Comment by telephone3

7 hours ago

My understanding is that this is the opposite of what is typically understood to be true - organisms with less truthful (more reductive/compressed) perception survive better than those with more complete perception. "Fitness beats truth."

I think we are maybe talking past each other?

Fitness is effective truth prediction, appropriately scoped.

A frog doesn't need to understand quantum physics to catch a fly. But if the frogs model of fly movement was trained on lies it will have a model that predicts poorly, won't catch flies, and will die.

There is another level to this in that the more complex and changing the environment the more beneficial a wider scoped model / understanding of truth.

However if you are going to lean fully into Hoffman and accept thatby default consciousness constructs rather than approximate reality I think we will have to agree to disagree. Personally I ascribe to Karl Friston free energy principle.