The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

Many scholars, heretofore, have claimed that it is possible to get beyond ‘absolute reality’. Even the twentieth century author, Shirley Jackson, opined in the opening line of The Haunting of Hill House that, “no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” And it seems apparent that one must check all certainty of the ‘real’ at the door before venturing onward.Having just finished Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, I don’t say this lightly, but I feel I am forever changed. His thesis, concise and erudite as it was left me in a strange, albeit unfamiliar, place.Hoffman suggested that there is something going on just beyond our perceptions; that our genes have dismissed absolute reality as it poses no considerable threat to our survival. But did they throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water? Perhaps, but finding a testable hypothesis as to just what the ‘baby’ was in this case has been largely difficult.Many of the ancient Philosophers, Plato forward, had questioned the extent of perceivable reality, but none went as far as Hegel. The Phenomenology of Spirit, The Philosophy of History, and The Science of Logic are the three books that I’ve been trying to crack for the better part of ten years.I was interested to see how Hegel’s theory of the dialectic, that is, the Hegelian Dialectic, Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis, was first encountered, understood, and how he applied his theory in The Philosophy of History. I was not let down.My curiosity in this idea of absolute reality led me to studies like Hoffman’s and, of course, to art, such as The Matrix film series. In each case the idea that we are living in a simulation, or a matrix, is actually true. But it’s not just one matrix, it’s billions. Our perceptions are simulations within simulations. And Hoffman exposes this in countless ways. Hoffman argued that Hegel did not go far enough (and I now tend to agree with him.)What is reality, Hoffman postulated, but pixels on a screen that our minds create and then deliver familiar structures to our perception that we easily recognize to be either a spoon, or a tree. The reality is that there is no spoon; no tree.Our perceptions create these three-dimensional structures from whatever is there (the cosmic dust, so to say), we create these structures to familiarize them for our utility; akin to an app icon on your phone, obviously the ‘F’ for Facebook isn’t the true source of this app, it is rather, simply a tool to visualize the entirety of the app. It may at first seem obvious, but when considered at depth, the magic starts to unfold.The theory of ‘absolute reality’ is thinking in three-dimensional constructs and thinking structures. In many cases the mind does this for us automatically, but the question is how? If it is pure perception; pure intention, or just pure intuition, I am still unclear.But I am convinced that the source of our soul is our intuition, and it is our soul that interfaces with reality. This body, holding my soul, is the vessel for which my soul exists in this fleeting moment of material or physical reality.However, I also have a hunch that what the ancients took for wisdom, and the modernists discarded as mysticism, was closer to absolute reality. The ability to ‘feel’ and ‘know’ and therefore ‘trust’ nature as it exists in and around all of us may be the key to unlocking more about ourselves than we ever could through technology, AI, or venturing into the cosmos.

Read it as an audiobook years ago after seeing Hoffman’s TED talk. Bought this paper copy later so I could take notes and use it to write my philosophy dissertation. Very intriguing ideas laid out clearly. Fun and engaging read, not too dense. Highly recommend

Great editing and authorship makes this book easy to understand from an outside perspective. Author has a unique position to present an amalgamation of data from his and related fields. However, the claims being sold on his press tours are greatly embellished and exaggerated. Although the thesis is technically true, it is still compatible with many contemporary philosophical views of ontology and not nearly as solipsistic as it has been portrayed. Additionally, there seems to be a lot of filler lines and reiterations of the same points throughout this short book.Highly recommended for anyone interested in science in general.

Very Deep comcepts

He was pleased to have such a book.

The central thesis, or at least one part of it, namely, that we necessarily perceive the world not as it really is, is obviously true. The other part, namely, that the world as it really is is but a network of conscious agents, is far-fetched and has not been argued out. The real problem, however, is that the text itself is one huge landfill of half-baked thoughts, inferences, references to esoteric physics, etc. that goes on and on in meandering circles, repeating itself, mentioning names, picking fights with various opponents in a seemingly unending, amorphous drift. The fact that the book is endorsed on the front cover by a known charlatan doesn't help either, as is the small, dense font it is set in. The bottom line, Hoffman is much more rewarding to listen to than to read.

Important to read

Amazing book, I recommend it to all my friends.