A few notes I made after coming across Donald Hoffman in 2024.
As with anything asserted by a human about reality, take with a grain of salt (which in this case is quite meta).
Oct 2024:
Donald Hoffman – predictions, magic
Donald Hoffman’s work in ‘The case against reality’ is to show that using evolutionary game theory, you can check if structural information about reality is preserved when processed through the reward systems of lifeforms, and what the likelihood is.
The conclusion is that the chance of any given reward system preserving the underlying reality is 0. And not just in the sense of loss of detail, but even in terms of having a similar structure. Therefore, the reality that evolutionary lifeforms perceive is analogous to a user interface with icons, which operates an entirely different looking structure of circuits and intricate voltage toggling. The brain itself, for instance, is an icon for an underlying structure of consciousness it doesn’t really resemble.
His more general conclusion is that consciousness precedes reality. Spacetime is a projection of consciousness, not vice versa.
Following his line of reasoning, it seems something does survive through, and that’s the fundamental maths that underpins both realities. So that implies systems of logic still hold. Meaning fundamental relationship types, and therefore fundamental meanings are inherited.
This is really interesting, because it aligns perfectly with a spiritual paradigm where the world is an illusion, but where there is meaning in how you tackle relationships of any kind.
Icebergs
You could analogize Donald’s model as the various phenomena or even aspects of reality being as icebergs. Space, time, matter, energy, all tips of icebergs that our evolved user interface has fused together into the impression of a consistent whole.
The truth of these icebergs is they are actually separate from one another, are mainly immersed in an entirely different medium than the air, and yet can interact with each other below the surface in ways we aren’t aware of.
Leaning into the implications
If it’s true, the concept actually has practical value – as a reminder or tool that you might as well lean into the implications by clearing your mind of what you think is possible, and look for correlations and causal relationships without the handicap of what’s possible within established science.
Perhaps the most immediate of these is the relationship I’ve noticed between what happens internally and externally. [Big internal changes being reflected in big external changes shortly afterwards]
A mathematical prediction for magic
It implies that there should be causal relationships that seem like magic. Donald describes the instincts of the organism as being solely concerned with: ‘If x happens, what is the probability of y happening?’ So for any given life form, the vast majority of obvious relationships would be incorporated into our ‘user interface’ already, but there will be those that aren’t. If / when you are able to discover these things, it will look like magic. You pull a thread here, and something else moves.
Quantum entanglement
This phenomenon is exactly what you’d expect to see. Apparently disconnected forms influencing each other instantaneously as if by magic.
Questions
There might be physical relationships between what you think of as internal mental states, and things in the reality around you. You might in some cases actually be pushing buttons or manipulating voltages that connect to the ‘external’ world.
Reading this now, what sticks out is the illusion of continuity. We see a cluster of atomic particle fields as a solid mass. We see their light waves as a solid colour. It seems our brains pick out the relevant parts and gloss over the gaps to create an illusion of smooth continuity.
Even the way we process sequences of events involves creating stories that turn them into seamless flowing narratives with a whole bunch of hypothetical glue.
It makes me wonder if the universe is as unified as it seems.
There could well be an intermediate reality where things are absolutely not working together in the way we think. I.e. spacetime is not continuous at all, but something else that underlies it is. It’s a structure where our starting assumptions for Occam’s razor would be completely misguided.
