The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

This critique also misreads the Copernican revolution. Yes, our perceptions misled us about our place in the universe. But its deeper message is this: our perceptions can mislead us about the very nature of the universe itself. We are prone to falsely believe that certain limitations and idiosyncrasies of our perceptions are genuine insights into objective reality.

as Einstein put it ‘Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live.

Conscious realism makes a bold claim: consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and is properly described as a network of conscious agents.

Perception is not a window on objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.

There are as many cubes as there are observers constructing cubes. And when you look away, your cube ceases to be.

The tinkering of evolution can concoct perceptual interfaces with endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful; the vast majority of these, however, are to us most inconceivable. Evolution is not finished tinkering with the perceptual interfaces of Homo sapiens. The mutations that bless one in twenty-five with some form of synesthesia are surely part of the process, and some of these mutations might catch on; much of the tinkering centers on our perceptions of color. Evolution defies our silly stricture that our perceptions must be veridical. It freely explores endless forms of sensory interfaces, hitting now and then on novel ways to shepherd our endless foraging for fitness.

The math is not the territory.

Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.” —JALALUDDIN RUMI

Steven Pinker sums up the argument well: “We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.

Exaptation, in which a trait evolved for one function can co-opt a new function, is commonplace in nature. We use sex to procreate, but also to bond, play, heal, and enjoy pleasure.

No conscious agent can describe itself completely. The very attempt adds more experiences to the agent, which multiplies the complexity of its decisions and actions in light of those new experiences, which requires yet more experiences to capture those more complex decisions and actions, and so on in a vicious loop of incompleteness. A conscious agent must therefore remain, at least in part, unconscious to itself. Recall that what conscious realism claims to be fundamental is not just conscious experiences, but conscious agents. An agent cannot experience itself in its entirety, no matter how large its repertoire of experiences.

Nathan Seiberg of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton said, “I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.

Physics and evolution point to the same conclusion: spacetime and objects are not foundational. Something else is more fundamental, and spacetime emerges from it.

Hence our decline of insight as we shift our gaze from human to ant to quark. Our decline of insight should not be mistaken for an insight into decline—a progressive poverty inherent in objective reality. The decline is in our interface, in our perceptions. But we externalize it; we pin it on reality. Then we erect, from this erroneous reification, an ontology of physicalism.

Conscious realism contends, to the contrary, that no physical object is conscious. If I see a rock, then that rock is part of my conscious experience, but the rock itself is not conscious. When I see my friend Chris, I experience an icon that I create, but that icon itself is not conscious. My Chris-icon opens a small portal into the rich world of conscious agents; a smiling icon, for instance, suggests a happy agent. When I see a rock, I also interact with conscious agents, but my rock-icon offers no insight, no portal, into their experiences.

If you play a video game on your computer, such as "Doom" or "Uncharted", you see compelling 3D worlds with 3D objects. Yet the information is entirely 2D, limited by the number of pixels on the screen. The same is true when you look away from your computer to the world around you. It too has pixels, and all the information is 2D.

In the last 20,000 years, our brains have shrunk 10 percent—from 1,500 cubic centimeters down to 1,350—a loss of the volume of a tennis ball.

The interface theory says that space and time are not fundamental aspects of objective reality, but simply a data format for messages about fitness, a format evolved to compress and correct such messages. Objects in spacetime are not aspects of objective reality, but simply messages about fitness coded in a format of icons that is specific to the needs of Homo sapiens. In particular, our bodies are not aspects of objective reality, and our actions don’t give us direct access to preexisting objects in spacetime. Our bodies are messages about fitness that are coded as icons in a format specific to our species. When you perceive yourself sitting inside space and enduring through time, you’re actually seeing yourself as an icon inside your own data structure.

The sclera—the white of the eye—affects attraction. No other primates have white scleras. Their scleras are dark, hiding their direction of gaze from predators, and from members of their own species—for whom a stare can be a threat.40 The white sclera of the human eye advertises gaze direction, making it a tool for social communication. It also advertises emotion and health.

What we call ‘reality,’ consists of an elaborate papier-mâché construction of imagination and theory filled in between a few iron posts of observation.”22 We

A glimpse of an eye is, for purposes of triggering the animate-monitoring system, a glimpse of the beast peering through that eye.

If you ever feel like ending your life, come see me first. Life is worth living.

Science is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.

Perception may seem effortless, but in fact it requires considerable energy. Each precious calorie you burn on perception is a calorie you must find and take from its owner—perhaps a potato or an irate wildebeest. Calories can be difficult and dangerous to procure, so evolution has shaped our senses to be misers.

Or perhaps we were short-changed by evolution, and lack the concepts needed to understand the relationship between brains and consciousness. Cats can’t do calculus and monkeys can’t do quantum theory, so why assume that Homo sapiens can demystify consciousness?

we need to write down laws or principles that precisely specify these processes and the conscious experiences with which they are identical. If we propose that conscious experience is an illusion arising from some brain processes attending to, monitoring, and describing other brain processes, then we must state laws or principles that precisely specify these processes and the illusions they generate. And if we propose that conscious experiences emerge from brain processes, then we must give the laws or principles that describe precisely when, and how, each specific experience emerges.

Which raises a perplexing question: What about the big bang? Didn’t it happen 13 billion 799 million years ago, before any observers?

In February of 1962, Joseph Bogen and Philip Vogel sliced in half the brain of Bill Jenkins—intentionally, methodically, and with careful premeditation. Jenkins, then in his late forties, recovered and went on to enjoy a quality of life that had eluded him for years. In the decade that followed, Bogen and Vogel split brain after brain in California, earning them the epithet “the West Coast butchers.

Once we know the rules that human vision uses to decode messages about fitness, we can use those rules to send the messages we want. Consider jeans.