I have not posted here in a long time but something caught my attention. I found this interview with David Hoffman disturbing.

The denial of our ability to observe objective reality is a regular theme perhaps starting with Kant but in any case the popularity of the idea seems to track the development of science. To some extent it goes back to Plato and his concept of the idea of the thing being more real than the thing itself. Whatever the source or evolution of the theme it is a dangerous idea. Perhaps carried to it's logical conclusion by the post modernists.

Hoffman would have us believe that we evolved to not see objective physical reality. Some times that is true as with cryptic sexual conflict. Most of the time however our senses relay information about physical reality the information is of course incomplete and approximate. So it is true that our sense have evolved to prevent information overload and only relay that which increases fitness.

What Hoffman and those that agree with him are missing is that an eye for example is a reflection of the properties of the sun. We are the environment we evolved in. Our sense don't lie even if they are limited. You can make the case that our instincts lie about the information that the senses pass to the brain but that is irrelevant.

The nature of physical reality is ultimately going to be defined abstractly using abstract tools such as mathematics. Those definitions are real they are just abstract and approximate as well as relative. It could be that the only thing that is real is information or what some call a mathematical universe. To argue that a mathematical reality is less real than a traditional view is rediculous. It's a language trap and a matter of semantics. Any thing describe by language when all language is abstract is going to have an abstract definition.

I'm not a big fan of Plato, Kant, or the post modernists. They are pointing out the obvious and making it sound profound. There are limits to objectivity because consciousness is a property of the subject. Hoffman's claim that we did not evolve to be objective observers is an observation that people with common sense have always made. For example the folk wisdom that love is blind reflects how fitness determines behavior more than complete objectivity.

Finally if our sense were limited to what evolution gave us our approximation would be more limited than is the case. There are many instruments that extend and refine the senses. There are also thinking tools that limit the influence of our instincts. It distresses me to find so many people mesmerized by computer models that find what they are looking for. Experimental data does not magically make it's way into computer models. It is selected by the modeler and unavoidably biased.

Networks of numerative culmative evidence help make models more accurate but only to an extent bias always plays a role.