In Defense of Scientific Realism and Down to Earth Physical Reality.
Besides my own edification, I've spent these weeks and months of effort hoping to produce a document of value for individuals (especially students) who recognize what a deliberate misadventure Hoffman's Case Against Reality is, but may not have the time to get into the weeds in order to recognize and think about his rhetorical fancy dancing, sleight of hand, and other tactics utilized by the professor.
I didn't tackle this project because I was under any illusion of being able to help convert professor Hoffman, or any of the others who seem to drink up on this sort of fantasizing. Erich von Daniken and his spacemen has come to mind, even more often was Elizabeth Holmes with her Theranos blackbox that was too good to be true, but in a world with little appreciation for biology, they lapped up the dream, to heck with reality, we're going to make money. (Why be surprised so many deny the COVID virus.)
These past chapters are your road map highlighting the landmarks of rhetorical deception. Since these contrarian sales pitches all follow basically the same script, you'll find these lessons valuable across the board - scroll to the bottom to find an index.
Hoffman’s Case Against Reality assures us:
DH: “Spacetime is your virtual reality.
The objects you see are your invention.
You create them with a glance and destroy them with a blink.” (10,¶91)
Hoffman bases this claim on his Fitness Beats Truth theorem which tells us that winning genes don’t code for “truth” they code for “fitness.”
(click on the image for better viewing)
The professor never comes close to adequately defining his factors, “truth” and “fitness.” "Fitness” makes intuitive sense, but “truth” is problematic.
“Truth” has no place within the processes of our natural world; nor in the dance between geology and biology; nor within cumulative harmonic change over time that created this cornucopia Earth we inherited. It's no wonder that "truth" loses in Hoffman's world.
Fitness, accuracy, ‘close enough’ and luck, those are what matters out here. “Truth” is a human construct, a product of our own conceptions and confined to our amazing, yet limited, mindscapes.
A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality,
Appendix, The Right to Be Wrong
(aka, Appeal to normalizing delusional thinking)
