TED
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2016–2024
21:51 · 3.1M views · Jun 11, 2015
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues in this TED talk that evolution shaped perception to track fitness rather than truth. He uses evolutionary simulations and the Australian jewel beetle as examples.
Cited in discussions of perception, consciousness and what is real, though some commenters find his conclusions hand-wavy.
7 comments from Hacker News
This reminds me of this amazing TED Talk: Do we see reality as it is? (Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist) this video The intellectual bomb in the video is this: Organisms that perceive only "fitness" drive to extinction all organisms that perceive reality as it is. (in model systems simulating environments and creatures navigating them) My take: at every level, it would seem, perceiving true reality is not favoured. Nevermind cognitive biases, that's just one level. Literally the fabric of the universe: spacetime, matter, language, etc. It means nothing that it might feel comfortable or intuitive -- we should question it all.
This is extremely relatable and true. Thank you. The Tinder game is so horrible, 5% of the women get the attention of 80% of the men or more, leaving both the men and women in the other group feeling like there is something wrong with them. People feel the need to edit themselves in order to fit the false narrative created by these gamified dating scenarios, or else experience the fear of dying alone . There is nothing wrong with you. Our complicated, 3-dimensional, deep , personalities and lives are not meant to be reduced to a catalog, best consumed on the toilet, dismissed or accepted instantly based upon a false presentation designed to harness the evolutionary biology of actual living beings. For money. This is not constrained to human society. There is an amusing anecdote of the Australian Jewel Beetle that also experiences the Tinder Effect. This nearly caused their extinction. I encourage you to watch Donald Hoffman's 2015 TED Talk "Do we see reality as it is?"[0] linked below for your convenience. I've timestamped the relevant section, skip forward about 100 seconds or so for the direct discussion of the Australian jewel beetle. [0] - this video
This is basically the exact hypothesis of a TED talk I saw by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman. this video fascinating stuff
There's something here that I feel is pretty deep, though offensive for some minds: What is the actual consequence of being wrong? Of not getting right the base reality of a situation? Usually, stasis is the enemy that is much great than false information. If people with 90% truth can take a step forward in the world, even if they mistakenly think they have 100% truth, what does it matter? They're learning more and acting more for that step taken. If the mistaken ground truth is false and importantly enough false, they'll learn it bc their experience is grounded in the reality the navigate anyhow. If they don't learn it, it's of no consequence. This is on my mind because I work in democratic reform, and I am acutely aware (from books like "Democracy for Realists", that eviscerate common assumptions about "how democracy works") that it often doesn't matter if we understand how democracy is working, so long as we feel like we do, enough to take steps forward and keep trying and learning. We literally don't even know how democracy works, and yet we've been living under it for centuries, to decent enough ends. I think often about the research of Donald Hoffman. His lab runs evolutionary simulations, putting "creatures" that see "reality" (of the simulation) against creatures that see only "fitness" (the abstraction, but also the lie, that is more about seeing what gets the creature living to the next click of the engine, whether that's truth or falsehood about the reality). [VIDE
> [0] - this video While most of the talk is great, he just handwaves the idea that reality is not "brains and neurons," nor what physicists try to model, but he makes no effort in explaining what's the difference between "reality" and "physics." It would be great if someone who understood that last part could explain it.