How the brain deceives us every day

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Our perceptions are deceiving, and our senses are a poor source of information. Let's figure out why a person sees the world in about the same way as an insect, and whether it is possible to get out of this trap of perception.

Why perception is deceiving

We often say, "I won't believe it until I see it." Donald Hoffman, a professor at the University of California, advises you not to believe even what you see with your own eyes. He illustrates his strange advice with a curious story.

For millions of years, the Australian goldfish beetle has lived happily. His reproductive system worked flawlessly. Everything changed when a man appeared with his habit of leaving trash everywhere. In particular, people do not clean up after themselves on the beaches and often leave beer bottles in the sand. This confused the goldfish, because the beetle is not able to distinguish a brown bottle from the brown shell of a female. Therefore, males regularly try to fertilize glass containers.

"Because of this, the beetles are almost extinct," says Donald Hoffman, who has spent nearly 30 years studying how our senses deceive us.

Why did the scientist tell this story? The fact that a primitive living creature can confuse a bottle and its kind is not surprising. In addition, this information has little to do with us: a person is much higher than a beetle from the point of view of evolution. Such problems should not be of concern to highly evolved Homo sapiens. However, Donald Hoffman hastens to upset us: we are no better than stupid brown beetles.

Evolution is not about an accurate perception of reality; evolution is about reproduction. Any information we process is calories burned. This means that the more information we need to assimilate, the more often we will have to hunt and the more we eat.

And this is irrational.

Just as a beetle can hardly distinguish a bottle from a female's shell, so we do not really distinguish objects that are similar to each other. The perception system is designed so as not to fix the details of the surrounding world, to simplify all objects.

This means that there is no reason to think that the objects that we observe around us are in any way related to the real world that exists outside of consciousness.

How perception deceives us

We erase details to save energy, which makes everything we see completely different from objective reality. The question arises: why is it easier for our brain to create the appearance of the world, which has little to do with the truth, than to perceive the world as it is?

You can answer with the help of an example with a computer interface.

You click on the square blue icon to open the document, but your file will not be blue or square. So we see physical objects, which are really only symbols. The square blue icon only exists on your desktop, in that particular interface, on this computer. There is no icon outside of it. In the same way, the physical objects that we see exist in time and space only in our reality. Like any interface, our visible world is connected with objective reality. But for our convenience, they have little in common.

It's hard to believe. More precisely, it is quite difficult not to trust your own feelings. Hoffman confirms:

Our perception is both a window to the big world and a kind of imprisonment. It is difficult to comprehend reality outside of time and space.

So, we already know that the senses deceive us. And we even have a rough idea of how exactly they do it. Is it possible to overcome the barriers set by our perception and look into the real world? Hoffman is sure: you can. And for that we need math.

How to find reality

Mathematics helps to "grope" the world that we cannot cognize with the help of our senses. For example, you are unable to imagine multidimensional space. But you can build a model of it using mathematics.

Mathematics allows you to find the real world, fixing the strange, incomprehensible and illogical in our perception with you. Hoffman found at least two examples of such inconsistencies that indicate the existence of another reality outside of consciousness. Here they are.

• The first example relates to the ability to instantly recreate aroma, taste, tactile sensations and emotions. We can imagine what it is like to eat chocolate. To create this complete mental image, we use only information obtained from the physical material of neurons and chemical synapses.
• The second example is known to everyone. The classical paradox: does an object exist at the moment when they are not looking at it? It is impossible to give an affirmative or negative answer based on perception alone.

In both cases, consciousness seems to go beyond the limits set by the sensory world. Maybe this is where you should start? Hoffman believes: consciousness is the primary substance, thanks to which the physical world exists.

Our consciousness has an experience that is inseparable from the one who experiences this experience. And there are three channels of information: perception, decision and action.

It's like input and output devices. For example, in the physical world, we perceive light reflected from objects, that is, we see. Information enters the perceptual channel. We make a decision and act, that is, we give out certain information to the physical world.

Obviously, the physical world can be excluded from this scheme if objects are connected to each other directly with information channels. What one person sees is information that another has already given out. What the third does will become information for the fourth to perceive.

Therefore, Hoffman believes that our world is a network of conscious agents. If you study the dynamics of information distribution within this network, you can understand how communication works. And then we will understand how the information received through perception relates to the real world.

Now the scientist must reconcile this model with space and time, physical objects, quantum field theory and the theory of relativity. Sheer trifle: solve the problem of mind and body in the reverse order.