Substituting one's own reality

No-one would sensibly suggest that our perception of reality gives us a complete picture. This more extreme view, however, strikes me as pointless :

He argues our perceptions don't contain the slightest approximation of reality; rather, they evolved to feed us a collective delusion to improve our fitness. Using evolutionary game theory, Hoffman and his collaborators created computer simulations to observe how "truth strategies" (which see objective reality as is) compared with "pay-off strategies" (which focus on survival value). The simulations put organisms in an environment with a resource necessary to survival but only in Goldilocks proportions. 

Consider water. Truth-strategy organisms who see the water level on a colour scale — from red for low to green for high — see the reality of the water level. However, they don't know whether the water level is high enough to kill them. Pay-off-strategy organisms, conversely, simply see red when water levels would kill them and green for levels that won't. They are better equipped to survive.

"[E]volution ruthlessly selects against truth strategies and for pay-off strategies," writes Hoffman. "An organism that sees objective reality is always less fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees fitness pay-offs. Seeing objective reality will make you extinct."

That's really stupid. Perceiving the water level as it really is is not mutually exclusive with realising the level is dangerous. And you can't perceive new situations as dangerous without understanding them anyway. In order to understand them, you have to perceive them (in a sense) as they really are. If you see a crocodile, you see teeth. You don't directly see danger, because that's completely impossible. Danger is a state to be understood, not a physical object to be perceived.

As far as our perceptions being flawed and incomplete, this is fine. It is valuable to remember the limitations of perception. But this idea that, "Something exists when we don't look, but it isn't an apple, and is probably nothing like an apple," is something I have a big problem with. What does it mean to say that it's "nothing like" an apple ? Granted, our perceptions are no more than a representation. But how would you ever define what an apple is really like, except through perception ? What is the Platonic form of an apple ?

Clearly, whatever an apple really is must be something that always and repeatedly generates the same perception of an apple, so in that sense I don't see how one could say it's nothing like an apple. It has the properties to generate our perception of an apple, and that too me is exactly what an apple is like. I see no other sane way of defining an apple.

Given this, I don't think it makes sense to contemplate what an apple really is, because we could never understand it. This doesn't mean that we have to then say nonsense like :

"I'm denying that there is such a thing in objective reality as an electron with a position. I'm saying that the very framework of space and time and matter and spin is the wrong framework, it's the wrong language to describe reality," Hoffman told journalist Robert Wright in an interview. "I'm saying let's go all the way: It's consciousness, and only consciousness, all the way down."

Denying objective reality is absurd, unnecessary, and opens the door to whatever nuttery one cares to substitute for objective fact and careful measurement. Instead of this, what we should do is define objective fact to mean that which gives the same repeatable results to our perceptive tools, under the condition of careful testing so as to preclude errors. Otherwise this degenerates to the notion that there are no errors, and that's bollocks. It's not big and it's not clever.

"But Rhys !" you may say, "I thought you said you found this idea interesting ?"

Well, yeah, I do. I just don't think it's in any way useful. Once you get to stuff like "it's all consciousness" (as opposed to "everything is conscious", which is another matter entirely), you don't

...make headway on such intractable quandaries like the mind-body problem, the odd nature of the quantum world, and the much sought-after "theory of everything."

You do the exact opposite. You say, "everything is a subjective illusion with no substance to it." It's utterly untestable gibberish. You cannot use it to solve or explain a damn thing. The map is not the territory, but the map can't be some nit throwing buckets of paint on the floor either.

Experiencing a virtual interface

The idea that we can't perceive objective reality in totality isn't new. We know everyone comes installed with cognitive biases and ego defense mechanisms. Our senses can be tricked by mirages and magicians. And for every person who sees a duck, another sees a rabbit.But Hoffman's hypothesis, which he wrote about in a recent issue of New Scientist, takes it a step further.