Donald Hoffman, cognitive science professor at University of California, argues that evolution favors an organism who sees the environment exclusively in terms of its “fitness function” (how well-suited it is to that organism’s survival), rather than objective reality. As NPR explains, this would mean that our perception has deviated further from a more fact-based reality as we’ve evolved.
In his TED talk last year, Hoffman cited as an example the species of jewel beetle that is glossy, dimpled, and brown. When this beetle comes across beer bottles that are glossy, dimpled, and brown, it attempts to mate with the bottles. The beetle has never truly been able to properly identify female members of the species, Hoffman argues, but instead has a hack for spotting them by identifying glossy, dimpled, and brown things. And so the male beetle cannot recognize that a beer bottle isn’t actually a proper mating partner: It’s just glossy, dimpled, and brown. [...]
But even if our perception of what’s going on around us isn’t as radically inaccurate as Hoffman suggests, it’s certainly the case that we’re not wholly correct. “We never have direct access to reality, it’s always mediated by what our senses make available to our brain,” says Cleeremans. [...]
Our actual perception, then, is a combination of what we expect to be the case and what’s actually the case. We’re constructing the world around us, just as much as we’re perceiving it.
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