A preview of Cc's "Hoffman playing Basketball in zero-gravity" a critical review of his "Case Against Reality"

I've put together this 9 page preview of my "Hoffman playing basketball in zero-gravity" critique in order to send a hard copy to scientists and others who's work I've featured during this project, maybe even get a little feedback.  

I'm sharing because during the year I worked on this project my homework has evolved into a rich student resource, with copious links, references and insights for the young critical thinker writing a paper or report.  Especially those that want to dig into Donald Hoffman's Case Against Reality, for themselves, this is a goldmine. 

That's also why I'm taking the opportunity to post this online and send hard copies to some others.  You see, I'm trying to find out if this resonates with anyone out there in the world beyond my rural Colorado cabin.  If the following does resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you.  Serious feedback, critique, suggestions, networking is invited.  

Thank you for your time, 

Peter Miesler (aka Citizenschallenge)

citizenschallenge at gmail

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 A preview of Cc’s “Hoffman playing basketball in zerogravity”

a critical review of “The Case Against Reality”

(5.01)    With a summary, explaining why I've pursued this project. 

These days science is under multiple attacks, much of it built upon malicious, deliberately fabricated falsehoods concocted by ruthless special self-interests, with bottomless bank accounts and control of screaming social media machines.  

But some is self-inflicted because in these modern times ‘provocative' gets more adulation than simple learning and constructively building upon understood fundamentals and exercising critical thinking skills.

An excellent example of this malaise is Donald Hoffman’s “Case Against Reality, why evolution hid the truth from our eyes,” with its insistence that science needs meta-physical thinking to comprehend human consciousness.  The book’s content, suggested to me, plain old Abrahamic dualism wrapped up in scientific pretense.  This has gotten me to wondering about how much of modern thinking, such as Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of consciousness is intractable simply because they are still trapped within a bubble of Abrahamic inspired dualistic mindset, with its unrealistic divisions, impossible expectations, along with its superlative self-centeredness.

My project, Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity Review is intended to identify the book's red flags and to offer solid critique, backed by information and sources that will provide students with the facts they need to see through Hoffman’s smokescreen for themselves.

Food for thought you could say. I'm specifically targeting those curious students already concerned with American’s descent into delusional anti-science thinking, students who are hungry for ideas on how to constructively confront today’s rising tide of belligerent willful ignorance. 

Diary, “Get over it dude, why u so obsessed with Hoffman’s Case Against Reality?”

I'm happy to report that after an unexpected extension, my critical review of Donald Hoffman's "Case Against Reality" is complete.  I thought to do more by way of summary, but not getting any inspiration, so I'm done.  Perhaps in a year, providence willing, it'll be fun to revisit and see if I can write an interesting summary.  In the meantime, this will have to do.

HOFFMAN'S "CASE AGAINST REALITY," 

PLAYING BASKETBALL IN ZERO-GRAVITY, A REVIEW

Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity Review is intended to offer solid information, food for thought, and hopeful inspiration for students concerned with American’s descent into delusional thinking.  It is set up to be easily skimmed, contains copious references to expert sources and reporting, along with a few promising gems.  

I've been challenged with the question: "Why am I so "obsessed" with Hoffman’s Case Against Reality?"

It’s a fair enough question.  Why have I spent a half year thinking about it, then nearly another half year and thousands of words dissecting Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality, why evolution hid the truth from our eyes? 

I’ll tell you why,  

* It started with Donald Hoffman boasting that he’s doing serious solid science that is relevant to our daily lives.  When all he’s doing is sophisticated mathematical games, computer modeling, philosophizing, wrapped in just-so storytelling.  But, none of it deserves being called serious science! 

* Getting further into the book, I found my Down to Earth sensibilities and my respect for physical sciences increasingly offended by this man’s glib disregard for natural facts as scientists have refined them.

* His dismissal of physical sciences and the physicalist paradigm were as laughable, as they were irritatingly disingenuous.  

* His notion that the perceiver composes the perceived, is childish.  

After all, doesn’t light need to reflect off an object before we can perceive it?  The perceiver composes an impression of the perceived.  How does Hoffman justify such gross distortions of physical fact?

* His constant reliance on computer analogies to answer questions - is reminiscent of an evangelical’s dependence on their own Bible to make their case, such debate tactics are not acceptable for a scientist.

* His constant conflation of Objective Reality and Physical Reality, needs a spotlight.  

“Objective” being a product of our minds doing their best to keep subjective human biases out of their observation and learning process.  

Thus, science’s dependence on process and measurements; physical evidence and repeatability; facts at hand driving understanding; a community of experts always looking over each other’s shoulders; constructively learning from mistakes; demand for honesty at all levels of communication; and so on.

* His tendency to imply that Evolution has agency reveals a limited appreciation for actual “wet” evolution unfolding one day at a time, over the course of deep time.  

* In fact, turns out the only thing Hoffman knows about Evolution, is Evolutionary Game Theory.  (He's never studied actual Evolution.)  Realizing that, made Hoffman’s simplistic sweeping pronouncements regarding Evolution that much more galling.

* Then, his quantum level rhetorical fancy dancing that disingenuously conflates conclusions from atom smasher experiments with our macroscopic day to day reality, was like listening to nails being scrapped across a chalkboard.  

* He joined the chorus of talking head$, proclaiming “Space-time and Reality (as we know it) is Doomed,” a mere figment of our imagination.  Why?  Basically because their latest and greatest math breaks down, leaving them with no other conclusion.

* Then to fill in this contrived void, Donald’s imaginative storytelling comes to the rescue with Hoffmanian Conscious Agents that zip around interpreting reality for us, because the reality we think we are seeing, isn’t really there, says Professor Hoffman.  He assures us that he has the math to “prove” it.

Zygmunt Pizlo, Philosophizing cannot substitute for experimentation: comment on Hoffman, Singh & Prakash (2014)

 Zygmunt Pizlo:  “I am an “expert” on 3D shape perception, so I will confine my comments about veridicality to shape. Unlike Hoffman et al., I do not have the temerity required to discuss veridicality in vision in general, as well as in smell, taste, touch and hearing in such varied species as humans, bees, and spiders.”

“… Any contemporary use of a Motor Theory of Perception, and this includes Hoffman et al.’s explanation of 3D shape perception, can be viewed as a legacy of psychology’s Dark Age called “Radical Behaviorism”. This is precisely what Hoffman et al. are offering us. As for me, “no, thank you very much.”

Zygmunt Pizlo’s paper does a wonderfully concise job of bringing Hoffman’s “veridicality” challenge back down to Earth and our three dimensional world.  This paper was 1200 words long and I whittled to 500 some odd.  Please visit the complete article for all the details. 

Philosophizing cannot substitute for experimentation: comment on Hoffman, Singh & Prakash (2014)

• Zygmunt Pizlo, September 18, 2015 

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

volume 22, pages 1546–1547 (2015)

Abstract  

The perception of a 3D shape must be excluded from Hoffman et al.’s “interface theory” primarily because shape is characterized by its symmetries. When these symmetries are used as a priori constraints, 3D shapes are always recovered from 2D retinal images veridically. 

These facts make it clear that 3D shape perception is completely different from, as well as more important than, all other perceptions because the veridicality of our perception of 3D shapes (and 3D scenes) accounts for our successful adaptation to the natural environment.

… when we talk about veridical 3D perception, we are referring to our natural visual space, that is, a space with natural, symmetrical objects residing, as they naturally do, on a common ground because of gravity. 

The concept of an “empty” visual space, used in laboratories, that contains only a few isolated points of light in total darkness, or a few objects floating in the air, no matter how attractive mathematically, is actually empty from an empirical, as well as from a computational, point of view. …

McLaughlin + Green, Are Hoffman’s Icons Sense Data?

Brian McLaughlin and E.J. Green: "We contend that, contrary to what Hoffman et al. claim, the perceptual icons posited by interface theory seem best taken to be sense data."

 "The brain, of course, is a complex middle-sized physical object. As such, HSP must hold that it does not exist. But if the brain does not exist, then where are visual computations carried out? HSP offer no answer to this question.”

"… We can’t justifiably appeal to evidence obtained from particle accelerators, for instance, without presupposing that there are particle accelerators."

"... We part company with HSP, however, when they tell us: “the language of space-time and physical objects is the wrong language for describing the true structure of the objective world.”

I’m grateful to Brian P. McLaughlin and E.J. Green for taking a closer look at Hoffman’s “Icons” in a way no one else has.  They’ve done an excellent job of detailing the logical and scientific fallacies within Hoffman's "icons" notion.  

Are icons sense data?

• Brian P. McLaughlin & E. J. Green 

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, September 18, 2015

volume 22, pages 1541–1545 (2015)

(Original article 4000 words)

Abstract

We argue that Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (Psychon Bull Rev, this issue) have not made the case that "the language of space-time and physical objects is the wrong language for describing the true structure of the objective world." 

Further, we contend that, contrary to what Hoffman et al. claim, the perceptual icons posited by interface theory seem best taken to be sense data.

As Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2014) (hereafter, HSP) point out, Palmer expresses the orthodox view in vision theory when he states:

Evolutionarily speaking, visual perception is useful only if it is reasonably accurate…Indeed, vision is useful precisely because it is so accurate. By and large, what you see is what you get. When this is true, we have what is called veridical perception. (1999, 6)

Prof Hoffman #10a - Community - Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - The Network of Conscious Agents

Cc:   Consciousness is an emergent property of biological complexity.

DH:  “The notion of a conscious agent is based on intuitions that are widely shared.  It must, however, be made precise and then endure the rough and tumble of science.”     (¶9)

Hoffman hasn’t produced anything tangible.  A fine tuned ‘theorem’ proven by mathematics within an idealized computer model universe, isn’t tangible.

Hoffman’s notions are the stuff of rough and tumble philosophical debates, not serious scientific inquiry.   That is, observing, measuring and learning about tangible stuff.

DH:  “…Evolution shaped our perception to hide the truth and to guide adaptive behavior.   (¶3) 

DH  : ”A new theory is required, in which spacetime, objects, their properties, and their fiction of cause and effect,…”   (¶4)

Besides a tendency to imbue Evolution with agency, Hoffman wants us to believe Conscious Agents act from outside.  

Where do Hoffmanian Conscious Agents originate?  How would they have been created?  Have they ever been observed?  Are they God’s twinkle dust holding everything together?  

Evolution isn’t a thing, or a program, it’s a label we put on accumulating change over time.  

A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality, 

chapter 10a, Community: The Network of Conscious Agents

I invite you to consider a different kind of “Conscious Agents.”

If organisms were to survive upon this four dimensional Earth they needed to perceive and act.  Sense organs needed to be invented or nothing would have happened on Earth.  

Furthermore, those organs needed to communicate with something; and that something needed to decode the incoming data; that data needed to be communicated to higher authorities for processing; decision making; and inducing action.

“Conscious agents” are the information the brain sends forth to blossom into the thoughts within our mind. 

A neuroscientist would correct me, by telling me about “neural correlates of consciousness,” then perhaps they’d point out the recent discovery of three super neurons that cradle a mouse’s mammalian brain, along with the implications and how that’s impacting the direction of current research.

Consciousness is an emergent property of biological complexity.

(Image Credit: Allen Institute for Brain Science)

Are These Giant Neurons the Seat Of Consciousness in the Brain?

Prof Hoffman #9 - Scrutiny - Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - Get what you need, life and business

Hoffman starts chapter nine by repeating his drill:

DH:  “Our sense forage for fitness, not truth.  They dispatch news about fitness payoffs: how to find them, get them, and keep them.

Keep in mind, this according to a theorem that plays out in an idealized mathematical universe of Hoffman’s design.  Not in our real universe ! ! !

DH:  “Despite their focus on fitness our senses confront a tsunami of information.  …”  (¶1-2)

All that Hoffman reduces to simplistic four-square games with ill defined terms such as “fitness” - “truth” - “hawk” - “dove” - terms that are fundamentally meaningless when it comes to actual evolution on Earth with it’s constant tsunami of information coming at us.

 

A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality, chapter 9, Scrutiny,

You Get What You Need, in Both LIfe and Business 

As I’ve worked on this project searching out respectable information and following leads.  I’ve been amazed by how much presence Hoffman’s Case Against Reality has attainted on the internet.  He truly is a marketing genius.

Seems that many people think this Case Against Reality is fascinating.  Time is doomed.  Man, how cool is that?!    

Me, I’m left wondering, what drives such a desire for this sort of vacuous escapism?  

DH:  “For those readers interested in marketing and business, this idea applies to visual advertising.  The goal of successful advertising is not merely, and sometimes not even, to present important facts.  It is to craft visual message that rivets the foraging eye of the typical shopper. …”   (¶12)

Prof Hoffman #8 - Polychromy - Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - Mutations of an Interface

DH:  “Color can speak volumes. … Color is a window into fitness - also a jailhouse. … Try to imagine a color you’ve never seen.  Can’t do it. … Color… like perception, is both window and prison.”   (¶1)

Polychromy = “the art of painting in several colors, especially as applied to ancient pottery, …”

We could also say that our bodies are the prison of our mind.  If you really wanted to look at it that way.  But, what’s it get you?  Beyond a reflection into your own psyche?

A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality, 

Chapter 8, Polychromy - Mutations of an Interface

DH:  “As a window on fitness color is not flawless, just adequate to guide our actions that keep us alive long enough to reproduce.  Color, like each of our perception, compresses the complexities of fitness payoffs to bare essentials.”   (¶2)

What gives Hoffman the right to expect some subjective idealized flawlessness from nature?  Seems a bit hubristic to me.

Sure color perception is an important element, among many important sense “elements,” none of them perfect in the best of times, all vulnerable to a galaxy of pathologies and quirks.  Such is life.  That’s why luck often matters as much as fitness.

The fundamental problem with Hoffman’s narrative is that he keeps blaming the perceived object for the quirks and short comings of the perceiving instrument.  It’s silly.

DH:  “(The human eye has 7 million cones and 120 million rods, each carrying compressed information.  The circuitry of the eye then squashes this down to 1 million signal and forwards it to the brain, which must correct errors and decode actionable messages about fitness.”   (¶8)

Thus optical illusions happens. I’m going to skip paragraphs worth of Hoffman’s tour through optics trivia.  I’ll share trustworthy authoritative sources and let them explain the details without Hoffman’s tactical omissions.

A Journey Through the Human Eye: How We See

Bausch and Lomb

Prof Hoffman #7 - Virtuality - Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - Inflating a Holoworld

In chapter 7 of Case Against Reality, Hoffman’s “spacetime is doomed” mantra starts sounding like a hypnotist's spell, as reality fades from view.  Here we read more fascinating stories that reveal slivers of actual physics, but then contain too many important omissions to be of any constructive help.  

One way Hoffman misrepresents facts and twists conclusions is by anthropomorphizing the results and implications of quantum experiments and theory, all the while ignoring the profound difference between quantum scale experiments, and our macroscopic physical reality. 

Or, for that matter, you’ll not hear Hoffman acknowledge the profound difference between his mathematical models of idealized universes and our actual ever evolving universal physical reality.  

Of course bias comes into it.

some have the luxury of sitting back and dreaming,

Others best take reality as a given and stay focused,

and get on with it.

As a simple hands on working man, trying to follow through on Hoffman’s trains of logic leaves me overwhelmed time after time.  I don’t kid myself, with my middling layperson understanding of physics, I’m in no position to offer lectures or corrections to Hoffman’s details, nor is that my intent.  

Heck, I’ve had to do a lot of searching and additional reading these past weeks and again wrestling with this chapter, trying to grasp the various philosophical strands running through it and trying to wrap my head around the heady pipe dreams of these creative theorists.

My intention is to get through Hoffman’s book then to offer a saner down to Earth alternative.  An evolutionary perspective of our Earth and our human relationship with this physical reality we are embedded within.  Sans the religious baggage Hoffman’s theorem carries, stay tuned for more on that. 

I compensate for my mediocre mind by doing homework and knowing how to check out claims and weigh evidence.  For this chapter I’ve blown my deadline and spend a good deal of time learning more about what knowledgeable authorities have to explain.  I’ll be sharing highlights throughout this review.

===========================================

A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality, 

chapter 7, Virtuality - Inflating a Holoworld

DH:  “… But here, where I don’t expect it, science injects a profound mystery: we still don’t understand “now” and “there”.  That is, we don’t understand time and space - length, width, and depth - which we take for granted, which are woven into the very fabric of our daily perceptions, and which we assume are a true and reliable guide to physical reality.”   (¶2)

The Quantum Mechanical model of an atom. 

What do atoms look like? Why?

Jul 31, 2020  -  Arvin Ash

Our spacetime is not doomed, no matter what impression breathless writers fill books and magazines with, no matter how smart the scientist’s mind, or how grandiose and self-certain their pronouncements are.  

Use your critical thinking skills.  

Prof Hoffman #6 - Gravity - Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - Spacetime is Doomed

DH:  “If our senses were shaped by natural selection, 

then the Fitness Beats Truth Theorem tells us we don’t see reality as it is.  

     

      

Interface Theory of Perception (ITP) tells us that our perceptions constitute an interface, specific to our species.  It hides reality and helps us raise kids.  

Spacetime is the desktop on this interface and physical objects are among its icons.”   (¶1)

In this chapter 6, Hoffman samples cutting edge theoretical physics to underpin his theorem.  This tour through the quantum realm, at the very boundary between atoms and universal background energy, is fascinating.  As for Hoffman’s conclusion and implications, they are fascinating science fiction for reasons I will make clear as we go through his text.

“Perceptions constitute an interface, specific to our species” is easy to explain without reaching for twinkle dust.  Every creature has a unique life style, with a unique body plan, sensing abilities, mental abilities, environmental demands and so on.

Eyes are optical instruments, they cannot help but receive the reflected light coming at them.  How well they can process, resolve and act upon those signals is altogether a different question - one that is independent of the physical reality of the object reflecting said light.

A review of Donald Hoffman’s, Case Against Reality, 

chapter 6, Gravity - Spacetime is Doomed

Is spacetime threatened by the qubit?

Before we look at Hoffman's pronouncements, I want to share a talk by Sean Carroll who offers us a more scientifically trustworthy baseline of current physics understanding.

You won’t notice any of the red flags of deception that pepper Hoffman’s presentations.  Not that Carroll doesn’t present some amazing theoretical conjectures that do seem to echo Hoffman’s - thing is, Professor Carroll presents them within a more balanced framework. 

    

This is what a scientist sounds like. 

Mysteries of Modern Physics by Sean Carroll

Jan 29, 2020  -  Darwin College Lecture Series

Sean Carroll,  10:45

. . .  these are the particles that make up you and this table and me and this laptop and really everything that you have ever seen with your eyes touched with your fingers smelled with your nose in your life. 

Furthermore we know how they interact with each other and even better than that, the most impressive fact is that there will not be a discovery tomorrow or next century or a million years from now which says you know what there was another particle or another force that we didn't know about but now we realize plays a crucial role in our everyday life. 

As far as our everyday life is concerned by which I really mean what you can see with your eyes touch with your hands etc we’re done find me the underlying ingredients.  That is an enormous achievement in human history one that does not get enough credit, because of course as soon as we do it we go on to the next thing.  

Physics is not done.  I'm not saying that physics is done, but physics has understood certain things and those things include everything you encounter in your everyday life - unless you're a professional experimental physicist or unless you're looking of course outside our everyday life at the universe and other places where we don't know what’s going on. … 

DH begins:  “ITP makes bold and testable predictions. 

Testable by what?  A theorem of Hoffman’s own design.  Anything else?  

If you have his book, check the paragraphs I skip, let me know if you can spot any actual testable predictions being outlined - as opposed to what-if stories.  I can’t.

DH:  “It predicts that spoons and stars - all objects in space and time - do not exist when unperceived or unobserved.  

Something exist when I see a spoon, and that something, whatever it is, triggers my perceptual system to create a spoon and endow it with a position, a shape, a motion, and other physical properties.  

But, when I look away, I no longer create that spoon and it ceases to exist, along with its physical properties. …”   (¶2)