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gineraay's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
The book argues that the role of perception (our senses) is not to represent the world as it is, it is to ensure our survival so we can reproduce. What matters is the payoff, not the truth of our perception.
I am not skilled enough in philosophy or biology and evolution to judge the argument but it did make me think and consider the question. From a lay point of view the argument and its presentation needs work.
I am not skilled enough in philosophy or biology and evolution to judge the argument but it did make me think and consider the question. From a lay point of view the argument and its presentation needs work.
mboundtogether's review against another edition
4.0
Finished reading with less enthusiasm than I began. I dont think it was necesarrily a waste of time because he puts out a topic that I find particularly interesting, what is the nature of reality. It was a fascinating idea that he puts forth and I guess others like Deepak Chopra have put forth this idea that consciousness is not dependent on brains. Although it was interesting, it seems like there is a ways to go until one is justified to hold such a view. It is a heavy question to grapple with.
maireo's review against another edition
medium-paced
1.0
Beautifully written sentences re-hashing well known philosophical conundrums. Nothing new or revolutionary in this book. Great marketing, great fluff.
johnnynolen's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
I love existentialism and science, and this book expertly combines the two in a way that I would not have been exposed to in my normal reading circuits: through the lenses of Darwinism and quantum theory. If you've got a tolerance for weirdness and denseness, this book is amazing.
bupdaddy's review against another edition
5.0
OK, the idea is nuts, but Hoffman's not a troll. I'm convinced of that. He believes he has proven that Fitness-Beats-Perception (FBT) and that therefore what we see is not reality, but an interface to something that works well for us.
Hold up. Look, I understand that pain doesn't exist "out there." If I touch a hot stove, the stove does not transfer pain into my hand, but heat energy. My consciousness turns it into pain. So pain is only in my consciousness. Trippy, right?
Further, I understand that even color is not a property of reality. Light wavelengths are, but color is just a thing that is painted in our Cartesian theater space in our head that doesn't exist but still kind of does. Yellow, for instance, is entirely a creation in our consciousness because our eyes report some sorta reddish some sorta greenish thing.
Fine. Here's where it goes off the rails, though.
I realize I'm about to be some rando taking on an MIT-educated, extensively published and respected scientist, but science don't care who says it. Probably I'm an idiot, but:
He says that if there are two states of a thing, reporting true or false, for instance (like a rod in your eye reporting: is there light Y/N?), the odds of it being right are 1 in 2. Well, he doesn't explicitly say that, but he does say that the odds of 10 of them all being right is 1 in 1000, which is suspiciously close to .5 to the 10th power. He then confidently goes on to provide the number of rods and cones in our eyes and say the odds they are reporting reality is 1 in some ungodly large number.
No. That's only true if the odds of each being right is .5 (why?), AND those events are all independent. They're clearly not. In fact, the more of them there are, the more likely you're going to learn something about the truth because they're related and redundant. Your brain works with the various reports to reduce the signal (which he acknowledges later in the book), to go with the collective hunch.
To put it in simple terms, if you have 1001 people watching a coin flip, and 1000 report seeing 'heads,' and 1 reports seeing 'tails,' which result are you going to believe?
Then he presents the Fitness-Beats-Truth (FBT) theorem, which he says was proved by one of his proteges. It was published in 2018, and I intend to see if I can get to it to read it, but I haven't yet. But I don't know what I hope to learn - it's a construct - a computer simulation, that shows the fitter something is the more likely it is to survive. Well, duh.
But he hasn't shown at all that fitness isn't close to reality, or that perceiving reality isn't a big way of getting fitness. Fitness is, I'll allow and he points out, a tradeoff between evolution pouring resources into something and the payoff. Things that take a lot of resources better pay off (big brain? better use it or something that's dumb and can live on a horrible diet of dead grass will out-compete you next drought. Hollow bones? Better be for something that really pays off like flying or your solid boned competitors will crush you). Still, there is a good payoff to knowing reality, if reality exists. He sees fitness and reality as different, independent things.
And he ties what he contends to physics. Here it's interesting. There are problems in physics. Some physicists have said "spacetime is doomed" but what they mean is not that we aren't really in a reality!
Anyway, the hypothesis he finally gets to - SPOILER! - no wait, it's in the title - is that nothing we perceive is real. Consciousness is real, and it creates everything we think exists. The moon doesn't exist if nobody is looking at it. The past didn't exist until there was a consciousness to perceive it. That's how he mostly gets past the age-old problem of how consciousness can arise from these non-conscious pieces - various molecules and energy.
Well, sorta. It still leaves us with the question, "what the hell is consciousness then!?"
And even though he got to the place he gets to through a bunch of what I think are wrong turns and magic, he might be on to something. Consciousness is a huge mystery. Maybe even though it's not proven, the hypothesis is worthwhile. Maybe he's left us in a huge void that has nothing yet, but at least has us asking (maybe) the right questions.
Hold up. Look, I understand that pain doesn't exist "out there." If I touch a hot stove, the stove does not transfer pain into my hand, but heat energy. My consciousness turns it into pain. So pain is only in my consciousness. Trippy, right?
Further, I understand that even color is not a property of reality. Light wavelengths are, but color is just a thing that is painted in our Cartesian theater space in our head that doesn't exist but still kind of does. Yellow, for instance, is entirely a creation in our consciousness because our eyes report some sorta reddish some sorta greenish thing.
Fine. Here's where it goes off the rails, though.
I realize I'm about to be some rando taking on an MIT-educated, extensively published and respected scientist, but science don't care who says it. Probably I'm an idiot, but:
He says that if there are two states of a thing, reporting true or false, for instance (like a rod in your eye reporting: is there light Y/N?), the odds of it being right are 1 in 2. Well, he doesn't explicitly say that, but he does say that the odds of 10 of them all being right is 1 in 1000, which is suspiciously close to .5 to the 10th power. He then confidently goes on to provide the number of rods and cones in our eyes and say the odds they are reporting reality is 1 in some ungodly large number.
No. That's only true if the odds of each being right is .5 (why?), AND those events are all independent. They're clearly not. In fact, the more of them there are, the more likely you're going to learn something about the truth because they're related and redundant. Your brain works with the various reports to reduce the signal (which he acknowledges later in the book), to go with the collective hunch.
To put it in simple terms, if you have 1001 people watching a coin flip, and 1000 report seeing 'heads,' and 1 reports seeing 'tails,' which result are you going to believe?
Then he presents the Fitness-Beats-Truth (FBT) theorem, which he says was proved by one of his proteges. It was published in 2018, and I intend to see if I can get to it to read it, but I haven't yet. But I don't know what I hope to learn - it's a construct - a computer simulation, that shows the fitter something is the more likely it is to survive. Well, duh.
But he hasn't shown at all that fitness isn't close to reality, or that perceiving reality isn't a big way of getting fitness. Fitness is, I'll allow and he points out, a tradeoff between evolution pouring resources into something and the payoff. Things that take a lot of resources better pay off (big brain? better use it or something that's dumb and can live on a horrible diet of dead grass will out-compete you next drought. Hollow bones? Better be for something that really pays off like flying or your solid boned competitors will crush you). Still, there is a good payoff to knowing reality, if reality exists. He sees fitness and reality as different, independent things.
And he ties what he contends to physics. Here it's interesting. There are problems in physics. Some physicists have said "spacetime is doomed" but what they mean is not that we aren't really in a reality!
Anyway, the hypothesis he finally gets to - SPOILER! - no wait, it's in the title - is that nothing we perceive is real. Consciousness is real, and it creates everything we think exists. The moon doesn't exist if nobody is looking at it. The past didn't exist until there was a consciousness to perceive it. That's how he mostly gets past the age-old problem of how consciousness can arise from these non-conscious pieces - various molecules and energy.
Well, sorta. It still leaves us with the question, "what the hell is consciousness then!?"
And even though he got to the place he gets to through a bunch of what I think are wrong turns and magic, he might be on to something. Consciousness is a huge mystery. Maybe even though it's not proven, the hypothesis is worthwhile. Maybe he's left us in a huge void that has nothing yet, but at least has us asking (maybe) the right questions.