argument, the article is very muddled due to a confused
philosophical foundation. Kant already made it clear that our experience of
the world by definition is something different from the world in itself. For
example, EM radiation of certain wavelengths hit the eyes which cause us to
experience colors. So strictly speaking colors do not exist in "the world in
itself", they are a function of the human mind.

But this does _not_ mean "reality does not exist" \- how would that statement
even make sense? Or that our experience is an "illusion" or "wrong". This
supposes there is some "correct" way to experience the world which might be
different from how the human mind experiences it. The human mind process input
and generates a model of the world which helps us survive. Other models are
possible (eg. different animal species experience the world in different
ways), but who is to say which model is _correct_?

~~~
danielam
> Kant already made it clear that our experience of the world by definition is
> something different from the world in itself.

He didn't make it "clear" if by "clear" you mean he demonstrated this to be
true. Why posit noumena at all if all that is knowable are phenomena?

> For example, EM radiation of certain wavelengths hit the eyes which cause us
> to experience colors. So strictly speaking colors do not exist in "the world
> in itself", they are a function of the human mind.

That's not really Kantian. But in any case, appealing to EM radiation and
minds as the true causes of color is appealing to unknowable noumena. You're
dismissing color as mere phenomena, but how could you even come to know that
to be the case? After all, as you say, all you really know are phenomena.

~~~
tux1968
Colors do exist as named segments of the visual spectrum. The internal
experience of each color in our minds, is something separate and different
from that external stimulus.

What did I get wrong?

~~~
olavk
It is more complicated. For example, the color magenta does not correspond to
a single segment of the EM spectrum. Due to how the eyes work, magenta is
caused by light of two different wavelength. This is the reason magenta is not
in the rainbow even though it is one of the primary colors (e.g. one of the
colors used in printer ink). So the experience of color is very much
determined by the design of the sensory organs.

~~~
tux1968
Okay. However the main point is there is something objective, and external to
the observer, that is being perceived. That phenomena no matter how complex or
disjointed, can reasonably be labelled color.

The experience of color, even with all the intricacies and deficiencies of
human perception, is another matter. When I ask you to think of the color
blue, you can recall the experience with no need for the visual stimuli.

The word can refer to parts of the EM spectrum or to the experience, or both.

------
danielam
It's very difficult to be charitable toward this kind of philosophical
dabbling. The most glaring absurdity is the performative contradiction of
appealing to evolution and quantum mechanics to prove that the world is an
illusion. If "the world" is an illusion, then we have evidence for neither
evolution nor quantum mechanics. If evolution and quantum mechanics rob us of
the possibility of knowing the world as it is, then we can't possibly appeal
to evolution and quantum mechanics since, after all, we can't know them to be
true. If evolution and/or quantum mechanics do indeed lead us toward these
absurd conclusions, then clearly evolution and/or quantum mechanics are
demonstrably false, and Hoffman would have deployed a successful reductio ad
absurdum to show that at least one of them is. Instead, Hoffman destroys the
very reality that made possible both the evidence and these theories in the
first place. It's somewhat analogous to beginning with the premise that root 2
is rational, deducing a contradiction and then claiming that what you've shown
is that numbers don't really exist.

Apart from that, neuroscience itself seems to suffer from a certain myopia
about what it takes for granted, metaphysically speaking. The source of many
of the problems in the philosophy of mind today have their origin in a
lingering legacy of Descartes' mechanistic metaphysics in modern and
contemporary thought. This legacy equally afflicts materialists who still
cling to a Cartesian view of matter (in fact they're in even worse shape than
dualists, having jettisoned what dualists use to account for things like
color). If you want to make headway, this Cartesian legacy needs to be
exorcised from our thinking. Otherwise, you'll keep collapsing back into
Cartesian dualism, panpsychism or, worse, eliminativism.

~~~
csomar
> The most glaring absurdity is the performative contradiction of appealing to
> evolution and quantum mechanics to prove that the world is an illusion.

I think you misunderstood what the OP (the physicist) means by that. He trying
to convey that "reality" is not "physical".

Physicality is conveyed by the brain but it is not the "reality". So it is an
illusion. It doesn't mean our existence is.

------
phkahler
>> You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if
your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop
is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a
complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. Evolution has
shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive
behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to
know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you
had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

What he's overlooking in that desktop metaphor is that there are people who
understand ALL of the inner workings down to atoms. No single person has it
all in their head, but the software was written by human minds to run on
hardware created by human minds that understand the device physics down to a
very low level. A user of the software doesn't have to have a full model of
the reality - in fact that was the entire point of the desktop metaphor, to
make it simple for people so they don't NEED to understand it all in order to
use it. For most users that is sufficient level of understanding, and if
everyone took the full deep dive we would indeed all be eaten by tigers. But
that only says none of us has a full model of reality, it does not say our
model of reality is wrong in any way.

I find it amusing that he chose a metaphor designed to hide the complexity of
reality from people while ignoring the fact that it was done that way
deliberately by people.

~~~
dajomu
It seems that he chose it exactly for that reason though. The desktop is an
abstraction built upon successive abstractions to hide reality from us so that
we can do what we need to do. Computers have 'evolved' to what they are today
to essentially improve their fitness to their environment, even if that means
that it is impossible for any one person to fully understand how they work.

In this case it kind of supports his idea that evolution would lead to a
similar kind of model of reality in our heads. But the most interesting thing
seemed to be the fact that if you remove objective reality from his models you
can just build on successive layers of abstraction and the model still works.
I know this metaphor doesn't hold up in all cases, but it seems like it's a
pretty good introduction to this idea.

------
DoctorOetker
Let's pretend a thought or experience is in fact just memories, or rather
recombinations and interactions of memories.

The word "remember" [as in 'recall to mind'] is etymologically composed of
"re-" [as in again, over time] and "memorari" ['being mindfull of'].

Instead of focussing on consciousness, let's focus on the "first-person"-ness.

Everyone else is an "I" too...

Imagine [part of] your memory is dysfunctional in a similar way to amnesia.
You are playing chess, and write down the moves on a piece of paper with some
"private" notes like "beware of the horse on E5". After every move, your nurse
turns the chess board and notes around, and "reminds" you with "it is your
turn". You forgot you were black a few minutes ago, and then you forgot you
were playing white after and so on. You would insist you don't have amnesia:
indeed by looking at your paper you can "recall" every move, and how you felt
about the moves.

In physics forces and fields fall as 1/r^2 or faster (say dipoles). So as _I_
(your "I" or my "I" alike) evaluate how _I_ the universe could move say this
electron, or fire that neuron, we predominantly take into account the 'local'
information. So we all are under the impression that we are merely part of the
universe, instead of an amnesiac decision process on the total universe.

Even though we don't, suppose we all agreed with the statement "I am the
universe", are we in agreement, or total conflict? Or is it only a paradox: a
linguistic illusion of contradiction?

Edit: I lost the cadence of my comment: intead of re-member to indicate
carrying information over time, we could call the subjective "first-
person"-ness here-member, carying information across space [but falling offf
quickly]...

~~~
DoctorOetker
A similar question/conundrum is this:

From a reductionist perspective a civilization is a collection of humans, a
human is a collection of cells.

Why is my _I_ or first-person perception that of me the human [and I am
convinced that others perceive it this way as well, even though I can't prove
it off course] as opposed to a first-person civilization (scale above) or a
first-person cell like a neuron (a scale below).

Allthough once I did have a weird and exhilerating experience of fright and
victorious excitement at the same time. I was lucky to always have been
interested in cryptography and programming, so when I first read Satoshi
Nakamoto's paper, I already knew the prerequisites or building blocks used, so
merely seeing how they were combined to achieve the decentralization I
immediately understood how it worked (except for a boatload of corner cases
and pitfalls, which the paper did not explain, and only the source code was a
guide). This high of a new insight, kept lasting and lasting, and implications
and rammifications kept popping up in my head... The excitement part was a
revolutionary feeling, originally just as in "humans against the system" but
it was like suddenly millions of little voices (probably not individual
neurons, but perhaps neuronal circuits) in my head were celebrating, and
yelling that _their supersystem_ i.e. my human-level I not only understood the
plight for decentralization, but as if they somehow thought it would liberate
and decentralize my brain as well. This lasted for a few hours, and I had a
hard time thinking straight, I was just hearing barely comprehensible
_thoughts_ which felt like some old ancient message (not in english, but
thoughts). I was elated for what decentralization meant on the human level,
but at the same time many different parts of my brain were celebrating on the
lower level. It's hard to describe the experience, but it was like how humans
would celebrate if somehow our human civilizational top-down structures
(nations/goverments/leaders/security services) would positively welcome
crypto/decentralization etc. i.e. suppose congress openly starts talking about
sponsoring and setting up decentralized provably secure social media, voting
systems, ... and suddenly appear to actually think in the best interests of
the people. That was what I was experiencing: small parts of my brain
celebrating the incredulous. This was a very scary experience, during those
couple of hours simple and mundane tasks like taking a sip because I was
thirsty would get repeatedly postponed, but at the same time I would start
cooking dinner. Luckily for me this revolt subdued afterwards and _order was
restored_ (I can only assume the normal order in my brain is some form of top-
down approach society of neurons), which allowed me to function properly.
Although the whole experience was scary, it was only scary in hindsight. While
it was happening "I" felt elated, excited, and only after recovering did I
notice something had gone horribly wrong in my brain.

I am not eppileptic, and I have never experienced anything like it before or
after (its many years ago now). The timing and similarity in subject makes me
think it was in fact caused by reading the Satoshi paper. I am not a religious
person, but I do consider this to be an experience which religious people
would call a religious experience if it happened to them. Since I am not
religious, I can only conclude that attention is some sort of top-down
approach in how the brain functions [apparently not a democracy!].

~~~
manjushri
Have you read the works of Carl Jung? Your experience reminds me of his
theories.

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. Every
civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic
man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us
with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages
going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a
product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless
archaic traits."

[https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-following-quote-by-
Carl-...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-following-quote-by-Carl-Jung-
mean-In-all-chaos-there-is-a-cosmos-in-all-disorder-a-secret-order)

------
mannykannot
In the examples where Hoffman claims there is always an optimal survival
function that is better than a reality-based survival function, it is not at
all clear to me that the optimal function is not actually a more realistic
function than the allegedly realistic one. At best, the author's case seems to
be that a) all mental representations are inaccurate to some extent (they are
all approximations, at least), and b) a representation that is good for
survival need not be accurate in aspects that do not matter for survival. To
go from there to say that there is no correspondence between mental
representations and reality seems to be a huge and unjustified leap, and to go
from there to there being no reality seems to be a second and even larger
stretch.

------
_bxg1
"But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we
also have to take it literally."

This is a perspective I like to take on the world's various flavors of
spirituality. I really liked the "desktop" analogy, in particular.
Spirituality is a very useful abstraction on top of reality, which our minds
have evolved because of its usefulness. The fact that elements of it don't
exist doesn't make them meaningless or reduce them to a simple opiate; just
because we shouldn't take them literally doesn't mean we shouldn't take them
seriously.

------
whack
This argument reminds me of the saying that "the map is not the territory".
Yes, it's true that evolution will select for organisms that are able to
model/understand reality only to the extent that it is practically useful to
them. But that still implies that their mental model has some basis in
reality.

Consider a map of NYC vs the actual territory of NYC. Yes, the map is only a
crude approximation of the territory. Map makers (similar to evolution) are
only incentivized to produce maps that are a practically useful approximation
of reality, and not a fully accurate depiction of reality. But that doesn't
change the fact that the map is still rooted in reality. When the map shows me
that Time Square is only a short walk from Port Authority, and that the WTC is
much further away, those are all facts that represent reality.

Yes, it can be disconcerting to realize that what we're looking at is a map,
and not the territory itself. Yes, there are limitations on how much we can
learn about the territory purely from looking at a map. But that doesn't
change the fact that the map is correlated with its underlying reality.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation#"The_ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation#"The_map_is_not_the_territory")

------
burlesona
This is pretty weird, deep stuff to think about. To me, the two main points of
the article were:

> While neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing
> as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the
> mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short,
> all roads lead back to the observer.

and

> Nevertheless, for now I don’t think we are machines — in part because I
> distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being
> represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences
> as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m
> claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of
> everyday life — my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate —
> that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

~~~
Filligree
> While neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing
> as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the
> mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short,
> all roads lead back to the observer.

You won't find many quantum physicists agreeing with this statement.

The notion of an 'observer' is an artificial one, coming from the Copenhagen
interpretation, which is well known to be false -- it's still used only
because it simplifies the calculations, so long as you know when to apply it.
The reality is far more nuanced.

That being said, even Copenhagen doesn't equate observers to humans. Anything
can be an observer, and to make good use of the interpretation, it's usually
equated with the measuring apparatus used in the experiment. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with thought.

In reality, the 'observer effect' is an approximation to decoherence that only
applies when the experiment is perfectly shielded, and the measuring
instrument is not. That is only _usually_ the case.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> The notion of an 'observer' is an artificial one, coming from the Copenhagen
> interpretation, which is well known to be false

I think you're overstating this a great deal. I don't think it's well-known,
or even agreed on, that it's false. Can you demonstrate otherwise?

And in what sense is it "false"? If it's true to the equations, and not
experimentally disproved, isn't it as valid as any other interpretation?

~~~
Filligree
The equations don't describe anything like collapse, and Copenhagen doesn't
really explain what's supposed to be triggering it. No, I don't think it's a
match.

There are plenty of interpretations that do match the math, though. You're not
stuck with MWI.

------
buvanshak
I couldn't find anything new in this article. Sure the version of reality that
gave us maximum advantage sustained. Organism who had color vision had an
advantage over organism s that only had monochrome vision...Sure. We
understand that. But what is new here?

~~~
goatlover
The question is why having color vision was an advantage, and the evolutionary
answer has to be because there's something about reality which makes it an
advantage. The evolutionary argument for total skepticism/illusion can't work,
because organisms wouldn't survive if their entire perceptual system produced
only illusions.

An organism does have to be able to distinguish between food, mates, shelter,
danger, etc. or it won't pass it's genes on. And that's where reality comes
in. Even invoking evolution is to assume that evolution has some basis in
reality, otherwise why invoke it as an explanation for illusion?

If our perceptions and cognition have no basis in reality, then neither does
evolution.

~~~
buvanshak
>because organisms wouldn't survive if their entire perceptual system produced
only illusions.

Small correction. You should say "organisms wouldn't survive if their entire
perceptual system produced only _useless_ illusions."

The illusions here can also be replaced by an "abstraction". Color is an
abstraction of wavelength. Sound is an abstraction of pressure differences.

So organisms who's senses produced useful abstractions for their minds
prevailed, while others perished.

So again, obviously, I see nothing new but the premise that useless
abstractions evolved but didn't sustain...

------
bbctol
This has been posted around, and I always feel I should point out: this is a
ludicrous headline and generally misleading framing of an idea that's actually
pretty interesting and plausible. (It doesn't have much to do with quantum
mechanics, for one.)

------
naasking
I don't really find this argument convincing. When considering a small number
of circumstances, indeed the fitness function won't necessarily converge on
truth because short cuts are probably more efficient in cognitive resources.

But once you start enlarging the possible set of circumstances, a lot of them
will overlap in ways that seem random unless you discern the actual causal
relationships between them. Without this process, then you're devoting
resources to recording a never-ending list of correlations, but this list is
strictly bounded if you instead infer causality.

In some cases, list of correlations will still be more efficient, but not in
general when considering a large and complex world.

------
gdubs
This brings me full circle to a thought that used to distract me from my
trigonometry class in high-school: how do I know the color “blue” that I see
is the same one my friend sees?

This interview was a good read - the computer “desktop” metaphor made the
central idea click for me.

Half-baked Monday association but I’ll throw it out there anyway. Seems to be
describing reality in a way that I’ve heard some zen Buddhists describe
reality — instead of separate objects, you have one connected consciousness
and individuals are just points on a plane (wave?).

~~~
manjushri
Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew
drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops.
And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in
that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the
universe in an image."

–Alan Watts

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net)

~~~
AstralStorm
Indra's Net. Older than dirt or Buddhism. It is shown in the few surviving
Sanskrit tracts too. The problem with the concept is that it is not
constructive not prescriptive.

------
eveningcoffee
If you like science fiction interpretation of ideas then evolutionary part of
it is covered in Peter Watts Blindsight.

Unified mind part is covered in Ramez Naam Nexus trilogy.

There is probably something about quantum minds too. If somebody knows then
please be kind to fill in.

------
mannykannot
The author's arguments abut the optimal form of perception for survival remind
me of Cuvier's faulty argument against evolution: change is impossible because
every species is optimally designed for its niche in life, and would become
extinct if it changed in any way. This is both factually incorrect, and
irrelevant under the reality of environmental change.

------
Djeman
That's not how quantum physics or evolution work. Saying that there is no
brain sounds very deep and astounding but as most stuff said when you are high
(on drugs or religion or ego) it all falls apart when you start connecting
dots to make picture.

