Umwelt = User Interface ? (Donald Hoffman)

how does this differ from umwelt idea? how does this differ from the concept of - of course we don't see the objective reality, we see a subjective reality, we see a very small slice of it, but what parts of the theory you put together expand on that sort of foundation?

The umwelt idea that von Uexküll had, I think was very very insightful for its time. He was pointing out that different organisms effectively have different perceptual worlds because they inhabit different niches. So what it's like to be a bat is very different from what it's like to be homo sapiens, and so their perceptual worlds are going to be very different. Many neuroscientists and cognitive neuroscientists today like von Uexküll's idea, but the way they take it is, they say: "The notion of an umwelt means that different organisms see different parts of reality. The bat sees different parts of reality than we do. So that their perceptual world might be very very different from ours because reality itself is very very rich, so different organisms can be tuned to different PARTS of that reality. I agree up to a point that different organisms have effectively different worlds, but where i disagree is that what these worlds are are seeing different parts of the TRUTH. I don't think they're seeing the truth at all. I think a much better metaphore is to say, that we have different user interfaces. So if you have a laptop computer and you're writing an email and the icon for that email that you're writing to your friend is blue and rectangular in the middle of your desktop. Does that mean that the email itself inside your computer is blue and rectangular and in the middle of the computer? Well of course not, that's silly. Anybody who would thought that would be mistaking the point of the interface. It's not there to show the truth, it's there to hide the truth. You don't want to know about the diodes and resistors and voltages. If you'd know all that you'd never read the email. So the desktop interface is there to hide the truth and give you eyecandy that'll let you get the job done.