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The Case Against Reality

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Case Against Reality

#61

Post by jackcosgrove »

xlm1717 wrote: post #57
maldusiecle wrote: post #23

I get really suspicious when I see quantum physics used in this way. It seems like a misdirection. Given the information in the article, it's impossible to evaluate his claims--we don't have access to the computer models he uses, or the expertise to evaluate his proofs. But there are a lot of gigantic red flags all throughout. Like when he says he's mathematically proved that "an organism that sees reality as it is w…

It's an article edited for lay audiences. It is for people who don't have the expertise to evaluate his proofs. You can look up his research, though, if you want. If you have an expert friend you can have that friend explain it to you. You can find a list of his publications here: http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/publications/ This is one of his papers that quantifies the ideas he talks about in the article: http://cogs…

I get suspicious when some proof is so complex it must be mediated by an expert. I think the burden is on the prover to make their case, rather than on the audience to understand the case.

Re: The Case Against Reality

#62

Post by JackFr »

acqq wrote: post #47
onli wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get really suspicious when I see quantum physics used in this way. It seems like a misdirection. Because it is. It is the usual physics-inspired pseudophilosophical blabla without any real grounding in philosophy, physics or intelligent thought. It caters to the "intellectual" esoteric wishing for a meta-universe, for some kind of god, for something apart from reality. It is rubbish, and on the same level as the…

Somebody can also check who this "scientist" really is. Those making such claims often represent themselves as much more qualified than they really are. The claims in the article are annoyingly unscientific.

You can too if you have access to a "web-browser".

His PhD is from MIT, and he's been a full professor at UC Irvine for 25+ years, publishing pretty continuously. Lots of papers online.

Re: The Case Against Reality

#63

Post by HillaryBriss »

> an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large—it only sees red—even though such a distinction exists in reality.

But, what about the fact that, we, as human thinkers, are _aware_ that this is what's going on in our own perception?

Doesn't that give us an ability to both imagine a model of reality beyond our perception and also to test that model?

Re: The Case Against Reality

#64

Post by jcfrei »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #61
xlm1717 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an article edited for lay audiences. It is for people who don't have the expertise to evaluate his proofs. You can look up his research, though, if you want. If you have an expert friend you can have that friend explain it to you. You can find a list of his publications here: http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/publications/ This is one of his papers that quantifies the ideas he talks about in the article: http://cogs…

I get suspicious when some proof is so complex it must be mediated by an expert. I think the burden is on the prover to make their case, rather than on the audience to understand the case.

From your argument I take that you are very suspicious of quantum mechanics as well?

Re: The Case Against Reality

#65

Post by jackcosgrove »

jcfrei wrote: post #64
jackcosgrove wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get suspicious when some proof is so complex it must be mediated by an expert. I think the burden is on the prover to make their case, rather than on the audience to understand the case.

From your argument I take that you are very suspicious of quantum mechanics as well?

Your use of the word "very" is a giveaway that you're being snarky.

I am definitely suspicious of scientists who act as the truth authority, and cast aspersions on lay people who don't understand their proofs. That attitude is antithetical to the spirit of science, which encourages skepticism and the democratization of thought.

Re: The Case Against Reality

#66

Post by maldusiecle »

jcfrei wrote: post #36
maldusiecle wrote: post #23

I get really suspicious when I see quantum physics used in this way. It seems like a misdirection. Given the information in the article, it's impossible to evaluate his claims--we don't have access to the computer models he uses, or the expertise to evaluate his proofs. But there are a lot of gigantic red flags all throughout. Like when he says he's mathematically proved that "an organism that sees reality as it is w…

I think you are being a bit pedantic here. His example merely demonstrated that if consciousness is a function of reality (and for the sake of his example he more or less explicitly makes the assumption that there is an observer independent reality) it can be either optimized on how closely it matches said reality OR how much that function helps survival. So if you assume that there is an observer independent reality…

> His example merely demonstrated that if consciousness is a function of reality (and for the sake of his example he more or less explicitly makes the assumption that there is an observer independent reality) it can be either optimized on how closely it matches said reality OR how much that function helps survival.

Right, I got that. My point is that in order to define what it is to "match reality," you have to already have a theory of mind and consciousness.

Think of what he says just after that: > For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large—it only sees red—even though such a distinction exists in reality.

This already has so much baggage to unpack that it's ludicrous. An organism which "sees" red or green already has consciousness--it's converting nerve stimuli into symbols which it interprets. An unconscious being wouldn't see a color, it would simply react. But let's say you do already have "consciousness." In that case, why is it necessarily going to be more complex to map the stimuli to "red" or "green" within consciousness, instead of prior to consciousness? For all we know, it'd be simpler to do the mapping within consciousness (put another way: to map the stimuli "consciously," or to be "conscious" of the mapping). To know which is more complex, we'd have to have a clear idea of what consciousness is, and how it works at a biological level.

(I don't think the metaphors I'm using here are accurate descriptions of how the mind works, incidentally. They're not much more than "just-so" stories. My point is that you have to have some kind of idea of what consciousness is before you can say things about a "function" which can "match said reality.")

Re: The Case Against Reality

#67

Post by coldtea »

astazangasta wrote: post #18
coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, because (from what I've seen around here) you actually chanced upon a rare person on HN (me) that doesn't consider math/hard science automatically "more profound" than sociology and informal argumentation/reasoning on a subject. That said, though, having it in math enables ways to re-use and test that knowledge that having it in sociological reasoning does not -- even if the understanding both methods reached…

I disagree that math is that great. A mathematical model is a formal description of some sort, but a mental model is just a different kind of ontological descriptor; both are merely machines to process inputs and produce some sort of output. You might argue that it's better to be able to observe and tweak the mathematical model than to use one built on purely human semantics, but, mathematical models, by virtue of th…

>I disagree that math is that great. A mathematical model is a formal description of some sort, but a mental model is just a different kind of ontological descriptor; both are merely machines to process inputs and produce some sort of output.

That doesn't say much though.

A cheap numeric calculator (not turing complete, the plain type) and a high end PC are both "merely machines to process inputs and produce some sort of output".

It's the precise kind of machines that each is and the exact kind of processing that it can do that's important -- not just their general similarities.

>You might argue that it's better to be able to observe and tweak the mathematical model than to use one built on purely human semantics, but, mathematical models, by virtue of their simplicity, are generally poor at dealing with complexity

Yes, but they're very good at dealing with very precise formulations. It's not necessary when doing an analysis of field X to deal with the whole of X's extend and complexity at all times. A very specific answer to a small non-complex part of X can be very worthy itself.

(The same way Newton's theory is very good to determine the angle of cannon shots with even if it's a bad model for anything really complex speed and mass wise -- only in this case, the "less complex" theory gives more precise answers for its subdomain, whereas with Newton vs Einstein it's the inverse).

Re: The Case Against Reality

#69

Post by jcfrei »

maldusiecle wrote: post #66
jcfrei wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are being a bit pedantic here. His example merely demonstrated that if consciousness is a function of reality (and for the sake of his example he more or less explicitly makes the assumption that there is an observer independent reality) it can be either optimized on how closely it matches said reality OR how much that function helps survival. So if you assume that there is an observer independent reality…

> His example merely demonstrated that if consciousness is a function of reality (and for the sake of his example he more or less explicitly makes the assumption that there is an observer independent reality) it can be either optimized on how closely it matches said reality OR how much that function helps survival. Right, I got that. My point is that in order to define what it is to "match reality," you have to alrea…

Ok, I think I can follow some of the points you are making. When I said I think you were being pedantic I meant you were taking the discussion to a meta level which is sort of beyond the scope of the interview. If you say we have to have a discussion about the nature of consciousness before we can talk about whether a function matches a reality then you have sort of put the cart before the horse, don't you think? I mean the whole purpose of mathematics is that we can talk about phenomenons in nature (such as consciousness) on a mutually agreed basis - if you take that basis away, I doubt there is very much left to talk about...

Re: The Case Against Reality

#70

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fit2rule wrote: post #19
willchang wrote: post #6

"Neurons, brains, space … these are just symbols we use, they’re not real." Such bullshit. Yes, they are symbols, but "just" symbols? They don't approximate reality at all? If so, how would he even know? Edit: Let me elaborate. Yes, it's possible the world is just one big movie set, and nothing is remotely what it seems to be. It's possible everything is just a dream. But this is among the most banal of ideas. We hav…

He's talking about the words we use - that they are just symbols, and are only representative of the observations made, and are not the actual thing being described, itself. We call it a 'brain', but it is so much more than that, and the more we look at it - the more we need to invent new symbols in order to describe what we're looking at. In fact, words are not the things they describe - words are just abstract symb…

But it still hurts when you kick a rock.

The article is trite hand waving. Of course we parse the world through symbols, but the symbols are shorthand for consistent, predictable experiences.

Does it matter if the physical experiences are created by physical objects in the Newtonian sense, or by quantum fields?

Not at all. Because if you drive a car into a wall fast enough you're still going to die. And so is everyone else who drives the same kind of car into the same kind of wall at the same speed.

If it turned out that the knowledge that your experience of reality is symbolic gave you the power to shape quantum fields directly, that would be an interesting thing.

Most humans don't experience reality in that way. (Writers of New Age books try to say otherwise, but there's no evidence they're right.)

The casual arrow of symbolic perception goes in one direction, from outside to in. So unless you have some way to hack the symbols and the experience they create, this kind of "explanation" is irrelevant.

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