On Donald Hoffmans case against reality

To many, Donals Hoffmans ideas about reality are considered radical. To me they seem obvious and, not to sound arrogant but, rather mundane. However, there is one point where it gets very interesting, and which to me, he seem event to miss him self. And where actually I think I got some new enlightenment.
Sam and Donald talks about the relation between perceived reality (PR) and full reality (R) and Sam proposes that there must be some isomorphism between PR and R. Donald pointed out that the relation is surely complex; but what he did not say explicitly, but which make things interesting, is that there is no reason actually to expect this to be an isomorphism at all. It could rather be a projection. And if that is the case, it might well be that there is no way to recover R from that projection/PR. It seem there can be multiple things that can be the case here; it could possibly be that it is possible to recover R from PR due to that it happens that R only has one way to be, given the structure of PR space.
But it could also be that the projected structure (which is probably a better word than space) is compatible with an infinite number of different complete/full realities.
I guess it could also be something like an ill-conditioned problem, that the projected structure in principle is completely connect to the full reality, but some parts/links in that projection are so weak that it is essentially impossible to probe them.
I hate when people who don't know a squat about things like Quantum Mechanics talk about it and throw out uninformed thoughts. But I will still do it here, and perhaps I am at least not completely uninformed. The thought is that perhaps the wavefunction collapse is a consequence of this ill-condition and that is why it is so hard to probe past it.
Given the non-existing of very weak link between PR and R, perhaps the evolutionary pressure on us is only from PR and there might be other PRs with completely other evolutionary pressure.

Are you afraid of AI? You should not. Focus on the right things!

There is a large debate about the dangers of AI. It is really a pseudo-debate. What we should be afraid of is climate change, nuclear weapons, pandemics and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Researchers recently published some impressive results where they mapped almost 25000 neurons in a fly's brain. Very cool. But, as highlighted, humans have about 86 billion neurons in our brains. So, probably neural networks of human size will not be mapped any time soon (and by extension, definitely not creates, arguably a harder feat then mapping an existing one):

The plot shows two recordings of biological neural networks being maps, in 1986 and the 2019 study respectively. The green line shows an exponential extrapolation assuming our mapping speed is keep with exponential growth. The orange line indicate the size of the human brain. It can be seen that we can expect to map it around 2125. It is more than 100 years in the future.
As a comparison, the grey shaded region show the time we have known that we need to reduce carbon emission and roughly the time we have left before that needs to be done. I think it is quite clear we need to focus on the right things.

Ironin i Torys förhållande till Brexit

Torys gick ut det Brittiska valet som storsegrare med löfte om en Brexit. Men man måste ändå tycka det är lite ironiskt att Engelsmännen vill gå ur ett förbund (EU) men tvinga Skottarna att stanna kvar i sitt (GB).

Men världen själv, varat omkring oss och inom oss, är aldrig ensidig, därom måste man tiga

Läste precis ut Hermann Hesses fantastiska Sidhartha. Sist jag läste den vad jag runt 16, så kändes som det var dags igen. Det är verkligen en fin bok. En insikt som kom till mej var att Sidhartha når samma slutsats som Wittgenstein. Varom man inte kan tala, därom måste man tiga. Vi kan bara säga så mycket om världen - varat omkring oss är aldrig ensidigt. Och därmed kommer vi aldrig kunna säga allt. Vi kommer alltid behöva ett förfinat språk och taget till sin extrem kommer vi aldrig kunna uttrycka det mest fundamentala i vår verklighet. Språket är i varat. Därmed kan språket aldrig komma ut varat, komma bortom och helt förklara det.
Därför behöver vi modeller. Dessa är vad vi kan prata om. Dessa är vad vi kan veta något om. Dessa är vad som kan vara användbart. Resten måste vi tiga om.

Seeing reality as it is is still a possibility. In fact, that is what we do. More or less

Hoffman just published another paper discussing his computer simulations indicating it is better to not experience reality as it is.

The ideas as stated are of course not new. They are present already in Plato's cave myth. But what should be pointed out I think, is that the ideas are actually not very interesting. Or perhaps even scientifically wrong.

First. We describe reality with models that approximate it. Hence, there is nothing new to anyone that we do not experience reality exactly as is. But what is more important is that there is, taking the scientific process to its limit over time, really nothing else to say about reality. Per definition. If there had been, it would be covered by some scientific theory. This is kind of the argument also against a supernatural being which I yet have not met any theist having a reasonable argument against: if an entity can interact with reality, that mechanism of interaction can be probed, and thus modeled. And then it is not supernatural any more. If there is no such interaction mechanism, they the entity has no implication on our reality.
Thus, in a proof by contradiction, there cannot be any supernatural entity.

On another note, of course an organism can be greatly successful and still not perceive reality fully. That's trivial. Take treas or any other plant. Surely their perceptive abilities are very limited and do not cover the whole of reality. They are still very successful as a spices. There is no problem here. However, a tree does also create models of the world. It is about light and temperature and nutrition. And the trees act according to those models. Surely, those models are quite good, they have made trees very successful. They approximate reality and the approximation is in direct relation to what that species needs. Trees cannot move, and hence they do not need models for kinematics.

This actually leads to an interesting thought - is evolution creating model-generating organisms? It looks like it. The genes are really an information processing system and as such, they are operating on some model assumption.

Seriously California, you are not making you best effort!

I recently had the opportunity to visit Silicon Valley. The stay was a pleasure, interesting meetings and great weather. But I must say I got quite upset. It was my first visit there, and it was very clear - California: you are not making your best effort here. I am of course talking about climate. Some examples:

• San Jose is, I don't know how, large. 4-5 lane roads, enormous parking lots and virtually no public transportation. Only 1-store buildings. This is not a building culture that is sustainable.
• On every single trash can I could find, it was printed "land fill". What the heck California? This is something we stopped doing in Sweden 40-50 years ago.
• In my hotel the cleaning lady changed my toilet roll even though it was at least 1/3 of the paper left. Enough to last several days for me! Just because it looks good. I am sure they throw that roll.

These are just some observations of the fact that this "liberal" state does not care. Here, in the richest area in the wold - without competition - nobody really cares about the environment. They care about exits, autonomous cars and apps.
I think California should feel ashamed. You have been the most lucky, yes lucky, in the world and you are not prepared to give anything back. That's BS. Shame on you!

Regeringens symbolism

Följande foto är från regeringens budgetpresentation ht 2019:

Här kan man se att både Stefan och Isabella väljer att bära sina partisymboler på slaget. Är inte detta underligt för en regering? Borde det inte vara svenska flaggan om någon de ska bära? Vilken är deras främsta prioritet egentligen? Sverige eller partiet?