Reality

I found Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality fascinating. It felt like a description of one aspect of Hindu philosophy explained via analogies I am familiar with. The aspect in question – do we perceive reality as it is?

 

The answer is No. He says our senses convey a picture of reality that can be compared to icons on the computer or smartphone:

“The purpose of a desktop interface is not to show you the “truth” of the computer – where “truth”, in this metaphor, refers to circuits, voltages, and layers of software. Rather, the purpose of an interface is to hide the “truth” and to show simple graphics that help you perform useful tasks such as crafting emails and editing photos.”

 

Evolution, he says, has made us evolve in a way where we seek not truth, but whatever increases our odds of survival:

“Perception is not a window of objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.”

Helpful wrt survival, that is.

“Does that mean our perceptions lie to us? Not really. I wouldn’t say that our senses lie, any more than the desktop of my computer lies when it portrays an email as a blue, rectangular icon. Our senses, like the desktop interface, are simply doing their job, which is not to reveal the truth, but to guide useful actions.”

This point can lead to very surprising, unintuitive, and hard-to-wrap-your-head-around possibilities:

“Space and time themselves are simply the format of our interface, and physical objects are icons…”

 

He then asks and answers the question that many ask when the above ideas are presented crudely – like being told that everything you perceive is imaginary, or wrong. When put like that, most of us react with questions like this:

“If a rattlesnake is just an icon of your interface, then why don’t you grab one?”

Hoffman’s response to that is very informative:

“I won’t grab a rattlesnake for the same reason I won’t carelessly drag a paintbrush icon across my artwork in a graphics app… If I drag it around, I could ruin my artwork. And that is the point. Evolution has shaped our senses to keep us alive. We had better take them seriously.”

 

Which in turn brings us to a subtle point:

“I must take my senses seriously. Must I therefore take them literally? No.”