Reality.
What if what we see is just a simplified interface much like a user interface of a mobile application and not reality as it is. what if I say that the subjective reality that we see through our eyes is much different from the actual objective reality.
Donald D. Hoffman Proposed this idea. It's not just a philosophical idea with no real evidence to support the hypothesis.
How do we see stuff?
We do not directly see stuff around us. we collect information from our eyes and it further converts into an electrochemical signal which travels through the dense network of neurons to the brain. And the brain re constructs the reality we see. More info.
Now another interesting question appears which is “Does natural selection favor seeing reality as it is?”
Hoffman tackled this problem using the equations of evolution.
A key notion in these equations is fitness.
Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is. Fitness depends on reality, yes but it also depends on the organism, its state and its action.
Hoffman ran thousands of evolutionary game simulations in his lab using these equations and he ended up with some interesting observations.
Experiencing reality is disadvantageous to evolutionary fitness.
which in simple words means evolution has tuned us to fitness and not to reality as it is.
Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be.
So in conclusion the subjective reality we see might not be the same as objective reality.
But then another interesting question comes up that if are not able to see reality how is it advantageous to our survival. We can think of subjective reality as a user interface of a computer and objective reality as the computer itself. Now to use the computer you don't really need to know what exactly happens inside the computer, you don't want to know about all the diodes and software to be able to use a computer to write an article or email someone you just need to know to navigate the user interface. Hoffman argues this is precisely what happens with us and hence not seeing the objective reality as it is helping our survival.
let me know your thoughts.
