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MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months agoYou should watch cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s TED talk about how our bodies aren’t real. And here’s a youtube link in case you have trouble with TED’s website.
Comment on Lemmy is the best social media
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months agoYou should watch cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s TED talk about how our bodies aren’t real. And here’s a youtube link in case you have trouble with TED’s website.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I watched the whole 20 minute video, just for you. I’m not interested in reading more from him as I was not impressed.
Welcome to philosophy. These ideas are not remotely new, they’ve been discussed for literally thousands of years. Obviously there’s a difference between sensation and perception, and obviously it’s possible for senses to be fooled, and obviously optical illusions exist. No one denies these things.
One thing that he is wrong about near the end is the idea that reason and logic are somehow magically immune to evolutionary pressures. The whole host of cognitive biases we experience as humans are grounded in the fact that we evolved in contexts where group cohesion was important to survival. He doesn’t seem like a particularly knowledgeable cognitive scientist if he either isn’t aware of the bandwagon effect (for instance), or if he can’t see the obvious connection between that and the need to fit in with a tribal community.
But more to the point of his thesis, the reason it’s trash is because it fails it’s own test. It’s indeed possible that, contrary to all evidence and observations, we’re living in a simulation, or whatever gobbledyremoved he said about conscious beings creating reality - the problem is, so what? By definition, this theory is unfalsifiable, and it is not capable of helping us do anything at all.
There is a saying in science, “All models are wrong - but some are useful.” Physicists are well aware that when we draw a diagram of an atom on a piece of paper, it differs from an actual atom in several crucial ways. It’s very large, for instance, meaning that the drawing can absorb and emit photons without really changing. Our mental models of atoms are necessarily imperfect, the only perfect representation of an atom is the atom itself. However, we still use these imperfect drawings and mental models because they help us navigate reality and predict events. This person’s theory does none of that.
It appears that he has conjured up an imaginary, unobservable world, that does not interact with us in any way, and he has, for some bizarre reason, chosen to dub that with the moniker of “reality,” instead of the actual, you know, reality that we can sense and perceive, that is testable and verifiable, that is necessary to navigate in order to survive. Why he’s chosen to call his fantasy reality and reality an illusion, I don’t know.
Now look, this whole thing you’ve come up with seems like a fun little form of escapism, and I don’t have a problem with that in itself. The problem I have is when you start trying to interject it into actual politics, when you actively try to divert energy away from engaging with reality, the thing that actually exists and can measurably improve or harm people mental and physical states, and instead towards your fantasy. That’s when it starts sounding more like a cult.
Your kind of thinking is responsible for countless New Age spiritualists telling people they don’t need medicine, that they can just cure diseases, like AIDS, through the power of belief. You can indulge whatever fantasy you feel like, but when push comes to shove, medicine fucking works, the train will kill you if you step in front of it, etc. The speaker in your video at least acknowledged that, even if by doing so, he undermined everything else he said - at the end of the day, he has to submit to that which he labeled “illusory” and deny that which he labeled “real.” And so should you. And that means that you have to engage with materialist and empirically backed theories of psychology, sociology, politics, economics, etc. Which means, get your nonsense ideology out of here.
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
The benefit Hoffman’s theory does us is that is reveals the universe is governed not by physical laws, but by cognitive laws, of which apparent physical laws are a contextually dependent subset. And we can use that, because it means reality can be manipulated not just by physical technology, but also by psychological technology. Imagine a civilisation only using half of science! It would look to the average person like a society practicing biology and medicine without ever discovering chemistry or physics. That’s precisely the situation our civilisation now finds itself in. We are only using half the science that is available to us, and half of the technologies we could have already invented by now. Antirealists demand that the government pour more research money into developing psychological technologies that alter our perception of reality. And that the public embrace such psychological technologies as have already been invented. For example, the technology to see a trans person as their preferred gender presentation regardless of their physical form. That technology is essential to preventing suicides and many people refuse to adopt it. We are fighting an anti-science platform pushed by transphobes who want trans people dead.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
This is not what he says at all, and if he has any credibility as a scientist and doesn’t want to change careers to cult leader, he would completely disavow what you just said.
This is complete nonsense.
No it absolutely is not.
Yes, I figured this was about getting high and seeing pretty colors.
Why do you need the government for this? If you need more funds, why don’t you just alter reality to manifest them into existence?
Again, respecting a trans person’s identity does not require a denial of reality or of our physical forms. If the physical form of a trans person wasn’t objectively different from that of a cis person of the same gender, then we would not need any of the medications or treatments that we do - we wouldn’t even have the terms “trans” and “cis.” Please stop talking as if trans identities are somehow a denial of reality.
If you respond to nothing else I say, then at least answer me this: why have you chosen to term something that is anti-science as “reality?” It makes absolutely no sense. Just say that science is real, that trans identities are real, and that transphobes are pushing a false and unreal narrative.
Try to pay attention to the language we’ve all agreed on.
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I didn’t choose to term anti-science beliefs as reality. Society did, and then I went along with it so as not to be incomprehensible to you. If by “reality”, we mean “An objectively extant world”, then there’s no such thing, and I oppose belief in such a thing. But if by reality we mean “The world society thinks is objectively extant”, then that thing is anti-science.
It’s much the same language as an atheist might use to talk about the gods. The atheist would say "If by ‘the gods’, you mean ‘almighty beings’, then there’s no such thing, and I oppose belief in such a thing. But if by ‘the gods’, you mean ‘the almighty beings society believes in’, then they are anti-science.
Please don’t begrudge me for accepting your premise that consensus reality is reality. It’s just a matter of convenience. I cannot at the same time believe that reality is true, and that reality is what the realists believe in. I have to pick one or the other.
Cause the brain doesn’t work like that, you dipshit. Didn’t I say our perceptual reality is governed by cognitive laws? Cognitive laws don’t allow me to just do that. Weren’t you paying attention, or do you just have a kindergartener’s understanding of psychology?