Evolutionary Argument Against Reality

Interview with Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality.

“Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.” — Physicist John Wheeler

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

sapiens-book-coverAmazon: “Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.”

You can scan my favorite nuggets after the jump: Continue reading

Why something instead of nothing?

John Updike takes a stab at The Big Question:

It’s beyond our intellectual limits as a species. Put yourself into the position of a dog. A dog is responsive, shows intuition, looks at us with eyes behind which there is intelligence of a sort, and yet a dog must not understand most of the things it sees people doing. It must have no idea how they invented, say, the internal-combustion engine. So maybe what we need to do is imagine that we’re dogs and that there are realms that go beyond our understanding. I’m not sure I buy that view, but it is a way of saying that the mystery of being is a permanent mystery, at least given the present state of the human brain.

Found this (and more) in a post by Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) about a book by Jim Holt titled Why Does the World Exist? (On the way).

I think the next big evolutionary leap for humans will some form of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). When the AGI is as intelligent as we (or it) needs or wants to be, I’m going to ask it to take a good, long look at Reality and once it has a good grasp, to explain/show it to me in a way I can understand. And it will look exactly like the Reality 1.0 I’m currently running. Until, of course, we reach the point where the AGI can modify my wetware sufficiently for me to glimpse the Source Code in all its magnificence.

Incognito – The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

It’s easy to think of “me” has “having” a brain, but this book left me thinking my brain has me. If there is a me apart from my brain, I fear it’s mostly along for the ride. Here are some ideas that brought out my highlighter.


The brain generally does not need to know most things; it merely knows how to go out and retrieve the data. It computes on a need-to-know basis. pg 28

You’re not perceiving what’s out there. You’re perceiving whatever your brain tells you. pg 33

We have no access to the rapid and automatic machinery that gathers and estimates the statistics of the world. pg 34

Your brain is in the dark but your mind constructs light. pg 40

The difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what’s in front of you. pg 45

It’s easy to spot a hallucination only when it’s bizarre. For all we know, we hallucinate all the time. pg 46

Our expectations influence what we see. There has to be a match between your expectations and the incoming data for you to “see” anything. Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. pg 48, 50

The brain refines its model of the world by paying attention to its mistakes. pg 49

The brain tries to see the world only as well as it needs to. We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them. What we perceive in the outside world is generated by parts of the brain to which we do not have access. pg 54

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it. pg 82

There are thoughts you cannot think. pg 82

Evolution has carefully carved your eyes, internal organs,sexual organs, and so on — and also the character of your thoughts and beliefs. pg 82

“In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.” — Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind

We are not able to see the instincts that are the very engines of our behavior. These programs are inaccessible to us not because they are unimportant, but because they’re critical. Conscious meddling would do nothing to improve them. pg88

Briefly glimpsed people are more beautiful. pg 92

We come to know our own attitudes and emotions, at least partially, by inferring them from observations of our own behavior. pg 134

David Eagleman is neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action.

Rejecting evolution

Jonathan Dudley is the author of Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics

“…creationism has failed to provide an alternative explanation for the vast majority of evidence explained by evolution.

It has failed to explain why birds still carry genes to make teeth, whales to make legs, and humans to make tails.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record proposed by modern scientists can be used to make precise and accurate predictions about the location of transition fossils.

It has failed to explain why the fossil record demonstrates a precise order, with simple organisms in the deepest rocks and more complex ones toward the surface.

It has failed to explain why today’s animals live in the same geographical area as fossils of similar species.

It has failed to explain why, if carnivorous dinosaurs lived at the same time as modern animals, we don’t find the fossils of modern animals in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs.

It has failed to explain the broken genes that litter the DNA of humans and apes but are functional in lower vertebrates.

It has failed to explain how the genetic diversity we observe among humans could have arisen in a few thousand years from two biological ancestors.

“…the belief that scientists can discover truth, and that, once sufficiently debated, challenged and modified, it should be accepted even if it creates tensions for familiar belief systems, has an obvious impact on decisions that are made everyday. And it is that belief Christians reject when they reject evolution.

In doing so, they’ve not only led America astray on questions ranging from the value of stem cell research to the etiology of homosexuality to the causes of global warming. They’ve also abandoned a central commitment of orthodox Christianity.”

 

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger

I’ve been doing a good bit of reading about consciousness, reality, ego and such. A lot of it is tough sledding. LIke Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel, which –according to this review– is “for the curious and fearless lay person wanting to know who, precisely, we are.”

The best I can do with books like this is highlight the portions that make some sense to me and stick ’em here, completely out of context. The Ego Tunnel (Thomas Metzinger) PDF


“When we speak of conscious experience as a subjective phenomenon, what is the entity having these experiences?”

“Why is there always someone having the experience? Who is the feeler of your feelings and the dreamer of your dreams? Who is the agent doing the doing, and what is the entity thinking your thoughts?Why is your conscious reality your conscious reality?”

“Yes, there is an outside world, and yes, there is an objective reality, but in moving through this world, we constantly apply unconscious filter mechanisms, and in doing so, we unknowingly construct our own individual world, which is our “reality tunnel.” We are never directly in touch with reality as such, because these filters prevent us from seeing the world as it is. The filtering mechanisms are our sensory systems and our brain, the architecture of which we inherited from our biological ancestors, as well as our prior beliefs and implicit assumptions. In the end, we see only what our reality tunnel allows us to see.”

“In dreamless deep sleep, nothing appears: The fact that there is a reality out there and that you are present in it is unavailable to you; you do not even know that you exist.”

“It is unsettling to discover that there are no colors out there in front of your eyes. The apricot-pink of the setting sun is not a property of the evening sky; it is a property of the internal model of the evening sky, a model created by your brain. The evening sky is colorless. The world is not inhabited by colored objects at all.”

“What is really happening is that the visual system in your brain is drilling a tunnel through this inconceivably rich environment and in the process is painting the tunnel walls in various shades of color.”

“The brain constantly creates the experience that I am present in a world outside my brain.”

“Consciousness is knowing that you know while you know.”

“Now-ness is an essential feature of consciousness.”

“There is no immediate contact with reality.”

“Flagging the dangerous present world as real kept us from getting lost in our memories and our fantasies.”

“From an evolutionary perspective, thinking is very new, quite unreliable (as we all know), and so slow that we can actually observe it going on in our brains. In conscious reasoning, we witness the formation of thoughts; some processing stages are available for introspective attention. Therefore, we know that our thoughts are not given but made.”

“There is more to an existence worth having, or a life worth living, than subjective experience.”

“Most of us do not value bliss as such, but want it grounded in truth, virtue, artistic achievement or some sort of higher good. We want our bliss to be justified. … We want a reason for our happiness.”

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

One measure of a book (for me) is how many passages get highlighted [after the jump]. What ideas will I want to find again? A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle had some on nearly every page. For example:


“Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. You take the thinker to be who you are. … Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on.”

Everything in the book made perfect sense to me. I’m trying to incorporate man of his ideas into my life.


“…when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form –or a species– will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.” – pg 20

“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” – pg 21

“We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and believe system. … At the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought.” – pg 21

“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought–or the emotion or sense perception–happens.” – pg 22

“Thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter, which is why they cannot be seen or touched.” – pg 146

“You look at the present through the eyes of the emotional past within you. In other words, what you see and experience is not in the event or situation but in you.” – pg 173

“Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do.” – pg 176

“…heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness.” – pg 23

“Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, bercome hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is.” – pg 25

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp.” – pg 27

“Most of the time it is not you who speaks when you say or think “I” but some aspect o fthat mental construct, the egoic self.” – pg 30

“…the shift in identity from being the content of their mind to being the awareness in the background.” – pg 30

“The egoic mind is completely conditioned by the past.” – pg 34

“The unconscious compulsion to enhance one’s identity through association with an object is built into the very structure of the egoic mind.” – pg 35

“Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one.” – pg 37

“Being must be felt. It can’t be thought.” – pg 40

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” – pg 41

“The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious.” – pg 42

“The ego doesn’t mind what it identifies with as long as it has an identity.” – pg 44

“…making yourself right and other wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns.” – pg 44

“The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison.” – pg 45

“How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Just be aware of your attachment to things.” – pg 45

“Wanting keeps the ego alive more than having” – pg 46

“The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks. … When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. … If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking.” – pg 55

“The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.” – pg 57

“Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield.” – pg 57

“Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. You take the thinker to be who you are. … Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on.” – pg 59

“In most cases, when you say “I,” it is the ego speaking, not you. It consists of thought and emotion, of a bundle of memories you identify with as “me and my story,” of habitual roles you play without knowing it, of collective identifications such as nationality, religion, race social class, or political allegiance. It also contains personal indentifications, not only with possessions, but also with opinions, external appearance, long-standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, as a success or failure.” – pg 60

“Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.” – pg 61

“Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity.” – pg 62

“The ego’s greatest enemy of all is the present moment, which is to say, life itself.” – pg 63″The ego’s greatest enemy of all is the present moment, which is to say, life itself.” – pg 63

“Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. … The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. … Every time it is recognized, it is weakened.” – pg 64

“When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong. There nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. For you to be right, you need someone else to be wrong. You need to make other wrong in order to get a stronger sense of who you are.” – pg 67

“Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness –not through thinking– can you differentiate between fact and opinion.” – pg 68

“The (church’s) Truth was considered more important than human life. And what was the Truth? A story you had to believe in; which means, a bundle of thoughts. … Thought can at best point to the truth, but it never IS the truth.” – pg 70

“The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you. … Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.” – pg 74

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. … There is a deep interrelatedness between your state of consciousness and external reality.” – pgs 75-76

“All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it.” – pg 78

“Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am.” – pg 78

“The only thing that ultimately matters: Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times?” – pg 79

“Whatever behavior the ego manifests, the hidden motivating force is always the same: the need to stand out, be special, be in control; the need for power, for attention, for more. … The ego always wants something from other people or situations.” – pg 80

“The ego thrives on others’ attention, which is after all a form of psychic energy.” – pg 85

“Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? … When you play roles, you are unconscious.” – pg 90

“Don’t say, “I’m unhappy.” Unhappiness has nothing to do with who you are.” – pg 95

“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” – pg 96

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” – pg 99

“Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.” – pg 103

“You are most powerful, most effective, when you are completely yourself. But don’t try to be yourself. That’s another role.” – pg 108

“Assumptions (are) unexamined thoughts that are confused with reality.” – pg 114

“You don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.” – pg 115

“Before you were the thoughts, emotions, and reactions; now you are the awareness, the conscious Presence that witnesses those states. … To become free of the ego, be aware of your thoughts and emotions — as they happen.” – pg 117

“Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, (is) of secondary importance.” – pg 117

“Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. Identity and thought merge.” – pg 121

“When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.” – pg 122

“When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.” – pg 122

“Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you. Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.” – pg 129

“Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality.” – pg 134

“The ego is the voice in (your) head which pretends to be you.” – pg 134

“Thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter, which is why they cannot be seen or touched.” – pg 146

“You look at the present through the eyes of the emotional past within you. In other words, what you see and experience is not in the event or situation but in you.” – pg 173

“Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do.” – pg 176

“Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle.” – pg 189

“Most people define themselves through the content of their lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think or feel is content. When you think or say, “my life,” you are not referring to the life that you ARE but the life that you HAVE, or seem to have. You are referring to content –your age, health, relationships, finances, work and living situation, as well as your mental-emotional state.” – pg 193

“Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.” – pg 200

“It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment.” – pg 201

“The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of ego.” – pg 201

“Instead of adding time to yourself, remove time. The elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination of ego. It is the only true spiritual practice.” – pg 207

“For the ego to survive, it must make time –past and future– more important than the present moment.” – pg 207

“You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.” – pg 211

“People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness.” – pg 213

“Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think “I Am” and add nothing to it.” – pg 236

“Breathing isn’t really something that you do but something that you witness as it happens. … Whenever you are conscious of the breth, you are absolutely present. Conscious breathing stops your mind.” – pg 245-246

“Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.” – pg 255

“To be still is to be conscious without thought. … When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this physical and mental form called a person.” – pg 256

“Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. … Instead of being lost in our thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it.” – pg 259

“Presence: consciousness without thought” – pg 259

“The separation of thinking and awareness happens through the negation of time. When you negate time, you negate the ego.” – pg 265

“You cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.” – pg 270

“Your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. This doesn’t mean you don’t know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary. And what you encounter at your destination once you get there depends on the quality of this one step. What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.” – pg 271

“Thinking cuts reality up into lifeless fragments.” – pg 276

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” – pg 293

William Gibson on Creationism

“Re Creationism, I must point out an unfortunate subtext that’s no longer quite so obvious. Having grown up in the previous iteration of the rural American south, I know that what *really* smarted about Darwin, down there, was the logical implication that blacks and whites are descended from a common ancestor. Butt-ugly, but there it is. That was the first objection to evolutionary theory that I ever heard, and it was a very common one, in fact the most common. That it was counter to Genesis seemed merely convenient, in the face of an anthropoid grand-uncle in the woodpile.”

The Rule of Four

This novel by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason is not a gripping story but I like the characters and the way the speak.

  • A son is the promise that time makes to a man, the guarantee every father receives that whatever he holds dear will someday be considered foolish, and that the person he loves best in the world will misunderstand him. [Prologue]
  • To count a hundred million stars, at the rate of one per second, sounds like a job that no one could possisbly complete in a lifetime. In reality, it would take only three years. The key is focus, a willingness not to be distracted. [Pg 7]
  • We made a friendship out of nothing, because nothing was the the heart of what we shared. [Pg 48]
  • The generational clock ground out another revolution, and time turned friends to strangers. [Pg 71]
  • The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see. [Pg 97]
  • My mind is a flock of pigeons, fluttering away. All my thoughts are shit and feathers. [Pg 130]