That's Donald Hoffman above.

Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.

or Calvin.

He looks creepy, doesn't he?

I wouldn't normally lead with how someone looks, but in this case, he is creepy, as you will see.

Besides, as a portrait painter and photographer, I can tell you they purposely lit him and posed him for maximum creep, so don't blame me for noticing.

They could have made him look much less like a reptile, so why didn't they?

Reptilians 101 – Library of Rickandria

You really need to ask yourself that.

To me, his eyes and his arguments seem to come from the same place.

I don't know where that place is, and I don't really wish to know.

I only wish to avoid it.

I recommend you do the same.

Donald Hoffman is a professor of cognitive science at University of California, Irvine, we are told.

He is featured this week in an article at The Atlantic.

The Case Against Reality - The Atlantic

The title is, “The Case against Reality”.

Hoffman and the editors at The Atlantic want to convince you the reality you believe in doesn't really exist.

True Nature of Reality – Library of Rickandria

OK.

So, I guess that means Hoffman may or may not be a professor of cognitive science.

He may just be a CIA agent posing as a professor of cognitive science, a sim, or some photo they pulled out of the files.

And we can say the same of The Atlantic.

It may not even be a magazine anymore.

Maybe it is just a CIA front, a computer hack, or a vicious hologram.

We will come back to that.

But the reason I am here is that one of my readers sent me this link.

Otherwise, I would know nothing of it. I don't read magazines anymore, and this is why.

However, this article is such a transparent example of the “reality is an illusion” project I have drawn your attention to many times—both here and on my science site—I have taken the time to respond to it.

The Real Matrix – Library of Rickandria

That, and it is so easy.

The Matrix: Deconstructed – Library of Rickandria

If I didn't believe in reality, I might think the aliens manipulating my brain in a tank are creating these articles to set me up for easy scores.

Although an alleged progressor of bognitive science [typos, but I like it, so stet], Hoffman immediately nods to quantum physics for his main proof that reality doesn't exist.

In the introduction, we find Experiment after experiment has shown—defying common sense—that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers.

There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space.

That is not even close to being true.

The truth is, there are some physics experiments that have yielded outcomes seemingly unexplainable using “classical assumptions”.

See superposition and entanglement, for example.

The old guys (this goes back to the 1920s and before) couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation, so they gave up.

They assumed that if there were a rational explanation, they would have found it pretty fast—since they assumed they were so brilliant—so the fact they didn't find it pretty fast meant it didn't exist.

To fill the hole, they gave up on rational explanations and substituted irrational “explanations” at the quantum level.

Quantum – Library of Rickandria

Since they promoted these irrational explanations—and got famous for them—they had to make sure no one came along later with a rational explanation, so what did they do?

They outlawed rational explanations.

That's right.

They forbade their students from asking the old questions or pursuing “old style” science.

Royal Science – Library of Rickandria

For about 90 years now they have been shaming any young physics or chemistry students who asked the old questions or demanded sensible answers to physical questions.

I know.

I was one of those students.

If you persist in asking those questions or working on sensible answers, they drum you out of physics.

It is in this way that these irrational explanations got enshrined.

Top physicists got Nobel Prizes for these irrational explanations, so there was huge and ever-growing incentive not to question the irrational explanations.

However, on my science site, I have shown that these seemingly unanswerable problems were not really unanswerable.

Homepage for Miles Mathis science site

Usually, the problem was either that the old physicists had asked the wrong questions; or, they simply didn't have the tools to answer the questions they faced.

Is Time an Illusion? NO! – Library of Rickandria

In some cases, they were applying faulty equations to the problems.

In other cases, they had the wrong diagrams.

They were failing to visualize the problem in the correct way, which prevented them from seeing the right answer.

My ability to visualize often helped me see things they failed to see.

I am not making idle assertions or empty claims.

If you don't believe me, spend a few thousand hours on my science site.

Link out from there and get back to me.

But of course, you probably don't have time for that.

You will have to decide this question in another way.

If you don't want to read my papers, you could read mainstream physics.

Study quantum physics for a while and see if you think it makes any sense.

You will say you don't have time for that, either.

OK.

Try this.

Read a gloss of quantum mechanics, at some place like Wikipedia.

Just read about ten linked pages on a given topic.

Then go to my site and read ten linked pages on the same topic.

I predict you will find a big difference.

If even that is over your head, then you will have to simply compare this paper of mine to the article at The Atlantic.

Once again, I think you will find a big difference.

As an example, I suggest you closely study Hoffman's second response at The Atlantic.

shouldn't creatures that see reality more clearly be better able to survive and prosper?

If an organism consistently misread its environment, it wouldn't last long, right?

Hoffman's answer is mostly illegible, but if you look closely, you can see it is just a debating trick.

He is trying to switch you off “reality” and onto “fitness”.

He says the fitness function doesn't match the structure in the real world, but he gives you no example of that.

Or the example he gives is just a fudge.

It has something to do with the amount of water being a bell curve, but it makes no sense on any level.

Since the question concerns water, he would have to explain why a creature that could correctly sense where water was would not be more fit than a creature that could not correctly sense where water was.

He misdirects you as far away from that as possible.

Hoffman's second answer is even less to the point, having something to do with images on your desktop not being real.

Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer?

Of course not.

Can you believe he is arguing this way?

Does he think you are a moron?

Apparently.

If the icon is blue, it means the icon is blue.

He implies that because the file itself is not blue, reality doesn't exist.

Brilliant.

The interviewer Gefter also immediately leads you into that conclusion, saying,

Because the file isn't blue, everything is one big illusion?

C'mon!

If you were the interviewer, would you say that?

No.

If I were the interviewer and Hoffman made that lame argument, I would say,

The “interview” pretty much devolves from there, getting worse, not better.

But I found it amusing when Gefter asked Hoffman,

I became interested when Langley called me up and said they wanted me to be part of Project Chaos.

They said all I had to do was get on the phone with some sim named Gefter—who was really working in the cubicle next to me—and lay a five-page runny egg at a website they were still tagging as The Atlantic—although the Atlantic had of course been merged with Langley decades ago.

And they pay you for that?

As far as I know.

There are some figures on my bank statement I choose to read that way.

I never leave the cubicle and they feed me lunch, so it never comes up.

Cool.

Plus, notice that Hoffman's own career contradicts his theory.

If reality is determined by fitness, then the personal reality he has created should have made him more fit for his function.

In other words, his beliefs that he is a machine and that there is no reality should have made him a better scientist—better able to argue and better able to put together a theory that would convince others “sharing his consciousness”. 

Instead, all it has enabled him to do cobble together these asinine public responses that wouldn't convince a precocious porpoise, much less a person with any native intelligence.

But these strange people can't seem to see past their own eyelashes.

I suppose Hoffman and Gefter must think they have made some good points, otherwise why publish this stuff with their names on it?

They must genuinely feel that the icon being blue while the file isn't, is some sort of master stroke of argumentation, worthy of wide dissemination and all due reverence.

But that just means that both science and propaganda have hit some sort of historical nadir, where they believe they are scoring points while they are just fouling out in fantastic fashion.

If these fellows believe fitness is the final arbiter, they should note how a belief in reality and truth might serve someone in any given pursuit—say the pursuit of seeing right through them. 

Yes, ironically, Hoffman's thesis is true in a sense, though not in the way they are selling it.

you only think they do because it makes you more “fit” for something, although they don't say what.

But snakes and trains do exist.

There would be no point to your seeing them if they weren't there to be seen.

Having a series of empty fantasies doesn't make you more fit for anything, except maybe easy destruction.

That said, there is a subset of your experience that is an illusion.

Although life is not an illusion, all the shit you are sold by the mainstream media is an illusion.

Global Media Control – Library of Rickandria

Most of the news is an illusion, much of history is an illusion, large parts of the economy are an illusion, the elections are an illusion, Congress is an illusion, the President is an illusion, and so on.

Not that these things don't exist; but they don't exist as you think they do.

or otherwise faked.

Animals and trees and so on live in the real world; you do only to a certain extent.

To the extent you believe what the mainstream media tells you, to that extent you have been deluded, colluded, and just looted.

But I want to be sure you are seeing the turn of the screw.

The reason they are pushing this “reality as an illusion” now as part of the continuation of Project Chaos is to prevent you from seeing all the hoaxed events.

They know you have become aware of a major distortion, and they want you to think it is even bigger than it is.

They know you are asking yourself and those around you if maybe the government is lying to you all the time about everything.

So, to confuse you, they are suggesting to you that maybe it is your senses lying to you about everything all the time.

It isn't just the stories you are being told in the media that don't make sense, it is life that doesn't make sense.

It isn't just Sandy Hook or the latest murder that is a hoax, it is life itself that is the hoax.

It isn't just CIA-created stories that are illusory, it is existence itself that is illusory.

If they can get you doubting that the snake or the rock exists, you aren't really going to care whether Sandy Hook happened.

You will be so lost and confused you won't have the fortitude to question specific events.

You will say to yourself,

I know that many readers will agree with that, but some will not like me accusing these guys of being CIA.

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency – Library of Rickandria

Maybe Hoffman is what he says he is: a cognitive scientist.

Just because I disagree with him doesn't make him an agent, does it?

In truth, I don't care who or what he is.

It is the message I am interested in, not the messenger.

But I will tell you it would be an incredible coincidence if Hoffman just happened to be promoting exactly the same project in the same words, quoting the same sources, as all the other agents promoting Project Chaos over the decades.

If these projects like Chaos and Cointelpro (which were real—they have been declassified, look it up) really ended back in the 1970s as we are assured, why is it that all the new projects look and feel exactly the same as the old ones?

Why are all the major mainstream media sources pushing this “reality as an illusion” project, while none are pushing the opposite?

Why is the entire modern education dominated by creepers like Hoffman?

If the media is really open and multilateral, why does it appear so controlled and unilateral?

If academia is just the search for truth, why does every “scholarly” or popular article you read have all the obvious earmarks of propaganda?

Why do you never feel like you are being informed, but always feel like you are being spun?

And finally, why do you always feel like you are being spun not by Masters of Deception, but by pathetic flunkies residing in sub-basement 4 at Langley?

Given the latitude and reach of Operation Chaos, you would think they would assign it to top agents.

Instead, we find people like Hoffman and Gefter, people who couldn't win a junior-college debate and whose target audience would appear to be Zoloft fogged teenagers.

Do they really imagine that audience is clicking on articles at The Atlantic?

I see no evidence of special powers, only the power to cower behind a tissue of poorly constructed fibs and feints.

Kabbalah, Hermeticism & the Occult – Library of Rickandria

Dark Lords of the Occult would be far more impressive in every way, and there is no way someone like me could parry them with such ease.

I have already demonstrated that Hoffman is not arguing like a scientist would.

He is arguing like an agent would, attempting to misdirect you with a series of parlor tricks.

So, even if he “really is a scientist”—working from an office at some university—it doesn't matter.

If you are writing or speaking propaganda, you are a propagandist, and it doesn't really matter what your professional title is.

And that's the problem of the modern world: almost everyone has been hired, directly or indirectly, by the CIA or some front of a front of a front.

The artists are propagandists, the scientists are propagandists, the academics in all fields are propagandists, the journalists are propagandists, the historians are propagandists, and so on.

I would assume most of them know they are propagandists, and who they are working for, but even if some of them don't, it doesn't matter.

Propaganda from dupes reads the same as propaganda from agents and may be even more convincing.

How Propaganda Works – Library of Rickandria

And finally, you may have noticed I dated this paper 2106.

If you agree with Hoffman, don't write in and tell me I made a mistake.

There are no mistakes in a world of no reality, just “shared consciousness”, remember.

I am sharing with you my consciousness that this may be 2106.

Or not.

I don't know why you care, because if the government tells you tomorrow it is yesterday, you will immediately back-date all your checks.

Secret Shadow Government: Deep State – Library of Rickandria

real.pdf (mileswmathis.com)

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THE CASE FOR REALITY & against the mainstream media (basecamp.com)

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THE CASE FOR REALITY & against the mainstream media – Library of Rickandria