AmsterSome interesting thoughts in "The Case Against Reality", Donald Hoffman, 2019. #DonaldHoffman #Perception #Reality
TL;DR the world around you is made up of pixels of color, pixels of sensations, and pixels of time. Your brain turns that into things, even the back sides it cannot see or the actions it predicts the thing will do. That is very limited information and yet we perceive it to be actual physicial objects in #SpaceTime.
Each of us is an “agent” moving around these Pixels of Everything, and we do this because it’s how we survive and thrive, and then pass on our genes to the next generation. We determine what’s a more tasty target by evaluating #FitnessPayoffs.
What does this mean for #Consciousness? Perhaps we “agents” reside not in our bodies so much as through our bodies. Our brains are the interface that glues all the senses together like a computer and stores our experiences like a hard drive. We can process only so fast as our computer allows. (That also implies other animals can process reality differently. Or perhaps other non-biological things could have consciousness.)
What’s the practical use for people though? The world around us are just #icons (as #DonaldHoffman puts it) for things and agents. So if you mimic the right properties of another icon, then other agents assume you are a different. i.e. cosplay. It applies to products. It applies to memes. And when it comes to #AI it means the better computer should be more goal-driven. An AI should also be able to transform itself into a different “icon”. #DeepThoughts #Consciousness #Reality
Ultimately, this means if you understand that other people might not have had the same circumstances (healthy bodies, stable finances, good community) as you to thrive, you have a choice: Do you want to be remembered as the person who consumed the other agent's resources, or do you want to be the one to help level the playing field a little? Is it more important to you to grow, or is it more important to aid?