Kind: captions
Language: en
honestly man trying to wrap my head
around your take on consciousness and
we're
living in a constructed reality that
we're essentially in the matrix whether
we want to be or not evolution gave us
this headset and it's no surprise i see
the moon i render a moon i turn away i
don't render a moon so the moon doesn't
exist your life in my life right now is
we're in a simulator a space-time
simulator this may also be an answer to
a very very question about um alien
intelligences what where are they
well
we're looking at our headset
of course we can't see them
[Music]
when we look up and see the moon
it's because there really is a moon and
it would exist even if there were no
observers to see the moon it would still
exist
and we don't
believe that we see all of reality no
one thinks that we see
everything that there is to see but we
do believe that we've been shaped by
natural selection to see those aspects
of the truth that we need to see to stay
alive and so that
our perceptions of space and time
are giving us a genuine insight into a
real space and time
that would be there even if there were
no observers to perceive it
and also our perception of objects like
tables and chairs the moon quarks and
leptons and so forth that these things
would also exist
and have roughly the properties that we
see
even if there were no creatures
no observers to see them at all and
the red pill that i'm offering is to say
that
if you believe
evolution by natural selection
then the mathematics of natural
selection makes it very very clear
that the probability of zero that any
of the language that we use in our
perceptions the language of space and
time the language of shapes and objects
and position and momentum and colors and
so forth
is the wrong language to describe
objective reality whatever that reality
might be
it's not that we're getting the shape of
this table a little bit wrong or the
color's a little bit off it's that no
description in the language of space and
time and objects and colors could ever
be be true
reality whatever it is can't be
described in that language if we buy
evolution by natural selection so we
have a choice between taking one of our
best confirmed scientific theories
seriously namely evolution by natural
selection or taking our intuitions that
space time is fundamental and objects
are fundamental taking that intuition
seriously and i decided to side with
this science on this one uh umvelt is
your senses taken the world in a certain
way and uh we have different senses in a
bat so a bat can do echolocation we
cannot and therefore the way that a bat
interprets the world is very different
than the way that we interpret the world
and every sort of species has a
different umvelt you can even have
humans that have a diff a slightly
different umvelt one that's colorblind
there's a million other examples but you
you get these variations that are
massive between species um you get like
a dog the the amount that they can smell
is crazy they can smell a seizure coming
which is absolutely bananas whereas of
course you're not going to get a human
that does that because of the number of
um scent receptors in the nasal canal
and so cool all right that that's an
umvelt every creature you know homo
sapiens has one room one user interface
we have the apple interface and someone
else you know some other creatures have
the mac or the pc interface or or
whatever yep and and and there's gonna
be a wide variety of interfaces that
evolution evolves every species has its
own class of interfaces
and
in each case the interface never shows
any
species the truth at all according to
evolution
but there are selection the selection
pressures that erase information about
the structure of the world in perception
do not also apply to
math and logic
the reason is that we do have to have
some elementary ability to reasonable
fitness payoffs two bytes of an apple
give me roughly twice the fitness
payoffs of one
so not reasoning about objective reality
just reasoning about fitness payoffs and
the logic of fitness payoffs right so
that's why there's no selection
pressures necessarily to be geniuses of
math and logic but at least the
selection pressures are not uniformly
against any capacity in math and logic
whereas in the case of
perception
it's one can show the unit the pressures
are uniformly against any
access to the structure of the world um
in terms of
the structure of what we perceive in in
our senses so that's why we have to be
very very careful so certain for example
christian philosophers alvin plantinga
for example has argued from
not mathematically but informally from
evolution saying that it would make all
of our cognitive capacities unreliable
and therefore evolution by itself was
unreliable theory and therefore we
should not you know not believe it and
i'm not saying anything like that at all
i'm saying that the theory of evolution
has a core that john maynard smith found
the evolutionary game theory when we
look at that core
we find that there are certain
peripheral assumptions like dna exists
whether or not it's perceived space and
time exist those peripheral assumptions
turn out to contradict the mathematical
core of the theory and one can prove
that
but math and logic our ability with math
and logic does not contradict the
evolutionary you know the core of
evolutionary theory so this
we have to be very very careful that's
why when you do this you know it's not
just hand wave anymore you really have
to look at the replicator equation you
really have to look at the fitness
payoff functions and do combinatorial
analyses and so forth this is very very
careful work but that's what we do with
our best scientific theories we take
them very very seriously we look at
their equations and say okay if the
equation entails
the probability zero that we see reality
as it is then
we've got a choice
we can agree that we don't see reality
as it is or we can say we need to revise
the theory now we don't have an
alternative to evolution by natural
selection
so if someone wants to propose one
they've got a lot of work to do because
evolution of natural selection is an
incredibly successful theory for anybody
who's
spent time in vr what i'm saying
will be obvious right if you're playing
a vr game of like race cars you see a
red corvette when you turn your heads up
that way you know that you're only
seeing a corvette that you're creating
when you turn your head that way you
turn your head to the other side now
you're seeing a blue mustang the red
corvette is gone it doesn't exist
there's no red corvette in the computer
that's running the game the red corvette
is only in your mind when you look over
there now you're seeing a blue mustang
because you're making that and so you
you're rendering these things and then
destroying them there is a reality but
it's not corvettes and it's not mustangs
it's the super computer that's running
the game and that's what i'm all i'm
saying is evolution gave us this headset
and it's no surprise i see the moon i
render a moon i turn away i don't render
a moon so the moon doesn't exist there
is something but it's just not like it's
not the moon it's nothing like the moon
just like there's something there's a
super computer in the the vr analogy but
in the super computer if you look you'll
never find any you know green mustangs
or red corvettes you give an example in
your book that is so powerful if you
would take a second you describe what's
happening in your eye when you look at a
scene that includes a red apple and the
way you describe it at the photoreceptor
level i was like oh my god it gave me
such an understanding of how
terrifyingly complicated all right
things actually do you remember the part
that i'm talking about
right so
this is now just normal physiology and
so for the moment i'll be talking as
though you know i believe in brain
science
and
everything is within the framework of a
theory so i'm now using neurophysiology
and physics right now for this to
describe this
so
when you look at a red apple and suppose
there really is a red apple just for
sake of this argument it's got a real
shape and
light rays hit it and they have certain
frequencies and they pass through the
lens of your eye which focuses it
on the back of your eye just like a
camera would and on the back of your eye
you've got
a piece of brain called the retina it's
a nervous tissue so a piece of nervous
tissue it has 120 million photoreceptors
it's like a 120 mega megapixel camera
and each photoreceptor
is just
reporting how many quanta of light how
many photons it catches so i caught
three i caught 10 i caught 50 that's all
you got a bunch of numbers so you have
120 million numbers
there are no colors
there are no shapes there are no motions
there's just 120 million
colors
numbers not not even colors it's like if
you look at the
the digital output from a video camera
you'll just see a stream of numbers if
you look at stream of numbers you'll see
the problem that vision has
you can't tell from the stream of
numbers what's going on you have to
create
three-dimensional objects and shapes and
colors and so forth from all those
numbers and so that's the problem that
we have envisioned you have all these
photon counts 120 million photon counts
on each eye
and from that you have to then create
objects see that it's a boy on a bicycle
eating a hot dog you know
all of that is you and that comes
that's not just theory it becomes really
an important problem when you're trying
to build computer vision systems right
you're trying to build a self-driving
car say with with passive vision systems
well so the vision systems are cameras
the video cameras say they're taking in
video maybe they have you know a few
million pixels that they come in that
each each you know maybe 70 times a
second or something like that
well
those pixels are just numbers
you've got
millions and millions of numbers coming
in every second
there's nothing in there that says
that's a boy that's a car don't you know
that's a stop sign there's nothing in
there that says that you have to you
have to have
megabytes of software that's really
intelligent that takes all those numbers
and starts computing with them to figure
out three-dimensional shapes to figure
out what the objects are to and to
figure out oh i'm about to hit a boy i
need to hit the brakes and so forth so
so this is not just abstract
self-driving cars have to solve the
problem of starting with numbers that
are in
unintelligent in some so just a bunch of
numbers and giving you an intelligent
assay of what's happening in the world
and so that's why a third of the brain
literally a third of the cerebral cortex
the higher part of our brain is involved
just in visual perception when you add
the other senses it's it's more like
half the brain is involved in sensory
perception
because the senses are doing an
incredibly complicated job but from my
point of view what they're doing is
they're building
a vr world
and it takes a lot of processing power
you need super computers you know what
would have been considered super
computers to do vr in real time and
that's what we're doing we open our eyes
and it looks like we're just seeing a 3d
world with objects and shapes and colors
it seems so
real and so just we're seeing the truth
but because you have billions of neurons
trillions of synapses that are doing it
all within about 100 milliseconds and so
you're so fast at it that you just think
you're opening your eyes and seeing the
truth you're seeing a vr world that
you're projecting out there in real time
hey guys hope you enjoyed the episode
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episode
when you think about what's really going
on as a computer programmer is trying to
make this game called grand theft auto
you're dealing with algorithms and
mathematics and
moving electrical currents around a xbox
or whatever
what you're saying is
what you see when you walk around the
room and interact with stuff and you
think about space time and einstein and
relativity is as divorced from reality
as the computer programmer is from the
gamer who plays his game
that's that's exactly right and and so
one way to think about it is
science
for all of its incredible breakthroughs
and wonderful theories has only been
studying our headset
science has not yet been studying
objective reality outside of our
space-time
virtual reality
that from an evolutionary point of view
was just evolved as a way for us to play
the game of life and stay alive long
enough to reproduce not to show us the
truth so we have really in the in the
last four or five centuries really
gotten to be
wizards
of our headset wizards of the grand
theft auto game but just because you're
a wizard of grand theft auto does not
mean that you know anything about the
circuits and software that are running
the game
and for someone who thinks that they
know everything when all they know is
grand theft auto means they they're
still stuck in the headset
science i want to claim has the tools we
have learned
the right tools as we've studied our
headset
we are ready to use those same tools to
venture outside the headset outside of
space and time so science has the right
tools we just have to open up you know
open our minds
to the fact that we're just playing a
game inside space time it's just a
virtual reality your life in my life
right now is we're in a simulator a
space time simulator and we've been
given like an ai system we've been given
certain
intrinsic
desires
that we then find and so so so my wife
is an artist
that's how she's exploring i i am still
stuck at third grade stick figures so
that's not how i'm exploring
i'm exploring in a different way so so
so there's billions of humans
and there are billions of different ways
that we explore in music in art and
literature in science various kinds of
science meditation sober it's sports
there are all sorts of ways that
consciousness is exploring um through
through us and there is not like one is
the best
or that makes consciousness want to go
to all the assay to create this vr
experience to run
each of us as sort of an individual
experience
in consciousness
the idea would be that that is what
consciousness is about is
the exploration of all of its
possibilities so is that just the
miracle like i've now hit the part where
you're like i don't [ __ ] know this is
the miracle
well yeah and when we when we say that
um
that's something that we have to say is
true of any explanation right
any explanation at some point
we say if you grant me these
assumptions
then with those assumptions i can
explain everything else well so and i
totally buy into that here here is the
basic assumption i've always made about
the miracle that the whole point is to
say hey everybody i've got this theory
here's my miracle check it out theory
works right yeah yeah wow this is better
than everything okay the only reason
i've told you about this thing is so you
can tell me how to move the miracle back
even farther
or are you just like cool i'm good with
that miracle and now i just want to
explore
within that where that miracle is or
well so i want to do both so so
this this miracle is so new that i you
know i need to explore a little bit
right
so i want to push on this one but but
the miracles i'm proposing are
consciousness is fundamental so
experiences
themselves don't come from physics
they are fundamental so that's a miracle
and second um this other miracle that
that girdle approved
where he proved it but it's still a
miracle right
the the incompleteness of mathematics
that you can that there's endless
exploration that's just a fact which is
a remarkable
fact we proved it but it's nevertheless
this why should the universe be that way
why should logic demand that that's
so that's but it's a satisfying kind of
end point
where
we say that's the way the world is
here's the theorem
that says that's the way the universe is
and that that one theorem tells us why
if you're up to exploration
then have fun because you will always
there's no getting there that's the key
there's no arriving all right my friends
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all right my friends give these a shot i
use them all the time take care and be
legendary
suppose you go to a vr arcade with some
friends to play virtual volleyball
and you put on your headset and body
suit and you're on a you know a
like a beach volleyball scene palm trees
and sand and then that and you're
playing
vr volleyball for a while then one of
your friends you know says i'm
thirsty i need a drink he takes off his
headset and bodysuit to go to go get a
drink his avatar
sits lifeless on the sand it collapses
on the sand it looks within the vr
headset within the game as though he's
dead
but he's his consciousness is not ceased
he's merely stepped out of that
interface all right now we're in what
i'll call the phineas gage problem okay
so once so phineas gage for those that
don't know is railroad worker one of the
most famous examples in neuroscience
he's hitting a tamping rod it's like a
three foot rod thicker than your thumb
and it shoots up through his jaw and out
the top of his head taking if i remember
right a teacup's worth of brain matter
which seems impossible but never loses
consciousness but they say he's forever
different right different and he used to
be like super sweet and he was one of
the best workers and then he becomes
this belligerent [ __ ] and he can't
hold a job right so
i will say that's that is the
so using this notion of the
headset or the umvelt it's like once you
alter the way that his brain works and
i'm fully willing to accept that this is
a problem only inside of the headset but
once you alter that function within the
headset is fundamentally different our
free choices
are not part of our conscious
experiences you can't directly
experience your own free choices you can
experience that you chose but you can
never actually experience yourself
choosing
this well it's really quite interesting
you can experience like if i go uh you
know here's there's chocolate and
vanilla
i'm going to choose between chocolate
and vanilla
well i just chose chocolate but how did
i do that well i had some deliberation
process but when i finally it i can all
i can do is see myself reaching for the
chocolate or the vanilla i can see my
cogitation processes but but the but
isn't that all in the headset
all that i'm seeing is in the headset
that's right so i'm seeing so by the way
i only know my actions
through my headset i actually don't know
what i'm doing when i reach out and grab
something
i don't know what i'm doing in objective
reality in the realm of conscious agents
how does all of this play out in your
real life
and i've heard you talk about that there
are moments where you have
i'm sort of putting words in your mouth
but almost a meditative experience where
you transcend the notion of self um
how so
how
do you stay so enthusiastic about this
for so long when it seems like
i mean really really at a deep [ __ ]
level man as a human experience this
just all feels so real
right right
well
i wouldn't say that i transcend
the self
but i what i
do get it once in a while is a glimpse
that oh
this is just a headset i actually feel
it
that i'm just rendering this
most of us feel like
space just exists i'm stuck inside space
there's this big stage
i'm on the stage
it's very different
i think by the way the next generation
will probably get this much easier
those who have just been raised
spending a lot of time in vrs that are
as compelling and as immersive as
everyday life it's going to be just sort
of obvious you take your headset off and
go it's a no-brainer to think well this
is just a headset too and to just sort
of be there so i think that it'll it'll
be
for the next generation the fact that
i'm having a hard time about it thinking
about it this way and imagining it
experientially will just be sort of an
artifact of the technology i grew up
with
if i grew up with vr's that were really
good as opposed to the stuff that we
grew up with which is not that good then
it would just be sort of obvious you do
it when you're young enough it's just
this obvious that yeah i'm just seeing a
vr headset too because by the way here's
one way to think about it
if you close your eyes
you just see sort of gray right
model gray in front of you so it looks
it doesn't look like nothing it looks
like model gray but what is it like
backwards back through your head
when you close your eyes well it's not
modeled gray it's nothing
and it's really the first time you
really if you close your eyes and
experience that yeah what is it like in
front of me yeah it's just gray sort of
model gray what is it like behind me
absolutely nothing that's the headset
you only have a headset of space-time in
front there is no headset behind now you
have a not a visual headset then you
have this
set yeah i can put my hands back there
and do stuff so so i have this but it's
all a creation it's all and so i do get
glimpses of that
once in a while
but there were no now put on the natural
selection language right so i have to
pick the language of the science that i
want to use you know because i don't
have a better language in some sense for
discussing this evolution um
there were no selection pressures for us
to see the truth
and so there were no selection pressures
for us to not
take space time as the truth
and so we do piaget tells us you know
when
we begin to take objects as real as we
you know these aren't just like little
data structures that you create that
they really exist all the time he called
it object permanence and piaget said
that you know when the kid is about 17
months 16 or 17 months of age they don't
have object permanence permanence you
take a little baby doll put in front of
a child they play with it you put put it
behind the pillow if they're 16 months
old they just doesn't need it doesn't
exist
piaget said and then but at 18 months
now they go and crawl around and try to
get the object the baby doll out of the
behind the pillow later experiments
showed maybe down to three or four
months but the point is
these experiments show that we're
programmed
now i'm using the evolution language
we're programmed by natural selection to
buy into the illusion that objects exist
even when they're not perceived
object permanent when we're three or
four months old
we're not rational it's being done to us
without our permission and so by the
time we come to the age of reason
it's it's the water that we we don't
know that we're wet it's the water we've
been swimming in all of our life we just
have been programmed to take this as the
reality
this may also be an answer to a very
very deep question about um
alien intelligences what where are they
well
we're looking at our headset
of course we can't see them
that's interesting they're out there
that's really interesting
we may we may i'm not saying we won't
find some of them out there our headset
may give us access to certain alien
intelligences on planets around alpha
centauri and so forth but
it's going to be trivial compared to all
the consciousnesses that are out there
that's what a headset is for it's there
to hide
all of the consciousnesses because it
would be overwhelming to interact with
them so that's where they are they're
all around us
we're like ants that don't see the guy
with the raid can coming at them they
can't they just can't see it right um so
they're all around us but we're we are
stuck on our headset
and we think that we're the
the epitome of of advancement and
knowledge
and and so forth might
it would be funny and it may be the case
that every
that that's
a rookie mistake that every
consciousness goes through in a
simulator
that it thinks it because it's headset
is only going to give it
the best access to itself and others
like it and less access to others and so
in its own eyes it will always be the
wisest
in its in its environment and so it may
be a rookie mistake
that every
simulator the consciousness creates
has that we all have to go through this
phase of going oh we're the best we're
the greatest we're the epitome of
evolution and then we slowly realize oh
no no no no i'm in a simulator and
there's you know there's this infinite
range of other possibilities of
consciousness
some so profound that i that i if i
could see them i won't be you know
inclined to fall down and worship them
who knows you know just so but but it's
it's a really humbling position so we go
from
being the top of creation the the the
smart yield
the brain is the most
incredibly complicated thing we've ever
found in the entire universe that point
of view to oh wow
um
we've made a rookie mistake here um
there are consciousnesses out there that
are far more you know
mind-blowing than anything i could even
concretely imagine so it's it's a very
very different kind of thing but i think
all of us
do wonder
about what's next
and
why are we here and what is it about
that's why i mean that's one reason i do
this is it life is very very short
i want to explore
and things that
most of what i've believed very deeply
has been very deeply wrong
most of what humanity has believed very
deeply has been very deeply wrong
we have a very good we're almost about
100 percent
consistent in being deeply wrong
we've believed that space time is
fundamental
almost everybody believes that space
time is fundamental we all believe the
earth is flat now a few and very
advanced physicists
ed whitten has said space time is doomed
david gross has said it's in doomed
neymar connie ahmed is saying space time
is doomed and these guys especially nema
are now really
being adventurous very very brave and
saying let's go
outside of space and time
into a world where we can't think just
imagine what they're trying to do we're
trying to think
entirely
outside space and time
like as you said as a kid you're going
what could possibly be on the other side
of space and time
these guys are saying not only is there
something on the side i need to think
deeply about it and here's a
mathematical structure in which space
and time
quantum mechanics and unitarianity don't
even appear in the language
and then i'll show you how
our headset they don't call it headset
that's not me
ad living for them but so how space and
time which i'm calling the headset how
space and time and quantum mechanics and
general relativity appear
from these deeper structures in which
there's no space in no time
so that fits perfectly with what what
i'm saying now they have no idea what
this deeper structure is about
and
what i'm up to is i'm actually nema gave
a class
at harvard last fall
more than 20 lectures on
for graduate students on these deeper
structures outside of space and time
i am taking this class online there's
all on youtube so i'm just studying it
i'm transcribing these lectures studying
them because i believe
that i can show with my team my
mathematicians so they'll show
that the long-term behavior this
dynamics of consciousness that we're
working on what we call the asymptotic
behavior
will give rise to the structures he's
seeing like his amplitude
and so the reason why and then the
amplitude he already shows how to build
up space time from that
that way i'll be able to go all the way
from conscious agents through the
long-term behavior conscious agents
through the amplitude and to space-time
i can show you how the headset is built
that's my goal and so i'm i'm really
quite excited once i get
you know i know enough to be worth his
time i may
talk with him but but i'm not going to
waste his time until i know enough so
i'm trying to figure out how the headset
is built once we if we succeed
we'll be able to reverse engineer that
headset
and the technologies we'll we'll be able
to play with the parameters of spacetime
it's like suppose you're you know a
wizard at grand theft auto and you can
play within the game do all sorts of
things that people find amazing that's
great but imagine someone who actually
knows the source code they can take the
wizard and they can give them a flat
tire they can take all the gas out of
his tank they can make the road
infinitely long they can do whatever
they want to they can play with the very
parameters so the wizard is nothing all
of our science right now has made us
wizards
we're eventually going to get the source
code of the game where can people get
your book
tell people about the book where you
want them to connect with you oh yes
it's called the case against reality um
you can get it on amazon or apple and so
forth the case against reality um and
then i've got a twitter feed um at
donald
d hoffman i think but if you just google
my name on twitter you can find it and i
put links to most of my to to i'll put a
link to our podcast here and and so
forth but
um and
yeah so on twitter and you know i have a
website at the university of california
irvine that lists some of my papers and
has my email um ddhoff uci.edu so people
can email me i i you know
i get enough that i can't respond to
most of the emails but but
every once in a while i can respond so
nice you know what that's like i'm sure
i i do indeed
cool well guys check him out for sure
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care