Kind: captions
Language: en
I think people suffer needlessly because
they confuse the distorted narrative
running inside of their minds with
actual reality but if I'm right and we
don't have access to the quote unquote
real world and instead we're just a
brain and a vat running a simulation
what do we need to understand about the
nature of this self-generated simulation
in order to live our lives well when we
talk about the brain and the vet of
course the vet here is as far as you
know our physical body that is much
through a physical universe and is
contains a skull full of cells that have
to get along and generate a model of
reality and of the individual itself and
its relationship to reality and the
purpose of that whole thing is to feed
all the C and to keep them um in play
not just for this generation but over
many many generations because we evolved
not for this particular moment in time
but for a longer course and in this long
long multigenerational course we adapted
to certain circumstances the basically
conditions under which our ancestors
live and uh in many ways our world has
changed in the last few Generations
rapidly away from the ways in which our
great par grandparents lived their lives
and these discontinuities are on one
hand extremely exciting and they force
us to adapt to new circumstances but
they also are very unusual from an
evolutionary perspective for the things
that we confronted with a lot of the
experience that we have alienating and
it's also very difficult to see in the
future and to see how long we'll be
around
as um whether our children or
grandchildren will still use any of the
thoughts that we have today and any of
the things that we build today for them
and this creates uh justifiedly anxiety
right if we live in a world that
possibly has no future for us or if
there's no future extension of us
present in the world it's unsettling and
I think it's a Justified experience to
have that when we start creating the
mental model we are not even born yet
and uh I said think that in ut already
we are starting to prepare a map of our
body and how it relates to our needs we
experience our first Pleasure and Pain
probably to some degree and um after we
are born we are focused on a world that
has an up and down Direction and uh
which light is playing out and we see
patterns in these in the light and then
Direct
and we are able to discern sounds and at
some point few months in we are able to
correlate the sound in the directions
and we also notice that the space that
you're observing is all the same space
it's the space in which that we can
touch and so at every moment we find
ourselves in a scene and this word model
the scene is something that our
ancestors discovered early on that we
generate this that our own Consciousness
creates this but uh when we start our
own memories at as a human being we're
typically Beyond this stage where we
create the world we are personal selves
at this point and when we try to
remember how our life started I think
what we remember are those moments where
this personal self is already online
because that's right now the vantage
point from which I assemble reality
right it's me remembering being a person
in this world that is being generated in
my mind so I'm no longer the
Consciousness that creates the world
around me in my own mind that runs a
simulation engine in my brain that
tracks visual data and perceptual data
but I am a being that cares about what
it sees in this world and can no longer
directly change my perception I also can
no longer directly change my emotion I'm
um basically exposed to my perception
and to my emotion and have to deal with
them and as I grow uh up I can build
models of the purposes that emerge over
my feelings and emotions and needs and
desires and fears and in this way I
create a model of the world that I'm in
and I discover I'm not alone in this
world but there are purposes that I
share with others and in this sense I
experience myself as a social being as a
state building creature that together
with others is not only U making plans
and is trying to change the world in a
particular way and specialized in the
hive but we also creating reality
together we have shared models of
reality that we exchange how close are
the models of reality that we have to
actual base reality well there are cor
strains models of based reality which
means that they are generalizations over
the perceptual data at the resolution in
time and space that our percepts have
which means for instance if our neurons
take um 20 milliseconds to pass on a
signal from one neuron to the next this
determines the temporal resolution in
which uh they can be excited and track
phenomena and then we are trying to
integrate a scene and is the question
how many neural junctures does the
signal need to pass until it computes
the necessary functions and so I observe
that my sense of now that I'm in can be
a fraction of a second and it can be
something like up to three seconds that
I perceive as one cohesive moment of now
and um the physical now of course is
different from this it's spread out much
further so there are things in my
perceptual now that are predictive that
are basically playing out in the future
and there are things in my perception
now that had played out in the past
signals that I just experienced now and
to integrate into my model despite a
signal from my feet needing hundreds of
milliseconds until it arrives in my
neocortex and then a few more 100
milliseconds until it's processed and
when it's surprising to be integrated in
my world model right so this subjective
now is a fiction and this subjective now
is constructed and in the physical world
there are no colors and no sounds there
are also no waves in the ocean right
there are molecules that exist in the
ocean that pull and push at each other
producing something that looks like
waves when you Zoom very far out and
there is no sound in the air there is
just air molecules pushing at each other
in regular patterns and we pick out
energy Spectra from these regular
patterns and translate them into
mathematical models that we experience
as sound and there are no colors in the
world instead we have receptors for
photons at uh different energy levels
and we sample in certain ranges and from
the samples Fe tried to integrate a
model of what the photons have been
doing and the direction that they
possibly came from and this is the type
of model that we building right this is
this is the distance that it has from
the underlying reality of course there
is the question what is the substrates
in which the photons emerge and uh
according to our current understanding
we can propose that there is some basic
underlying field that is being excited
to produce um waves and particles uh
that we perceive as phonons and photons
and that uh there are um in the same way
there are this air that can be excited
to produce the elements of sound the
phonons that travel through the air and
can be perceived in our mind as the
outcome of these waves and these energy
patterns the underlying quantum
mechanics is also an observer dependent
perspective it's something what the
universe perceives us to from the
perspective of the measurement of the
experimental and the most elegant
mathematical model that I can fit to
those measurements to make sense of them
right this is how far we can go then
there is the question what is space
reality below that so what are the
conditions of a universe that can exist
by itself without an indidual cause
without an additional underlying
substrat and how far are we from this
level and there are relatively few
people which make theories in this
regard one of them who is bold enough is
for instance Steven vram uh who believes
that we can describe the world as Bas
superposition of all automata of all Bas
operations that can be performed and
they happen and I'm not sure if uh he
would say this but I think they mostly
happen because nothing prevents them
from happening so if the universe has
nothing that stops IT from existing the
default is not that nothing exists but
there is a possibility of existence and
we might be existing and one of those
possibilities right there's a stream of
possibilities that where we apply all
the possible operators on top of each
other and within that stream of
possibilities there are sometimes
statistical regularities parts of the UN
I that are so regular that other parts
of the universe can predict them so
control structure is possible and
sometimes the control structure become
stable enough to form molecules and then
cells and then organisms and we can only
emerge as observers if we have such
structure if we can form organisms that
can reflect a regular environment around
them so the only parts of the universe
that we can perceive are those that
contribute to the structure that we are
and uh of those we can only perceive
those where we have instruments for
perceiving them at the level and
resolution where we exist right so I
would not say uh in the same way as
Donald Hoffman that reality looks
nothing like what we perceive there is
something about reality that we perceive
correct but it's corar grained which
means you see high level patterns in
this in a similar way as you corar grain
the ocean when you look at it and you
cannot see the molecules and instead you
try to perceive it as waves okay so out
of curiosity if the simulation is uh a
pure representation of what's going on
underneath it's at a very coarse level
what makes you think that it is directly
correlated so when you think about a
computer and this is definitely Donald
Hoffman's take so a computer is turning
electrical circuits on and off that's
all you have so that creates a
perception if you're playing a video
game of like oh I'm you know running
around the example he always uses is
Grand Theft Auto running around I jump
in a car I turn the wheel it gives me
the perception that I'm moving this car
inside this world but in reality all I'm
doing is in in base reality all I'm
doing is toggling electrical voltages on
and off and so the the level of
abstraction is
complete what about that is wrong why do
you have confidence that that there is a
map to direct reality and it just isn't
very granular so when we think about
what urance are doing they also
basically turn currents on and off and
these curant are implemented part as
chemical signals some of them are
probably mechanical signals
electromagnetic signals and so on and
what neurons are mostly exchanging are
these neurotransmitters at the Gap
junctures and in between the neurons
there are currents that flow and Trigger
uh these excitations that then lead to
the release of chemicals that the next
neuron can perceive and it's quite
similar to uh what the transistors are
doing there is a slight difference in uh
terms of
the way in which this comes about
because our brain is a self-organizing
system all the organization happens
inside out and the our computers are
constructed systems where an engineer
goes and forces patterns on the
functioning of the system so be Force
the transistor to work in a particular
way we force transistors in a particular
pattern that can represent a logical
function and then we can write logical
functions that are imposed on these
transistors whether they like it or not
and then compute the program that is
making sense or not of the data that
come into a camera for instance whereas
in our own brain every individual cell
needs to have its own control there is
nothing that is able to control the cell
from the outside the cell is trainable
from the outside it can be fed and it
can be killed and can probably be uh
rewarded and punished Beyond this but
the every all the control is in the
individual cell this is the Machinery
that works in our organism and the
individual cells are exchanging patterns
of information information and some of
these patterns of information are
constrained by perception they are
constrained by our sensory cells that uh
put certain patterns into the system and
the system learns that it makes sense to
pay attention to those patterns and to
predict them because this allows the
organism to navigate the world around it
and find food right so uh it's it's
something that just emerges over the
need of the individual cells to feed
themselves and they can only feed
themselves if they cooporate in our body
if they don't figure this out they're
going to starve and die and of course we
are evolved to into particular
functional differentiation so having a
bunch of cells that are tasked as
functioning as an eye and a bunch of
cells that tasked is functioning as a
brain or as a liver or as a heart is
something that the organism is not going
to learn in one generation but does
require many generations of successive
specialization in which we acquire more
and more
function but uh the universe that we are
in does not look very different from
what I would expect if the universe is
one that is just emerging over
mathematical Necessities in some sense I
think the question is um is not so much
physicalism or psychism or something
else but it's physicalism or simulation
theory physicalism is the idea that the
Universe has a mechanical cly closed
layer and the alternative to Mechanical
here is symbolic symbolic means magic it
means meaning that is because of the
force of will of something not because
of that is necessarily an underlying
structure independently of that will
right so uh when you think of a
simulation like Minecraft that's
something that exists due to the will of
the programmer turned into a program and
if you find the same interface that the
programmer did or if the programmer lets
leaves an interface for you like the
shell in Minecraft that you can call up
to let the sunrise or go down or create
objects in your environment or teleport
right all these are tricks that are only
possible because Minecraft is a magical
Universe it's one where a mind has right
access on the walls in which reality
works and uh all these alternatives to
physicalism are in some sense simulation
theories that require that there is a
mind that is realized in some kind of
mechanical parent universe and of course
you could stack these simulation
universes you can have in Minecraft
create a computer from rocks that you
mind in Minecraft from Redstone and then
you can turn create logical gates from
these Redstone Circuits and then build a
computer that is even able to run
Minecraft although very very very slowly
but some people have done it they have
implemented a version of Minecraft that
runs extremely slowly on a computer
Minecraft it's beautiful art they see
there is no limit to the number of
stacks that you can build except at some
point it's going to be so slow that
before you go to the next state the sun
and the parent universe is going to burn
out and you can no longer run your
computer to process the simulation I've
heard you talk about this before it was
running it something like 2 million
times slower than the normal Minecraft
so if you want to see it at the normal
speed you have to speed it up um it's
really fascinating so that's a really
important distinction and you're getting
to what I have a gut instinct is the the
nature of things which is that you have
a universe it is real it is physical but
the brain is running a true simulation
so so in terms of our experience this is
why you can take psychedelics completely
break the simulation I don't think
you're breaking the Machinery itself
which is why you return to normal but
you can break the simulation such that
you you know are basically astral
projected if you're doing DMT or
something which I have not done but the
way that people describe it it it sounds
like you you really sort of leave this
planet if you will and that's just
manipulating the simulation it's not
manipulating the underlying reality and
this is where I've always been a little
bit dubious I love Donald Hoffman had
them on the show multiple times but I've
always been a little dubious about
whether this is a pure simulation that
we exist in um or not and I think
because eventually you would have to
bump up against there is something
physical somewhere that is running this
I don't see any reason to keep pushing
that farther and farther out I think
that the important thing for The Human
Experience is you have to understand you
your brain is running a simulation to
your point there's no such thing as
color there's no such thing as quote
unquote sound those are interpretations
of it I've never heard anybody use the
ocean waves but that's another great
example the waves aren't real that's you
coming way back out and you're seeing
something that then looks like a wave
but the reality is there's something um
going on underneath that so my thing is
when I look at the world from that
perspective okay there there is a
physical thing here that I have evolved
to do well my simulation has evolved so
my inner world you know what we perceive
is quote unquote reality that has
evolved to give me predictive ability
through simplification if I had to guess
to be able to navigate the real world
well so I am in a physical Universe the
way that I perceive it is a complete
abstraction and so then for me it
becomes a question of you would said
earlier that we don't have control of
our emotions that doesn't ring true to
me I think we have a pretty limited
window but when you think about like a
Buddhist monk that can light himself on
fire and not seem to outwardly Express
the kind of suffering that I would think
I would be going through so there is
some level of control that we can exert
once we understand how our cognition
Works how our mental models work how how
that layer of abstraction Works yes I
agree you can get to the level where you
have you where you have control over the
construction of your own self I uh once
uh tried to express this as a letter of
stages that you could think of as I
don't think that people move through the
these stages in succession and I don't
think it's a game where you have a score
if you get to a higher St stage but um
the at the lowest level so to speak um
we uh exist just in the here right now
when we are babies uh we cannot perceive
past and future yet or anticipate them
and at some point we are able to extend
ourselves over time and separate between
self and world and uh at a later stage
we are able to identify our own goals
and then learn how to control our own
goals and derive them from our needs and
establish purposes and then when we form
our models of reality we usually form
them together with others and uh most
people get to a stage where they're able
to perceive a social self basically they
read the room and they become part of
that room and uh in becoming part of
this room in the widest possible sense
they have a shared morality with people
around them and the shared construction
of reality and the next stage is that
you discover rationality and you
discover things are true and false
independently of what others believe
when you can get to this stage your um
ideas mean something independently of
what other think because you're now able
to take responsibility for your beliefs
you're able to make derivations and
disprove things that you believe you
have a choice over your beliefs and in
the next stage you would discover how
your own identity is constructed and
then when you construct your own
identity you realize that uh people are
different because they're born in
different places and then things
happened to them and they started out
with different traits but we get more
and more agency as we get older over
this identity and we realize that our
values are not something that is exatic
given but that we can choose and we can
choose it according to the worlds that
we want and that are achievable for us
right so what is the harmonic world that
I want to contribute to and from this
perspective I can start to evaluate
values and choose values and construct
who I am as a being and uh on the next
stage I can trans understand what I am
as a human being so I go back to the
Beyond this personal self that I
constructed as a child and see myself on
the outside I see how I construct this
personal self and I'm no longer Yos
shabak but Yos shabak is a
representation inside of me that I can
influence and shift around and uh Yos
shab cares about stuff and I can decide
what he should care about but I'm not
him instead I'm not an i and there's
just set of generation functions and
they can observe what these generation
functions are trying to optimize for and
maybe influence them and observe the
outcomes of this I really want to
understand that so I'm not him these
generation functions so if you're not
him you're not your
identity what is that relationship what
is what is the sense of I'm not him in
that scenario him is obviously the
identity what's the the
I'm when we start out um as infants I
think that we are just the dreamer that
there basically something that dreams
it's an attention that is reflexive and
that notices itself attending I suspect
that this is necessary to uh make us
coherent so basically we have this spark
that tries to observe itself observing
it doesn't know how to talk about this
it doesn't know how to reflect this very
much but the uh what makes Consciousness
Consciousness is awareness of awareness
there's reflexive element in it and I
suspect that we need to become conscious
to train our own brain to perceive
reality and to make sense of it and so
we built a toolbox to make sense of
reality right when we are conscious and
awake we can construct our mental
representations and change them we can
construct things in our inner stage we
can look into the world of perception
and decide how we parse the perception
what we attend to what's background
what's foreground what things are
meaningful to us what how our reality is
being constructed from the percepts and
these are all skills that we get and
when we are inated or tired or asleep
and dream then parts of this
functionality can be missing and can
dissociate or when we become DED or have
theable problem in our brain we might
not be able to uh get agency over the
way in which we construct construct
reality and remain at the stage of where
something is being dreamed and when this
uh active dreamer is gone this thing
that perceives and constructs reality
then we fall asleep we might be a Sleep
Walker we might even be moving but there
will be no coh
in our actions and so we will not be
able to learn in this state and we will
not be able to perform go directed
actions that make sense and in terms of
our purposes and so Consciousness is at
the core I think the ability to become
coherent and then it's something that is
gathering more and more skills as we
grow up and as we get more skills we
understand we reflect more what we are
and Consciousness begins to understand
itself it begins to understand at first
that it's not actually the personal self
but it's attention on that personal self
and identification with the personal
self and then we transcend this
identification with the personal self
you perceive it from the
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today I didn't start drinking until very
late in my life so when I had my first
uh drinking experience I became very
aware of what I called the OverWatch
mechanism and I think that's what you're
describing here and so you'll hear a lot
about the hard problem of
Consciousness look out of ignorance like
if you've seen those memes where it's
like the the small brain guy is you know
says one thing and then the mid-brain
guy says something else and then the the
big brain guy says the same thing as a
small brain guy so for me it was like
there's no hard problem of Consciousness
I'm small brain normal people are like
oh my God like hard problem of
Consciousness and then the the smartest
people I have a feeling come back around
to it's not a hard problem so I'd love
to get your take so I I have this drink
uh I'm intoxicated but I have a sense of
I I am standing outside the intoxication
and still watching my body be
intoxicated so I I was aware of the ways
in which I was acting differently and so
I found it very interesting that I still
did not find myself with an Impulse to
do things I wouldn't do when I was sober
and so I have no embarrassing stories
from drinking because that OverWatch
mechanism is always there that OverWatch
mechanism is is present in my dreams so
even though I can't can't track the
logic of the dream I will occasionally
be like wait wait wait I'm I'm almost
certain I'm Dreaming right now so that
same sense of like ah there's some part
of me that's watching this so it seems
to me that Evolution would build that
mechanism in
necessarily as a way to be able to
formulate a simulation so that I can
make sense of the simplification that
like I If you are not going to take in
all of the data present reality you
would need Consciousness to navigate
that
well if you're going to um use
adaptation as a
strategy I can feel that falling apart
as I think about like grades and
things which I very much doubt have a
sense of self so I'm really curious what
what do you think about that where where
is my logic break
down I don't think that there is a
breakdown of your logic I guess that uh
when we are looking naively at the world
we do not notice the fact very much that
Consciousness could be in any way
mysterious it's only when we think of
the world in terms of function and we
observe that in the world around us
functions are created by objects pushing
and pulling at each other uh it becomes
difficult to understand how something
that like the mind would exist because
it's clearly not made of things pushing
and pulling at each other yet the entire
physical Universe seems to be stuff
pushing and pulling at each other right
so at this point you wonder how does
this come about how can be something
purely causal structure and how is it
possible that something that is purely
causal structure can
perceive and I think that uh we learn
understand this with the notion of
software because software is p caal
structure that is in a sense disembodied
and the computer is a causal insulator
it's something that works the same way
regardless of the universe around it is
doing within a certain range so you can
take my laptop or my phone and can uh
take it to a different place say to a
Mountaintop or to Europe or to a place
that is 5 degre Centigrade hotter than
here and it's still going to work and
it's still going to perform the same
function despite the physical
environment around it changing and work
in a different way and once you have
such a universal caal substrate that is
able to um ex uh to Harbor caal State
changes based on some kind of recipe
that have put into it then this thing
can be used to make arbitrary models of
the future the p the past because such
models need to be different from what's
happening right now they need to be
decoupled from what's happening right
now and when you take that system and
couple it with the outside world so you
under in a very controlled way allow the
environment to influence states of that
system then it's able to explain the
patterns uh that it's being entangled
with and these patterns that it's
entangled with could be for instance the
camera image or the patterns on your
retina and you explain them by using the
information that you gathered in the
past
that you turned into models in your
brain to predict what's going to happen
next and the elements of these models
are for instance the scene and in the
scene like a scene in a computer game
you have scene controller that contains
object controllers that have feature
controllers that interact with each
other and that are being projected with
a particular kind of perspective one to
an agent that is also simulated in this
world and the agent also cares about
things so the agent is being told what
it cares about via emotions and
motivation and the agent is a system
that is looking into the world from its
own perspective and it's a simulation
it's that means it's as if it's behaving
as if it there was something that is
looking at cares and that it solves
these problems as if it would be solving
them which in this case is the same
thing because if you do as if in a caal
structure it's the same thing as if you
do it in another caal structure right so
software can be emulated using other
software and when you for instance
follow a planning procedure then a
simulation of this planning procedure is
the same thing as following the planning
procedure in this level there is no more
difference between a simulation and a
simulation of that simulation right and
so mental processes of this nature they
are representational they are not
physical processes even though they're
implemented by physics they're realized
through physical processes as far as we
know but they are processes that that in
their purpose create representations and
these representations have set up in
such a way that they cly influence
the further generation of
representations and so we create our own
thoughts which are representations and
these thoughts are being interpreted by
the system that generates them and they
cause the next thought and the next
thought and the next and these thoughts
cause our behavior and they cause
structuring of our mind and so on so
this there are causal structures that
are implemented on the physical level
but by their nature they are built in
such a way that they are invariant to
the small tiny changes that physical
universe is producing by itself without
us controlling it and it's true both in
the computers that we building that run
software in a deterministic way and it's
also true for our brains that run
software by producing patterns and self
organizing cells so is Free Will an
illusion it depends on how we Define
free will most people when they want to
talk about Free Will and explain it they
point at something that they perceive
and what they perceive is a sense of
agency they notice that they make
decisions for the first time and they
cannot predict these decisions before
they make them if you could predict your
PR decisions before you make them or if
they're not decisions but just parent
glitches in your uh the behavior of a
nervous system you do not perceive them
as free will right when you slide on the
banana that's not free will but uh when
you make a deliberation over the
outcomes of your actions and then after
considering the best possible outcomes
based on what you know and you're an
actus then you perceive it as free will
and I think that Free Will is the
perception of this process so in this
sense I believe that the calvinist for
instance had the wrong interpretation of
free world Calvinism is this dream
vising Christianity that reformed
Catholicism uh because they thought if
God knows everything how can we have
free have free will but if we have free
will then our actions cannot if we don't
have free will how can our actions
influence whether we go to heaven or not
so in Cal ISM it's pre-ordained whether
you go to heaven or not regardless of
what you do because what you do has been
pre-ordained by God at the Before Time
right so I think this is a
misunderstanding because if your
prospects of going to hell influence
your behavior or going to heaven then
they have caal relevance right so just
by telling people the fact that if you
do X then you're likely going to end up
in this and this place uh and people
believe that or um take this into
consideration then it's going to have a
caal influence on their actions and uh
of course you can follow the reason why
is somebody telling me this do they have
free will right and so they might also
think that there's a better possible
outcome if they influence me and you you
go forth and forth and you have to
understand the reason why they do is
because Nature has set them up as a
system that controls the future agents
are systems that are meant to control
the future and they do this by modeling
them and then making decisions based on
those models can you define define an
agent really fast okay
the simplest explanation for what an
agent is and it's a notion that is very
popular in computer science so I try to
get the simplest one is a controller for
future States a controller is a system
like a thermostat right you all know
this example of the thermostat it has
for instance a
metal piece that is reacting to
temperature and when the temperature is
a at a particular range it's going to
close an electrical contact and that
contact is turning on the heating and
when the temperature goes above a
certain level then this metal contact
bends to to the Heat and uh it uh
disengages and the heating gets turned
off and in this way you can have an
adjustable heating just by adjusting the
position of this uh strip of metal uh
you can get it sensitive to this
particular Target temperature and then
it's going to achieve this target
temperature it's an extremely simple
circuit that is not an agent it's only
regulating the present it's only using
the present state of this measurement
instrument of this biometal strip and uh
that corresponds to the temperature in
the room and then performs an action and
this action in the Here and Now is going
to influence the outcome but now imagine
you want to build a more efficient
heating one that is taking into account
how long it takes for the temperature in
the room to change so for instance you
put uh turn off the heating a little bit
for the peak because you know the
heating is going to continue for a while
before it cools down again and you might
also even model that certain times of
day somebody is going to open the window
and that's going to influence it and
maybe there's weather outside and you
can access the weather report and can
take this into consideration and so the
more you can model about reality the
more efficient you can heat and you do
this by basically trying to model the
deviation between the target temperature
and the current temperature in the
future for a branching past of possible
Futures and some of these branches in
the future are being controlled by your
own actions by whether you will turn on
the heating at that point or not right
and so you can make a plan of when you
want to turn on the heating under which
conditions and uh as a result that you
learn you get much much better and more
efficient at Heating and so in this
sense this is an agent because it's one
that has a model of reality it has
beliefs and it has expectations over the
future over which it some prefers and
others not so it has intentions and it
can commit to those intentions and turn
them into goals and uh in this way you
get all the properties of an agent just
out of control in future States so an
agent is a controller for future States
all right so uh then I trust humans fall
into that definition yes cells also do
that right cells seem to be the simple
system that we know in nature that are
agents so you think cells are trying to
predict their future implicitly
Evolution forces them to uh become uh
aware of future trajectories by
implementing a number of programs into
their DNA and uh other mechanism in the
cell that make it ready to uh react to
certain things so for instance when uh
an amiba that feeds gets a certain
condition at environment it notices that
there's spray nearby and it's going to
get closer to the spray right and it
might not have a concept of prayer very
likely doesn't have that but it has a
reactivity to sensors that get it onto a
trajectory in which it behaves in such a
way that it changes its Behavior
according to what it can expect in the
future to happen that is that it's going
to find prey in a particular kind of
Direction and a neuron and your brain
also needs needs to be an agent right
would it be fair to say that at the cell
level it's it's uh if this then that so
everything is if this then that but uh
very often you don't know what's going
to happen and it's not only going to
work based on the present it's also
going to work based on the state that
the cell is in so when the amiba is in
the hunting mode it probably needs to
turn a switch inside of itself uh that
is Switched turned on when probably when
the amiba is more hungry and when it
sends something that looks like food in
its environment and then it's going to
have some kind of tendency to go into
the environment where it's more likely
to find food so it's going to interpret
some of the signals that it receives
from its environment at its cellular
boundary as uh rules or as um incentives
to go in a particular kind of Direction
because it's more likely to find foot
there so in this sense it's all if then
but a lot of the if is the state of the
system and a lot of that state is
representational which means it does not
really depend depend on the particular
arrangement of the molecules in the cell
but it depends on a mechanism that is
interpreting this particular arrangement
of molecules and many other similar and
sometimes dissimilar Arrangements of
molecules in a particular way as
information of the state the cell has to
be in and the behavior that it should
pursue okay so this is asking me to uh
differentiate between two things so when
I think about uh single celled organism
amibas um I think of something that
would be incapable of Consciousness that
ability to create a mental model to
predict different outcomes to sort of uh
Doctor Strange style move down a bunch
of different paths mentally come back
and say okay I'm going to try this one I
think it's going to be the best and so
when I think about what makes the human
mind more interesting than more
simplistic things is that that it's
reached a level of complexity where it
has enough different nodes that
Consciousness arrives which I've already
made a base assumption there obviously
that Consciousness is born out of
complexity which I know is very
controversial not everybody agrees with
that uh but seems true to me so uh you
would stack Consciousness or stack
complexity to the point where
Consciousness becomes possible we have
the The self-aware Watcher that is able
to build a predictive model and thus
choose the best path are you saying that
either that's a mistake and we're l just
stacking if then then that's and there
is no moment where Consciousness comes
online and so an amoeba has the same
predictive abilities or is there a real
dichotomy there's something very
different about the way the two approach
the
world so the short answer is I don't
know that and for the longer answer we
would need to define consciousness first
so we talk about the same thing and I
think that it's there's three elements
to Consciousness one is attention to
contents but we notice that we looking
at contents
and then there is awareness of the mode
in which we attend so for instance we
usually know whe this is perceptual or
whether it's something that we can
construct and change like a memory or an
imagination or a theory that we have or
an interpretation of reality that very
we conditionally manipulate the way in
which we parse the percepts to see if
they make more sense now and uh then the
third one is reflexive awareness we
notice that we are aware and uh these
three elements need see to be crucial
for Consciousness but m m we need to
have this reflexive awareness and I
suspect that the reason why this is the
case is because it's self organizing so
there there's a self-organizing process
in our brain it needs to organize itself
in such a way that doesn't fall apart
and is indeed that process so you
basically need to have the memory of the
fact that you are actually The Observer
and as long as this memory is fresh
enough uh this might be sufficient but
otherwise you need to go back and check
am I still awake am I still this process
and when you are tired for instance
imagine you are driving a car while
being pretty exhausted you might go back
more and more in this reflexive mode
where you check am I still awake is this
still making sense am I still paying
attention do the object that I still see
that I see still make sense and so on
and we notice when we wake up in the
morning the first thing that I do is
that I try to orient myself and try to
get everything to snap into a cohesive
reality where feature that I perceive is
part of the same scene and there are no
contradictions in the scene and I think
that ultimately this is the main purpose
of Consciousness this creation of a
coherent reality and uh the long tale of
the creation of this coherence in
reality is U our ability to reason and
construct and
plan so it's at the beginning it's
basically just the ability to make sense
of the dreams that the Observer is
having it's an imposition of order on
the perceptual cont contents and then
now if we go back to simp organisms to
ask ourselves are they conscious we can
first of all observe that people do not
become conscious after the PHD so it's
not the most advanced function that
exists in our brain you become conscious
very very early on and when we uh see a
baby being born it's obviously pretty
conscious and it's not able to track a
finger at this stage so maybe
Consciousness emerges because it's the
simplest mechanism to train
self-organizing information processing
system what do people say when you put
that forward that does not seem like it
would be readily absorbed by a lot of
the Consciousness Community I'm not sure
who the Consciousness Community is I'm
an a researcher and cognitive scientist
and most people in my field are very
reluctant to talk about Consciousness at
all and when they do they try to be very
careful to come up with a formal
definition of the object that they're
talking about right and this means that
a lot of them are very hesitant to speak
before they have such a formal
definition and make theories of it and a
little bit more unusual in in that I'm
willing to point at a few phenomena and
say it's important and I think it's I
think it's time that we turn this into a
computational model and I think I can
almost formalize it but the U The
crucial thing about this thing is that
it seems to emerge early on and when we
don't have it we don't
learn right if you look at a human being
that is born not conscious or that wakes
up not conscious that human being is a
vegetable it's not doing anything it's
not learning it's not behaving and in
this uh vegetative state uh your mind is
not doing anything now what about the
order in your organism if we need
Consciousness to wake up the mind and
bring it into a cohesive order and
create coherence in our behavior in real
time um what about the function in our
own body can this function our our own
body in a completely decentralized way
without some coherence imposing
principle and I think that's an open
question is our body conscious too but
at a different time scale right if it
was then it would be conscious not at
the time scale of our brain because the
time scale of our brain is given by the
signal processing and Signal
transmission between the neurons which
is very fast and uses its own code if
the cells in the body would basically
start to compute informations about
their coherence and send feedback back
and forth until they create one cohesive
pattern um then uh this would be much
much slower and I don't know whether
systems outside of complex brains are
conscious I'm completely agnostic with
respect to that I met a couple uh people
uh who are cognitive scientists who
suspect that the same Organization
principles that make our
representational um data in our mind
coherent by propagating constraints back
and forth and this is enabled by this
Consciousness enhancing operator that is
discovered early on in the organization
of brain Consciousness we might have
something that is structurally very
analogous to this that happens in every
large well organized multicellular
organism or every very large system that
is made out of such organisms like an
ecosystem and to me this is a theory
that seems to be very hard to test
because it would require that such an
agent emerges and talks about its
conscious experience otherwise I would
say um I am hesitant to ascribe this um
property I'm agnostic with respect to it
because I don't know I don't think it's
impossible but I'm also not convinced
that it's necessary and that it's
obviously the case is this one of the
things that Drew you to um cognitive
science and AI as an exploration of
cognition as a way to show how this
comes online I wanted to know how the
mind works I want to understand how what
we are and how we relate to reality and
that's why I went into Academia in the
first place and then I studied Psych
ology and um a bit of Neuroscience and
philosophy and um try to figure out what
do they know and I had the impression
that these fields are not making much
progress and the most progress I could
make by building testable models which
to me means something like cognitive
architectures that are built in the
context of AI and this is why I stuck
around in this field and started
building cognitive architectures and I
still think that it's difficult to make
progress if you are a pure philosopher
or a pure neuroscientist and if I look
at my colleagues who are neuroscientists
their definitions of Consciousness tend
to be relatively wake so if I look at
Global workspace theory that is a high
level theory that for instance is
championed by uh dein who takes it from
Berard bars the notion that Deen has for
his models of Consciousness are not so
closely defined that you could actually
understand how the functionality comes
about I think there's nothing wrong in
what she does as far as I understand it
but uh it's it's not yet at a point
where I can plug this into a simulation
and would expect the simulation to
become conscious and um the same thing
is true for for instance Michel
graciano's theory of the attention
schema I think it's a good metaphor if
we have a body schema we understand that
the body schema is represented in the
somato sensory cortex in our brain we
know where that is we know roughly which
shape it has and how it organizes itself
and it's a model of the proception of
our body and how our body moves in space
and what signals we get on the skin of
our body right all the sensations of our
body are organized there according to
their neighborhood and nature and they
allow the rest of the mind to make
inferences based on on this right so
it's pretty clear what this body schema
does and to say that graciano does that
the Consciousness is an attention schema
and it's similar to attention as the
body schema is to our body is I think
very insightful but it does not explain
how the attention is organized in our
brain and how it would give rise to this
attention schema this is something that
we need to figure out based on this idea
it's a good idea but it's insufficient
to explain Consciousness or you have
ideas like integrated information theory
that is both not explaining how it would
work and why it would emerge uh nor does
it have no contradictions internally
it's a theory that has internal
contradictions and therefore cannot work
as a theory and this is BAS the spectrum
of theories that currently exists in
this field it's of course a number of
more detailed theories uh that try to
predict particular kind of functionality
or go more into how the self model works
and how the self- perception works and
reflection works for instance the work
by Thomas metzinger and so on but to put
this all together into something that
actually works that we can test we need
to have computational models that's why
I'm an AI That's a good answer uh couple
questions so the reason I'm obsessed
with cognition uh is because it it my my
entire life is controlled by cognition
so my thesis that I was laying out in
the beginning you're living a life in a
simulation created by your brain maybe a
very sort of simplistic way to look at
it but very functional in my opinion um
what is it that makes you want to
understand
cognition so well that you can build a
mind or that you'd spend your whole
career trying to build a mind in order
to understand it and then earlier you
talked about um philosophy Neuroscience
uh a few other disciplines and said you
didn't think they were making progress
so what is that progress so for me
progress would be it gives me the
ability to better control my life and
and live a better experience um what
does that progress look like for you and
why is that so important that you
dedicate your career to it when you're
an artist the purpose of art is not to
live a better life it's uh there Bic
three levels of artistic appreciation
the lowest one is to say um it's it's
made by an important artist right and if
you acquire this you can speculate it
it's going to acquire value and if you
affiliate yourself with it might
increase your own status uh the second
highest R of artistic interpretation is
you like it what you see like it it I
like what it looks like to me I I like
what it makes me feel and so on and
people at the lowest rung of artistic
appreciation tend to look down on those
people who have this honic relationship
to art
and I think that the uh next higher
level of artistic interpretation is I
value what it allows me to see so there
is something by looking at the artistic
artifact and interacting with it that
gets you a particular conscio