Donald Hoffman: Do We See Reality As It Is?
In 2015, Cognitive Scientist Donald Hoffman gave a Ted Talk on how our minds reconstruct reality in real-time. I encourage you to walk the full talk linked below. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the presentation:
“I open my eyes and I have an experience that I describe as a red tomato a meter away. As a result, I come to believe that in reality, there’s a red tomato a meter away. I then close my eyes and my experience changes to a gray field. But is it still the case, that in reality, there’s a red tomato a meter away?”
“We don’t construct the whole world at once. We construct what we need in the moment.”
“Fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes, but also on the organism, its state, and its action. Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it’s fitness and not reality as it is that figures centrally in the equations of evolution.”
“In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality but are just tuned to fitness drive to extinction all of the organisms that perceive reality as it is. Evolution does not favor accurate perceptions. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?”
“We do not see reality as it is. We are shaped with tricks and hacks that keep us alive.”
“Evolution has given us an interface that hides reality and guides adaptive behavior.”
“Reality is more like a 3D desktop that is designed to hide the complexity of the real world and guide adaptive behavior. Space as you see it is your desktop. Physical objects are just the icons in that desktop.”
“We are blind to our own blindnesses.”
“Once we let go of our massively intuitive but massively false assumption of reality, it opens up new ways to think about life’s greatest mystery.”
Watch the full Ted Talk below:
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