Thought-Provoking Quotes

As I wrote earlier, Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality, makes for an interesting read on why reality may be nothing like what we perceive and yet why it should be taken seriously (In simple terms, that means that just because the bus may not be really what it looks like to you doesn’t mean you should go stand in front of that bus when it is moving).

 

This blog though is about some thought-provoking points he makes. The quotes are self-explanatory, so I won’t elaborate on them.

 

As science advances, many of us (including scientists) believe we are getting closer to the “true” reality, whatever that is. Not necessarily, says Hoffman. He points out the time when Rutherford discovered that the atom is mostly empty space:

“This claim by physicists is not as radical (as it seems)… Their claim is more like saying, “I know that the icons on my desktop are not the true reality. But if I pull out my trusty magnifying glass and look really closely at the desktop, I can see tiny pixels. And those tiny pixels, not the big icons, are the true nature of reality.”… Well, not really.”

 

On whether we can ever hope to understand consciousness?

“Why assume Homo sapiens can demystify consciousness? Perhaps we don’t need more data. Perhaps what we need is a mutation that lets us understand the data we have.”

 

He quotes these lines by Daniel Dennett, on how Darwin’s idea of evolution cuts through almost every field and leaves us the wiser for it:

“I would encounter an idea – Darwin’s idea – bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.”

 

Lot of food for thought in that book.