I'd love to see any demonstration of a model of an intelligent organism with no sense of reality at all but that still functions properly. Barring any evidence, the whole article is simply "if you assume the impossible, then magical unicorn rainbows". (or else it's just extrapolating claims about the intelligence of amoebas way too literally)
> I'd love to see any demonstration of a model of an intelligent organism with no sense of reality at all but that still functions properly
That is a strawman argument. Hoffman's actual theory is that "under evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness."
This is taken from the more in-depth in the Quanta interview [0] linked in the submitted article.
This seems to be begging the question of whether it's possible to have a well-tuned fitness function that doesn't map in some significant way to the underlying reality.
Sure, maybe there's no point in us knowing the difference between hot and cold, as long as we avoid contact with both of them. Only wait, there is a point - if we know the difference, we can take different actions in response to each in order to respond in a more survivable manner to both. And this is indeed what we see - as well as abstracted signals (like 'pain') we have signals which measure our environment more directly (like 'hot' and 'cold'). These signals raise our fitness because they let us know not only that we should take action, but in what direction that action should be taken.
For those who have actually looked at Hoffman's work (rather than just reading a popularized account):
What happens when the fitness function is not static (as it often is in the real world)? My gut instinct is that an organism that perceives actual reality (or some close analog thereof) will be more adaptable to a changing environment than one that is optimized for static conditions.
Perhaps Hoffman has taken this into account (I don't know -- that's why I'm asking).
Which lacks predictive power. Humans have a blind spot because they can operate just fine while having a blind spot. However other organisms don't have a blind spot thus blind spots are not selected for.
The missing piece is something where getting the wrong information has value. But, that's harder than simply incorrectly interpreting information.
> Humans have a blind spot because they can operate just fine while having a blind spot. However other organisms don't have a blind spot thus blind spots are not selected for.
I'm not quite clear on your point of view, can you clarify? The phrases "blind spots" and "other organisms" are very vague. I'll try to rephrase it into something manageable. This is what I think you are saying:
Humans [cannot see behind their heads] because they can operate just fine while
[not seeing behind their heads]. However, [other species] [can see behind their
heads], thus [seeing behind one's head] is not selected for.
The "other organisms" are other species, as logically, the "other organisms" don't have "a blind spot" and therefore could not be human, which do have "a blind spot".
Do let know if this is correct, and I'll get back to you.
> The missing piece is something where getting the wrong information has value
I'm unclear where this disagrees. That's exactly the point of Hoffman's theory: an (sometimes) incorrect view of the world may have more value than the actual (correct) view of the world.
Squid for example use a different arrangement without that hole. So, while people are not getting accurate information, the gap is arbitrary and not selected for by evolution.
"his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality"
If both he and the press are hyperbolic about the absurdity of his claims, I feel justified in saying that the claims he's making in these articles are on-their-face absurd.
Still the color argument is pretty strong. What if the energy emitted/reflected by the universe was totally in the non visible light spectrum. No one would see anything. To a blind person this is a normality, and so perhaps a person who is blind would have a better feel for what this means, but to the rest of us, color is so ingrained as "color is reality" it's hard to imagine.
Now also realize that we touch absolutely nothing. And yet we perceive solid things, as if they were solid. But again they are not. We just feel electro-magnetic force.
Following with QC, there isn't really anything such as particles.. the world is just fields of various types. Only when we go and look at the fields do we see particles, but they are just excitations in the fields.
I sometimes walk around and think what if i shut off all the perceptions that i know are only in my body/head, and thought about what was left. There really wouldn't be anything at all what we think there is.
I'm not concluding that this guy is right or wrong, but I think we have an almost impossibility in comprehending that this could actually be the case. Given that we are 90% fooled, why couldn't we be 100% fooled?
You still have to wonder why the brain created color to differentiate wavelengths. If we could not see and were speculating on how you could discern wavelengths, maybe you would guess that there would be some sort of frequency pattern that differentiated. But no... color? What is color, really? I'm not sure i even know the answer to that.
What would it be like to touch "something", rather than mere electro-magnetic forces? Isn't this just a game of words? When we touch electro-magnetic forces, we are in fact touching solid things.
Imagine you had a force field generation machine, that could produce fields in any size, shape, density, etc.
If you made a force field in a tubular shape about 8 inches long, with a smooth rubber tactile force, that was squishable, but still somewhat firm, .. would it be a banana? If you moved that force field close to your mouth would it provide sustenance (whatever that means)?
Of course you would be touching a real thing. What else could you touch?
However, on closer inspection (such as taking a bite) you would be able to tell that it wasn't a banana: the theory that the object is a banana is falsifiable. If, on the other hand, the machine can produce a simulated banana that is indistinguishable from a real one in all respects, then we can say that the object _is_ a banana.
Your point can be generalized to Descartes' evil demon, or the simulation argument. Imagine a machine that can provide arbitrary sensory inputs to the brain by simulating your body as well as the universe it inhabits.
The simulator has complete control over all reality, so that all perceptions are illusions; there is no "physical" reality, only a simulated one.
To me, this is a reduction to absurdity. If a simulated universe is indistinguishable from a real one, then we (as inhabitants of the simulated universe) should say that it is a real universe, as the simulation theory is unfalsifiable.
(If we discovered that we are in fact living inside a simulation because the simulation code was buggy and we hacked it from inside, then a Simuluation Argument Believer could just say that the "real" universe is also just another level of the simulation. This is why the _metaphysical_ Simulation Argument is unfalsifiable.)
Similarly, if a machine can produce a perfect copy of a real banana, then the copy is also actually a banana. And if a banana feels solid, then it actually is a solid object, and we aren't touching "nothing". It is irrelevant whether the feeling is produced by electromagnetic forces, or some special Platonic "solid" surface that doesn't actually exist.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this reaction seems "tuned" rather than "reality-based". That is, one reaction to a novel theory is to consider an exaggerated caricature of the theory, because that's easier to dismiss than the theory itself. Dismissing novel theories leaves more time for foraging. b^)
Having observed the behavior of prey animals, one might find oneself more open to this theory. Prey animals like deer or turkey largely ignore other, larger prey animals like elk or moose. The presence of a single small dog, however, will set them totally on edge. It's difficult to say that a moose is in any "real" sense less dangerous than a small dog. However, it is sensible that evolutionary tuning would focus more on dog-like animals.
I don't think they are talking about having NO sense of reality. They are saying that having filters that 'simplify', or make these signals more 'user friendly' bring evolutionary benefits in comparison to experiencing reality as is. In other words, we experience an altered reality sculpted by our cognitive engine.
This reminds me of Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception", by the way.
It's not saying that intelligent organisms have no sense of reality, rather that they only see as much of reality as is advantageous to their reproduction and continued existence.
Evolution does not fine tune things that closely. Sure, we can't tell which specific frequency's something reflects. That's a well known limitation. It's also kind of boring.
If we had gaps in our hearing range that may support the theory, but a more accurate assessment is detecting the world has costs. Organisms only collect as much sensory information as they need to survive. But, the same is true of running speed. To be predictive you would have to find a new and active distortion in sensing based on some prediction.
Actually yes, these things and many beyond that are knowable, yet you don't know them. Therefore you only have a sense for a subset of reality, just as you can't see the whole spectrum of light or hear every sound.
But this extreme example is not really relevant for this discussion, at least that's my humble opinion.
You also can't detect the Higgs field, or neutrinos or dark matter and energy, or gravity waves, or really vast amounts of forces and particles that are nonetheless very real. Most of 'reality' is totally invisible to us because it doesn't help us survive.
If bananas reflected yellow light, but we saw them as blue instead by some purely neuropsychological phenomenon, would this cause any significant problems?
That's actually a question of qualia and as long as you see the same frequency or collection of frequencies as the same color consistently, you can swap them around arbitrarily, but if you can't tell the difference between, for example, red and green, that is a real disadvantage.
Is that true? Yellow/Orange/Red are perceived as 'danger' colors. Is that just a made up association in our brains, or do we see yellow/orange/red more readily? If you flashed a bright orange billboard in front of a chimpanzee, would you get a different reaction than if you flashed one that was dark blue?
Orange and dark blue are names we give to perceived frequencies of light.
Dark blue isn't really any 'darker' in terms of energy content spectrum than orange is, its our brains that have evolved to make this association that X spectrum is dark and Y spectrum is bright.
I'd love to see any demonstration of a model of an intelligent organism with no sense of reality at all but that still functions properly. Barring any evidence, the whole article is simply "if you assume the impossible, then magical unicorn rainbows". (or else it's just extrapolating claims about the intelligence of amoebas way too literally)
And remember: They laughed at Bozo the Clown too.