No no, I have been ill for years :)

Thanks and I am sorry. I indeed did not invest fair time when reading your text a second time for writing the reply, but I should have found a more polite way to explain why I am out of the general discussion. I furthermore had a stronger than usual pain attack yesterday (while writing that reply to you) and this resulted in an unecessarily harsh tone. I wish you all the best. I changed the starting post now too, so that not more people run into the trap of getting no replies to their comments.

I always admired hermits :) And I don't think that it is even desirable that everyone thinks the same. If you can be an optimist, I don't want to destroy that, it's a gift. I am more after the natural human narcicism, who thinks that the mind of humans is perfect and ignores all the damage it is doing on nature and other humans than I am after someone who genuinely wants to see the good in the universe. Indeed I am a believer because I still want to see the good (which I however can't find in evolution, or at least in the theory of evolution as it is formulated in the moment). Kants Moral argument for god is the base for my believe. However hapiness can have certain disadvantages that those who are in this state are not aware of. It reduces empathy with sad people, or in other words they can't understand them very well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/12/10/why-happy-people-arent-as-empathetic-as-they-think/?sh=3566ca1e2a7f Some of the worst errors I have made in my life where connected to the fact that I was a) rich and b) not arware that the reality of many other people is THAT different from mine.

Sorry I had difficulties to see how your text related to my complaints about logic at all, this is why I tried to summarize it. If this is not the reason why you mentioned science than how does this relate to my original complaint that evolution would make us thinks in ways that are a) insuficient to understand all of nature and b) evil. Furthermore if logic does not discover scientific truths but just "establishes" them I am curious what part of our mind discovers things. This is ment in now way sarcastic, I always wanted to know where the heureka moment comes from. Since so many people counter me, and often in the same way, I am selective with my time. I did not discover anything in your comment that was not mentioned so fare in the discussion, this is why I did not reply. This is not ment to be a value judgment about what you say. I just see no use in writing down the same replies again and again. I do not deny that I am egoistic too and I will hence from now on only reply if I see a really new argument. Call me a bad person for that if you want, but if you would have read all of the discussion than you would have understood that "limited time" is a very important concern for me.

You said that one can proof that logic discovers the truth by the success of science. I don't deny that. But just because logic can solve problems which are related to survival questions - and that is what science in my eyes is doing it's solving survival questions - this does not mean it can solve non-survival related questions. I answered that when describing how a neural network is trained: it is trained to solve a special task; and it can not solve other tasks equally well. For example if you train a neural network for speech recognition it will not be able to do image recognition. If you train a network for survival it would only be by accident be able to answer different questions than it was trained for. That some questions in philosophy and science are unsolvable or can be only answered by taking certain axioms as a given points to the limits of what this network can achieve.

A key error many people make is to think: science has solved questions in the past so it will solve all questions if it is given enough time. In science no one would make a prediction about the past based solely on an emprical trend. What you need in addition is a model to explain why this trend happend in the first place and why it should continue into the future. In this case you have to do a model of how the brain really works to explain the trend that some questions have been solved. I don't know how the brain really works but if it works like an artifical neural network in a computer it can not solve tasks it was not trained for.

Yes you are right, that is a computer analogy too :) The deeper problem with the "heuristic bias" is that the consciousness is so different from any object that surounds us, that propably all analogies from our everyday life are misleading, mine, yours, everyones. I hoped by poking everyone a bit this would bring me and them to new ideas, and than maybe the magic: "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" thing might be happening. It's a fact that a group if it works well together can easily beat a person of higher intelligence. The propblem is that humans rarely can work well together if they are not extremely good friends. In all other contexts competition take over and this is why I doubt that anything new, anything in the sense of a synthesis will come from the overall discussion in this threat. I don't want to blame that on the others" alone, I am subject to the same faults. But when wachting society as a whole I have the eerie instinct that our social skills are declining (and the ability to focus for prolonged time is declining too) and that this must be conneced to to much verbal fighting. More and more people I see retreat socially and trust only a very small number of friends. Attempts to make more contacts mostly end in fighting, injury and biterness. If we would give up the idea that our mind can be neutral or that we are fighting just for "the truth" in such disputes like this one we might be able to understand why our societies implode in this way and prevent it. With so much of the young people becoming depressed we are sitting on a time bomb; socially and economically.

No problem! When I was young I was an atheist too. However one interesting outcome of this discussion was that an evolved logic would not be capable to distinguish between good and evil. If it's not possible to understand what evil is than the problem of evil can not be used as counter proof against god. I neither believe that there is such a thing as an innocent creature (I just think that there are some creatures who have less opportunity to show their intrinsic agression for example because they die young) nor do I think that a god needs to be necessarily all powerfull. That was rather an idea of Augustinus and not present in the early jewish religion. But it's the most empathic people who struggle the strongest with the problem of evil and I hence think this is the most honourable cause to not believe in god.

I apologize for having shown ethusiasm for the ideas of someone else, enthusiasm is the true mark of the stupid, I realize that now. Whoever is not "for" some idea can't be proofen wrong, because he is not making a positive claim. To answer your question: There are videos of Hoffmann which are more mathematical and present more detail on youtube, but I am only a human. After a day of negativism from almost everyone I met (Yes, outside of this discussion people hate enthusiasm too, this even extend to unexpexted areas like d&d) I opt for not thinking anymore. Whoever does not think can't make any thinking errors and hence can't be attacked. By the way I have run into many people recently who don't think anymore or at least nothing original. I slowly realize why their mind died. Now searching up the more scientific youtube videos of Hoffmann would require me to think but a dead mind can't do that, sorry. I wish you a good evening nevertheless. You are a very well educated person, I am sure that if you find "ethusiasm" for the subject of the limits of logic and perception (I thinks it's a typical error of reductionism to want to seperate both) you will make progress on your own. Unless of course your enthusiasm was killed by the constant toxity of social media too. Who knows? I am offline.

I can imagine how a cylinder looks like a square when seen from fare away but I can not imagine how a quantum wave looks like a particle by any manipulation of my mind. Means unlike the cylinder example my mind can not take a perspective even in theory where I can see how a wave function "looks". Remember that this is not about quantum physics beeing untrue but about our logic not beeing able to understand it, and what that might tell us about said logic. Furthermore a logic conclusion should not depend on if or if not an observer has interacted with an object. In theory you should be able to make a logic conclusion by modelling the problem in your mind and that would be independent from the actual interaction. The Bohmian pilote wave has so low popularity because it requires faster than light signaling and hence backward causality. You might have solved one logic problem, by introducing it, but you created the next logic problem; I can not imagine anything that messes logic more seriously than the thought of backward causality.

It was an invitation. Some centuries ago everyone thought that apples falling to the ground is just how nature worked and not a sign of anything special. Than someone had a hinge that this might require some deeper investigation. You just take the working and laws of your logics as a given, in the same way people take it for a given that apples fall to the ground: no further explanation required, it's just how nature is. This precludes you from learning anything deeper about the human mind. In case there is nothing deeper about the relation between mind and physics this saves you a lot of time, good for you. In case there is you completely block yourself from discovering it. I give up at this point because I see I can not arise the same sense of wonder in you that the unimaginability of the quantum world rises in me. To you it looks as trivial as cylinders, to me not. I want to understand why I can't imagine that.

P.S. I don't see it as usefull that either I convince you to change your position nor that you change my position. Pluralism is better for the progress of science than lemming--thinking. Follow ideas like the pilote wave theory, one does not know where it might carry you. I follow my feeling that I can learn more about logic when I see paradoxes as a real problem.

My original opinion is that human logic has something evil to it and that I don not fully trust it. If you don't like the word evil for historic reasons call it destructive.

I should have said "entity that can solve problems" not entity that has a mind :)

If you say so. And it is certainly compatible with the laws of logic that one and the same particle can hold two oposing spins at the same time, and that a particle can be a wave and an object at the same time. Litewave, there is stuff in this universe that simply violates logic, we call it paradoxa. If you try to explain paradoxa away you close an important opportunity to understand logic better. Because understanding the limits of something can usually tell you a lot about the properties of that something. In engineering you for example want to run an engine at it's limits to see where the real problems lie.

I am pretty sure that your table does not exist in a propability cloud just because it's legs extend to several locations.

I have made my mind up this night and I stay with my original opinion.

During the discussion somehow moral blured more and more into the background. It might be a central feature of logic that it is somehow nihilistic, so the longer one discuss "logically" the more moral blures. I have the feeling that the majority of people here (or at least a large number) don't believe it makes a difference if a thinking entity runs it's minds operation for example on donated energy like the computer or if that thinking entity runs it's entire operations by stealing life energy.

I am absolutely sure that it does make a moral difference. Our brain has no choice here, and hence it is claimed to be not evil. I agree that it is not evil in the sene of choice but that makes it just intrinsically evil.

However this is a personal opinion that I can not proof objectively. If I attack logic I can not use it to justify my own logic anymore. My opposition must be either due to a brain error, come from god or from my own subjective intuition.

God as a source always raises strong suspicions so I will not discuss this. "Intuition" or "instincts" here as well seen as an inferrior source to logic. I don't agree to that. I once was in a situation where my logic told me; it's all fine, this are completely normal people in here, no one said or did anything evil while my intuition told me: "run for your life". Than my logic told me: "No evidence. You only have this feeling because you gotten paranoid." So I stayed. I count not running for my life at that day into the worst three decisions I ever made.

What people don't understand is that the unconsciousness can handle more information in a given time slot than logic. Logic is really the thing that focus so hard it can't see the wood for all the trees. So facts about why this people where evil where propably all known to me on the subconscious level - I just could not connect the dots on the logic level.

I read your quritique about science Gravellty and I must say that I start to have the first slight sensation of the "run for your life" instinct again when it comes to modern western life style. You are right, science is becoming the new unquestionable god and I wait for a new inquisition to show up to defend it.

It short term success are undeniable. But what exactly does it give us in the long run? There is a Massai tribe, that is happier than the richest people on the Forbes list: https://www.forbes.com/2004/09/21/cx_mh_0921happiness.html?sh=c8ce61f13c1e

The disastifcation level of non-rich people with the modern "rational" life style is high enough already, that one of our two primary surivival instincts is failing now (the reproductive instinct). It has to be noted that especially in countries with high atheism the birth rate is fare below the death rate. South Koreas population is projected to reach zero in about 800 years. In our time standards this sounds slow but in evolutionary standards that is close to light speed. Happy as the Massai? Certainly not.

I furthermore see that many of my higher qualified friends seem to get more and more nervous. There is this genetic engineer who started his career by doing medical research but is now offering advice on bioweapons. There are my two coder friends who's favourite subject has become how to stop surveillance technology of the style China is currently developing.

My personal nightmare is the achievment of immortality by medical means or through transhumanism. It totaly escapes the proponents of this ideas that this opens up the possibility of beeing tortured forever. What the effect will be on our moral, our will to counter injustice and hence our political systems - I am sure that this will go wrong.

I don't say that this is a reason to abadon science alltogether but the feelings and intuitions of people about it should be taken more serious, it must be respected when they don't want to rush into this. It is true that especiallys some religious ideas delay technological progress. But by that they might be delaying the moment too, where we are trapped in the ultimate surveillance state, controlled by face recognizing drones and tortured forever, when the ruler does not like us.

Another reason why I stand to my own opinion, even if it is unpopular is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjP22DpYYh8

However despite all this gloom there was one insight that made me really laugh during the discussion too: our understanding of the universe ends exactly where it is predicted to end! The brain just needs to know how to get energy to survive and not to know what energy exactly is. And the axioms of our modern physics end exactly there: with energy and matter. We know what they do, and this is how we describe them but we don't know what they are.

We have a disagreement here on which are the best options for an analogy: you think it's the organisation of a business I think it's a matrix where the conscious part is imprisoned in the matrix and dosn't even understand what the matrix does or that there is one. Hoffmann chose a computer interface and hence computers to descibe this thoughts, and that is something that many people do today when they describe the mind. I think both the business hierahcy analogy and the computer analogy represent the heuristic bias: We tend to overjudge the value of the information we have/what is familiar to us and this distorts our thinking.

Why the asymmetry - predators being more intelligent than prey animals - you think?

In reality prey animals prey too: they take away the food of other animals. That might look peacefull as long as there is plenty of food but if there is not you can see herbivourous animals fighting in quiet unfriendly ways for it.

This is not to say that there is no difference at all in herbivores and predators. Prey animals have to pay attention to all of their surounding all the time (predators could come from any direction) while predators rather scan their surounding meter by meter and than hyperfocus once they spot something. In humans I guess that there are people who pay more attention to their surounding/are more prey like (this are the creative people, there is some relation to how distractable you are by your surounding and how creative you are) and there are people who are more classic predators like psychopaths. In psychopaths it's strange that if a strategy once was successfull but than is not anymore they will take longer time to realize that and drop the strategy than normal people. This is a form of hyperfocusing. In a chase hyperfocusing makes sense because many animals live in groups to confuse predators. If you have the skill to always focus your attention on the same prey/strategy than you will not be confused and you can tire your prey out. If you can not focused you will change prey again and again and the prey will tire you out isntead.

If you think more like a prey you can be for example a good artist and good at any task that requires holistic thinking and integrating large amount of information (seeing the larger picture). If you think extremely focused an logical ... well I hope srongly that not all people who can do that are psychopaths but it starts to scare me.

I might see as well why creative people tend to not get along well with the more "focused" part of humanity :)

Yes but as I said, again it's logic (intelligence) that made the case for the golden rule.

Is it really logic alone that makes the case for the golden rule? I think that the golden rule is true, this is either a brain error of me or someone outside evolution is telling me that it is true :)

Well I am already changing my mind in relation to Hoffmann, or lets say I suspended my opinion about him until I understand the counter proof in that study which was linked here better. But the arguments why logic should not be evil are not convincing yet.

Serotonine is something extremely complicated. It is not only involved in body functions and in decision processes (it's levels seem to rise in the same moment than dopamine goes down and vice versa at least for the parts of the brain where direct measurements could be made) it's as well as status hormone (if you are a high status individual you have high amounts of it) and in higher doses it can decrease empathy.

As David Hume asserted "reason is . . . a slave to the passions"

That is nice, I will try to remember it :) In fact evolution could have selected some people in a way that they try to solve their problems more in intelectual ways and some people to solve them more with physical violence like the witch hunters did. That evolution can select people positivly that willfully ignore scientific facts is already a bad sign for what evolution is doing when trying to train our brains. Clearly truth is at least not always the main concern of evolution when you look at that people. If you are interested in the subject: there is a measure called "social dominance orientation" and it has been proofed that 1. This trait is genetic. 2. That such people despise science and scientists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368430221992126
They are as well low in agreableness (means they are egoistic and hart hearted). I am sure they are prime material for a witch judge. Even if we do not agree on everything I wish you all the best and thanks for joining the discussion!

I think you have a very good point here. With all the disbute about Hoffman the focus was lost that my complaint is that logic is evil. If Hoffmann would be right ( I start to have some doubt now too but I will need more time to think this through) this would not have made logic really evil it would have just made it into an intelectual disapointment. What could make it evil is more it's origin in predation.

Sophisticat had mentioned here that the ultimate test of the truth of our mental models is if we can do predict events correctly. At this point it makes sense to look more on how a brain actually learns to make predictions. Any neural network has to be "backtrained" what was a wrong prediction and what was a correct prediction in several rounds. When the prediction was false some neural connections will be cut in the hope that the error they produced will not reoccur. When the prediction was right the connections that this prediction made are reinforced so that the network get's better with every training round. Now I am afraid that the ultimate measure for the brain of what was a wrong prediction and what was a correct prediction is if it gained or lost energy through this prediction. But you can gain energy only by stealing (either directly or indirectly) life energy from other life forms. And since other life forms don't want their life energy to be stolen, the only way to train your brain is by constantly breaking the golden rule. The idea that we are morally allowed to take the life of so called " inferior" species is highly dubious and sounds like an excuse. I think there would be strong opposition if "intelectually superior" aliens came here and would harvest us justifying this with the same line of reasoning.

Now the neural network that is trained for this purpose and in this way it should have strong limitations in what kind of intelectual problems it can solve. For example in computer science you can't use a neural network that was trained for language recognition to recognize images.

In the case of the human brain that was in effect trained on how to break the golden rule most efficiently I am for example sure that it can not know what evil is in the metaphysical sense. I agree hence with the critique that - if I am really only that network - I can not know what evil is either. But if I am unable to recognize what evil is I could commit very evil deads all the time without noticing and that alone bothers me.A second unexpected but straightforward conclusion is that if it's impossible to understand for humans what evil is, they should stay away from building counter proof of god based on that term (I mean the problem of evil).

Idenpendent of if or not Hoffmann is right - it should be hard to impossible for this network to understand anything that is not either food or can be used as a tool to obtain food. If you see everything just as food or as a tool to food this will preclude you from understanding it's deeper nature. Understanding that deeper nature would just waste energy and maybe it even would over time degrade the strength of the network at least in relation to the task of gathering energy efficiently.

This network will as well have difficulty to recognize life forms that are to strong to be harvestable. If the universe is such a life form that can not be predated or if god is one, this explains why it would be impossible to discover them.

I doubt that the subconscious mind "allows" you to think rationally. Instead, the executive Conscious mind must occasionally overrule the default motivations of the Subconscious.

To be able to occasionally overrule the motivation it must always have the first access to information and decision about such informations or the occassional overuling would not work reliably -this is what I wanted to explain with my primary survival reflex example. This first access should give it absolute power over what happens with the information it lets through. If I would have first access and hence full controll over all information you ever receive in your life you may call yourself my manager and I might find it conveniend to let you think you are my manager to avoid unecessary quarells but if I decide what your reality is by controlling all the information I should have absolute controll over you. Let me say that I am neither an opponent of free will nor that I am convinced that the mind really works like materialist think it works. I just tried to think this philosophy through too it's conclusion.

I start to have a bad consciouness to bring up my health. One must say too that it is still not certain that I die but several health problems combine in an unfunny way. I am very happy that so many people here give me empathy but it completely crashes the subject of the conversation :) I am very interested in evolution (especially the evolution of primates) but I am actually a believer. I am open in how I imagine god, I consider both classical theist and pantheist options possible. However in both cases death itself is nothing I fear. As you see I am unhappy with my predature nature and death is the only option to finally exchange it against something truly new.

In retrospect the heading was a bit click bait: I did not have a good idea of how to pack my problems with logic into a short heading.

It is true that reality is conditioning us to be predators. In a certain sense you could even say that all the evil things human ever do come from beeing tricked by their environment. I consider for example my brain to belong to my physical environment and it can trick me hard into doing evil things especially if it is hurt into the wrong place (brain injuries can turn you into a psychopath). However if dualism is right one might say that my soul is not exactly evil but very flawed if it can be tricked into doing any type of bullshit by such outside forces.

I think that social inequality is more than just hurting people, it creates an evolutionary pressure that outselects people with high empathy. Or in other words: if we don't change the current political system we will over the long run create a species of psychopaths. The biological reasons are complex and this is the wrong threat to discuss them. (There is a week relation with the current subject however in the sense that beeing "emotional" instead of logical is today framed as beeing inferior. A psychopath is very logical, and indeed mainly relying on the left brain so this represents a shift towards a psychopathic value system.) Since you are interested in the subject of social justice I want to share with you just for joy that I am discussing with a major charity on how to donate money (over my last will) into researching exactly this subject. It's a very famous charity and the discussion was very very friendly after it became clear how much that donation is... I might have lost the battle (in the sense that I am dying, and that there is a relation with the strong bullying I experienced during m life) but that does not mean I have lost the war :)

I am ill, my heart could stop at any moment. This somehow changes my perception of what is important in life. See it this way: the need to survive has conditioned my thinking from the point of birth to think only into certain directions. If I will not survive anyway my mind is finally free. I don't need to care for example anymore if I make myself enemies with an unpopular opinion. But I wonder: Should an evolved mind have the capability to reject the evolution that allegedly created it? I don't think so, my rejection must come from somewhere else.

Nice idea but not falsifiable. It could be an evolved intuition and a dopamine shot but it could as well be something else. Furthermore you get dopamine too when you do a logical thinking effort. In fact I would say that the distinction between a logical thinking person and an emotional/intuitively thinking person is completely arbitrary, no one can think well without dopamine/happiness/feelings. You can test that by taking a strong dopamin antagonist, your concentration will go to that of a sneeker. The believe that the world is seperated into logical and emotional persons very likely derives from the Dunning Kruger Effect as I explained in my previous comment.

I as well do not suscribe to the believe that you can beat your subconcious by making a hart thinking "effort". This assumes that you have controll over your subconcious while it is the other way round: the subconciousness is your master and under certain conditions it generously allows you to think consciously. No joke!

If you hence are undertaking a hard thinking effort "against your intuition" as you feel you are doing it's very likely your subconscious who is pushing you to do that hard effort. I can explain this to you with an example: When your amygdala detects a primary death treat it shortcircuits your consciousness completely and enacts an evasive movement without you understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it (the understanding of the situation will come later when your amygdala allows you to think again). This is a stark example that in theory you do not need to be conscious (read: have any logical knowledge) to execute survival tasks. It's as well an example that evolution values speed and survival higher than knowlegde. This mechanism is active all day long. Your subconciousness can switch of your consciousness at free will at any moment. The only thing that you might feel in that moment is fear, but fear alone is not logic. The question is now, when the subconcious has such as trong controll over you why your consciousness give you the opportunity to think at all in other times. It must derive some benefit from letting its "slave" aka you work but it must not necessarily be the benefit you assume conciously. If a lie to you about what your conscious "mental work" is good for for your unconscious is more energy efficient than explaining the truth - according to the theory of evolution your subconciously will always lie to you about the reason why it let's you be concious at all. Furthermore if it can switch of all intelectual faculties like in the primary survival reflex it is likely that it can switch of part of your conciousness during all your thought process when it finds them unhelpfull. You have as much power to prevent that thorugh "effort" than you have the power to stop other subconscious tasks like breathing.

In my opinion the true reason/motivation why your subconscious allows you to think in some situations and not in others could be key to understand if logic is of any value at all.

James Riley could take the position of absolute scepticism. Whatever he argues for could have the nature of a thought experiment in a gentleman's club doing thought experiments. However I guess where he is mistaken is that there are any gentleman's in this club here... Consciously you and me might think that we argue for finding and defending truth. But subconciously it's more likely that we are just doing it to regulate hormones. When you win an argument this changes your hormone levels in a way that makes you feel better and more valuable:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21756446/#:~:text=Results%3A%20Winning%20is%20consistently%20shown,to%20continue%20their%20competitive%20efforts . When you loose arguments again and again this can make you depressed (in evolutionary psychology depression is involuntarily submission). Sophisticat for example tried everything to make me depressed even using personal insults such as that I am lazy and that he doesn't respect me. A depressed opponet is no strong competitor for food or sex. So all of this argument - IF evolution is true - is again not about any higher truth but about food and sex. That we are not able to notice that nature of our motivatiion during the argument is already a support for Hoffmanns theory. For evolution it's aboslutely ok if you win a fight through a trick, only the outcome counts. So if this fight leads to any deeper insight into the nature of logic it must do so by accident only.

I think the desire to make logic our god has something to do with the human value system. Statistically the majority of people think that they are subaveragely good in logic (which is not possible it's another example of the Dunning Kruger Effect). Furthermore logic is necessary to survival and survival is hold by many to be the highest value in life (not me). So the majority of people think they are overaverage performers in the most valuable skill there is and this secretly justifies to them why they feel more valuable than others as a person. They are simply "better". If you attack logic the majority of people hence will attack back. It attacks the basis of their self value, or what they believe makes them special. I guess hence that something is wrong with logic will always remain a minority position.

It's the other way round, there would not be any matter to make a gentleman from if the gentleman agreements would represent reality. The atom would collapse if the electron would not be in a propability cloud. But propability cloud means that the electron is not in one position but in several positions at a time. So this is a violation of the law of the excluded middle: the electron is there and there and somewhere in between all at the same time.

Correct. I noticed that I isolated myself to much when trying to think through philosophical problems. I know I will be grilled for this confession but having company and a good intelectual conversation was one of the main reasons I started the discussion. I am a group animal I am not supposed to think alone :) I wish you all the best and thanks for the defense!

You are in the moment the closest to actually changing my mind at least when it comes to using the term 'evil' :) I can see how the philosophy of Jainism could actually lead to a much more peacefull world and it as well resounds with other metaphysical believes I hold. However it was sort of a blow to my ego when I finally understood that logic originally was ment for predation and only for that. I guess that is what makes the man blind in your example. So emotionally seen I still have to recover from the insight about the predatory nature of logic. Sometimes one can repurpose stuff a bit for things it was not ment for but one has to be lucky for this to work. I think that logic is very akin to your microscope perception of reality. What good predators really do is they focus hard but only on very small aspects of reality. You can even see this from the outside if you watch how the eyes of predators are build (they point to the front, prey animals can not focus well to the front but they have a wider field of vision). What a predator does is hence the opposite of holism.

I wanted to give Sophisticat credit for finally bringing forward what is his problem with Hoffman but I cheared to early: this is not him, apparently I am to fare below him to be worth his wisdom :) I can see what this paper is heading too: (unless you are a monist) all that humans ever can do is make a model of reality. So the author says it's unfair to expect humans to make more than a modell of reality, and he thinks that Hoffman is doing exactly that when designing his model and that this is the sole cause of the creatures failing inside the model. But I understand it this way that Hoffmann is citicising more than just that we make models of reality. The main thing that breaks the connection between model and reality in Hoffmanns view is that it is more important that we think time/energy efficiently than that we think true. I can explain this best with a practical example: in evolution those creatures will win that can harvest the most energy while expending the least (thought) energy on that harvesting tasks. Now that requirement can lead to serious misjudgments about the situation at hand: imagine a cat sitting before the hole of a mouse waiting for it to come out. We know that impulse controll takes up a lot of brain energy so simply staying there will cost the cat energy and she should aim to reduce that energy if she wants to survive. Now it's absolutely possible that distracting yourself costs less brain energy than true impulse controll.
At least we see a lot of people who count stuff to get through boring or stressfull situations. Imagine hence a second cat which believes that counting sheep makes mouse come out of holes so she eagerly counts sheeps while sitting there. This cat will consume less energy than the cat that holds the true believe that mouse tend to come out of holes by the descision of the mouse.The cat that holds the false believe about mice will hence be positively selected over the cat that holds true believes. Other more sad examples come to mind; for example it can give you a survival advantage to believe your neighbour is a witch (in Africa the people that killed the "witch" usually take her land and house). I furthermore need to make clear that my argument is only in a small part based on Hoffmann (this is what might have confused you). My main problem is that logic is developed for the purpose of predation and that it might work for that purpose but I don't think it works well on intelectual tasks that are not related to predatable objects. This claim is based on research on brain lateralisation in Lizards and hence fully independent of Hoffmann's logic.

I fear you are right about the relation between death and truth. Truth might well be that what one gets when one finally stops to use "stolen life energy" to power ones brain (aka thinking). But even if we can't find ultimate truths in this discussion - and we know it - I am reliefed to know that I am at least not alone with my doubts.

Thanks for the kinder interpretation of what I am trying to do. Coherence is a good point. I guess the only states we know where we do not use logic is that of mindfulness meditation, "mystic raptures" and complete chaos or beeing "nuts". Or in other words: we don't get very "fare" when we try to think without logic. For me this feels a bit like a prison that I can not think well without (this predatory type) of logic. But if my mind is a prison where my thinking capabilities have been limited purposefully (evolution could be a method to limit thinking capabiliies by the way) for what reason have I been put into that prison? And do I want to know the answer :)

Ah Ok, I recognized that this is similar to Platingas Argument (I think Hoffman gives a bit more details on what exactly will go wrong than Platinga who basically just states that things would go wrong in respect to logic). Of course knowledge given by a god could be the outside metrics that was requested as a measurement for such a logic beeing evil too. I didn't know William Laine Craige though. I will have a look into his reasoning, thanks that's a valuable information. In total I got some beating by some members here but comments like this make it worth it.

You still do not provide any actual logic argument what is wrong with the reasoning of Hoffmann. There is a further value judgment instead and that is that you have done a lot of work but that I am lazy and incurious (ad hominem). For someone who wants to defend logic this is a sad method. Ad hominem is a rethoric trick and not a logic argument. Provide your logic evidence against the reasoning of Hoffmann here, and I will gratefully have a look into it. But your personal opinion about me is nothing that interests me, to be frank.

I can't understand why you get so angry by the way. You use a combination of argmument from authority against me (youtube videos have to be denied as a source) and personal insult ("do your homework") Please return to a polite discussion style.

There is a controversy about everything, because logic is ment to make war and gain attention. If you can use logic to gain attention this will give you a survival advantage because it increases your chances to gain a mate or become a leader. This is another argument against logic. Hoffmanns proof is based on evolutionary game theory, so disproof either evolutionary game theory or the assumptions behind his computer model if you want to proof him wrong.

I approve of good intuition as an argument in this context :) It could be from aplace beyond logic. However I would love to think more about how this place could look like and why it is protected against logic.