[Dprglist] seriously off topic rant about tonight's discussion

[Karim Virani]

First, the Nature special on bees was just fantastic. I went ahead and
watched it after the conversation tonight.
https://video.kera.org/video/my-garden-of-a-thousand-bees-trjhzt/

And then ... there's the Donald Hoffman TED interview ...

OMG David!!!

You were totally fun'in us. You meant to provoke! DH is just a Deepak
Chopra wannabe. I resist giving credence to these peddlers of soft-shoe
quantum theory tincture in pursuit of monetizable wishful thinking.

Granted this was only one interview on a platform that often caters to the
intellectual mystics among us (I used to be a fan of TED talks), but this
dude outed himself completely.

First he completely mis-characterizes the field of modern cognitive science
(if that's what he considers to be his colleagues) and paints it in the
light of 70's era progress. As if he was the first to consider fitness as
the basis for how evolutionary development works. Almost nobody thinks
sensory evolution is driven to create accurate or truthful interpretations
of reality. He can't claim that as his unique insight. It's like he's
saying his peers all have a 5th grade understanding of evolution.

But then he goes totally bonkers:

1. Consciousness is hard to describe and investigate - ok so far
2. So let's throw traditional "reality" out the window and assume the
universe is fundamentally made up of a network of multi-level conscious
entities
3. For those entities bundled up as humans, the network has decided to give
them an "interface" that creates time, space, particles, neurons, etc. as a
useful fiction. (ie. the software is real and the hardware is the story)
4. Oh, and I have some math, so it's not really BS
5. Oh, and I may or may not believe this, but I'm brave for going out on a
limb and daring to shake up the field because hard problems need
disruptions to solve. (this is my get out of jail free card, maybe)

I agree with step 1, but step 2, that's a doozy. The rest is a sophomoric
attempt to confound interesting modern explorations into the foundations of
physics with 70s era pop quantum psychology like in the Dancing Wu Li
Masters or the Tao of Physics. My bet, he'd point to those books as his
influences. They were fun reads when I was a pup. But they are truly works
of fiction. So is this dude.

Now I'm going to tell you how I really feel...
... Oh, and I'm actually very open minded about this guy...

David, thanks for riling my sensibilities - haven't had a good rant
defending honest inquiry in ages.

Again, this is effectively a slam of a single interview but if you wish to
point to a place where he offers a shred of evidence toward his theory, or
can correct my interpretation of this interview, well please share. We can
continue the fun :)

Cheers,

Karim
ps. dear reader, this acerbic review is a choice in creative expression. If
it offends your viewpoint or sensibilities, I'm sorry, it was not meant to
do so
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