Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? (2015; video; 20 minutes)
Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? (2015; video; 20 minutes)
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is trying to answer a big question: Do we experience the world as it really is ... or as we need it to be? In this ever so slightly mind-blowing talk, he ponders how our minds construct reality for us.
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A few months ago I read Hoffman's book A Case Against Reality. It was an interesting read, one in which I ended up learning more about quantum mechanics than I ever thought I would when I picked the book up. Frankly I think the book could be distilled down to a much shorter version, as the central concept was not a particularly complicated one, just one which challenges conventional ways of thinking. I think this talk does a better job. If your curious to learn more about the science that supports this particular way of thinking or a more in depth exploration of what it means, particularly with relevance to the concept of spacetime, I'd suggest giving the book a read.
Thanks! I totally intend to. After watching this I went down the rabbithole to watch 2 more hours on the subject from a podcast in 2019. His thinking seems to have evolved between 2015 and 2019. Where the TED talk treats evolution as axiomatic, he seems to now be thinking about what sorts of physical laws in the space of consciousness might lead to emergent evolution and natural selection in the perceptual realm. But that feels a lot less falsifiable and scientific? He seems to be giving up a lot of what got him to this point. So I'm curious to read more and understand what he's planning to model if not evolution.