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

[Carl Ott]

OK - I confess to fueling (hopefully entertaining) intellectual fisticuffs
- Sorry - I was aiming more to include representative fodder for the chat
records versus a fringe representation...

Now I'm even more intrigued than before to understand what this bru ha ha
is all about ;-)



On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 12:38 PM Karim Virani via DPRGlist <
dprglist at lists.dprg.org> wrote:

> pps. I don't expect David to respond to this - David was referring to the
> papers that Donald Hoffman has produced. I looked at his CV last night and
> he has plenty of the publish-or-perish normal scientific investigations
> into human perception systems.  Somebody else posted the TED interview into
> the chat from a google search. That interview is related to what I'd call
> an alternative set of publications centered around his panpsychic
> philosophy which seem to be a distinct thread in his output, but which I
> would resist calling science. Anyhow, I found that particular interview to
> be outlandish enough to warrant some hopefully entertaining intellectual
> fisticuffs.
>
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 3:15 AM Karim Virani <pondersome64 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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