Can one overcome adversity without free will?

I recently read a book titled being (no capital) written by a father and daughter (Ross G. Menzies and Rachel E. Menzies), both academics in psychology, albeit at different institutions in Sydney. The subtitle is Why It’s Harder To Be A Human Than A Hamster Or A Herring, which I think is a little misleading, and probably unnecessary.

For me, the title, being, says it all, because it’s a category on my blog. ‘Being’ is literally about being human, with all that entails, including the fact that we are a complex social species who thinks in a complex language, which is akin to software in that it’s hard to imagine thinking without it. That alone differentiates us from all other species, but, having read their book, I really don’t think that’s what it's about.

 

The book has a strong existential flavour, because it’s really about how to take control of your inner self and therefore your life. And perhaps that would have been a better subtitle, and even shifted more books. But perhaps the authors wanted to differentiate themselves from the plethora of self-help books on the market, and I can understand that, because I don’t think this book fits that genre either. It’s more Oliver Sacks than Oprah Winfrey. In particular, they provide examples of case studies (like Sacks did in his seminal tome, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), which are all extreme cases, yet illustrate their points.

 

I found myself identifying with a lot of what they described, and perhaps others will too. In particular, they explain how we all have an inner voice that can be our biggest critic and can inhibit us. I’m really not sure how widespread this is: I can’t imagine narcissists having a critical inner voice; I imagine their inner voice never stops telling them how exceptional and brilliant they are. Just listen to Donald Trump’s public exhortations of his own genius.

 

Basically, the authors are saying this inner voice can have pathological consequences, and I know mine never shuts up. They make the point that it was probably fostered in childhood, and I can certainly testify to that. But here’s the thing: I’ve come to see it as a positive, because it helps to keep my ego in check, and I agree with Socrates’ maxim about the unexamined life. It was also a feature of Confucius’ philosophy: that self-examination is a bulwark against our propensity to blame others for our shortcomings. Note that they both lived around 4-500 years before Christ.

 

The book includes a couple of questionnaires, which the reader is invited to try, and I complied.

 

One was about one’s search for purpose or meaning. It was only 10 questions but it was cleverly designed to ascertain 2 parameters: how strong is one’s search for meaning; and how strong is one’s sense of having acquired meaning or purpose. They are meant to be complementary in that a high score on one should be reflected by a low score on the other. I scored high on both: 29 out of 35.

 

They don’t address that anomaly, but my takeaway is that my sense of purpose is probably a lot higher than it was when I was younger; yet I’m still searching, in the belief that there is no final destination. I think this blog encapsulates both of those.

 

The other one was a measure of regret with only 5 questions, and I scored 9 out of 35, which is roughly what I expected. The questions were about reflecting on outcomes and considering what-ifs.

 

They reference Carl Rogers and, in particular, his mostly unacknowledged influence on the relationship between psychologists and their clients. In particular, in creating a non-judgemental environment. I remember that Carl Rogers was barely mentioned when I studied psychology, yet I’d read about his ‘client-centred therapy’ external to my studies.

 

Given their book has an unapologetic existential influence, I was surprised by their views on free will. Basically, they take the very strong scientific position that it’s a fallacy.

 

Following a chapter titled The Forks in the Road, which is about decision-making as the title suggests, there is a chapter titled The Illusion of Freedom, headlined by a quote from Sam Harris: You can do what you decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do. And that sums up what they talk about for the next 28 pages.

 

But let me backtrack momentarily to The Forks in the Road where they discuss something called the ‘Indecisiveness Scale’ devised by Robert Frost and Deanna Shows at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in the 1990s. To quote the authors:

 

This simple, fifteen-item scale has been used by researchers around the globe for decades and has revealed just how destructive to wellbeing indecisiveness really is. (My emphasis)

 

Across investigations, high scores on the Indecisiveness Scale have been linked to high levels of negative emotion, worry, depression and rumination.

 

One section of this chapter was subtitled, Maximising versus satisficing, and basically, giving examples, the authors explain how satisficing is better than maximising as a life enhancing strategy. Basically, maximising means always seeking and demanding the optimum outcome, and satisficing means making compromises and accepting the best outcome in a given situation.

 

Possibly, you can see a connection to the notion of free will, given we associate decision-making to the attribute of personal agency. Therefore, the Illusion of Freedom was like a bucket of cold water, in the face of what went before.

 

Essentially, they argue we are nothing more than ‘biological machines’. They quote from a previous book of theirs (which I haven’t read):

 

The decisions we believe we’re making ‘freely’ are all in fact determined by a dense thicket of crisscrossing cogs and causes – biographical, physiological, cultural, psychological, neurological and environmental… We are incredibly complex creatures, entwined in incredibly complex situations, which makes our choices often seen baffling and unpredictable, but we are nonetheless, ultimately, biological machines that obey the laws of physics just like everything else. (my emphasis)

 

That last sentence reminds me of Sabine Hossenfelder, and in fact, they reference her book at one point, Existential Physics (which I have read). But the main problem I have with their thesis is how they reverse the norm when it comes to dealing with failures. They give the example of Italian soccer player, Roberto Baggio, who famously (or infamously) missed a penalty goal in the 1994 FIFA World Cup final against Brazil, held in Pasadena, California. Other than the personal shame and humiliation, it effectively curtailed a brilliant career. The authors argue that the way he should have dealt with it, was to acknowledge that he had no free will.

 

I find this such a self-defeating attitude. Does that mean that all the brilliant successes he’d had up to that point in his star-studded career were also just a product of being a robotic ‘biological machine’? My point is that if you’re going to take responsibility for your triumphs you also need to take responsibility for your failures. Anything else is a cop-out. It’s why Socrates’ famous aphorism: The unexamined life is not worth living; is so resonant throughout the ages. We only examine our lives when we fail, and Socrates had failed to prevail against the Senate and paid for it with his life.

 

To provide a counter perspective, I watched a 97m YouTube video provided by Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s Closer to Truth channel, titled, Big Questions in Free Will. It covered a four-year project (so not a one-week seminar as you might expect), with experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and theology. The theology component was separate and is covered at the end, and assumes free will, but discusses the apparent contradiction with having an omnipotent and omniscient God with human free will, which I won’t discuss here. I read a book on that topic by Clifford A Pickover (The Paradox of God And the Science of Omniscience), which I discussed in another post.

 

Overall, Kuhn’s video is an excellent exposition on the topic, based on interviews with various experts, and it revealed that free will is more nuanced than what many people claim, including myself. Basically, there are a lot of thoughts, impulses and ideas that come into your mind that you don’t have conscious control over. I think the most obvious example is when one dreams. In a dream, there is a sense that we don’t have control over events, even though I believe there is a conscious interaction. But anyone who has done something creative is aware that there is a strong subconscious component – we literally don’t know where it comes from.

 

Of all the participants (over 20), there were 2 in particular, who came closest to expressing my beliefs: Eddy Nahmias, Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University, and Peter Tse, Professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College. Both expressed the view that decisions requiring detailed cognitive analysis with potentially life-changing consequences, like getting married or changing careers, were not solely the result of subconscious impulses. My own view, not expressed by any of the participants, is that consciousness can act as a feedback loop and modify a subconscious decision. Peter Tse alluded to this without calling it a loop. Douglas Hofstadter coined the term, ‘strange loop’ to describe this experiential phenomenon.

 

Peter Tse’s interaction with his colleague, Thalia Wheatley (Associate Professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College) was most interesting and informative, because Thalia held the view that free will is a chimera (my term, not hers), the same as Rachel and Ross Menzies. At one point, Tse mentions the role of imagination, which I’ve argued before is the key to free will – an idea I’ve borrowed from Raymond Tallis (neuroscientist turned philosopher).

 

I’ve long argued that consciousness without free will makes no evolutionary sense. If consciousness simply makes us aware of decisions already made, then what’s the point? On the other hand, consciousness can access memory and mentally time travel – hence the role of imagination – because that’s what imagination does. The ability to mentally time travel, especially into the future, allows us to consider the far-reaching consequences of events like getting married or changing careers or any other life-changing decision.

 

Getting back to the Menzies’ position and the subtext of their book, which is really about trying to live a more fulfilling life. I’ve spoken about this before, but I went through a phase in my life where I felt I had no control and I became a fatalist – believing that everything was caused by fate. Not surprisingly, I became very depressed. The fact that I overcame this, I put solely down to free will – the belief that one can change one’s circumstances, by taking control and responsibility for one’s decisions.

 

The authors don’t mention impostor syndrome, but I suspect I’ve suffered from a version of that my whole life, although I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I think it gives one perspective and stops one from being full of themselves. Ex New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said she suffered from imposter syndrome, but gave the impression that it helped her because it imbues humility in the face of dealing with significant events. It’s not lack of confidence, as she was quick to point out, but it requires self-examination, which requires a feedback loop.

Should you believe me?

Note how prefacing the question with ‘why’ would change its focus if not its intent. I’ll return to this point at the end. I was originally going to write a post on time travel and UFOs, but I got sidetracked in my 'research'. In particular, I watched a talk given by famous sceptic, Michael Shermer (executive director of The Skeptics Society) and I remember reading his column in Scientific American in the 70s or 80s when I was a regular reader. He’s only slightly younger than me.

 

He gives a number of challenges in his talk, which are insightful in themselves, and I would gladly take them up. Basically, he’s making the point that when you challenge someone to explain why they believe something, they mostly can’t. He gives the examples of climate change and evolution, which he says are positions based on political beliefs rather than whether or not they understand the science behind them. I fall into this category, even though I’ve read books and accounts on these topics that most people wouldn’t bother, despite holding very passionate views on them.

 

Regarding evolutionary theory, I’d recommend Nick Lane’s excellent book, Life Ascending; The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, which I’ve written about before. But I have another argument, which I’ve also presented before. Since Darwin and Wallace independently proposed their theories of evolution by natural selection over 160 years ago (1859 to be precise), we’ve made extraordinary discoveries that they could never have dreamed about, specifically in palaeontology and genetics. But here’s the thing: all the evidence discovered in the interim is not neutral; what has proven them right could just as readily have proven them wrong.

 

Regarding anthropomorphic climate change, I know of the role of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, without knowing the details, and I know that ultimately it’s caused by the difference in heat that can escape our atmosphere and the heat that’s trapped, which can’t be measured directly. However, NASA has data that is publicly available on their website, which combines historical ice-core data with atmospheric data collected at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, and they show how the 2 sources of data are complementary and seamlessly connected.

 

But I have a subsidiary argument, which is that we need to trust the expertise of people who work in climatology, because the rest of us don’t have it. I learned this from spending over 4 decades in engineering, where I constantly relied on expertise by people in various fields from structural and civil engineering to architecture to mechanical and electrical engineering to process engineering to software design and automation. The problem is, with the internet, you can always find an ‘expert’ to provide the evidence that supports your view, which was very prominently exhibited during the not-so-recent COVID pandemic.

 

But, in the case of climate change, nearly all the arguments I’ve come across (that question it) are that it’s a hoax and/or a global conspiracy to keep climatologists in a job. I admit I don’t take those arguments seriously. However, there is someone I know who was a geologist and had spent a very successful career in mining, who put up a technical argument based on the tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere and how, as a percentage, it contradicted the official reporting, including that provided by NASA. NASA’s data is in ppm (parts per million), and I pointed out that to convert the weight into ppm you had to allow for the molecular weight of CO2, which brings it back in line with the reported results. He knew I was right and he didn't respond. But as Shermer would have pointed out, he was on the Right of politics and I’m on the Left, which axiomatically creates the divide. I’ve long argued that climate change should never have been politicised. But having said that, you’ll find people on the other side of the argument who will say exactly the same thing.

 

Shermer added a couple of other challenges to demonstrate how much we don’t know or take for granted. He asked, ‘Can you explain how a zipper works?’ No, but I can draw a diagram. Engineers often draw a picture when explaining something. He also asked, ‘Can you draw a bicycle?’ and explained how many people get it wrong. Well, actually, I can. I stopped the video to prove it to myself, though I had to raise the handlebars when I finished it. Mind you, I started drawing before I could write.

 

However, Shermer made me question myself, which is why I’m writing this post. You see I write about topics where I’m not an expert, specifically physics and cosmology. I’m not even a proper philosopher – I don’t even have a degree let alone a PhD. My only defence is that I’m well read and pay attention to people who know a lot more than me, even if I disagree with them. And what I’ve found from watching panel discussions on YouTube is that even experts can’t agree.

 

To give an example, I watched a panel discussion between 2 prominent philosophers of science and a theoretical physicist: Tim Maudlin, Hilary Lawson and Sabine Hossenfelder respectively; on whether there are particles or fields. Tim Maudlin appeared to be the odd one out, yet I found I was more in agreement with him, which might just be a reflection of my own ignorance. Basically, he argued that the ‘field’ in quantum mechanics is the wavefunction of the particle which doesn’t even exist in spacetime (it exists in Hilbert space with potentially infinite dimensions) and can’t be measured. It’s possible that Lawson and Hossenfelder were talking about something different – I don’t know enough to comment – but Hossenfelder said you can have different mathematical models that describe the same phenomenon. Maudlin quoted John Bell as saying we effectively don’t have a particle until it creates a spot on a screen or a photographic emulsion. Which is why I think it exists in the past and the wavefunction exists in the future, compatible with Freeman Dyson’s viewpoint.

 

Speaking of Bell, I watched another video with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking to Jana Levin about entanglement which is one of the best discussions I’ve seen on the topic. The point that I think needs to be emphasised is that entanglement introduces instantaneity, which to me, only makes sense if there is a universal 'now'. Tyson focused the discussion on the ramifications for cryptology, where they both agreed that it can’t be used to send a message faster-than-light, though I do it in my science fiction (I readily acknowledge I break the known laws of physics in my sci-fi).

 

I think there is an inherent contradiction or conundrum in physics and cosmology that the Universe has an edge in time but not space, whereas relativity theory tells us there is only spacetime (they are not separate) and ‘now’ is a purely subjective experience – there is no universal, objective now. This has led to physicists arguing that our experience of time ‘flowing’ is an illusion. Paul Davies believes that this experience will ultimately be 'explained by neuroscience, not physics'. Sabine Hossenfelder argues that there is no ‘now’ – it’s an illusion. Everyone knows that I greatly admire both of these scientists, both of whom know a lot more than me, yet I also think that postulating something that’s so outside our everyday experience, requires better explanations than we currently have. To me, it’s a sign that there is something wrong with our current theories rather than a sign that we all suffer from the same illusion that there is a past, present and future.

 

Getting back to Shermer and the role of expertise (though he doesn’t mention it, but I do): what I’ve found is that if you watch a discussion on a topic like evolution or climate change, especially when it’s combative, and you have someone present who is more knowledgeable and more experienced, they will invariably win the argument. And to extend that to my position, I imagine that if I was to have a discussion with Sabine, she would win hands down, and I would have to defer to her greater expertise, while not necessarily agreeing with her.

 

I once wrote a post where I critiqued her position on determinism and free will. It so happened I referenced this post to someone I met online, and to my surprise they said it was ‘very balanced’. I didn’t think it was balanced at all, given my prejudices, but I took it as a compliment.

 

So, addressing the question at the head of this post, the answer is, No. You shouldn’t simply believe what I say or argue; instead, you should do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

The Case Against Reality by Donald D. Hoffman

As I’ve pointed out before, YouTube has allowed scientists and philosophers of all stripes to promote pet theories that they know they can’t pursue academically with the same freedom. In fact, I’ve heard comments from people like Gregory Chaitin and Sabine Hossenfelder, who feel that the innate conservatism in academia is hindering progress in research and exploring new ideas.

 

Donald Hoffman is possibly an exception given his credentials: ‘Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine… [He] is the author of over one hundred scholarly articles on various aspects of human perception and cognition. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research into visual perception, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences.’

 

All of the above I’ve lifted verbatim from the About The Author section to his book, The Case Against Reality (2019). The copy I have is Penguin paperback (2020). The subtitle is How evolution hid the truth from our eyes. I first came across Hoffman 10 years ago (2016), when someone sent me a link to an academic paper he cowrote with Chetan Prakash called Objects of Consciousness, which I reviewed back then.

 

All of this gives Hoffman enormous credibility, without even mentioning that he had direct communication with Francis Crick before the latter died. His book is obviously aimed at people like myself, who have an interest in science but are not academic, with the intention of convincing us that his ideas are unassailable. But the truth is that by the time I reached the end of his book, I was more convinced that he was wrong than when I started. Now that’s a huge admission given the extraordinary gap in our credentials not to mention the limitations of my knowledge in neuroscience.

 

I wrote a post some time ago, where I talked about how important beliefs are in the development of science. What I’ve learned from watching various science experts on YouTube, who have, what one might call, ‘fringe ideas’, is that they form a very strong belief and then look for the evidence to support it. I include myself in this, even though I’m not a scientist. My fringe idea is that there is a universal now, and I think this is consistent with relativity theory, even though everyone will tell you that I’m wrong. The one thing going in my favour is that the Universe appears to have an edge in time and a finite age, which runs contrary to the orthodox view that there is no objective now. From what I’ve seen and read, physicists gloss over this conundrum, including Brian Greene in his excellent book, The Fabric of the Cosmos.

 

A better example is cosmologist Claudia de Rahm, who is one of the very few scientists (perhaps the only one with the necessary expertise) who thinks that gravitons could have mass. The point is that we don’t even know if gravitons exist, and she readily acknowledges, that if they do exist, they might be impossible to detect.

 

So I can’t criticise Hoffman simply because his ideas are ‘out there’; it’s not uncommon among scientists, including famous ones like Sir Roger Penrose.

 

This is a lengthy preamble, but I want to make one other point, before I get into the nitty gritty of his arguments. I wrote a post once on how I believe science works, which, in a nutshell, builds on what we already know, even when we have so-called revolutions in science. Ever since the scientific revolutions of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and of course, Newton and Leibniz, our theories have extended science rather than outright replaced what went before. Claudia de Rahm (cited above) in answer to an audience question I watched online, made the explicit point that whatever new discoveries we make, they have to explain what we already know, so we don’t just throw everything in the rubbish bin (to use her turn-of-phrase).

 

Many people don’t know that one of Einstein’s self-imposed constraints on his General Theory of Relativity (GR) was that it had to agree mathematically with Newton’s theory of gravity when relativistic effects were negligible. Likewise, quantum mechanics (QM) hasn’t so much replaced classical physics, as added to it and possibly underpins it. UK based Aussie physicist, Mithuna Yoganathan (from the Looking Glass Universe YouTube channel) has made the point that she’s attracted to the many worlds interpretation (MWI) of QM because she can’t accept that the Universe obeys 2 sets of rules: for quantum mechanics and classical physics. The fact that she even mentions it suggests to me that it’s quite plausible, in which case, QM adds new physics without completely overturning the old.

 

The reason I’ve spent so much time on this detour is that, according to Hoffman, we need to reinvent virtually all the physics of the past 4-500 years, as well as evolutionary theory.

 

In fact, Hoffman states that “ITP asserts that one theory of objective reality – that it consists of physical objects in spacetime – is false.” (p.82) Einstein’s GR, mentioned earlier, is one such theory and currently underpins the latest cosmological model, specifically ΛCDM. ITP is Hoffman’s ‘Interface Theory of Perception’ which he analogises with a desktop interface on a computer, and to extend the analogy, the ‘objects’ we perceive are like ‘icons on the desktop’, so not ‘real’. I’ll return to this point later, given its significance to his argument.

 

After reading his book, I have many philosophical differences with Hoffman, but there is one point in particular, which is central to his entire thesis, where I’d argue the evidence contradicts him. I’m calling it the ‘principle of object permanence’. I admit I made that up, but it’s something that I argue evolution by natural selection selected for, because it’s a principle we not only take for granted but is cognitively found in babies and other animals. In other words, it’s the fundamental belief that an object still exists when we can’t see it. I will give an example of its ‘evolutionary value’ shortly, but it’s the direct opposite of what Hoffman believes. And I mention its evolutionary value because key to Hoffman’s theory is that evolution by natural selection supports his position and not mine.

 

He calls his theorem FBT, ‘Fitness-Beats-Truth’, which effectively means that evolution selects for fitness, not truth, while being somewhat hand-wavy about what those terms mean and how they can be quantified. The one example he provides in his book is a graphic representation. In fact, all his ‘evidence’ is based on computer modelling according to the examples he gives. He combines FBT with ITP (already mentioned), asserting they prove that he’s right: object permanence does not exist (as I defined it above).

 

I’m not going to try and prove his FBT or ITP wrong; I’m going to show why I believe the principle of object permanence is a necessary belief for evolutionary fitness. Now Hoffman would agree that the perception of object permanence affects evolutionary fitness but that doesn’t mean it’s real. However, I contend that it can make the difference between life and death, which does make it real.

 

I will give an example I read about once, involving crows not humans, which I assume really happened. Actually, it involved crows and humans, but it’s the cognitive ability of the crow that’s tested. A human with a gun set a trap for a crow using bait, then went into hiding until the crow took the bait. The crow, however saw the man go into hiding, and believing in object permanence waited patiently till the man left. Then the man got a companion, and this time the crow waited until both of them left. So they repeated the exercise using 3 gunmen and this time after 2 left, the crow thought it was safe, only it wasn’t. The exercise proved that the crow couldn’t count past 2. But you can see how a belief in object permanence can be critical to survival.

 

Now Hoffman has an answer to this, because it’s comparable to being hit by a car or being killed by any so-called object in his ‘interface’ (hence the name, ITP). He would say you need to take the car ‘seriously but not literally’. I admit I have a problem with that statement: I take the car ‘seriously’ because it can kill me but I don’t take it ‘literally’ because it’s not ‘real’. Hoffman keeps comparing this to someone playing Grand Theft Auto on a computer, because we live in an ‘interface’ not spacetime and there are no objects, only ‘icons’, including your own body. He later argues we don’t live in a computer simulation, which I’ll return to.

 

For examples of truth that evolution didn’t select for, he mentions oxygen and ultraviolet light causing sunburn. His point is that in both cases we don’t need to know about oxygen in order to know that the ability to breathe air confers fitness or know about ultraviolet light to know that keeping our skin covered against prolonged exposure to sunlight also confers fitness. By these examples, truth means explanations, to which I’d agree: evolution doesn’t select for explanations and I wrote about that elsewhere, while also discussing Hoffman. Note how sunlight and air exist externally to us.

 

Returning to my principle of object permanence, Hoffman cites Einstein’s famous retort to Bohr, ‘Do you think the moon ceases to exist when you’re not watching?’ It turns out that Hoffman does: “There is no objective moon or spacetime that exists even when unperceived…” (p.198)

 

I would like to know how that affects the tides occurring all around the world, although, according to Hoffman, there is no ‘around the world’, because there is no 3-dimensional space, and there is no cause and effect. He also claims that DNA and chromosomes don’t exist unperceived which turns evolutionary theory on its head. I discussed that in my original post on Hoffman. It reinforces my earlier point that Hoffman’s theory requires all of science to be replaced, including evolutionary theory as well as cosmology. He doesn’t explain how DNA and chromosomes can only exist when observed, yet underpin evolutionary theory as we currently know and understand it. He also claims the same for neurons in the brain, meaning consciousness creates them rather than the converse, which is the consensus of virtually all neuroscientists. Hoffman acknowledges this fundamental disagreement.

 

He spends a lot of time discussing optical illusions in considerable detail as supporting evidence that what we perceive is not real. I agree with him that our sensory experiences, like colour, sound and smell are all totally subjective and that other animals’ sensory experiences can be completely different to ours. We know that some animals can see colours we can’t and vice versa, and some can hear sounds that we can’t. But here’s the thing: colours are created by reflected light from an external source, and sounds are caused by vibrations transmitted through a medium, like air, and we’re evolutionarily adapted to pick them up and transform them into sensory experiences. To use his terms, the ‘fitness’ is our sensory experience and the ‘truth’ is our explanation of their external origins. So, yes, we evolved for fitness, not a scientific understanding called truth, but that doesn’t rule out object permanence (as described above) nor their location in space and time.

 

For the sake of brevity, I can’t address all his points but there is one other I find particularly contentious, and that is the idea that 3 dimensions of space are redundant, and we only need 2. Hoffman cites the cosmological holographic principle, which is basically the idea that all the (quantum) information inside a black hole is available holographically on the surface of its event horizon, which, it needs to be pointed out, is a sphere. Some argue that our entire universe could be modelled on the same principle, that everything in it could be a hologram projected from a 2-dimensional horizon. Hoffman argues that since all the information can be contained in 2 dimensions the third dimension of space that we ‘perceive’ is redundant and is used for ‘error-correction’. Aside from this being highly speculative physics, Hoffman overlooks the fact that the 2-dimensional surface of an event horizon on a sphere can only exist in 3-dimensional space; a hollow sphere in 2 dimensions becomes a circle.

 

But there is more: the inverse square law for gravity, which is in both Newton’s and Einstein’s theories, is a direct consequence of space being 3-dimensional. John Barrow gives the best account I’ve come across in his excellent book, The Constants of Nature. Given Hoffman’s access to academia, I’d recommend he talk to Barrow, or at least, read his book. Hoffman quotes Arkani-Hamed in a 2014 lecture at the Perimeter Institute: “Almost all of us believe that spacetime doesn’t exist; that spacetime is doomed, and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks.” (p.114) Now, I’m obviously not familiar with Arkani-Hamed’s work, but Graham Farmelo (The Universe Speaks in Numbers) also quotes Arkani-Hamed in a different context, which is the success of mathematical objects called amplituhedrons in predicting the amplitude of gluons in particle physics. Note this has an experimental physics basis, and is not just theoretical.

 

This is a concrete example of a way in which the physics we normally associate with space-time and quantum mechanics arises from something more basic. (my emphasis)

 

Now, I know that some physicists are speculating that spacetime might be an emergent property from something deeper (as inferred in the above quote from Arkani-Hamed), but that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t exist. If, on the other hand, Arkani-Hamed really believes that ‘spacetime doesn’t exist’, then he needs to replace the highly successful GR with something else. He also needs to explain the cosmological history based on the observable CMBR (cosmic microwave background radiation) that is the remnant of the Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago). I don’t know how you can have a cosmological history without spacetime. Hoffman challenges this by arguing for a ‘top-down cosmology’, that starts with an observer, but that’s another topic for another time.

 

In fact, Hoffman argues that conscious agents generate spacetime and all the physics we currently know, including quantum mechanics.

 

Conscious realism must ground a theory of quantum gravity, explain the emergence of our spacetime interface, and its objects, explain the appearance of Darwinian evolution within that interface, and explain the evolutionary emergence of human psychology. (pp.198-9)

 

We must show how conscious agents generate spacetime, objects, physical dynamics and evolutionary dynamics. We must get back quantum theory and general relativity, and generalisations of these theories that are mathematically precise. (p.184-5)

 

Hoffman does this by creating a mathematical model of consciousness that apparently generates all of what we call objective reality. He reveals this in an appendix, titled, Precisely; The Right to Be Wrong. He doesn’t make it clear who has ‘the right to be wrong’: himself or the rest of us. It’s very obtuse mathematics, in the form of logic rather than equations, but basically, he creates a mathematical formula for ‘conscious agents’, and then, using ‘Markovian dynamics’, effectively derives spacetime. I don’t pretend I can follow it. He concludes by saying: “…perhaps a dynamic evolution of conscious agents toward small-world networks may appear in spacetime as the dynamics of gravity.” (p.205) I think the words, ‘perhaps’ and ‘may’, do a lot of heavy-lifting. To provide context, Hoffman argues that it’s networks of ‘conscious agents’, not individuals, that generate the world we call reality.

 

Earlier this year, I attended a 2hr stage presentation by Prof Brian Cox, which was very esoteric, discussing wormholes, black holes and other cosmological exotica, but he never mentioned that ‘spacetime is doomed’; so that’s the orthodox view.

 

In summary, I have 2 fundamental contentions with Hoffman, without even considering his ideas on evolution. Anyone who has lost an object (like car keys) knows they still exist unobserved, including Hoffman, I suspect. He will rationalise that he takes them ’seriously but not literally’. However, that explains nothing, unless you’re in a video game (refer below). My argument is that evolution confers fitness on perceiving ‘object permanence’ because it’s a matter of life-and-death, as per my crow story.

 

My second contention is that we live in 3D not 2D. To demonstrate, draw an animal, any animal, on paper, so it’s flat and you can cut it out. Then draw an alimentary canal from its mouth to its anus. If you then cut it out, it falls apart into 2 pieces. This is as good a reason as any why we don’t live in a 2D universe. Hoffman mentions, in passing, while discussing something else, that he can’t visualise 4D, and there’s a good reason for that: we don’t need to; even though we can represent any finite dimensional world mathematically. The reason we can only visualise 3D and less, is because we live in a 3D world.

 

Hoffman finishes his main text (before the Appendix) with this:

 

Spacetime is your virtual reality, a headset of your own making. The objects you see are your inventions. You create them with a glance and destroy them with a blink. You have worn this headset all your life. What happens when you take it off? (p.202)

 

Despite claiming that he doesn’t believe we live in a computer simulation, his description of ‘reality’ is indistinguishable from one. This is demonstrated by calling objects and even his own body, ‘icons’, and that he believes the world is 2D like a screen, which we erroneously perceive as 3D (according to him), because it increases our evolutionary fitness.

 

He reinforces that view here: “The interface theory of perception contends that there is a screen – an interface – between us and objective reality.” (p.191, my emphasis)

 

Later he talks about spirituality, which I won’t elaborate on, except to say that the idea that consciousness can escape its physical constraints, as opposed to creating them, is not ruled out or ruled in.

Addendum: I admit to indulging in a fantasy of ‘talking’ to Donald Hoffman, so we could have a Socratic conversation.