Imagine yourself immersed in a virtual reality multiplayer version of a game Grand Theft Auto, take on players from around the world in a frantic race behind the wheel of your racing car – a bright red Kangoo. Once the race is over and your VR headset is removed, you know that this car did not really exist and that it was just polygons behind which billions of bits emulated by a computer were hidden. For cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, this scene may well be the best metaphor for our reality.
According to him, we would live in a kind of “multiplayer game”, where our body would only be an avatar. The Popular Mechanics site details its theory, called “interface theory,” according to which evolution has not shaped us to perceive reality as it is, but to interact with a simplified version useful for our survival. Like a video game that hides the complexity of its code, our perception would be a practical but misleading interface.
Donald Hoffman relies on a particular interpretation of the theory of evolution. If natural selection favors survival over truth, then there is no reason for our senses to accurately reflect the world. Using evolutionary game theory, he shows that organisms thrive by maximizing their chances of survival, not by accessing an objective truth.
From this perspective, a hungry lion chasing a gazelle acts effectively, without needing to understand the deeper reality of what he sees. Evolution would therefore preserve the perceptual systems that work, not necessarily those that are accurate. Over time, this would have shaped a perception oriented towards efficiency and usefulness rather than truth.
This idea leads Donald Hoffman to a radical conclusion: the probability that what we perceive corresponds to objective reality would be zero. Space and time themselves would not be fundamental, but would be part of this interface. In other words, we do not see the world as it is, but as we must see it to survive.
Go beyond space-time
But if our body is an avatar, where is our real “self”? For Donald Hoffman, this question is poorly posed, because it assumes that we exist in space and time, whereas our real nature could precisely transcend them. The interface that allows us to navigate the world is also what prevents us from understanding what we really are.
This hypothesis is consistent with certain questions in modern physics: many researchers today think that space-time is not the fundamental structure of the universe. It has also been observed that on extremely small scales, physical laws cease to function as they should. Our reality could be based on more abstract foundations that we do not yet understand.
Despite growing scholarly interest in these ideas, they remain controversial today. Some critics believe that even if our perception is simplified, this does not mean that reality itself is a total illusion. Others point out that if our cognition is biased by evolution, why trust the resulting theories?
Can what we perceive really be a filtered construction, a sort of collective hallucination useful for the survival of our species? If so, what would be the deep rules governing this universe? And above all, does my Kangoo really exist?
