Prof Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball In Zero-Gravity - the prelude.

An unauthorized critical review.

If Donald Hoffman had categorized his book “The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes” as new age literature, metaphysical intellectual entertainment, I’d have no complaints.  It’s his insistence on passing it off as a serious scientific effort that begs a frank detailed response, (even if I’m only a thoughtful spectator and no academic myself.) 

Science is a set of rules and an attitude for observing and striving to understand our physical world, it’s about atoms and molecules, all they create, including biology and our planet’s biosphere, along with the rules all of it follows.  Science strives for objectivity, it demands facts and rejects ego driven conclusions.

All of us view the world through our own unique perspective, which of course is the product of genes, upbringing, environment, cumulative learning and experiences that produce inevitable biases in how we perceive the same bits of information.  Admittedly, there’s an ocean of difference between the professor and myself.

Donald David Hoffman (12/29/55) is a cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a Professor in the Dept of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Dept of Philosophy, the Dept of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.

Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. His research subjects include facial attractiveness, the recognition of shape, the perception of motion and color, the evolution of perception, and the mind-body problem. (wiki)

Me, I’m on the outside looking in on academia.  Born the same year as Hoffman, mine was a skilled working-man’s life with a passion for learning about Earth’s story through science, personal observation, thinking, reading quality popular publications and books, visiting libraries, museums, then the internet and always pondering the fundamental questions, fitting together pieces of the puzzle, and being astounded at all science was learning and sharing.  

In particular, I’ve been impressed that even with all the unexpected surprises over these decades, there remains an underlying harmony and consistency that’s amazing.  Our understanding has been like an image coming into better focus as more pixels of information are gathered.  Seems like proof that we’ve developed a reasonably accurate understanding, even if some mysteries and surprises remain.  We shouldn’t glibly turn our backs on all we've learned.  

To hear someone of Hoffman’s stature simply dismiss it all and replace our day to day reality with imagined icons replacing material stuff; reduce Evolution to a computer interface & game theory analogies; topped off with “conscious agents” zinging around like so many photons.  It’s mystifying, disconcerting, crazy-making, and a hell of challenge for me to get to work on enunciating a more down to Earth perspective on the Evolution of perceiving the reality we are embedded within.

Hoffman begins his book with a quote from a founding father of science,

I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on . . . 

reside in consciousness.  Hence if the living

creature were removed, all these qualities

would be wiped away and annihilated. 

Evolution is not a process. Evolution is a result.

 Looking at it from a slightly different perspective:

Evolution is Time driving Matter forward.

From the cosmic perspective of some 14 billions years,

Evolution has no intent, it has matter, time, motion, outcomes.

An under appreciated analogy for “Evolution,” is to recognize that “Evolution” is a result of time’s relentless forward momentum.

Time is motion.

The sum total of human knowledge shows us with overwhelming consilience that our “Reality” started at what’s been coined the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, when massive pure energy was released to create our Universe.

It’s time/motion that pushed this primal energy to coalesce into bundles such as quarks, and it’s time that drove the universe to expand and cool.  It’s time/motion that saw atoms and molecules form.

Time/motion/gravity is what brought vast clouds of atomic, molecular dust together into swirling nurseries for stars to be formed, only to run through their life cycles.  Some dying stars exploded and producing all the elements heavier than iron.  Time/motion/gravity is what sweeps together those remnants into new stars and planets.

Here in our corner of the Universe, conditions were promising for something special to happen and it did.  It’s time/motion/gravity with sunshine and radioactivity that created Earth’s geological turmoil which is the source of life

Time married Earth’s geology with biology and it has driven all the changes since.  One second, minute, day, season at a time.  Resulting in folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time.

Diary: Depression, considering depression.

August 21, 2017  -  Sunrise in Wyoming

I have a project I’m all excited about: “Donald Hoffman Playing Basketball in Zero-gravity,” a detailed critical examination of his astounding “Case Against Reality.”  

Unfortunately, one thing after another keeps real progress out of my reach.  Hours worth of free time is rare, I get snippets.  Soon as I think I’ve carved out some time, bam.  Within the past week another couple hugely time consuming family projects have been piled on.  Heck, I barely have the time to drop in at CFI these days.  

Don’t get me wrong, life is all about today, our day to days, and the people, our family, those lives and times matter most.   Still it requires an investment of time and I’m good with that.  It’s that little writer dude inside that has his occasional issues - but we make due.  Sturm und drang, dancing the sword’s edge of living, we do.

Last night, I finally responded to a pal at CFI Forum who brought up the despair that aware individuals are going through, as we’re watching our decades old worst fears unfolding with frightening rapidity.  I had some ten day mulling it over and waiting for a good time to sit down and focus on it. Last night the stars alined and I stayed up alone.  Me'n my MsMac laptop.

I’m sharing it here, with a little polishing, since I guess the dream of encountering some real dialogue remains, no matter how cynical I may seem. This is also part of laying out my case to my own satisfaction.

August 21, 2017  -  Wyoming

Yo ∏, hope you’re doing well. 

I’m in from my last walk with Maddy, dark skies, stars and all that.  I keep thinking back on your “clinically depressed” remark, which really caught me by surprise. Although, didn’t take long to figure out where it was coming from.  It’s made for lots of musing about the difference between “clinical” depressions and plain old justified human depression.

Seems to me clinical depression is for the candles in the wind, never knowing who to cling to when the rains come in, and so on.  The lost souls without a foundation under them.   

Scientism: On getting lost within the Mindscape.

It’s an odd sensation, periodically rediscovering how some things that I find self-evident, seem absolutely foreign (if not invisible) to most others.  When I embraced the term “Mindscape” a couple years back, I thought I did a good job of capturing a metaphor for those universes of thoughts that we possess just beyond our physical brain with its neurons, synapses and electro-chemical cascades.  The seat of ego, emotions, thought, reflection, god seeking, knowledge seeking, love seeking, success thirsting, the sense of self, our life’s spirit, our soul, whatever labels you want to tag onto it.  

The world flowing through our physical senses and then getting sorted through our genetic and environmental filters before being reflected against the metaphorical retina of our brain and infusing through our body.  The thing that thinks it’s telling our body what to do, when most the time it’s the other way around.  The thing that believes it’s in control of us, or out of control, as the case may be.  The thing that is us, but has yet to be found by scientist or philosopher.  

I’ve discovered that suggesting we should categorize it differently than the stuff of atoms and the laws of physics invites the wildest mental gymnastics intent on drawing the discussion away from the essence of acknowledging the ephemeral nature of our human mind, that thing that animates our bodies during our short dance across physical reality’s stage, or more specifically, Earth - and then disappears when we die.

A humanist's adventures in culinary arts. (4of4)

continued from part 3, the Denver years.

Back home and the Tamarron Resort, Durango, Colorado

On a visit home I stopped in at the Tamarron Resort north of Durango for a casual inquiry.  HR sent me to see the restaurant manager.  Turned out to be a French import, who was there for one year as part of his own career building.  He was also lonesome for someone with a bit of continental sensibilities and genuine appreciation for fine dining.  He practically wouldn’t let me leave his office without promising to take the job and come back and start working.  

Though I was pleasantly surprised and impressed with Denver, three years of the big city was getting to be enough and it was time to get back to home and my people, so I said sure.

When my French pal went back to his home, and to take up his next position with the French President’s culinary/service team for a year, I was promoted to replace him.  While manager I created a server training manual for the San Juan Mtn Cafe.

A humanist's adventures in culinary arts. (3of4)

(continued from part two) Back in America.

Silverton’s Zhivago’s Restaurant on “Notorious” Blair Street

I can still remember driving down the “Champions” into Silverton at 9,300’ July ‘79.  First sight of that town way down there in the distance and I simply could not stop laughing, it was like a fairy town on a miniature train set.  Even had a smoking steam train on the tracks way down yonder.  How was I to know I was driving into Colorado’s last gold rush?  But, I digress again.

I met Falco’s friends and told them about my culinary experiences.  That night they took us to the best in Silverton, Zhivago’s Restaurant on “Notorious” Blair Street, under lease to a very nice, very hip L.A couple with lots of money and dreams of having the coolest mountain town restaurant ever.  With the help of friends within the L.A. music community, they succeeded.  Well, for a few glorious years.  But, giving away the profits playing the high roller will sink the best of establishments, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

A humanist's adventures in culinary arts. (2of4)

(continued from part one) My German culinary experience.

Mittenwalt, Germany.

That sent me back to Germany, where my “Has Been German Citizen” legal status gave me the right to apply and receive work permits.  Finding an apprenticeship was another matter.

Mittenwald, Bavaria, Germany

Winter was coming and I needed to find some work, which I did at the Hotel Gasathof Mühlhauser in Mittenwalt, Bavarian Alps.  Basically an owner chef, a cook and me prepping for them.  I also washed the pots and pans though I remember more about my moonlight excursions out into the magical countryside and hanging out with other restaurant workers in the evenings drinking beer and puffing on Turkish cigarettes and discussing everything under sun, than I do about the kitchen.  It was a fun Christmas and winter, then back to hunting for an apprenticeship.
   

Gasthof Mühlhausen, Mittenwald winter of 1976/77

Restaurant Zum Burgkeller, Stolberg, Germany.