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whatever reality is it's not what you
see what you see is is just an Adaptive
fiction the following is a conversation
with Donald Hoffman professor of
cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine focusing
his research on evolutionary psychology
visual perception and Consciousness he's
the author of over 120 scientific papers
on these topics and his most recent book
titled the case against reality why
Evolution hid the truth from our eyes I
think some of the most interesting ideas
in this world like those of Donald
Hoffman's attempt to shake the
foundation of our understanding of
reality and thus they take a long time
to internalize deeply so proceed with
caution questioning the fabric of
reality can lead you to either Madness
or to truth and the funny thing is you
won't know which is
which this is the Lex Freedman podcast
to support it please check out our
sponsors in the description and now dear
friends here's Donald
Hoffman in your book the case against
reality why Evolution hid the truth from
our eyes you make the Bold claim that
the world we see with our eyes is not
real it's not even an abstraction of
objective reality it is completely
detached from uh objective
reality can you explain this idea right
so this is a theorem from evolution by
natural selection so the technical
question that I and my team asked was
what is the probability that natural
selection would shape sensory systems to
see true properties of objective reality
and to our surprise we found that the
answer is precisely zero except for one
one kind of structure that we can go
into if you want to but for for any
generic structure that you might think
the world might have a total order a
topology metric
the probability is precisely zero that
natural selection would shape any
sensory system of any organism to see
any aspect of objective reality so in
that sense uh what we're seeing
is what we need to see to stay alive
long enough to reproduce so in other
words we're seeing what we need to guide
adaptive Behavior full stop so the
evolutionary process the process that
took us from the origin of life on Earth
to the humans that we are
today that process does not
maximize for truth to maximizes for
Fitness as you say Fitness beats truth
and fitness does not have to be
connected to truth is the claim and
that's where you have an approach
towards zero of probability that we have
evolved human cognition human
consciousness whatever it is the magic
that makes our mind work
evolved not for its ability to see the
truth of reality but its ability to
survive in the environment that's
exactly right so most of us intuitively
think that surely the way that Evolution
will make our senses more fit is to make
them tell us more truths or at least the
truths we need to know about objective
reality the truths we need in our Niche
that's the standard View and it was the
view I took I mean that's that's sort of
what we're taught or just even assume
it's just sort of like the intelligent
assumption that we would all make but we
don't have to just wave our hands
evolution of a natural selection is a
mathematically precise Theory uh John
merard Smith in the' 70s created
evolutionary Game Theory and we have
evolutionary graph Theory and even
genetic algorithms that we can use to
study this and so we don't have to wave
our hands it's it's a matter of theorem
and proof and or simulation before you
get the thms and proofs and uh couple
graduate students of mine just Mark and
Brian Maran um did some wonderful
simulations that tipped me off that
there was something going on here and
then I went to mathematician chayon
prosh and Manish Singh and uh some other
friends of mine Chris fields and but
chayon was the real mathematician in
behind all this and he's proved several
theorems that uniformally indicate that
um with one exception which has to do
with probability measures um there's no
uh the probability is zero the the
reason there's an exception for
probability measures so-called Sigma
algebras or or um Sigma of classes is
that for any scientific theory uh there
is the assumption that needs to be made
that the
whatever structure the whatever
probabilistic structure the world may
have is not unrelated to the
probabilistic structure of our
perceptions if they were completely
unrelated then no science would be
possible so and so this is technically
the the map from reality to our senses
has to be a so-called measurable map has
to preserve Sigma algebras but that
means it could be infinite to one and it
could collapse all sorts of of event
information but other than that there's
there's no requirement in standard
evolutionary theory for uh Fitness
payoff functions for example to preserve
any specific structures of objective
reality so you can ask the technical
question this is one of the Avenues we
took um if you look at all the fitness
payoffs from um
whatever World structure you might want
to imagine so a world with say a total
order on it so it's got nend States and
they're totally ordered and then you can
have a set of maps from that world into
a set of payoffs say from zero to a TH
or whatever you want your payoffs to be
and you can just literally count all the
payoff functions and just do the
combinatorics and count them and then
you can ask a precise question how many
of those payoff functions preserve the
total order if that's what you're or how
many preserve the
topology and you just count them and
divide so so the number that are
homomorphisms versus the total number
and then take the limit as the number of
states in the world and the number of
payoff values goes very large and when
you do that you get zero every time okay
you've there's a million things to ask
here but first of all just in case uh
people are not familiar with your work
let's sort of Linger on the big bold
statement here MH which is the thing we
see with our
eyes is not some kind of limited window
into reality it is completely detached
from reality likely completely detached
from reality you're saying 100%
likely okay so none of this is real in
the way we think is real in the way we
have this in ition there's um like this
table is some kind of abstraction but
Underneath It All there's atoms and
there's an entire Century of physics
that describes the functioning of those
atoms and the quirks that make them up
there's uh many Nobel prizes about
particles and Fields and all that kind
of stuff that uh slowly builds up to
something that's perceivable to us both
with our eyes with our different senses
as this table then there's also ideas of
chemistry that over layers of
abstraction from DNA to embryos the
cells that make the human body right so
all of that is not real it's a real
experience and it's a real adaptive set
of perceptions so it's an Adaptive set
of perceptions full stop we want to
think the perceptions are real so so
their perceptions are real as
perceptions right they are we are having
our perceptions but we've assumed that
there's uh a pretty tight relationship
between our Perceptions in reality if I
look up and see the moon then there is
something that uh exists in space and
time that uh matches um what I perceive
and all I'm saying is that if you take
evolution by natural selection
seriously then that is precluded that
our perceptions are there they're there
to guide adaptive Behavior full stop
they're not there to show you the truth
in fact the way I think about it is
they're there to hide the truth because
the truth is too complicated it's just
like if you're trying to you know use
your laptop to write an email right what
you're doing is toggling voltages in the
computer but good luck trying to do it
that way that's we the reason why we
have a user interface is because we
don't want to know that quote unquote
truth the diodes and resistors and all
that that terrible Hardware if you had
to know all that truth it would you your
friends wouldn't hear from you so you so
what evolution gave us was perceptions
that guide adaptive behavior and part of
that process it turns out means hiding
the truth and giving you um a eye candy
so what's the difference between hiding
the truth and forming
abstractions uh layers upon layers of
abstractions over these over lowlevel
voltages transistors and uh chips and uh
programming languages from assembly to
python that then leads you to be able to
have an interface like Chrome where you
open up another set of JavaScript and
HTML uh programming languages that lead
you to have a graphical user interface
on which you can then send your friends
an
email is that completely
detached from the zeros and ones that
are firing away inside the computer it's
not of course when I talk about the user
interface on your desktop um there's
this whole
sophisticated backstory to it right that
that the hardware and the software
that's allowing that to happen Evolution
doesn't tell us the backstory right so
the theory of evolution is not going to
be adequate to tell you what is that
backstory it's going to say that
whatever reality is and that's the
interesting thing it says whatever
reality is you don't see it you see a
user interface but it doesn't tell you
what that user interface is how it's
built right now we can we can try to
look at certain aspects of the interface
but already we're going to look at that
and go real okay before I would look at
neurons and I was assuming that I was
seeing something that was at least
partially true and now I'm realizing it
it could be like looking at the pixels
on my
desktop or icons on my desktop and and
good luck you know going from that to
the data structures and then the
voltages and the I mean good luck
there's just no way so what's
interesting about this is that our
scientific theories are precise enough
and rigorous enough to tell us certain
limits but and even limits of the
theories themselves but they're not
going to tell us what the next move is
and that's where scientific creativity
comes in so the the stuff that I'm
saying here for example um is not alien
to physicists the physicists are saying
precisely the same thing that space time
is doomed we've assumed that space time
is fundamental we've assumed that for
for several centuries and it's been very
useful so all the things that you are
mentioning the particles and all the
work that's been done that's all been
done in SpaceTime but now physicists are
saying SpaceTime is doomed there's no
such thing as SpaceTime fundamentally in
the laws of physics and that comes
actually out of gravity together with
Quantum field Theory it just comes right
out of it it's it's it's a theorem of of
of those two theories put together but
it doesn't tell you what's behind it so
the physicists are know that their their
best theories Einstein's gravity and
Quantum field Theory put together entail
that SpaceTime cannot be fundamental and
therefore particles in space time cannot
be
fundamental they're just irreducible
representations of the symmetries of
SpaceTime that's what they are so we
have so SpaceTime so we put the two
together we put together what the
physicists are discovering and we can
talk about how they do that and then we
the new discoveries from evolution of
natural selection both of these
discoveries are really in the last 20
years and what both are saying is um
SpaceTime has had a good ride it's been
very useful reductionism has been useful
but it's over and it's time for us to go
beyond when you say SpaceTime is doomed
is it the space is the is the is it the
time is it the very hardcoded
specification of four
dimensions um
or are you specifically referring to the
kind of U perceptual domain that humans
operate in which is spacetime you think
like there's a
3D um like our world is
three-dimensional and time progresses
forward therefore three dimensions plus
one 4D what uh what what exactly do you
mean by
SpaceTime what do you mean by SpaceTime
is doomed great great so this is by the
way not my quote this is from for
example Nema aranam Ed
at The Institute for Advance study at
Princeton Ed Whitten also there David
Gross Nobel Prize winner so this is not
just something the cognitive scientists
this is what the physicist are saying
yeah the physicists are SpaceTime uh
Skeptics we they're saying that and I
can say exactly why they think it's
doomed but what they're saying is that
because your question was what what
aspect of space time what are we talking
about here it's both space and time
their Union into space time as an
Einstein Theory that's doomed mhm and
they're they're basically saying that
even quantum theory this is Nar Kan
hemed especially so Hilbert spaces will
not be fundamental either so that that
the notion of Hilbert space which is
really critical to Quantum field Theory
Quantum information Theory uh that's not
going to figure in the fundamental new
laws of physics so what they're looking
for is some new mathematical structures
Beyond SpaceTime Beyond you know
Einstein's four-dimensional SpaceTime or
super symmetric version you know
geometric algebra Signature 2 comma 4
kind of there are different ways you can
represent it but they're finding new
structures and then by the way they're
succeeding now they're finding they
found something called the amplitud
hedrin this is Nema and his colleagues
the the cosmological polytope these are
so the there are these
like polytopes these polyhedra in in
multi multi Dimensions generalizations
of
simplies that are coding for for example
the scattering amplitudes of of
processes in the Large Hadron Collider
and other other colliders so they're
finding that if they let go of SpaceTime
completely they're finding new ways of
computing these scattering amplitudes
that turn literally billions of terms
into one
term when you do it in space and time
because it's the wrong framework it's
it's it's just a user interface from
that's now from The evolutionary point
of view it's just user interface is not
a deep insight into the nature of
reality so it's missing deep symmetri
something called a dual conformal
symmetry which turns out to be true of
the scattering data but you can't see it
in SpaceTime and is making the comp the
computations way too complicated because
you're trying to compute all the loops
and Fineman diagrams and all the Fineman
integrals so see the Fineman approach to
the scattering amplitudes is trying to
enforce two critical properties of
SpaceTime locality and unitarity and so
by when you enforce those you get all
these loops and multip you know
different levels of loops and for each
of those you have to add new terms to
your computation but when you do it
outside of
SpaceTime you don't have the notion of
unitarity you don't have the notion of
locality you have something deeper and
it's capturing some symmetries that are
actually true of the data and but then
when you look at the geometry of the
facets of these polytopes then certain
of them will code for you know arity and
locality so it actually comes out of the
structure of these deep polytopes so
what we're finding is there's this whole
new world now Beyond
SpaceTime that is making explicit
symmetries that are true of the data
that cannot be seen in SpaceTime and
that is turning the computations from
billions of terms to one or two or a
handful of terms so we're getting
insights into symmetries and we're and
all of a sudden the math is becoming
simple because we're not doing something
silly we're not adding up all these
Loops in SpaceTime we're doing something
far deeper but they don't know what this
world is about all so you know they're
in an interesting
position where we know that SpaceTime is
doomed and I I should probably tell you
why it's doomed what they're saying
about why it's doomed but but they need
a flashlight to look Beyond SpaceTime
what what flashlight are we going to use
to look into the dark Beyond SpaceTime
because Einstein's theory and quantum
theory can't tell us what's beyond them
all they can do is tell us that when you
put us together SpaceTime is doomed at
10 to the - 33 cm 10- 43 seconds beyond
that space time doesn't even make sense
it just has no operational
definition so but it doesn't tell you
what's beyond and so they're they're
just looking for deep structures like
guessing it's really fun so these really
brilliant guys generic brilliant men and
women who are doing this work physicists
are making guesses about these
structures informed guesses because
they're trying to ask well okay what
deeper structure could give us the stuff
that we're seeing in SpaceTime but
without certain commitments that we have
to make in SpaceTime like locality so
they make these brilliant guesses and of
course most of the time you're going to
be wrong but once you get one or two
that start to pay off and then you get
some lucky breaks so they got a lucky
break back in
1986 um couple of mathematicians named
Park and
Taylor took the scattering amplitude for
two gluons coming in at high energy and
four gluons going out at low energy so
that kind of scattering thing so like
apparently for people who are into this
that's sort of something that happens so
often you need to be able to find it and
get rid of those because you already
know about that you need to so you
needed to compute them it was billions
of terms and they couldn't do it even
for the supercomputers couldn't do that
for the many billions or millions of
times per second they needed to do it so
they They begged you the
experimentalists begged the theorist
please can you you got it and so park
and Taylor took the billions of terms
hundreds of pages and mirac miraculously
turned it into nine and then a little
bit later they guessed one term
expression that turned out to be
equivalent so billions of terms reduced
to one term the so-called famous Park
Taylor formula 1986 and that was like
okay where did that come from what this
is a pointer into a deep realm beyond
space and time but but no one I mean
what can you do with it and they thought
maybe it was a one off but then other
formulas started coming up and then
eventually neemar KH hemed and his team
found this this thing called the
amplitud Hedon which really sort of
captures the whole a big part of the
whole bow wax um I'm sure they would say
no there's plenty more to do so so I
won't say they did it all by any means
they're looking at the cosmological
polytope as well so what's remarkable to
me is that two pillars of modern science
Quantum field Theory with gravity on the
one hand and evolution by natural
selection on the other just in the last
20 years have very clearly said
SpaceTime has had a good run
reductionism has been a fantastic
methodology so we had a great ontology
of SpaceTime a great methodology of
reductionism now it's time for a new
trick now you need to go deeper and and
show but by the way this is doesn't mean
we throw away everything we've done not
by a long shot every new idea that we
come up with Beyond SpaceTime must
project precisely into SpaceTime and it
better give us back everything that we
know in love in SpaceTime or
generalizations or it's not going to be
taken seriously and it shouldn't be so
so we have a strong constraint on
whatever we're going to do Beyond
SpaceTime it needs to project into
SpaceTime and whatever this deeper
theory is it may not itself have
evolution by natural selection this may
not be part of this deeper realm but
when we take the whatever that thing is
beyond SpaceTime and project it into
SpaceTime it has to look like evolution
by natural selection or it's wrong so so
that's so that's a strong constraint on
on this work so even the evolution
by natural selection
and uh Quantum field
Theory could be interfaces into
something
that that doesn't look anything like
like you mentioned I mean it's
interesting to think that Evolution
might be a very crappy interface into
something much deeper that's right
they're both telling us that the
framework that you've had can only go so
far and it has to stop and there's
something Beyond and that framework the
very framework that is space and time
itself now of course evolution by
natural selection is not telling us
about like Einstein's relativistic based
on so that was another question you
asked a little bit earlier it's telling
us more about our perceptual space and
time which um we have used as the basis
for creating first a Newtonian Space
versus time as a mathemat mathematical
extension of our perceptions and then
Einstein then took that and and extended
it even further so the relationship
between what evolution is telling us and
what the physicists are telling us is
that in some sense the Newton and
Einstein
SpaceTime are formulated as sort of
rigorous extensions of our perceptual
space um making it mathematically
rigorous and and laying out the
symmetries that that that they find
there so that's sort of the relationship
between them so it's the perceptual
SpaceTime that evolution is telling us
is just a a user interface effectively
and then the physicist are finding that
even the mathematical extension of that
into the einsteinian formulation has to
be as well not the final story there's
something deeper so let me ask you about
reductionism and interfaces as we March
forward from Newtonian
physics uh to Quantum Mechanics these
are all in your view
interfaces
um are we getting closer to objective
reality
how do we know if these interfaces in
the process of science the reason we
like those interfaces is because they're
predictive of some aspects strongly
predictive about some aspects of our
reality is that completely deviating
from our understanding of that reality
or is it helping us get closer and
closer and closer well of course one
critical constraint on all of our
theories is that they are empirically
tested and pass the experiments that we
have for them so so no one's arguing
against experiments being important and
wanting to test all of our or current
theories and any new theories on that so
that's that's that's all there
but we have good reason to believe that
science will never get a theory of
everything you everything everything
everything everything right a final
Theory of Everything right I think that
my my own take is for what it's worth is
that girdle's incompleteness theorem
sort of points Us in that direction that
even with
mathematics uh any finite atiz that's
sophisticated enough to be able to do
arithmetic it's easy to show that
there'll be um statements that are true
that can't be proven can't be deduced
from within that framework and if you
add the new statements to your axioms
then there'll be always new statements
that are true but can't be proven with a
new Axiom system and
the best scientific theories um in in
physics for example and also now
Evolution are mathematical so our
theories are going to be they're going
to have their own
assumptions and um they'll be
mathematically precise and there'll be
theories perhaps of everything except
those assumptions because assumptions
are we say please grant me these
assumptions if you grant me these
assumptions then I can explain this
other stuff but so you have the
assumptions that
um are like Miracles as far as the
theories concerned they're not explained
they're the the starting points for
explanation and then you have the
mathematical structure of the theory
itself which will have the girdle limits
and
so my my take is that um reality
whatever it is
is always going to
transcend
any conceptual theory that we can come
up with there's always going to be
mystery at the
edges
uh right uh contradictions and all that
kind of stuff
okay and truths so there's an this idea
that is brought up in in the financial
space of uh settlement of transactions
you often talked about in cryptocurrency
especially so you could do you know
money cash is not connected
to anything uh it used to be connected
to gold to physical reality but then you
can use money to exchange uh to exchange
value transact uh so when when it was on
the old standard the money would
represent some stable uh component of
reality isn't it more
effective to avoid things like
hyperinflation if we generalize that
idea isn't it better to connect your uh
whatever we humans are doing in the
social interaction space with each other
isn't it better uh from an evolutionary
perspective to connect it to some degree
to reality so that
the that the transactions are settled
with something that's Universal as
opposed to us constantly operating in
something that's a complete illusion
isn't it easy to hyperinflate that like
where where you really deviate very very
far
away
from um from the underlying reality or
do you not never get in trouble for this
can you just completely drift far far
away from the underlying reality and
never get in trouble that's a great
question on the financial side there's
two levels at least that we could take
your question one one is strictly like
evolutionary psychology of financial
systems um and that's that's pretty
interesting um and there the
decentralized idea the de defi kind of
idea in
cryptocurrencies may make good sense
from just an evolutionary psychology
point of view having you know human
nature being what it is putting a lot of
faith in a few Central controllers um
depends a lot on
the veracity of those and
trustworthiness of those few Central
controllers and we have ample evidence
time and again that um that's often
betrayed so it makes good evolutionary
sense I would say to have a
decentralized I mean democracy is a step
in that direction right we're we don't
we don't have a monarch now telling us
what to do we decentralize things right
because if thearch if you have Marcus
aelius as your Emperor you're great if
you have Nero it's not so great and so
we don't want that so democracy is a
step in that direction but but I think
the defi thing is is an even bigger step
and is is going to even make the
democratization even even greater so so
that's one level of also the fact that
power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely is also an Evol a
consequence of
evolution right that's also a feature I
think right you can argue from the long
span of living organisms it's nice for
power to corrupt for you to it so uh mad
men and women throughout history might
be useful to teach us a lesson we can
learn from our negative example right
exactly right
right right so power does corrupt and I
think that you can think about that
again from an evolutionary point of view
but I think that your question was a
little deeper when that was is does The
evolutionary interface idea sort of
unhinge science
from from some kind of important test
for the theories right we don't want
doesn't mean that anything goes in
scientific theory but there's no if
there if we don't see the truth is there
no way to tether our theories and and
test them and and I
think there there's no problem there we
we can only test things in terms of what
we can measure with our census in space
and time so we're going to have to
continue to do experiments and but we're
going to re we're going to understand a
little bit differently what those
experiments are we had thought that when
we see a pointer on a uh some machine in
a you know an experiment that the
machine exists the pointer exists and
the values exist even when no one is
looking at them and that they're an
objective truth and and our best
theories are telling us no the pointers
pointers are just pointers and that's
what you have to rely on for making your
judgments um but um that even the
pointers themselves are not the
objective reality so and and I think
girdle is telling us that not that um
anything goes but you know as you
develop new Axiom systems you will find
out what goes within that Axiom system
and what what testable predictions you
can make so I don't think we're we're
untethered we we continue to do
experiments what I think we we won't
have that we want is a conceptual
understanding that gives us a theory of
everything that's final and complete I I
think that this is to put it in another
way this is job security for
scientists our job will never be done
it's job security for
Neuroscience because before we thought
that when we looked in the brain we saw
neurons and neural networks and and uh
you know Action potentials and and
synapses and so forth and that's that
that was it that that was the reality
now we have to reverse engineer that we
have to say what is beyond
SpaceTime what is going on what is a
dynamical system Beyond SpaceTime that
when we project it into Einstein
SpaceTime gives us things that look like
neurons and neural networks and synapses
that's so we have to reverse engineer so
there's going to be lots more work for
Neuroscience it's going to be far more
complicated and and difficult and
challenging but but that's wonderful
that's what we need to do we thought
neurons exist when they aren't perceived
and and they don't in the same way that
if I show you when I say they don't
exist I should be very very concrete if
I draw on a piece of paper a little
sketch um of of something that is called
the necer cube it's just a little line
drawing of a cube right it's on a flat
piece of paper if I execute it well and
I show it to you you'll see a 3D cube
and you'll see it flip sometimes you'll
see one face in front sometimes you'll
see the other face in front but if I ask
you know which face is in front when you
don't look you know the answer is well
neither faces in front cuz there's no
Cube there just a flat piece of paper
yeah so when you look at the piece of
paper you perceptually create the cube
and when you look at it then you fix one
face to be in front and one face to the
so that's what I mean when I say it
doesn't exist SpaceTime itself is like
the Cube It's a data structure that your
sensory systems construct whatever your
sensory systems mean now because we now
have to even not even take that for
granted but there are perceptions that
you construct on the Fly and uh their
data structures and a computer science
and you garbage collect them when you
don't need them so you create them and
garbage collect them but is it possible
that it's mapped well in some concrete
predictable way to objective reality the
sheet of paper this two-dimensional
space or we can talk about space time
maps in some way that we uh maybe don't
yet understand but will one day
understand understand what that mapping
is but it Maps reliably it is Tethered
in that way well yes and and so the new
theories that the physicists are finding
Beyond SpaceTime have that kind of
tethering so they're they show precisely
how you start with an edrin and how you
project this High dimensional structure
into the four dimensions of SpaceTime so
there's a precise procedure that that
relates the two and they're doing the
same thing with the cosmological
polytopes so so there are the they're
the ones that making the most uh you
know concrete and and fun advances going
Beyond SpaceTime and there they're
they're tethering it right they say this
is precisely the mathematical projection
from this deeper structure into
SpaceTime one one thing I'll say about
as a non- physicist what that I find
interesting is that they're finding just
geometry but there's no notion of
Dynamics right now they're just finding
these static geometric
structures which is impressive I'm so
I'm not putting them down this is what
they're doing is unbelievably
complicated and and Brilliant and uh um
adventurous all the and it's it's all
those things and Beautiful from a human
aesthetic perspective cuz geometry is
beautiful it's it's absolutely and it's
they're finding symmetries that are true
of the data that can't be seen in
SpaceTime but I'm looking for a theory
beyond space time that's a dynamical
theory I would love to find and we can
talk about that it's some point a theory
of Consciousness in which the Dynamics
of Consciousness itself will give rise
to the geometry that the physicists are
finding Beyond SpaceTime if we can do
that then we'd have a completely
different way of looking at how
Consciousness is related to what we call
the brain or the physical world more
generally right right now all of my
brilliant colleagues 99% of them are
trying
to they're they're assuming space time
is fundamental they're assuming that
particles are fundamental quirks gluons
leptons and so forth elements atoms and
so forth are fundamental and that
therefore neurons and brains are part of
objective reality and that somehow when
you get matter that's complicated enough
it will somehow generate conscious
experiences by its functional Properties
or if you're Pan psychist um maybe you
in addition to the physical properties
of particles you add you know a
Consciousness
um property as well and then you have
you combine these physical and conscious
properties to get more complicated ones
but they're all doing it within
SpaceTime all of the work that's being
done on Consciousness and this
relationship to the brain is all assumed
something that our our best theories are
telling us is doomed SpaceTime why does
that particular assumption bother you
the most so you bring up
SpaceTime I mean that's just one useful
interface we've used for a long time uh
surely there's other interfaces is
spacetime just the one of the big ones
that you to build up people's intuition
about the fact that they do assume a lot
of things strongly or or is it in fact a
fundamental flaw in the way we see the
world well everything else that we think
we know are things in
SpaceTime sure and so if you when you
say SpaceTime is doomed this is a shot
to the heart yeah of the whole framework
the whole conceptual framework that
we've had in science not to the
scientific method but to the the
fundamental ontology and also the
fundamental methodology the ontology of
space time and its contents and the
methodology of reductionism which is
that as we go to smaller scales in
SpaceTime we will find more and more
fundamental laws and that's been very
useful for space and time for centuries
reductionism for centuries but but now
we realize that um that's over
reductionism is in fact dead as is
spacetime what exactly is reductionism
what is the process of
reductionism that is
different than uh some of the physicists
that you mentioned that're trying to
think trying to let go of the Assumption
of SpaceTime looking Beyond isn't that
still trying to come up with a simple
model that explained this whole thing
isn't and it's still reducing It's a
Wonderful question because it really
helps to clarify two different Notions
which is scientific explanation on the
one hand and a particular kind of
scientific explanation on the other
which is the reductionist so the
reductionist explanation is saying I
will start with with things that are
smaller in SpaceTime and therefore more
fundamental and where the laws are more
fundamental so we go uh to just smaller
and smaller scales whereas with in
science more generally
we just say like when Einstein did the
special theory of relativity he's saying
let me have a couple postulates I will
assume that the speed of light is
universal for for all
um
observers in uniform motion um and that
the laws of physics so you for for
uniform motion are are the that's not a
reductionist that those are saying grant
me these assumptions I can build this
entire concept of space time out of it
it's not a reductionist thing you're not
going to smaller and smaller scales of
space you're you're coming up with these
deep deep principles same thing with his
theory of gravity right it's it's the
falling elevator idea right so this it's
not a reductionist kind of thing it's
it's it's it's it's something different
so
simplification is a bigger thing than
just reductionism that yeah reductionism
has been a particularly useful kind of
scientific explanation for example in
thermodynamics right where the notion
that we have of heat some macroscopic
thing like temperature and heat it turns
out that NE boltzman and others
discovered well hey you know if we go to
smaller and smaller scales we find these
things called molecules or atoms and if
we think of them as bouncing around
having some kind of um energy then um
what we call heat is is a is really can
be reduced to to that and and so that's
a particularly useful kind of um
reduction is a useful kind of scientific
explanation that works within a range of
scales within SpaceTime but we know now
precisely where that has to stop at 10-
33 cm and 10- 43 seconds and I would be
impressed if it was 10 - 33 trillion CM
I'm not terribly impressed at 10 Theus
cm I don't even know how to comprehend
either of those numbers frankly uh do
just a small side because I am a
computer science person I also find
cellometer beautiful yes and uh so you
have somebody like uh stevenh wol Fromm
who recently has been very excitedly
exploring um a proposal for a data
structure that could be um the numbers
that would make you a little bit happier
in terms of scale because they're very
very very very tiny um so do you like
this space of exploration of really
thinking letting go of space time
letting go of everything and trying to
think what kind of data structures could
be underneath this whole mess that's
right so if they're thinking about these
as outside of space time then that's the
that's what we have to do that's what
our best theories are telling us you now
have to think outside of space now of
course I should back up and say we know
that Einstein surpassed Newton right but
that doesn't mean that there's not good
work to do on Newton there's all sorts
of Newtonian physics that takes us to
the moon and so forth and there's lots
of good problems that we want to solve
with Newtonian physics the same thing
will be true of SpaceTime we we'll still
it's not like we're going to stop using
SpaceTime we'll continue to do all sorts
of good work there but for for those
scientists who are really looking
to go deeper to actually find the next
you know just like what Einstein did to
Newton what what are we going to do to
Einstein how do we get Beyond Einstein
and quantum theory to something deeper
then we have to actually let go and and
if we're going to do like this automata
kind of
approach it's it's critical that it's
not automa in SpaceTime it's automa
prior to SpaceTime from which we're
going to show how SpaceTime emerges if
you're doing automa within space
SpaceTime well that might be a fun model
but it's not the radical new Step that
we
need yeah so the SpaceTime emerges from
that whatever system like you're saying
it's it's a dynamical system do we even
have an understanding what dynamical
means when we go
beyond when when you start to think
about Dynamics it could mean a lot of
things even causality could mean a lot
of things if if we if we realize that
everything is an interface
uh like what how much do we really know
is an interesting question because you
you brought up neurons I got to ask you
another yet another tangent there's a
paper I remember a while ago looking at
called uh could a neuroscientist
understand a microprocessor and I just
enjoyed that thought experiment that
they provided which is they basically
it's a couple of uh neuroscientists Eric
Jonas and Conrad cording uh who used the
tools of Neuroscience to analyze a micro
processor let so computer computer chip
yeah if we leion it here what happens
and so forth and if you go and leion in
computer it's very very clear that leion
experiments on computers are not going
to give you a lot of insight into how it
works and also the measurement devices
and the kind of sort of just using the
basic approaches of Neuroscience
collecting the data uh trying to Intuit
it about the underlying function of it
and that helps you understand that our
scientific exploration of
Concepts uh
depending on the
field are are maybe in the very very
early stages I wouldn't say it leads us
astray perhaps it does sometimes but
it's not a uh it's not anywhere close to
some fundamental mechanism that actually
makes the thing work I don't know if you
can sort of comment on that in terms of
using Neuroscience to understand the
human mind and neurons are we really far
away potentially from uh understanding
in the way we
understand the transistors enough to be
able to build a computer so one one um
one thing about understanding is you can
understand for
fun the other one is to to understand so
you could build things right and and
that's when you really have to
understand uh exactly in fact what got
me into the field that I at MIT was um
work by David Maher on this very topic
so David Maher was a professor at MIT
but he'd done his PhD in Neuroscience
studying just the architectures of the
brain but he realized that his his his
work it was on the cerebellum um he he
realized that his
work as as as rigorous as it was left
him unsatisfied because he didn't know
what the cerebellum was for yeah and and
and why it had that architecture and so
he he went to MIT and he was in the AI
lab there and and uh he he said he had
this three-level approach that really
grabbed my attention so I when I was an
undergrad at UCLA I read one of his
papers in a in a class and said who is
this guy because he said you have to
have a computational theory what is
being computed and
why an algorithm how is it being
computed what what are the prec pro
algorithms and then the hardware how
does it get instantiated in the hardware
and so to really to do Neuroscience he
argued we needed to have um
understanding at all those levels and I
that really got me I loved the
Neuroscience but I realized this guy was
saying if you can't build it you don't
understand it effectively and so that's
why I went to MIT and I I had the
pleasure of working with David until he
he died as just year and a half
later so there was there's been that
idea that you know with Neuroscience we
we have to have in some sense a top-
down model of what what what's being
computed and why that we would then go
after and the same thing with the you
know trying to reverse engineer you know
a Computing system like your laptop we
really would we really need to
understand what the user interface is
about and why we have what are keys on
the the keyboard for and so for you need
to know why to really understand all the
circuit train what it's what it's for
now we don't evolution of natural
selection does not tell us the deeper
question that we're asking the answer to
the deeper question which is why what
what why what what's this deeper reality
and what's it up to and why it all it
tells us is that whatever reality is
it's not what you
see what you see is is just an Adaptive
fiction so of just to linger on this
fascinating bold question that shakes
you out of your dream state does this
fiction still help you in building
intuitions as literary fiction does
about reality
the reason we read literary fiction uh
is it helps us build intuitions and an
understanding in indirect way sneak up
to the difficult questions of human
nature great fiction same with this
observed reality um does this interface
that we get this fictional interface
help us build intuition about deeper
truths of how this whole mess works well
I think that each theory that we propose
will give its own answer to that
question right so when the physicists
are proposing um these structures like
the amplitud hedrin and cosmological
polytope associahedron and so forth
Beyond SpaceTime we can then ask your
question for those specific structures
and say how much information for example
does evolution by natural selection and
the the kinds of sensory uh systems that
we have right now give us about this
deeper reality and and why did we evolve
this way we can try to answer the that
question from within the deeper so
there's not going to be a general answer
I think we're going to what we'll have
to do is posit these new deeper theories
and then try to answer your question
within the framework of those deeper
theories knowing full well that there
will be an even deeper Theory so is it
is this paralyzing though Cu uh how do
we know we're not completely a
drift uh out the sea lost forever from
so like that our theory is completely
lost so if if it's
all um if we can never truly deeply
introspect to the
bottom if it's always just Turtles on
top of turtles
infinitely um isn't that paralyzing for
a scientific mind well it's interesting
that you say introspect to the
bottom because there there is that there
is one I mean again this is In The Same
Spirit of what I said before which is it
depends on what answer you give to
what's beyond SpaceTime what answer we
would give to your question right so but
one answer that um is interesting to
explore is something that spiritual
Traditions have said for thousands of
years but haven't said precisely so we
can't take it seriously in science Until
It's Made precise but we might be able
to make it precise and that is that um
they've they've also said something like
um space and time aren't fundamental
their Maya they their illusion and but
but that um if you look inside if you
introspect uh and let go of all of your
particular
perceptions uh you will come to
something that's beyond conceptual
thought and that is they claim uh being
in contact with the Deep ground of being
that that transcends any particular
conceptual understanding if that is
correct now I'm not saying it's correct
but and I'm not saying it's not correct
I'm just saying if that's correct then
it would be the case that as scientists
because we also are in touch with this
ground of being we would then not be
able to conceptually understand
ourselves all the way but we could know
ourselves just by being
ourselves and so we would there would be
a sense in which there is a fundamental
grounding to the whole Enterprise
because we're not separate from the
Enterprise this is the opposite of third
the the impersonal third person science
this this would make science go personal
personal all the way down and and but
but nevertheless scientific because the
scientific method would still
be what we would use all the way down
for the conceptual understanding
unfortunately you still don't know if
you went all the way down it's possible
that this kind of whatever Consciousness
is and we'll talk about it is getting
um the cliche statement of be
yourself uh is is it it is somehow
digging at a deeper truth of reality but
you still don't know when you get to the
bottom you know a lot of people they'll
take psychedelic drugs and they'll say
well that takes my mind to certain
places where it feels like that is
revealing some deeper truth of reality
but it's still it could be interfaces on
top of interfaces that's that's um in
your view of
this you really don't know I mean it's
G's incompleteness is you really don't
know my own view on it
for what it's
worth because I don't know the right
answer but my own view on it right now
is that it um it's never ending I think
that there will never that this is great
as I said before great um job security
for Science and that we if this is true
and if if Consciousness is somehow
important or fundamental in the universe
this may be an important fundamental
fact about Consciousness itself that
that it's a NeverEnding exploration
that's going on in some sense
well well that's interesting let me push
back on the job security
okay so maybe as we understand this kind
of idea deeper and deeper we understand
that the pursuit is not a fruitful one
then maybe we need to maybe that's why
we don't see aliens everywhere is you
get smarter and smarter and smarter you
realize that like
exploration is uh there's other fun ways
to spend your time than
exploring you could be um you could be
sort of living maximally in some way
that's not
exploration um you know I could there's
all kinds of video games you can
construct and put yourself inside of
them that don't involve you going
outside of the game world it's um you
know feeling for my human perspective
what seems to be fun is challenging
yourself and overcoming those challenges
so you can constantly artificially
generate challenges for yourself like
sis us and his Boulder just and and
that's it so the scientific method
that's always reaching out to the Stars
that's always trying to figure out the
puzzle on bottom puzzle the the always
trying to get to the bottom turtle um
maybe if we can build more and more the
intuition that that's a infinite Pursuit
we get um we agree to start deviating
from that Pursuit and start enjoying the
the Here and Now versus the looking out
into the unknown always maybe that's a
looking out to the unknown is a um
early uh activity for a
species that's evolved I'm just sort of
saying uh pushing back because you
probably got a lot of scientists excited
in terms of job security I could I could
Envision where it's not job security
where scientists become more and more
useless uh maybe they're like the
holders of the ancient wisdom uh that's
that allows us to study our own history
but not much more than that just to well
push back that's good push back I I'll
I'll put one in there for the scientists
again but but but sure but then I'll
take the other side too
so when uh Faraday did all of his
experiments with magnets and electricity
and so forth he came with all this
wonderful empirical data and James Clerk
Maxwell looked at it and wrote down a
few equations which we can now write
down in a single equation the maxal
equation if we use geometric algebra
just one
equation that opened up unbelievable
Technologies you know people were
zooming and talking to each other around
the world um the whole electronics
Industry there was something that
transformed our lives in a very positive
way with the theories Beyond
SpaceTime here's one potential
right now most of the galaxies that we
see um we can see them but we know that
we could never get to them no matter how
fast we traveled they're going away from
us at the speed of light or Beyond so we
can't