Truth v Reality: No Contest

in truth •  2 years ago 

This is a brilliant - and depressing - video.

Truth vs Reality: How we evolved to survive, not to see what’s really there. Donald Hoffman.

Mercifully, there is also a full transcript.

Hoffmann says many of the things I've been saying for some years - and has some mathematical models to back him up.

An organism that sees reality as it is is never more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality and is just tuned to the fitness payoffs. Translated, that means if you see the truth, you'll go extinct.

But it gets worse.

Fitness payoffs themselves destroy information about the structure of the world. It's truly stunning.

Our intuitions are, of course, if I see the truth, that will make me more fit. And this example makes it very, very clear that seeing the truth is the opposite in most cases of seeing what's fit.

And being tuned to the fitness payoffs means that you will not be tuned to the structure of the world, because the fitness payoffs have lost that structure. And so that's how devastating this is. So we're in a dilemma here. We have two things that we deeply believe. We deeply believe in evolution by natural selection. And we deeply believe in physicalism. [...] Those two claims are in conflict. Both cannot be true.

I have generally used a different language, and have reached similar conclusions from the point of view of the energetics of belief-functions compared to truth-functions. Hoffman adds an extra feedback loop to this, in that the payoffs of holding consensus-beliefs - irrespective of whether they are true or not - are far higher than in holding non-consensus-truths. So, not only is truth hard work, but you also get poorly rewarded - at least in societal terms.

The hollow men stay upright not because they are fully stuffed with straw, but because they lean on each other. The outsider has to walk his own path with his own power.

The history of science has many, many examples where an unbelievable truth has eventually gained acceptance. But what is rarely picked up on is that such new truths no longer carry with them their own proof! Sure, they mostly do among scientists but certainly not among the masses; and even scientists can be diverted away from inconvenient truths that further rock the consensus-beliefs that have grown around a set of convenient truths.

I used to do a lesson in which I would ask my students to demolish some of the lame arguments regarding the flat Earth psyop. They were generally poor at doing so, but with some encouragement they could see how to apply the physics they should have known to argue against such claims. But at the end, I would ask them to prove that the Earth is actually a sphere using their own perceptions! No satellite images were allowed. How did they know? Indeed, none of them knew at all. This is what I mean about consensus-truth turning into consensus-belief and, in so doing, has lost the proof of its own truth.

Where we end up with is, "Believe the science." Easily the most offensive affirmation of "science" ever propagated.

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  ·  2 years ago  ·   (edited)

It's these mathematicians and computer modellers who created the plandemic, viruses and genetics. I don't take much of what they predict seriously. They're the kind of people who believe a machine can be sentient yet ignore the sentience of other species 'lower' than humans.
PLUS to use the plandemic again, those who didn't work out the truth and followed the narrative are all now suffering the side effects. They could be the victims of the eugenicists and therefore truthers could be the only survivors.


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  ·  2 years ago  ·  

But that is precisely what the model is saying, that the masses believe the plandemic because they also believe the payoffs - of health, security etc etc.
What appears to be missing is to factor in when the payoffs are wrong! This is not the same as the payoff not manifesting, but that what manifests is the opposite.
Coz the model as it stands always ends up with a zombie society - this itself is obviously not true as we would have been extinct a long time ago. This requires a more oscillatory model, where the truth then becomes the best payoff.

There are similar economic models that illustrate how bubbles form, and how they burst, and those divide the population into 3 groups: promoters, the masses and the truthers. The truth can stop such bubbles if there are enough truthers - from memory, about 10-15% - which also explains why such truthers are sh7ut up by the propagandists.

I don't think he takes into account the old 'spanner in the works' scenario. I like to emulate that, or try to. Not sure how we came to different conclusions as to what he was getting at.? Maybe it was coz I couldn't understand his terminology. I felt he was saying truthers would not survive? His model is crap maybe coz like I said computers don't think like we do. They are not conscious and never will be.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Just because some simulations are used as propaganda, doesn't mean they all are. Indeed, we could tell the plandemic used exaggerated numbers for alarmist purposes precisely because we can understand the model used. We can simulate the solar system without having little planets inside the computers.
Yes, is a very condensed talk, with a lot of terminology.
I even dislike using "evolutionary biology", coz one ends up with the same formulas by just assuming social interactions among the living.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

A simulation is a simulation. It takes certain factors into account.
It cannot take into account all factors, for there is no consensus nor convention about "all factors".

We can simulate the solar system without having little planets inside the computers.

Why would you wish for a solar system simulation, for example?

Having an "accurate" simulation about the solar system, would it not mean that this would require also an accurate simulation about the galaxy we live in? And would that not also require having an accurate simulation about the universe?

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Why would you wish for a solar system simulation, for example?

strange question. How do you think we calculate whether a planetary model is accurate or not?

Indeed, Neptune was discovered through verifying such a model in 1846.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

The knowledge that our sun will cease to exist in some billion years, does that make a difference to you and your life of the present?
I am not asking rhetorically.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

No, and we don't stop planting crops - setting extremes does nothing to diminish the validity of the approximate now.

Yes me too as he assumes evolution is fact and not theory.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

You do not need the notion of an independent reality.

I believe that the very notion of an independent reality is meaningless.

The very notion of independent reality is intrinsically misleading because it leads us to believe that reality would apply to notions such as thingness. But it doesn't apply, because the notion of things applies to what we do.

Humberto Maturana

I share this view.

The age-old dispute of objective reality versus subjective perception leads to an endless conflict between people. This conflict is meaningless.

All those who developed theories about life over time could only do so because they were provided for by their environment (food, shelter, structures, the results of human activity). This put them in the position to develop theories and models about the world in the first place. It is irrelevant in my eyes how accurate or inaccurate their theories are or were, simply because I live.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Dependencies.

If I set "food" as a payoff, then it becomes a game of winners and losers - what we see in this world. If I think of "food" as a dependency then we are all co-dependent, and winning is sufficiency, not a race - eating more meals per day is not a measure of winning.

I don't understand the last part - just don't even discuss it, if it doesn't matter.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

People seem to give meaning to the question whether there is an objective reality or not. In this context, "truth" is an often used term. I find, this produces a lot of discord and conflict. Which I think is not needed.
Instead of having conflicts about who owns the truth, it would be better in my eyes to change the questions altogether.

It would be too long to explain myself. Maybe you are interested in reading this book:
https://uranos.ch/research/references/Maturana1988/maturana-h-1987-tree-of-knowledge-bkmrk.pdf

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Well, that was waste of 27 minutes of my life !...lol

There are more holes in that presentation, than there are in 300kg of swiss cheese.

....the green/red - oxygen, no oxygen (one example and the easiest).
The premise that information is lost because you only see 'the fitness payoff' (also a laughable concept), is......er...retarded ?
The fact you see 'the fitness payoff' only is THE PRODUCT OF natural selection.
You do not lose information ('truth'), just because you don't use it.

I wont even go into the presenters own mental gymnastics to support/not support an objective reality...

Is this the heights of intellectual prowess in today's academia ?
Ffs...lol.

Foucault has a lot to answer for.....

Blurt proposal !

Give @lucylin 200 K to destroy this argument in it's entirety - in about one week.

Please do. He made my brain hurt.


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  ·  2 years ago  ·  

lololol.....listening to very intelligent people with an ego - spout idiocy to try and seem more intelligent, is a very painful experience ...

Indeed it is.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Great essay! Watching the video now. Thanks.
You must have been some teacher. What level did you teach?


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  ·  2 years ago  ·  

See my comment above.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

yeah the whole video was based on a false assumption. I don't remember, today, what that even was, but it pissed me off so I stopped watching.


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  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Re🤬eD

The hollow men stay upright not because they are fully stuffed with straw, but because they lean on each other. The outsider has to walk his own path with his own power

~An Example from Above
An other examples Down Below 🥓

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

P.S. Though I admit it can be fascinating when I have inspiring conversations about theories of life.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Maybe the fun is in the puzzles!
;-)

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Yes, it can be fun to converse about such things. The fun stops when people want to be right and make the other one wrong.
I like having conversations which inspire me.

  ·  2 years ago  ·   (edited)

People who don’t have kids don’t have to worry about any of this. They will all be extinct in a few years. For those of us that have lots and lots of kids we have Bitcoin, Blurt and Actifit for Fitness rewards.

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Ahahhahaa 😂 you have like 95 kids 🤘🏻

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

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Do vote @Blurt.Live as your Witness

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  ·  2 years ago  ·   (edited)

Could they use photos from a plane window ?

Studies place the threshold altitude for seeing Earth's curvature at about 35,000 feet.

Commercial aircraft typically fly between 31,000 and 38,000 feet — about 5.9 to 7.2 miles —

5647D3D3-510A-442B-8EBE-C700061E43C0.jpeg

2F8A015F-BEB1-4A21-9A40-63DAE3A788E3.jpeg

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

Those are fish eye windows

  ·  2 years ago  ·  

lmao, yes!
Basic 3D geometry - at any elevation still considered intrinsic to the sphere, the visual horizon will appear flat! lol. However, if the Earth were truly flat, and you were not in the centre, then it would appear elliptical from an airplane.

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