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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 we can't ever get to them so
there's all this beautiful real estate
that's just smiling and waving at us and
we can never get to it yeah but that's
if we go through
SpaceTime but if we recognize that
SpaceTime is just a data structure it's
not
fundamental we're not little things
inside SpaceTime SP time is a little
data structure in our perceptions mhm
it's just the other way around once we
understand that and when we get
equations for the stuff that's beyond
SpaceTime maybe we won't have to go
through space time maybe we can go
around it maybe I can go to proximus
centari and not go through space I can
just go right there directly it's a data
structure we can start to play with it
so so I think
that my for what it's worth my take
would be that that the end
L sequence of theories that we could
contemplate building will lead to an
endless sequence of new remarkable
insights into the potentialities the
possibilities that would that would that
would seem miraculous to us and that we
will be motivated to continue the
exploration partly um just for the
technological innovations that that come
out
but you're the other thing that you
mentioned though what about just being
what if we what do we decide instead of
all this doing and exploring what about
being my guess is that the best
scientists will do both and that the act
of
being will be a place where they get
many of their ideas and that they then
pull into the conceptual realm and I
think many of the best scientists you
Einstein comes to mind right where these
guys say look I didn't come up with
these ideas by a conceptual analysis I
was thinking in vague images and I was
it was just something non-conceptual and
then it took me a long long time to pull
it out into Concepts and then longer to
put it into math but the real insights
didn't come from just slavishly you know
playing with equations they came from a
deeper place and so there there there
may be this going back and forth between
the complete
non-conceptual where there's essentially
no end to the wisdom and then conceptual
systems where there's the girdle limits
um that we have to that and that may be
if if Consciousness is is important and
fundamental that may be what
Consciousness at least part of what
Consciousness is about is this
discovering itself discovering his
possibilities so to speak we can talk
about what that might mean um by going
from the non-conceptual to the
conceptual and back back and
forth you get better and better and
better at being
right let me ask you just just to linger
on The
evolutionary because you mentioned
evolutionary Game Theory and that's
really where you the perspective from
which you
come uh to form the case against reality
uh at which point in our evolutionary
history do we start to
deviate the most from reality is it uh
is it way before life even originated on
Earth is it
um in the early development from
bacteria and so
on or is it when some inkings of what we
think of as intelligence or maybe even
uh complex
Consciousness uh started to emerge so
where did this
deviation um just like with the
interfaces on in a computer you know you
start with transistors and then you have
uh assembly and then you have uh C C++
then you have python then you have guies
all that kind you have layers upon
layers when do we start to deviate well
David Mah again my visor at
MIT in his book Vision suggested that
the more primitive sensory systems were
less realistic less veritical but that
by the time you got to something as
complicated as the humans we were
actually TR estimating the true shapes
and distances to objects and so forth so
so his point of view and I think it was
probably it's not an un uncommon view
among my colleagues that that yeah the
sensory systems of lower creatures may
just not be complicated enough to give
them much much truth um but as you get
you know to 86 billion neurons you can
now compute the truth or at least the
parts of the truth that we need when
when I look at evolutionary Game
Theory um one of my graduate students
Justin Mark did some simulations using
genetic algorithms so there he was just
exploring um we start off with random
organisms with random sensory genetics
and random actions and the first
generation was unbelievably they were it
was a foraging situation they were
foraging for resources most of them set
you know stayed in one place didn't do
anything important and and but we could
then just look at how the genes evolved
and and what we found was what what what
what what he found was that uh basically
you never even saw the the the
truth organisms even come on the stage
they they they if they came up they were
gone in one generation they just they
just weren't so they they they came and
got they came and went uh even just in
one generation they they just are not
good enough the ones that were just
tracking their senses just were tracking
the fitness payoffs were were far more
um fit than than um the truth Seekers so
from so an answer at at one level I want
to give an answer at a deeper level but
just with evolutionary Game Theory
because my attitude as a scientist is um
I don't believe any of our
theories I take them very very seriously
I study them I look at their
implications but none of them are the
gospel they're just the latest ideas
that we have and you know so the reason
I study evolutionary game theories
because that's the best tool we have
right now in this area there's there's
there is nothing else that competes and
so as a scientist is my responsibility
to take the best tools and see what they
mean and the same thing the physicists
are doing they're taking the best tools
and looking at what what they entail but
I don't I I think that science now has
enough experience to realize that we
should not believe our theories in the
sense that we've now arrived in 1890 it
was a lot of physicists thought we'd
arrived they were discouraging um Bright
Young students from going into physics
because it was all done and that's
precisely the wrong attitude yep forever
it's the wrong attitude forever we the
attitude we should have is a a century
from now they'll be looking at us and
laughing at what we didn't know and we
just have to assume that that's going to
be the case just just know that
everything that we think is so brilliant
right now our final Theory a century
from now they'll look at us like we look
at the physicists of 1890 and go how
could they have been so dumb yeah so so
I don't want to make that mistake so so
I'm not doctrinaire
about any of our current scientific
theories I am doctrinaire about this we
should use the best tools we have right
now that's we and with with humility
well so let me ask you about Game Theory
there's um I Love Game Theory uh
evolutionary Game Theory um but I'm
always suspicious of it um like
economics um when you construct models
it's too easy to construct things uh
that
oversimplify just um because we are
human brains enjoy the the
simplification of constructing a few
variables that somehow represent
organisms or represent people and
running a simulation that then allows
you to build up intuition and it feels
really good because you get can get some
really deep and surprising intuitions
but how do you know uh your models
aren't the assumption underlying your
models aren't some fundamentally flawed
and because of that your conclusions are
fundamentally flawed so I guess my
question is what are the limits in your
use of Game Theory Evolution game theory
your experience with it what are the
limits of Game Theory so I've gotten
some push back from professional
colleagues and friends who have tried to
rerun simulations and try to mean the
idea that we don't see the truth is not
comfortable and so many of my colleagues
are very interested in trying to show
that we're wrong
and so the idea would be to say that
somehow we did something as you're
suggesting maybe something special that
wasn't completely General um we got some
little special part of the whole search
space in evolutionary game theory in
which this happens to be true but more
generally organisms would evolved to see
the truth so the the
best push back we've gotten is from a
team at Yale and uh they suggested that
um if you use thousands of payoff
functions so we in our simulations we
just use a couple mhm one or two because
it was the first simulations right so
that would be a limit we had one or two
payoff functions we showed the result in
those at least for the genetic
algorithms and they said if you have
20,000 of them then we can find these
conditions in which um truth see seeing
organisms would be the ones that that
evolved and survived and so we looked at
at their simulations and and it it
certainly is the case that you can find
special cases in which truth can evolve
so when I say it's probability zero it
doesn't mean it can't happen it can
happen in fact it could happen
infinitely often it's just probability
zero so probability zero things can
happen infinitely often when you say
probability zero you mean probability
close to zero to be very very precise so
for example if I have a unit
Square on the
plane um and I use a measure in which
the um on a probability measure in which
the area of a region is as probability
mhm then if I draw a curve in that unit
Square it has me measure precisely zero
precisely not approximately precisely
zero and yet it has infinitely many
points so there's an object that for
that probability measure has probability
zero and yet there's infinitely
infinitely many points in it so that's
when I what I mean by when I say that
the things that are probability zero can
happen infinitely often in principle
yeah but Infinity as far as I and I look
up outside off and I walk around and I
look at people I have never seen
Infinity in real
life that's an
interesting issue I've been looking I've
been looking I I don't notice it
infinitely small or the infinitely big
and so the tools and Mathematics you
could sort of apply the same kind of
criticism that it is a very convenient
interface into our reality that's a big
debate in mathematics the intuitionists
versus the ones who take for example the
real numbers as as as as real and that's
that's a fun discussion Nicholas geson
has a physicist had really interesting
work recently on how if you go with
intuitionist
mathematics uh you could effectively
quantize Newton and you find that the
Newtonian Theory and and quantum theory
aren't that different once you go with
funny it's really quite interesting so
so the the issue you raised is a very
very deep one and one that I think we
should take quite seriously which is you
know how should we think about the
reality of the contous hierarchy Alf one
alf2 and all these all these different
um Infinities versus um just um a more
algorithmic approach right so where it's
everything's computable in some sense
everything's finite as big as you want
but but but nevertheless finite um so
yeah they ultimately boils down to
whether the world is disc or continuous
in some general sense and again we can't
really know but there's just um a mind
breaking thought just common sense
reasoning that something can happen and
is yet probability of it happening is
0% that doesn't that doesn't uh compute
for common sense computer right um this
is where you have to be be a sharp
mathematician to really and I'm not
sharp is one word what I'm saying is
Common Sense computers I I mean that uh
in a very kind
of in a positive sense because we've
been talking about perception systems
and interfaces if we were if we are to
reason about the world we have to use
the best interfaces we got and I'm not
exactly
sure uh that game theory is the best
interface we got for this oh right and
and application of mathematic
uh tricks and tools and Mathematics the
game theory is the best we got when we
are thinking about the nature of reality
and faithness functions and evolution
period right well that's a fair
rejoinder and I think that um that that
was the tool that we used and if if
someone says here's a better
mathematical tool and here's why this is
this mathematical tool better captures
the essence of Darwin's idea John Mard
Smith didn't quite get it with
evolutionary Game Theory there's this
better this thing now there are tools
like evolutionary graph Theory which
generalize evolutionary Game Theory and
then there's Quantum Game Theory so so
you can you can use uh Quantum tools
like entanglement for example as as a
resource in games that that change the
very nature of of the solutions of the
Optimal Solutions of the game
theoretic well the the the work from Y
is really interesting it's a really
interesting challenge of that kind of of
these ideas where okay if you have a
very large number of Fitness functions
or let's say you have a nearly infinite
number of Fitness functions or a growing
number of Fitness functions what what
kind of interesting things uh start to
emerging uh emerging if if you are to be
an organism if to be an organism that
adapts means having to deal with an
ensemble of Fitness
functions right and so we've actually
redone some of our own work based on
theirs and this is the the back and
forth that we expect in science right
and what we found was that they in their
simulations they were assuming that you
couldn't carve the world up into objects
that uh and so we said well let's relax
that assumption allow organisms to
create data structures that we might
call Objects and an object would be you
take you you would do hierarchical
clustering of your Fitness payoff
functions the ones that have similar
shapes if if have 20,000 of them maybe
these 50 are all very very similar so I
can take all the perception action
Fitness stuff and make that into a data
structure and we'll call that a unit or
an object and as soon as we did that
then all of their results went away it
turned out they were the special case
and that the the organisms that were
allowed to only see that that that were
shaped to see only Fitness payoffs were
the ones that were so so the idea is
that objects then what are objects from
an evolutionary point of view this
bottle um we thought that when I saw a
bottle it was because I was seeing a
true object that existed whether or not
it was
perceived
evolutionary theories suggest a
different interpretation I'm seeing a
data structure that is
encoding a convenient way of looking at
various Fitness PS I can use this for
drinking MH I could use it as a weapon
not very good one I can beat someone
over the head with it um if my goal is
mating this is pointless so I'm seeing
for what I'm coding here is all sorts of
actions and the payoffs that I could get
when I pick up an apple now I'm getting
a different set of actions and pay and
and payoffs for when I pick up a rock
I'm getting so for every object what I'm
getting is a different set of payoff
functions um and act with various
actions and so once you allow that then
what you find is once once again that
truth goes inct and the organisms that
just get an interface are the ones that
that win but the question uh just
sneaking up on this is
fascinating from where do Fitness
functions originate what gives birth to
the fitness functions so if there's a
giant black box of that just keeps
giving you Fitness functions what are we
trying to optimize you said that water
um has
different
um uses than an apple so there's these
objects what are we trying to optimize
and why is not reality a really good
generator of Fitness
functions so each Theory makes its own
assumptions and says grant me this then
I'll explain that so evolutionary Game
Theory says grant me Fitness payoffs
right and Grant me strategies with
payoffs and I can write down a matrix
with this strategy interacts with that
strategy these are the payoffs that come
up if you grant me that then I can start
to to explain a lot of things now you
can ask for deeper question like okay
how does physics evolve biology and
where do these Fitness payoffs come from
right
now that would be that's a completely
different Enterprise and of course
evolutionary Game Theory then would be
not the the right tool for that it would
have to be a deeper tool that shows
where evolutionary Game Theory comes
from my own take is that there's going
to be a problem doing
that because SpaceTime isn't
fundamental it's just a user
interface and that the distinction that
we make between living and
non-living is not a fundamental
distinction it's an artifact of the
limits of our
interface right so this is a new wrinkle
and this is an important wrinkle what
it's so nice to take space and time as
fundamental because if something looks
like it's inanimate it's it's inanimate
and we can just say it's it's not living
now it's much more complicated certain
things are obviously living I'm talking
with you I I'm obviously interacting
with some something that's alive and and
conscious I think we've let go of the
word obviously in this conversation I
think nothing is obvious nothing is
obvious that's right but when we get
down to to like you an ant it's
obviously living but well I'll say it
appears to be living but when get down
to a virus now people wonder and when we
get down to you know protons people say
it's not living and and my attitude is
look I have a user
interface interface is there to hide
certain aspects of reality and others to
to well
to it's an uneven representation put it
that way certain things just get
completely hidden dark matter and dark
energy are most of the energy and matter
that's out there our interface just
plain flat out hides them mhm the only
way we get some hint is because
gravitational things are going wrong
within our so so most things are outside
of our of our interface the distinction
between living and
non-living is not fundamental it's an
artifact of our interface so if so this
is the if we really really want to
understand where Evolution comes
from to answer the question the Deep
question you asked I think the the right
way we're going to have to do that is to
come up with a deeper Theory than
SpaceTime in which there may not be the
notion of time
and show that whatever this dynamics of
that deeper theory
is and by the way I'll talk about how
you could have Dynamics without time but
the Dynamics of this deeper Theory when
we project it
into in certain ways then we do get
SpaceTime and we get what appears to be
evolution by natural selection so I
would love to see evolution by natural
selection nature readed and tooth and
Claw people fighting animals fighting
for resource and the whole bit come out
of a deeper theorum which perhaps it's
all cooperation
there's no no limited resources and so
forth but as a result of projection you
get space and time and as a result of
projection you get nature red and tooth
and Claw the appearance of it but it's
all an artifact of the interface I like
this idea that uh the line between
living and non-living is very
important because that's that's a thing
that would emerge before you have
Evolution the idea of
death um
so that seems to be an important
component of natural selection if and if
that emerged because that's
also um you know asking the question I
guess that I ask where do Fitness come
uh Fitness functions come from that's
like
asking the old meaning of life question
right is a what's the why
why why and one of the big underlying
yse okay you can start with Evolution on
Earth but without living without life
and death without the line between the
living and the dead you don't have
Evolution so what if underneath it
there's no such thing as the living in
the
dead there's no uh like this concept of
an organism period there's a living
organism that's defined by a volume in
SpaceTime that somehow
interacts that uh over time maintains
its Integrity
somehow it has some kind of History it
has a wall of some kind the outside
world the environment and then inside
there's an organism MH so you're
defining an organism and also you're
Define that organism by the fact that it
can
move and it can be come alive which you
kind of think of as
moving combined with the fact that it's
keeping itself separate from the
environment so you can point out that
thing is living and then it can also
die uh that seems to be a all very
powerful component of SpaceTime that
enable you to have something like
natural selection and evolution um well
and there's a lot of interesting work
some of it um by collaborators of Carl
friston and others where they they have
um baset kind of stuff that they build
on and the notion of a Markov blanket so
you have some states within this network
that are inside the blanket then you
have the blanket and then the states
outside the blanket and the states
inside this Markov blanket are
conditionally independent of the states
outside the blank blank blanket
conditioned on the blanket and what
they're what they're looking at is that
the Dynamics inside of the states inside
the Markov blanket seem to be trying to
estimate properties of the outside and
and and react to them in a way so it
seems like you're doing probalistic
inferences and ways that might be able
to to to keep you alive so there's
interesting work going on in in in that
direction but but but what I'm saying is
is something slightly different and that
is like when I when I look at you all I
see is skin hair and eyes right that's
all I see
but I know that there's a deeper reality
I believe that there's a much deeper
reality there's the whole world of your
experiences your thoughts your hopes
your dreams in some sense the face that
I see is is just a symbol that I create
right and as soon as I look away that I
I delete that symbol but I don't delete
you I don't delete the conscious
experience the the the whole world of
your so I I'm I'm only deleting an
interface symbol but that interface
symbol
is a portal so to speak uh not a perfect
portal but a genuine portal into your
beliefs into your conscious experiences
into that's why we can have a
conversation we we genuinely but your
Consciousness is genuinely affecting
mine and mine is genuinely affecting
yours through these icons which which I
create on the Fly I I mean I create your
face when I look I delete it I don't
create you your Consciousness that's
there all the time um but but I do so
now when I look at a cat I'm creating
something that I still call living and I
I still think is conscious when I look
at an ant I create something that I
still would call living but maybe not
conscious when I when I look at
something I call a virus now I'm not
even sure I would call it living and
when I look at a proton I would say I
don't even think it's it's not alive at
all it could be that I'm
nevertheless interacting with something
that's just as conscious is you I'm not
saying the proton is conscious the face
that I'm creating when I look at you
that face is not conscious that face is
a data structure in me that face is it's
an experience it's not an
experiencer S similarly a proton is is
is something that I create you know when
I look or do a collision in the large
hyron collider or something like
that but what is behind the entity in
SpaceTime so I've got this SpaceTime
interface and I just got this entity
that I call proton what is the reality
behind it well the physicists are
finding these big big structures
amplitud hedrin ass
soedin what's behind those could be
Consciousness what I'm playing with in
which case when I'm interacting with a
proton I could be interacting with
Consciousness again to be very very
clear because this easy to Mis I'm not
saying a proton is conscious just like
I'm not saying your face is conscious
your face is a symbol I create and then
delete
as I look and so your face is not
conscious but I know that that face in
my interface the The Lex Freedman face
that I create is an interface symbol
that's a genuine portal into your
Consciousness the portal is is less
clear for a cat even less clear clear
for an ant and by the time we get down
to a proton the portal is not clear at
all but that doesn't mean I'm not
interacting with Consciousness it just
means my interface gave up and there's
some some deeper reality that we have to
go after so so that so you're question
really forces out a big part of this
whole approach that I'm talking about so
it's this portal and conscious I wonder
why you can't your portal is not as good
to a cat to the cat's
Consciousness than it is to a human does
it have to be have to do with the fact
that you're
human and just similar organisms
organisms of similar complexity are able
to create portals better to each other
or is it just is more and more complex
you get better and better
portals well let me answer one one
aspect of that that I'm more confident
about then I'll speculate on that why is
why is it that the portal is so bad with
protons well and and and Elementary
particles more generally so quirks
leptons and gluons and so forth well the
reason for that is because those are
just symmetries of
SpaceTime more technically they're
irreducible representations of the poin
cray group of SpaceTime
so they're just literally
representations of the data structure of
SpaceTime that we're using so that's why
they're not very much insightful they're
they're just almost entirely tied to the
data structure itself there's there's
not much that they're telling you only
something about the data structure not
behind the data structure it's only when
we get to higher levels that we're
starting to in some sense build portals
to what's behind SpaceTime sure yeah so
there's more and more
um complexity built on top of the
interface of SpaceTime with the cat so
you can actually build a portal
right yeah
right ah yeah I this interface of face
and hair and so
on
skin there's some sinking going on
between humans though where we sink like
you're you're getting a pretty good
representation of the ideas in my head
and starting to get a foggy
view of uh my memories in my head even
though you know this is the first time
we're talking you start to project your
own memories you start to solve like a
giant hierarchy of puzzles about a human
because we're all uh there's a lot of
similarities a lot of it Rhymes so you
start to make a lot of inferences you
build up this model of a person you have
a pretty sophisticated model what's
going on uh
underneath again I just um I wonder if
it's possible to construct these models
about each other and nevertheless be
very distant from an underlying
reality this there's a lot of work on
this so there's some interesting work
called signaling games where they they
look at how people can coordinate and uh
come to communicate there's some
interesting work that was done by some
colleagues and friends of mine um Lewis
narens Natalia karova and Kimberly
Jameson where they um were looking
at evolving color words so you have a
circle of colors know this the color
circle and they wanted to see if they
could get people to cooperate on how
they carve the color circle up into two
units of
words and so they had a game theoretic
kind of thing that they'd had people do
and what they found was that when they
included so most people are TR
you have three kinds of cone photo
receptors but there are some a lot of
men 7% of men have are dichromats they
might be missing the red cone photo
receptor they found that the dichromats
had an outsized influence on the final
ways that the whole Space of colors was
carved up and and labels attached you
needed to be able to include the
dichromats in the conversation and so
they had a bigger influence on how you
made the boundaries of the language I
thought that was a really interesting
kind of insight that that there's going
to be again a game perhaps a game or
evolutionary or genetic algorithm kind
of thing that goes on in terms of
learning to communicate in ways that
that are useful and uh so yeah you can
use Game Theory to to actually explore
that or signaling games um there's a lot
of brilliant work on that I'm not doing
it but there's work out there so if it's
okay let us tackle once more and perhaps
several more times after the big topic
of Consciousness okay this this very
beautiful powerful things that perhaps
is the thing that makes us human what is
it what's the role of Consciousness in
um let's say even just the thing we've
been talking about which is the
formation of this
interface um any kind of ways you want
to kind of start sure uh talking talking
about it well let me say first what most
of my colleagues
say 99% of are again assuming that
SpaceTime is fundamental particles in
SpaceTime matter is
fundamental and most are
reductionist and so the standard
approach to Consciousness is to figure
out
what complicated systems of matter with
the right functional properties could
possibly lead to the emergence of
Consciousness that's the general idea
right so maybe you have to have neurons
Maybe
only if you have neurons but that might
not be enough they have to certain kinds
of complexity in their their
organization and their Dynamics certain
kind of network abilities for
example so
there's there are those who say for
example that um Consciousness arises
from orchestrated collapse of quantum
states of microtubules in
neurons so this is Hammer off and
Penrose have that's kind of so it's it's
a you start with something
physical property of quantum states of
neurons of microtubes and neurons and
you say that somehow an orchestrated
collapse of those um is consciousness or
conscious experiences or integrated
information Theory again you start with
something physical and if it has the
right kind of functional properties
something they call Fee with the right
kind of integrated information then you
have
Consciousness or you can be a panus
Philip goof for example where you you
might say well in addition to the the
particles in space and time those
particles are not just matter they also
could have say a unit of
Consciousness um and so but once again
you're taking space and time and
particles as fundamental and you're
adding um a new property to them see
Consciousness and then you have to talk
about how when a proton and neutron
where proton and electron get together
to form hydrogen then how those
consciousnesses
merge to or interact to create the
consciousness of of hydrogen and so
forth um there's a tension schema Theory
which again is how neural
network processes representing to the
network itself its attentional processes
that could be Consciousness um there's
Global workspace Theory uh and neuronal
Global workspace the workspace Theory so
there's many many theories of this type
what's what's common to all of them is
they assume that space time is
fundamental they assume that physical
processes in SpaceTime is fundamental
psychism adds Consciousness as an
additional thing is almost dualist in
that
regard and my attitude is our best
science is telling us that SpaceTime is
not fundamental
so why is that important here well for
centuries deep thinkers thought of earth
air fire and water as the fundamental
elements it was a reductionist kind of
idea nothing was more Elemental than
those and you could you could sort of
build everything up from those when we
got the periodic table of
elements we realized that um of course
we want to study earth air Fire and
Water there's combustion science for
fire there's you know um there's
Sciences for for all these other things
water and so forth so we're going to do
science with these things but but
fundamental no no know if you're looking
for something fundamental those are the
wrong building blocks Earth has many
many different kinds of elements that
project into the one thing that we call
Earth if you don't understand that
there's silicon that there's iron that
there's all these different kinds of
things that project into what we call
Earth you're you're you're hopelessly
lost you you're not fundamental you're
not going to get there and then after
the periodic table then we came up with
quarks leptons and gluons the the
particles of the standard you know the
standard model of physics and and and so
we actually now know that if you really
want to get
fundamental the periodic table isn't it
it's good for chemistry it's just
wonderful for chemistry but if you're
trying to go deep fundamental what is
the fundamental science that's not it
you're going to have to go to quarks
leptons and gluons and so forth well now
we've discovered SpaceTime itself is
doomed quarks leptons and gluons are
just irreducible representations of the
symmetries of
SpaceTime so the whole framework on
which Consciousness research is being
based right now is doomed and for me
these are my friends and colleagues that
are doing this they're brilliant they're
ABS they're they're they're brilliant I
my feeling
is I'm so
sad that they're stuck with this old
framework because if they they weren't
stuck like with earth air Fire and Water
you could actually make progress so it
doesn't matter how smart you are if you
start with earth air Fire and Water
you're not going to get anywhere right
can I actually just uh uh because the
word doomed is so interesting let me
give you some options multiple choice
quiz uh is spacetime we could say is
reality the way we perceive it
doomed um
wrong or fake because doomed just means
it could still be right and we're now
ready to go
deeper it would be that so it's not
wrong it's not a complete deviation from
a journey toward the truth right it's
like earth air fire and water is not
wrong there is earth air Fire and Water
that's a useful framework but it's not
fundamental right well there's also
wrong which is they used to believe as I
recently learned that George Washington
was uh the president the first president
of the United States was bled to death
uh for something that could have been
easily treated uh because it was
believed that you can get actually I
need to look into this further but I
guess you get toxins out or demons out I
don't know what you're getting out with
the bleeding of a person right um but so
that ended up being wrong but widely
believed as a medical tool so it's also
possible that our Assumption of
SpaceTime is not just doomed but is
wrong well if we believe that it's
fundamental that's wrong but if we
believe it's a useful tool that's right
but it could see but bleeding somebody
to death was believed to be a useful
tool wrong it wasn't just not
fundamental it was very I'm sure there's
cases in which bleeding somebody would
work but it would be a very tiny tiny
tiny percentage of cases uh so could be
that it's wrong like it's a side road
that's ultimately leading to a dead end
as opposed to a truck stop or something
that you can get off of my feeling is is
not the dead end kind of thing I I think
that the what the physicists are finding
is that there are these structures
Beyond SpaceTime but they project back
into SpaceTime and so SpaceTime when
they when they say SpaceTime is doomed
they're explicit they're saying it's
doomed in the sense that we thought it
was fundamental it's not fundamental
right it's a use useful absolutely
useful and Brilliant data structure but
there are deeper data structures like
cosmological polytop and and and
SpaceTime is not fundamental what is
doomed in the sense that it's wrong is
reductionism which is saying SpaceTime
is
fundamental right right the idea that
that
somehow being smaller in space and time
or SpaceTime is a fundamental nature of
reality that's is a that's that's just
wrong it turned out to be a useful
heuristic for for thermodynamics and so
forth and and several other places it
reductionism has been very useful but
that's some sense an artifact of how we
use our interface um yes so you're
saying Size Doesn't Matter okay this is
very important for me to write down UL
ultimately ultimately right it's useful
for for theories like thermodynamics and
also for understanding brain networks in
terms of of individual Nur and neurons
in terms of of chemical systems inside
cells that's all very very useful but
but the idea that we're getting to the
more fundamental nature of reality no
when when you get all the way down in
that direction you get down to the corks
and gluons what you realize is what
you've gotten down to is not fundamental
reality just the irreducible
representations of a data structure
that's all you've gotten down to so
you're always stuck inside the data
structure so you seem to be getting
closer and closer went from neural
networks to neurons neurons to chemistry
chemistry to particles particles to
clerks and gluons I'm getting closer and
closer to the real no I'm getting closer
and closer to the the actual structure
of the data structure of space and time
the irreducible representations that's
what you're getting closer to not to a
deeper understanding of what's beyond
space time we'll also refer we'll return
again to this question of Dynamics
because you keep saying that SpaceTime
is doomed but mostly focusing on the
space part part of that it's very
interesting to see why why time gets the
bad credit too because how do you have
Dynamics without time is the thing I'd
love to talk to you a little bit about
but let us
return um your brilliant Whirlwind
overview of the different theories of
Consciousness that are out
there what is consciousness if outside
of space time if we think that we want
to have a model of Consciousness we as
scientists then have to say what do we
want to write down what what what kind
of mathematical model are we going to
write down right and if you think about
it there's lots of things that you might
want to write down about Consciousness
really complicated subject um so most of
my colleagues are saying let's start
with matter or neurons and and um say
what properties of matter could create
Consciousness but I'm saying that that
whole thing is out SpaceTime is doomed
that whole thing is out we need to look
at Consciousness qua
Consciousness in other words not as
something that arises in space and time
but perhaps it's something that creates
space and time as a data
structure so what do we want and here
again there's no hard and fast rule but
what you as a scientist have to do is to
pick what you think are the
minimal assumptions that are going to
allow you to boot up a comprehensive
theory that is the
trick so what do I want so what what I
chose to do was to have three
things I said that there are conscious
experiences feeling of headache the
smell of garlic um experiencing the
color red there are those are conscious
so that's a primitive of theory and the
reason I want few Primitives why because
those are the Miracles of the theory
right The Primitives the assumptions of
e theal the things you're not going to
explain those are the things you assume
and those experiences you particularly
mean there there's a subjectiveness to
them that's right it's the thing when
people refer to the hard problem of
consciousness
is it feels like something to look at
the color red okay exactly right it
feels like something to have a headache
or or to feel upset to your stomach it
feels like something and so th so I'm
going to grant that in this Theory there
are experiences and they're fundamental
in some sense so conscious experience so
they're not derived from physics they're
not functional properties of particles
they are penous they're they exist just
like we assume SpaceTime exists I'm now
saying SpaceTime is just a data
structure it doesn't exist independent
of conscious experiences ex sorry to
interrupt once again but should we be
focusing in your thinking on humans
alone or is there
something about in relation to other
kinds of organisms that have a
sufficiently high level of complexity or
even uh or is there some kind of uh
generalization of the panus idea that
all ious permeates all matter outside of
the usual definition of what matter is
inside SpaceTime so it's beyond human
consciousness human consciousness from
my point of view would be one of a
countless variety of
consciousnesses and even within human
consciousness there's a there's
countless variety of consciousnesses
within us right you have your left and
right
Hemisphere and apparently if you split
the Corpus kosum the the personality of
the left hemisphere and the religious
beliefs of the left hemisphere can be
very different from the right Hemisphere
and their conscious experiences can be
disjoint one could have one conscious
experience they can play 20 Questions
the left hemisphere can have an idea in
its mind and the right hemisphere has to
guess and it might not get it so so even
within you there it's it's more than
just one Consciousness it's lots of
consciousnesses so I the the general
theory of Consciousness that I'm after
is not just human consciousness it's
going to be just Consciousness and I
presume human cons ious is a tiny drop
in the bucket of the infinite variety of
consciousnesses that said I should
clarify that the black hole of
Consciousness is uh the the the home cat
I'm pretty sure cats
lack uh is the embodiment of evil and
lack all capacity for Consciousness or
uh compassion so I just want to lay that
on the table that's a theory I'm working
I I don't have any good evidence but the
black cat intu that's just a shout
out uh sorry to distract so that's the
first assumption the first assumption
that's right the the second assumption
is that these experiences have
consequences so I'm going to say that
conscious experiences can trigger other
conscious experiences
somehow so so really in some sense there
there's two basic assumptions your
there's some kind of causality is there
is a chain of causal does there relate
Dynamics I'll say there's a
probabilistic relationship okay and then
then so I'm trying to be as non-specific
to begin with and see where it it leads
me so what I can write down are
probability spaces so probability space
which contains the conscious experiences
that this Consciousness can have so I
I'll I call this a conscious
agent this technical thing know I I
Anica Harris and I have talked about
this and and she rightly cautions me
that people will think that I'm bringing
in a notion of a self or agency and and
so forth when I say conscious agent so I
just want to say that I use the term
conscious agent merely as a technical
term there is no notion of Self in my
fundamental definition of a conscious
agent there are only experiences and
probabilistic relationships that of how
they trigger other experiences so the
agent is the generator of the conscious
experience the agent is a mathematical
structure that includes a probability
measure the probability space
of of possible conscious experiences and
what and a marvian kernel which
describes how if this agent has certain
conscious experiences how that will
affect the experiences of other
conscious agents okay including itself
but you don't think of that as a self no
there there is no notion of of a self
here there's no notion of of really of
an
agent but is there a
locality is there an organism there's no
is this is um these are conscious units
conscious entities but they're distinct
in some way because they have to
interact well so here's the interesting
thing when we write down the mathematics
um when you have two of these conscious
agents interacting they the the pair
satisfy a definition of a conscious
agent so they are a single conscious
agent so there is one conscious agent
yeah but it it has a nice analytic
decomposition into as many conscious
agent that's a nice interface it's a
very useful scientific interface yeah
it's it's a scale-free or if you like a
fractal-like approach to it in which we
can use the same unit of analysis at all
scales in in studying Consciousness but
if I want to talk about so there's no
notion of
learning memory problem solving
intelligence self agency so none of that
is fundamental
so and the reason I did that was because
I want to assume as little as possible
everything I assume is a miracle in the
theory it's not something you explain
it's something you assume so I have to
build networks of conscious
agents if I want to have a notion of a I
have to build a self I have to build
learning memory problem solving
intelligence and planning all these
different things I have to build
networks of conscious agents to do that
it's a trivial theorem that networks of
conscious agents are computational
Universal that's trivial so anything
that we can do with neural networks or
you know automa you can do with networks
of conscious agents that's trivial what
but you can also do more the events in
the probability space need not be
computable so the marvian Dynamics is
not restricted to computable functions
because the very events themselves need
not be computable so so this can capture
any computable Theory anything we can do
with neural networks we can do with
conscious agent
networks but but it leaves open the door
for the possibility of of non-computable
um interactions between conscious agents
so we have to to if we want a theory of
of
memory we have to build it and there's
lots of different ways you could build
we've actually got a paper Chris Fields
took the lead on this and he he we have
a paper called conscious agent networks
where where Chris takes the lead and
shows how to use these networks of
conscious agents to build memory and to
build primitive kinds of of of learning
but can you uh provide some intuition of
what conscious networks network of
conscious networks of conscious agents
helps you what first of all what that
looks
like uh and I don't just mean
mathematically of course maybe that
might help build up intuition but how
that helps us potentially solve the hard
problem of
Consciousness right or is that baked in
that that
exists I I is the the can you solve the
hard problem of Consciousness why it
tastes delicious when you eat a
delicious ice
cream uh with networks of conscious
agents or is that taken as an assumption
so the the standard way the heart
problem is thought of is we're assuming
space and time and particles or neurons
for
example these are just physical things
that that have no consciousness and we
have to explain how the conscious
experience of the taste of chocolate
could emerge from those so that's the
typical hard problem of Consciousness is
that problem right how do you boot up
the taste of chocolate the the
experience of the taste of chocolate
from neurons say or the right kind of
artificial intelligence
circuitry how do you boot that up that's
that's typically what the hard problem
of Consciousness means to to researchers
notice that I'm changing the problem I'm
I'm not trying to boot up conscious
experiences from the Dynamics of neurons
or silicon or something like that I'm
saying that that's the wrong
problem my heart problem would go in the
other direction if I start with
conscious experiences how do I build up
space and time how do I build up what I
call the physical world how do I build
up what we call
brains because I'm saying Consciousness
is not something that brains do brains
are something that Consciousness makes
up it's one among the experience it's an
exper an ephemeral experience in
Consciousness I look inside so to be
very very clear right now I have no
neurons if you looked you would see
neurons that's a data structure that you
would create on the Fly and it's a very
useful one as soon as you look away you
garbage collect that data structure just
like that necro Cube that I was talking
about on the piece of paper when you
look you see a 3D cube you create it on
the fly as soon as you look away that's
gone when you say you you mean a human
being scientist right now that's right
more generally it'll be conscious agents
because as you as you pointed out in my
asking for a theory of Consciousness
only about humans no it's it's
Consciousness which human consciousness
is just a tiny sliver so but you are
saying that there is that's a useful
data structure how many other data
structures are there that's why I said
you human if there's another Earth if
there's another alien civilization in
doing these kinds of Investigations
would they come up with similar data
data structures probably not what is the
space of data structures I guess is what
I'm asking
um my my my guess is that if
Consciousness is
fundamental Consciousness is all there
is then the only thing that mathematical
structure can be about is possibilities
of
Consciousness and that suggest to me
that there could be an infinite variety
of
consciousnesses and
ADV vanishingly small fraction of them
use SpaceTime data structures and the
kinds of structures that we use there's
an infinite variety of data structures
now this is very similar to something
that Max tegmark has said but I want to
distinguish it he has this his level
four uh Multiverse idea he he thinks
that mathematics is
fundamental and and so that's the
fundamental reality and and since
there's an infinite variety of endless
variety of mathematical structures
there's an infinite variety of
multiverses in his view mhm I'm saying
something similar in spirit but
importantly different there's an
infinite variety of mathematical
structures
absolutely but mathematics isn't the
fundamental reality in this in this
framework Consciousness is and
Mathematics is to Consciousness like
bones are to an organism you need the
bones so mathematics is is not divorced
from Consciousness but it's not the
entirety of Consciousness by any means
and so there's an infinite variety of of
cons ious consciousnesses and and and
signaling games that consciousnesses
could interact via and therefore worlds
you know Common worlds data
structures that they can use to to
communicate so space and time is just
one of an infinite variety and so I I
think that what we'll what we'll find is
that as we go outside of our little
SpaceTime bubble
um we will encounter utterly alien forms
of conscious experience
that we may not be able
to
really comprehend in the in the
following sense if I if I ask you to
imagine a color that you've never seen
before do anything
happen right nothing happens right yeah
no nothing happens and and that's just
one color I'm asking for just a color we
we actually know by the way that there
apparently there are women um called
Tetra um who have four color
receptors not just three and Kimberly
Jameson and others who studied these
women have good evidence that they
apparently have a new dimension of color
experience that the rest of us don't
have so so these women are apparently
living in a world of color that you and
I can't even concretely imag no man can
imagine them yeah and and yet they're
real color experiences and so in that
sense I'm saying now take that little
baby step oh there are women who have
color experiences that I could never
have well that's shocking now take that
infinite there are consciousnesses where
every aspect of their their experiences
or is like that new color it's something
utterly alien to you you you have
nothing like that and yet these are all
possible varieties of conscious
experience when you say there's a lot of
consciousnesses it's a singular
Consciousness basically the set of
possible experiences you can have in
that subjective way as opposed to the me
the underlying
mechanism CU you say that you know
having a extra color receptor uh ex you
know ability to have new experiences
that's somehow a different Consciousness
is there a way to see that as all the
same Consciousness the subjectivity
itself right because when we have two of
these conscious agents interacting
mathematics they actually satisfy the
definition of a conscious agent so in
fact they are a single conscious agent
so so in fact one way to think about
what I'm saying i' I'm postulating with
my colleagues jayon and Chris and others
Robert prenner and so forth um there is
one big conscious agent infinitely
complicated but fortunately we can for
analytic purposes break it down all the
way to in some sense the simplest
conscious agent which has one conscious
experience one I this this one agent can
experience red 35 that's it that's what
it that's what it experiences you can
get all the way down to that
so you think it's possible that
Consciousness whatever that
is is uh much more is fundamental or at
least much more in the direction of the
fundamental than is space time as we
perceive it that's the
proposal and therefore what I have to do
in terms of the hard problem of
Consciousness is to show how dynamical
systems of conscious agents could lead
to what we call space and time and
neurons and brain activity in other
words we have to show how you get space
time and physical
objects in entirely from a theory of
conscious agents outside of SpaceTime
with the Dynamics outside of SpaceTime
so that's that's and I can tell you how
we plan to to do that but but that's
that's the idea okay the magic of it
that chocolate is
delicious so so there's a mathematical
kind of thing that we could say here how
it can emerge within this system of uh
networks of conscience agents but
um is there going to be at the end of of
the proof why chocolate is so
delicious or or no I guess I'm I'm going
to ask different kinds of dumb questions
to try to sneak up sure oh well that's
the right question and when I say that I
took conscious experiences is
fundamental what that means is in the
current version of my theory I'm not
explaining conscious experiences where
they came from that's the miracle that's
one of the Miracles so I have two
miracles on my theory there are
conscious experiences like the taste of
chocolate and that the there's a
probabilistic relationship when certain
conscious experiences occur others are
more likely to occur those are the two
Miracles that possible to get
beyond that and somehow start to chip
away at the miracl of that miracle that
chocolate is delicious I hope so I've
got my hands full with what I'm doing
right now but but the I can just say a
top level how I would think about that
that would get at
this Consciousness without
form this this is going to be really
this is really tough because it's
Consciousness without form versus the
various forms that Consciousness takes
for the experiences that it has
right right so there's so when I write
down a probability space for these
conscious experience I say here's a
probability space for the possible
conscious experiences right it's just
like when I write down a probability
space for an experiment like I'm going
to flip a coin twice right and I I want
to look at the probabilities of various
outcomes so I have to write down the
probability space there could be heads
heads Heads Tails Tails heads Tails
Tails so you before as any class in
probability you're told write down your
probability space if you don't write
down your probability space you can't
get started so here's my probability
space for Consciousness how do I want to
interpret that structure the structure
is just sitting there there's going to
be a dynamics that happens on it right
experiences are appear and then they
disappear just like heads appears and
disappears so so one way to think about
that fundamental probability space is
that corresponds to Consciousness
without any content
the infinite
Consciousness that transcends any
particular content well do you think of
that as a mechanism as a
thing like the rules that govern the
Dynamics of the thing outside of
SpaceTime isn't that if if you think
conscious is fundamental isn't it
essenti you're getting like it is
solving the hard problem which is like
from uh where does this thing pop up
which is the mechanism of the thing
popping up whatever the Consciousness is
the different kinds of so on that
mechanism and also the the question I
want to ask is uh how how tricky do you
think it is to solve that problem we've
solved a lot of difficult problems
throughout the history of humanity um
there's
probably more problems to solve left
that we've solved by like an infinity
uh but along that long journey of
intelligent
species how when will we solve this
Consciousness one which is one way to
measure the difficulty of the problem so
I'll give two answers there's one
problem I think we can
solve but we haven't solved yet and that
is the reverse of what my colleagues
call the hard
problem the problem of how do you start
with conscious experiences in the way
that I've just described them and the
Dynamics and build up space and time and
brains
that I think is a tough technical
problem but it's in principle solvable
so I think we can solve that so we would
solve the hard problem not by showing
how brains create Consciousness but how
networks of conscious agents create what
we call the the symbols that we call
brains so that that I think but that
does that allow you to so that's
interesting that's an interesting idea
Consciousness creates the brain not the
brain creates Consciousness but does
that allow you to build the thing my
guess is that it will enable un
believable Technologies once and I'll
I'll tell you why I think it plugs into
the work that the physicists are doing
so this Theory Of Consciousness will be
even deeper than the structures that the
physicists are finding like the amplitud
hedrin but the other but the other
answer to your question is less
positive I as I said earlier I think
that there is no such thing as a theory
of
everything so
that I think that my the theory that my
team is working on this conscious agent
theory is just a 1.0 Theory
Theory we're using probability spaces
and marov and kernels I can easily see
people now saying well we can do better
if we go to category Theory and we can
get a deeper perhaps more interesting
and then someone will say well now I'll
go to Topo Theory and then there'll be
so I I imagine that there'll be you know
conscious agents five 10 3 trillion
.0 but I think it will never end I think
ultimately this question that that we
sort of put our fingers on of
how does the
formless give birth to
form to The Taste the wonderful taste of
chocolate I think that we will always go
deeper and deeper but we will never
solve that that that in some sense that
will be a per I hope I'm wrong maybe I'm
maybe it's just the the limits of my
current imagination
um so I I'll just say my my imagination
right now
doesn't peer that deep hopefully so I
don't by the way I'm saying this I don't
want to discourage some brilliant
20-year-old who then later on proves me
dead wrong I I hope to be proven dead
wrong just like you said essentially
from now everything we're saying now
everything you're saying all your
theories will be laughing stock they
will respect the uh the the the puzzle
solving abilities and how how much we
were able to do with so little but uh
outside of that it will all be just uh
the silliness will be entertainment for
a teenager especially the S when we
thought that we were so smart and we
knew it all so it would be interesting
to explore your ideas by
contrasting you mentioned anuka anuka
Harris you mentioned um Philip
gof so outside of if you're not allowed
to
say the fundamental disagreement is the
fact that time is
fundamental um what are interesting
distinctions between ideas of
Consciousness between you and anuka for
example you guys have uh you've been on
a podcast together I'm sure in in in in
private you guys have some incredible
conversation so what where are some
sticking interesting sticking points
some interesting disagreements let's say
with with anuka first maybe there'll be
a few other people well ANUK and I just
had a conversation this morning where we
were talking about our ideas and what we
discovered really in our conversation
was that um we're pretty much on the
same page it was really just cons about
Consciousness yeah we're we're our ideas
about Consciousness are pretty much on
the same page she rightly has cautioned
me to when I talk about conscious agents
to point out that the notion of agency
is not for is not fundamental in my my
theory the notion of self is not
fundamental and that's that's absolutely
true I can use this network of conscious
agents this this and I now use Tech as a
technical term conscious agents is a
technical term for that probability
space with the marov Dynamics I can use
that to build models of a self and to
build models of agency but they're not
they're not fundamental so she she has
really um more been very helpful in in
helping me to be a little bit clear
about these ideas and not say things
that are misleading sure the word I mean
this is the interesting thing about
language actually is that language quite
obviously is an interface yes um to
truth it's it's so fascinating that
individual
words can have so much um ambiguity and
the the and the slight the specific
choices of a word within a particular
sentence within the context of a
sentence can have so much uh such a
difference in meaning it's quite
fascinating especially when you're
talking about topics like consciousness
because it's a very loaded term it means
a lot of things to a lot of people and
the entire concept is shrouded and
mystery so combination of the fact that
it's a loaded term and that there's a
lot of mystery people can just interpret
it in all kinds of ways and so you have
to be both precise and help them avoid
getting um stuck on on some kind of Side
Road of miscommunication Lost in
Translation because you Ed the wrong
word that's interesting I mean
because for for a lot of people
Consciousness is ultimately connected to
a
self I mean that's our our experience of
Consciousness is
very is connected to this ego I mean I
just I mean what else could it possibly
be I can't even how do you begin to
comprehend to visualize to conceptualize
a Consciousness that's not connected to
like this particular organ
ISM well I have a a way of thinking
about this whole problem now that's
that's that comes out of this this
framework that's
different so we can imagine a a dynamics
of
Consciousness not in space and time just
abstractly it could be cooperative for
all we know it could be very friendly I
I don't know but it and you can set up a
Dynamics a movian dynamics that is
so-called stationary and that's a
technical term which means that the
entropy effectively is not increasing
there is some entropy but it's constant
so there's no increasing entropy and in
that sense the Dynamics is
timeless there is no entropic
time but it's a trivial
theorem three line proof that if you
have a stationary Marian Dynamics any
projection that you make of that
Dynamics by conditional probability and
if if you want I can State a little bit
more even more mathematically precisely
for for some readers or listeners but if
any projection You Take by conditional
probability the induced image of that
Markov chain will have increasing
entropy you will have entropic time so
so I I'll be very very precise I have a
mark of chain X1 X2 through xn where X N
goes to Infinity right mhm the entropy
h capital H of xn is equal to the
entropy h of xn minus one for all n
so the entropy is the
same
but it's it's a theorem that h of
xn say given x sub one is greater than
or equal to H of xn minus one given
X1 sure where does the greater come from
because with the theorem of the three
line
proof h of xn given X1 is greater than
or equal to H of xn given X1 and X2
because conditioning
reduces but then h of xn minus one given
X1 comma X2 is equal to H of
xn um given X2 xn minus1 given X2 by the
Markov property and then because it's
stationary it's equal to H ofx um um
I have to write it down except sure sure
I have to write anyway there's a three
line proof sure so what but the
Assumption of
stationarity we we're using a lot of
terms that people won't understand
doesn't doesn't matter the uh so there's
some kind of so marvian Dynamics is uh
basically trying to model some kind of
system with some probabilities and
there's agents and they interact in some
kind of way and you can say something
about that system as it evolves uh
stationarity so
stationary uh system is one that has
certain properties in terms of entropy
very well but we don't know if it's
stationary or not we don't know what
properties uh right uh so you have to
kind of take assumptions and see okay
well what is what does the systems
behave like under these different
properties the the more constraints the
more assumptions you take the more
predictive the more interesting powerful
things you can say but sometimes they're
limiting
that said we're talking about
Consciousness
here how does
that you said Cooperative okay
competitive it just I like chocolate I'm
sitting here I have a brain I'm wearing
a suit it sure as hell it feels like I'm
myself right uh what am I tuning in am I
plugging into something am I a
projection simple trivial projection
into space time from some much larger
organism that I can't possibly
comprehend how the hell you're saying
some you're building up mathematical
intuitions fine great but I'm just I'm
I'm having an existential crisis here
and I'm going to die soon we all die
pretty quickly so I I want to I want to
figure out why chocolate's so
delicious uh so help me out here so
let's just keep sneaking up to this uh
right
so the whole techn technical thing was
to say this even if the Dynamics of
Consciousness is stationary so that
there is no entropic time any projection
of it any view of
it will have the artifact of entropic
time that's a limited
resource limited resources so the the
fundamental Dynamics may have no limits
limited resources whatsoever any
projection will have certainly time as a
limited resource and probably lots of
other limited resources hence we could
get competition and evolution and nature
red and tooth and Claw as an artifact of
a deeper system in which those aren't
fundamental and and in fact I take it as
something that this Theory must
do at some point is to show how networks
of conscious agents even if they're not
resource limited give rise to evolution
by natural selection via a projection
yeah but you're saying I'm I'm trying to
understand how the limited resources
that give rise to um so so first the
thing gives rise to time it gives rise
to limited resource that gives rise to
evolution by natural selection how that
has to do with the fact that chocolate
is delicious well well it's it's not
going to do that directly it's going to
get to this notion of self so oh oh it's
going to give you the notion of self the
evolution gives you the notion of self
and and also of of of a self separate
from other selves so so the idea would
be that competition has life and death
all those kinds of things that that's
right so it it won't I I I don't think
as I said I don't think that I can tell
you how the formless gives rise to the
experience of
chocolate right now my current theory
says that's that's one of the Miracles
I'm assuming yeah that that so my theory
can't do it and the reason my theory
can't do it is because Hoffman's brain
can't do it right
now but but the notion of self yes the
notion of self can be an artifact of the
projection of it so there's one
conscious
agent because anytime conscious agents
interact they form a new conscious agent
so there's one conscious
agent any projection of that one
conscious agent gives rise to time even
if there wasn't any time in that one
conscious agent and it gives rise I I
want to now I haven't proven this so
this is so now this is me guessing where
the theory is going to go not I haven't
done this there's no paper on this yet
so now I'm speculating my guess is I'll
be able to show or or the my brighter
colleagues working with me will be able
to show that that we will get evolution
of a natural selection the notion of
individual selves individual physical
objects and so forth coming out as a
projection of this thing and and that
the self this then will be be really
interesting in terms of how it starts to
interact with certain um spiritual
Traditions right where they will say
that there is a notion of self that
needs to be let go which is this finite
self that's competing with other selves
to you know get more money and and
Prestige and so forth that self in some
sense has to die but there's a Deeper
Self which is the
Timeless um
being um that pre preclude that precedes
not precludes but precedes um any
particular conscious experiences the the
ground of all experience that there's
that notion of a deep Capital self but
our
little cap lowercase s selves could be
artifacts of projection and
it may be
that what Consciousness is doing in this
framework is right it's it's projected
itself down into a self that calls
itself Dawn and a self that calls itself
Lex and through conversations like this
it's trying to find out about itself and
eventually
transcend the limits of The Da and Lex
little icons that it's using and and
that little projection of itself through
this Con conversation it somehow it it's
learning about itself so that that thing
dressed me up today yeah in order to
understand itself and in some sense you
and I are not separate from that thing
and we're not separate from each other
yeah well I have to question the fashion
choices on my end then all right so uh
you mentioned you agree on in terms of
Consciousness on a lot of things with
anuka is there somebody friend or
friendly foe that you disagree with
with in some nuanced interesting way or
some major way about Consciousness about
these topics of of reality that you
return
to um often it's like uh uh Christopher
Hitchens with the rabbi David
walpy have had interesting conversations
through years that that added to the
complexity and the beauty of their
friendship Is there is there somebody
like that um that over the years has
been a source of disagreement with you
that strengthened your ideas H my ideas
have been really shaped by several
things one is
um the physicalist framework that my
scientific colleagues almost to a person
have adopted and that I adopted too
until I the reason I I walked away from
it was because I I uh it became clear
that we couldn't start with unconscious
ingredients in boot up Consciousness can
you define physicalist with uh in
contrast to
reductionist so a physicalist I I would
say is someone who takes SpaceTime and
the objects within SpaceTime as
ontologically fundamental right and then
reductionist is saying the smaller the
more fundamental that's a
methodological thing that's that's
saying within SpaceTime as you go to
smaller and smaller scales in space you
get deep deeper and deeper laws more
more and more fundamental laws and you
know the reduction of temperature
to particle Mo movement was an example
of that but I think that that that the
reason that worked was almost an
artifact of the nature of our interface
that was for a long time and your
colleagues including yourself were
physicalist and now you broke away broke
away because I think you can't start
with unconscious ingredients and boot up
Consciousness and so even with Roger
penr where there's like a gray
area right and here's the the challenge
I would put to to all of my friends um
and colleagues who
are give one specific conscious
experience that you can boot up right so
if you think that it's integrated
information and this I've asked this of
Julio Toni a couple times back in the
90s and then just a couple years ago
asked Julio okay so great inte great
information so we're all interested in
explaining
some specific conscious experiences so
what what is you know pick one the taste
of chocolate what is the integrated
information precise structure that we
need for chocolate and why does that
structure have to be for chocolate and
why why is it that it could not possibly
be vanilla is there any ask them is
there any one specific conscious
experience that that you can account for
because notice they've set themselves
the task of booting up conscious
experiences from physical system that's
the task they've set themselves but that
doesn't mean they're uh I I understand
your intuition but that doesn't mean
they're wrong just because they can't
find a way to boot it up yet that's
right no that doesn't mean that they're
wrong it just it just means that um they
haven't done it I think it's principled
the reason is principled but but I'm
happy that they're exploring it but the
fact is the remarkable fact is there's
not one Theory so integrated information
Theory orchestrated collapse of microt
tual
um Global workspace Theory these are all
theories of Consciousness these are all
theories of Consciousness there's not a
single theory that can give you a
specific conscious experience that they
say here is the physical Dynamics or the
physical structure that must be the
taste of chocolate or whatever one they
want so you're saying it's impossible
they're saying it's just hard yeah me my
attitude is okay no one said you had to
start with neurons or physical systems
in boot up you guys are just you chose
that problem so since you chose that
problem how much progress have you made
well when you've not been able to come
up with a single specific conscious
experience and you've had these
brilliant people working on it for
decades now that's not really good
progress let me uh ask you to be to play
Devil's Advocate can you try to steal
man steal man meaning argue the best
possible case for reality the opposite
of your book
so um or maybe just sticking to
Consciousness can you take the
physicalist view Can you steal man the
physicalist view for a brief moment
Playing devil's advocate to or um steal
man the person you used to be right
she's a physicalist what what's a good
like saying that you might be wrong
right
now what would be a convincing argument
for that well I think
the the argument give and that I
believed was look when you have very
simple physical systems like a piece of
dirt there's not much evidence of life
for Consciousness it's only when you get
really complicated physical systems like
that have brains and really the more
complicated the brains the more looks
like there is consciousness and the more
complicated that Consciousness is surely
that means that simple physical systems
don't create much Consciousness if maybe
not any or maybe pany because they
create the most Elementary kinds of
simple conscious experiences but you
need more complicated physical systems
to boot up to create more complicated
consciousnesses I think that's the
intuition that drives most of my
colleagues and you're saying that this
concept of
complexity is il defined when you ground
it to
SpaceTime oh I think it's well defined
within the framework of SpaceTime right
no it's IL defined relative to what you
need to actually understand
Consciousness because you're grounding
complexity in just in space time oh got
you right right yeah yeah what what I'm
saying
is if it were
true that SpaceTime was
fundamental then I would have to agree
that if there is such a thing as
Consciousness given the data that we've
got that you know comp complex brains
have Consciousness and you know dirt
doesn't that somehow it's the complexity
of the Dynamics or
organization the function of the
physical system that somehow is creating
the Consciousness um so under those
assumptions yes but when the physicists
themselves are telling us that space
time is not
fundamental then I can understand see
then the whole picture starts to come
into Focus why my my colleagues are
brilliant right these are really smart
people I mean Francis Crick worked on
this for the last 20 years of his life I
these are not stupid people these are
brilliant brilliant people the fact that
we've come up with with not a single
specific conscious experience that we
can explain and no hope there there's
there's no one that says I'm really
close I'll have it for you in in a year
no there there's just like there's this
fundamental Gap so much so that Steve
Pinker in in one of his writings says
look he likes the global workspace
Theory but he says the last dollop of
the theory in which you know there's
something it's like to he said we may
have to just stipulate that as as a
brute fact he that's mean that would
iner is brilliant right he he's he
understands the state of play on this
problem of the hard problem of
Consciousness starting with
physicalist assumptions and then trying
to boot up Consciousness you've set
yourself the problem I'm starting with
physical stuff that's not that's not
conscious I'm trying to get the taste of
chocolate out as maybe some kind of
function of the of the Dynamics of that
we've not been able to do that and so
Pinker is saying we may have to punt we
may have to just stipulate that last bit
he calls it the last dollop um and just
say stipulated as a bare fact of nature
that there is something that's like well
from my point of view is the phys the
whole point the whole promise of the
physicalist was we wouldn't have to
stipulate I was going to start with the
physical stuff and explain where the
Consciousness came from if if I'm going
to stipulate Consciousness why don't I
just stipulate Consciousness and not
stipulate all the physical stuff too so
I'm stipulating less I'm saying okay the
psychist perspective well it's actually
what I call the conscious realist
perspective panus are are effectively
dualists right they're saying there's
physical stuff that really is
fundamental and then Consciousness stuff
so I would go with Pinker and say look
let's just stipulate the Consciousness
stuff but I'm not going to stipulate the
physical stuff I'm going to actually now
show how to boot up the physical stuff
from just the Consciousness stuff so
I'll stipulate less is it possible so if
you stipulate less is it possible for
our limited brains to visualize reality
ity as we delve deeper and deeper and
deeper is it possible to visualize
somehow with the tools of math with the
tools of computers with the tools of our
mind are we hopelessly lost you you said
there's ways to in
it um what's true using mathematics and
probability and um sort of uh marvian
Dynamics all that kind of stuff but
that's not visualizing that's what a
kind of building intuition but is it
possible to visualize in the way we
visualize so nicely in space time in
four dimensions in two in three
dimensions sorry well two we really are
looking through a two-dimensional screen
onto what we Intuit it to be a
three-dimensional world and in also
inferring Dynamic stuff making it 4D
anyway is it possible to visualize some
pretty pictures that give us a deeper
sense of the truth of
reality I think that we will
incrementally be able to do that I think
that for
example the picture that we have of
electrons and photons interacting and
scattering
MH wasn't it may have not been possible
until Faraday did all of his experiments
and then Maxwell wrote down his
equations and and we were then sort of
forced by his equations to think in a
new
way and then then when plank in 1900 you
know desperate to try to solve
the the problem of black body radiation
what they call the ultraviolet
catastrophe where Newton was predicting
infinite energies were there weren't
infinite energies in black body
radiation and he in desperation
proposed packets of energy the
then once once you've done that and then
you have an Einstein come along five
years later and show how that explains
the photo electri photoelectric effect
and then then eventually in 1926 you get
Quantum the and then you get this whole
new way of thinking that was you know
from the Newtonian point of view
completely contradictory and and
counterintuitive
certainly and maybe if decent is right
not contradictory maybe if you use
intuitionist method not contradictory
but
still certainly you wouldn't have gone
there and so here's a case where the
experiments and then a desperate
mathematical
move sort of we use those as a
flashlight into the deep fog right
where're and and so that science may be
um the flashlight into the deep fog I
wonder if it's still possible to
visualize in the in the like uh we talk
about Consciousness in from self-
perspective experience it hold that idea
in our mind the way you can experience
things directly we've evolved to
experienc things in this 3D World and
that's that's a very rich experience
when you're thinking
mathematically uh you still in the end
of the day have to project it
down to uh low dimensional space to make
to make conclusions they conclusions
will be a number or a line or a plot or
a visual so I wonder like how we can
really touch some deep truth in a in a
subjective way like experience it really
feel the beauty of it you know in the
way that humans feel beauty right are we
screwed I don't think we're screwed I I
think that we get little hints of it
from from psychedelic drugs and so forth
we we get hints that there are certain
interventions that we can take on our
interface I apply this chemical which is
just some element of my interface to
this other to a brain I ingest it and
all of a sudden I it seem like I've
opened new portals into conscious
experiences well that's very very
suggestive that's like um the black body
radiation doing something that we didn't
expect right it doesn't go to Infinity
when we thought it was going to go to
infinity and we're forced to propose
these quanta so once we have a theory of
conscious
agents and is projection into space on I
should say I should sketch what I think
that projection is um but then I think
we can then start to ask specific
questions when when you're taking
DMT or you're taking LSD or something
like that um now that we have this deep
model that we've reverse engineered
space and time and physical part
particles we've pulled them back to this
theory of conscious agents now we can
ask ourselves in this idealized future
um what are we doing to conscious agents
when we apply 5mo DMT what are we doing
are we opening a new portal right so
when I say that I mean I have a portal
into Consciousness that I call my body
of Lex Freedman that I'm creating and
it's a genuine portal not perfect but
it's a genuine portal I'm definitely
communicating with your Consciousness
and we know that we have one technology
for building New Port portals we know
one technology and that is having
kids having kids is how we build new
portals into Consciousness takes a long
time can you elaborate that oh oh oh you
mean like your son and your daughter
didn't exist that was a portal though
you're having contact with Consciousness
that you never would have had before but
now you've got a son or a daughter it
you had you went through this physical
process they were born then you there
was all the but is that portal yours so
when you have kids are you creating new
portals that are completely distinct
from the portals that you've created
with other Consciousness like can you
can you elaborate on that to which
degree is are the consciousness of your
kids a part of you well so every person
that I
see that symbol that I see the body that
I see is is a portal potentially for me
to interact with with a Consciousness
yeah um
and and each Consciousness has unique
character and we call it a personality
and so forth so with each new kid that's
born we come in contact with a
personality that we've never seen before
and a a version of Consciousness that
we've never seen before at a deeper
level I said the theory says there's one
agent so this is a different projection
of that one agent But but so that's what
I mean by a portal is within my own
interface my own
projection can I see other
projections of of that one Consciousness
so can I get portals in in that sense
and
I so and I I think we will get a theory
of that that we will get a theory of of
portals and then we can ask how the
psychedelics are acting are they
actually creating new portals or not if
they're not we should nevertheless then
understand how we could create a new
portal right maybe we have to just study
what happens when we make when we have
kids we know that that technology
creates new portals so we have to
reverse engineer that and then say okay
could we
somehow create new portals denovo with
that with something like uh like a brain
computer interfaces for example maybe
just a chemical or something like
probably more more complicated than a
Chic that's why I think that the
psychedelics the psychedelics May
because they might be affecting this
portal in such certain ways that it
turns it around and opens up in other
words it maybe once we understand what
this thing is a portal your body as a
portal understand all of those
complexities maybe we'll realize that
that portal can be shifted and to
different parts of the the deeper
Consciousness and give new Windows on it
and so in that way maybe yes
psychedelics could open up new portals
in the sense that they're taking
something that's already a complex
portal and just tweaking it a bit well
but creating is a very powerful
difference between morphing
right right tweaking versus creating I
agree but maybe it gives you intuition
to at least the full space of the kinds
of things that this particular system is
capable of I mean I mean the idea your
idea that Consciousness creates brains I
mean that breaks my brain because Cu uh
I you know I'm I'm I guess I'm Still A
physicalist in that sense because that
you could it's just much
easier to Intuit the world um it's very
it's practical to think all right
there's a neural network and what are
the different ways
fascinating uh capabilities can emerge
from this neural network um I agree it's
easier and so you start to and then
present to yourself the problem of okay
well how does Consciousness arise how
does intelligence arise how does emotion
arise how does memory arise in the how
do we filter within this system all the
incoming sensory information we're able
to uh allocate attention in different
interesting ways how do all those
mechanisms
arise to say that there's other
fundamental things we don't understand
outside of SpaceTime that are actually
core to how this whole thing works is uh
is a bit paralyzing
because it's like oh we're not we're not
10% done we're like
0.001% done
is the immediate feeling certainly
understand that my attitude about it
is if you look at the Young physicists
who are searching for the inst structors
Beyond SpaceTime like appen and so
forth they're having a
ball SpaceTime that's what the old folks
did that's what that's what our the
older generation did we're we're doing
something that really is fun and new and
and
they're having a blast and they're
finding all all these new structures so
so I I think that we're going to
um
succeed in getting a new deeper Theory I
can just say what I'm hoping with the
theory that I'm working on I'm hoping to
show that I could have this Timeless
dynamics of Consciousness no entropic
time I take a projection and I show how
this Timeless Dynamics looks like the
big
bang and the entire evolution
of space in other words I see how my
whole Space
interface so not just the uh the
projection is just doesn't just look
like SpaceTime you can explain the with
it the whole from the origin of the
universe that that's that's what we have
to do and that's what the physicists
understand when they go beyond SpaceTime
to the amplitude heer and the
cosmological polytope they ultimately
know that they have to get back the Big
Bang story and the whole Evolution that
whole story where there were no living
things there was just
a point and then the explosion and then
just particles at high energy and then
eventually the cooling down and the the
differentiation and finally matter
condenses and then life and then
Consciousness that whole story has to
come out of something that's deeper and
without time and that's what what we're
up to that's we we want to to get so the
whole story that we've we've been
telling ourselves about Big Bang and how
brains evolv in Consciousness will come
out of a much deeper Theory and and for
yeah for someone like me um it's a lot I
mean I but for the younger
generation this is like oh wow um all
the low cherries aren't picked this is
really good stuff this is really new
fundamental stuff that we can do so that
I can't wait to read the papers of the
of the younger generation and I want to
I want to see
them uh kids these days with their
non-space time assumptions uh it's just
interesting looking at the philosophical
tradition of the difficult ideas you
struggle with if you look like somebody
like Emanuel Kant what are some
interesting agreements and disagreements
you
have uh with a guy about the nature of
reality so there's a lot in agreement
right so K was an
idealist transcendental idealist
and he he basically had the idea that
um we don't see nature as it is we
impose a structure on
nature
he and and so in some sense I'm saying
something similar I'm saying that by the
way I don't call myself an idealist I
call myself a conscious realist because
idealism has a long history a lot of
different ideas come under idealism and
there's a lot of debates and so forth it
t tends to be identified with in many
cases anti-science and anti-realism and
I don't want either connection with my
ideas and so just called M conscious
realism with an emphasis on realism and
not not
anti-realism but but one place where I
would of course disagree with Kant was
that he thought that um ukan SpaceTime
was a prior right we just know that
that's that's false so so he he went
went too too far on that but but in in
in general the idea that we don't start
with space time that space and time is
in some sense the forms of our
perceptions yes
absolutely and I would say that you know
there's a lot in common with Barkley in
that regard
um there's a lot of ingenious arguments
in Barkley
liet liet in his monadology understood
very clearly that the hard problem was
not solvable he he posed the hard
problem and and basically dismissed it
just you can't do this and so if he came
here he' and saw where we are he'd say
look guys I told you this three 300
years a ago and he had his monadology he
was trying to do something like it's um
it's different from what I'm doing but
he he had these things that were not in
space and time the the these monads he
was trying to build something um I'm
trying to build a theory of conscious
agents my guess is that if if he came
here I could just if he saw what I was
doing he would say he would understand
it and immediately take off with it and
go places that I couldn't he would he
would have there would be uh right there
would be overlap of uh the spirit of the
ideas be totally overlapping but but his
genius would then just run with it far
faster than I could I love the humility
here so let me let me ask you about sort
of practical implications of your ideas
to our world our complicated world when
you look at the big questions of
humanity
of
hate
War what else is there
evil maybe there's the posit postive
aspects of that of meaning of
Love um what is the fact
that reality is an
illusion perceived uh what what is the
conscious
realism when applied to daily life what
kind of impact does it have a lot and
it's it's sort of
scary
um we all know that life is
ephemeral and spiritual traditions have
said wake up to the fact that you know
anything that you do here is going to
disappear but it's even more ephemeral
than perhaps we've thought I see this
bottle because I create it right now as
soon as I look away that data structure
has been garbage collected that bottle I
have to recreate it every time I look so
I spend all my money and I buy this
fancy car that that car I have to keep
recreating it every time I look at it
it's that ephemeral so all the things
that we invest our El in we fight over
we kill each other over we have wars
over these are all it's it's like people
in a virtual reality
simulation right and and there's this
this Porsche and we all see the Porsche
well where that Porche exists when I
look at it I turn my headset and I look
at it and and then if Joe turns his
headset the right way he'll see his
Porsche it's it's not it's not even the
same Porsche that I see he's creating
his own
Porsche so these things are exceeding
ephemeral and and and now just imagine
saying that that's my Porsche
well you can agree to say that it's your
Porsche but but really the Porsche only
exists as long as you look so so this
all of a sudden what the spiritual
Traditions have been saying for a long
long time this gets cashed out in in
mathematically precise science it's
saying in femoral yes in fact it it
lasts for a few milliseconds a few
hundred milliseconds while you look at
it and then it's gone so so the whole
idea why are we fighting why do we
hate
it's we fight over
possessions because we we think that
we're small little objects inside this
pre-existing SpaceTime we assume that
that that mansion and that car exists
independent of us and that somehow we
these little things can have our sense
of self and importance enhanced by
having that special car or that special
house or that special person when in
fact it's just the opposite you create
that Mansion every time you look that's
that's you're the You're Something far
deeper than that Mansion you're the
entity which can create that mansion on
the Fly and there's nothing there there
is nothing to the mansion except what
you create in this moment so so all of a
sudden when you take this point of
view it it has all sorts of implications
for how we interact with each other how
how we treat each other
um and again a lot of things that
spiritual Traditions have
said it's a mixed bag spiritual
Traditions are a mixed bag so let me
just be right up front about that I'm
not promoting any particular but they do
have some insights yeah they have wisdom
they have certain wisd they have I can
point to nonsense I won't go into it but
I can also point to lots of nonsense so
so the the issue is to then to look for
the key the key insights and and they I
think they have lot of insights about
the ephemeral nature of of objects in
space and time and not being attached to
them including our own bodies and
reversing that I'm not this little thing
a little Consciousness trapped in the
body and the Consciousness itself is
only a product of the body so when the
body dies the Consciousness disappears
The it turns completely around the
Consciousness is fundamental the
body my hand exists right now because
I'm looking at it my hand is gone I have
no hand I have I have no brain I have no
heart if you look you'll see a heart
whatever I
[Music]
am is this really complicated thing in
Consciousness that's that's what I am
all the stuff that I thought I was is
something that I create on the Fly and
delete so this so this is
completely radical restructuring of how
we think about um possessions about
identity about survival of death and and
and so forth this is is completely
transformative but the nice thing is
that this whole approach of conscious
agents unlike the spiritual Traditions
which have said in some cases similar
things they've said it in
precisely this is mathematics we can
actually now begin to State precisely
here's the mathematical model of
Consciousness conscious agents here's
how it maps on to SpaceTime which I
should sketch really
briefly and here's why
um Things Are are ephemeral and here's
why you shouldn't be worried about the
ephemeral nature of things because
you're not a little tiny entity inside
Space and Time quite the opposite you're
the author of space and time the I and
the am and the I am is all kind of
emerging through this whole process of
evolution and so on that's uh that's
just surface waves and there's a much
deeper ocean that we're we're trying to
figure out here so how does you said you
said this some of the stuff you're
thinking about Maps SpaceTime how does
it map the space time right so so just a
very very high level and I'll keep it
brief the structures that the physicists
are finding like the amplitud hedrin it
turns out they're just static structure
they're they're
polytopes but they remarkably most of
the information in them is contained in
permutation
matrices so it's a matrix like an N byn
Matrix that just has zeros and ones
that contains almost all of the
information and you can they have these
pabic graphs and so forth that they use
to boot up the scattering you can comput
the scattering amplitudes almost
entirely from these permutation
matrices so that's
just now from my point of view I have
this conscious agent Dynamics it turns
out that the stationary dynamics that I
was talking about the the the where the
entropy is
increasing all the stationary Dynamics
are sketched out by permutation
matrices so if you there's so-called
burkoff polytope all the vertices of
this polytop all the points are
permutation matrices all the
internal points are markovian
kernels um that have the uniform measure
as a stationary measure and int a little
better what what the heck you're talking
about but so so basically there's some
complicated thing going on with the
network of conscious conscious agents
and that's mappable to this you're
saying a two dimensional Matrix that uh
uh scattering has to do with what
perception like that's like Photon stuff
or I mean I don't know if it's useful to
sort of uh dig into detail I I'll do
just the high level thing yes so the the
the high level is the long-term behavior
of the conscious agent dyamics so that's
a projection of just looking at the
long-term
behavior I'm hoping will give rise to
the amplitud hedrin the amplitud hedrin
then gives rise to SpaceTime so then I
can just use their link to go all the
way from Consciousness through its
astics to through the ampl into
SpaceTime and get the map all the way
into our interface and that's why you
mentioned the permutation Mage just
because it gives you a nice thing to to
try to generate that's right it's the
connection with the amplitud hedron the
permutation matrices are the core of the
amplitud hedron and it turns out they're
the core of the ASM totic description of
the conscious agents so not to sort of
bring up the idea of a Creator but I I
like first of all I like video games and
you mentioned this kind of simulation
idea first of all do you think of it as
an interesting idea this thought
experiment that we live in a
simulation and in general do you think
we live in a
simulation so the Nick bostrom's idea
about the the simulation is
typically couched in a physicalist
framework yes so there's the bottom
level there's some programmer in a
physical SpaceTime and they have a
computer that they've programmed really
cleverly where they've created conscious
entities so you have the hard problem of
Consciousness right the standard hard
problem How could a computer simulation
create a cons which isn't explained by
that simulation Theory but then the idea
is that the next level the the entities
that are from the that are created in
the first level simulation then can
write their own simulations and you get
this this
so so the idea that um this is a
simulation is fine but the idea that the
starts with a physicalist bace I think
isn't well there's there's different
properties here the the partial
rendering I mean to me that's the
interesting idea is not whether the
entirety of the universe is simulated
but how efficiently can
you um create interfaces that are
convincing to to
all other entities that can appreciate
such interfaces how little does it take
cuz you said like partial rendering or
like temporal aeral rendering of stuff
only render the tree falling in the
forest when uh there's somebody there to
see it it's interesting to think how can
you do that super efficiently without
having to render everything and that to
me is one perspective on the simulation
just like it is with video games right
where a video game doesn't have to
render every single thing it's just the
thing that the Observer is looking at
right there is actually that's a a very
nice question and there's whole groups
of researchers that are actually
studying in in virtual reality what what
is the sort of the
minimal requirements on this system what
how does it have to operate to give you
an immersion experience to give you the
feeling that you have a body to to get
you to take it real and and there's
actually a lot of really good work on
that right now and it it turns out it
doesn't take that much you do need to
get the perception action Loop tight and
and you have to give them the
perceptions that they're expecting if
you want them to but if you you you can
lead them along if you give them
perceptions that are close to what
they're expecting you can then maybe
move their reality around a bit yeah
it's a tricky engineering problem
especially when you're trying to create
a product that costs little but that's I
it feels like an engineering problem not
a deeply scientific problem um or
meaning obviously it's a scientific
problem but as a scientific problem it's
not that difficult to trick us uh
descendants of Apes but here's here's a
a case for just us in our own if this is
a virtual reality that we're
experiencing right now so here's
something you can try for yourself if
you just close your
eyes and look at your experience in
front of you be aware of your experience
in front of you what you experience is
just like a model dark gray but there's
all sort of there's some Dynamics to it
but it's just dark gray but now I ask
you instead of having your attention
forward put your attention backward what
is it like behind you with your eyes
closed and there it's like
nothing it's really so what is going on
here what what am I experiencing back
there right well it's it's I I don't
know if it's nothing it's it's like I
guess it's the absence of it's not even
like Darkness or something it's it it's
not even Darkness it's there's no
there's no qualia to it and yet there is
a sense of being and that's the
interesting there's a sense of being
back so I close my eyes I put my
attention forward I just I have the
quality of a gray model thing but when I
put my attention backward there's no
quality at all but there is a sense of
being yeah I I personally uh now you
haven't been to that side of the room I
been to that side of the room so for me
memories I start um I start uh playing
the engine of memory
replay which is like I I take myself
back in time and think about that place
where I was hanging out in that part
that's what I see when I'm behind so
that's an interesting Quirk of hum
humans too we're able to we're
collecting these experiences and we can
replay them in interesting ways whenever
we feel like it and it's almost like
being there but not really but almost
that that's right and yet we can go our
entire lives in this you're talking
about the minimal thing for VR we can go
our entire lives and not realize that
all of my life it's been like nothing
behind me yeah we we we're not even
aware that all of our Lives if you just
just for the just pay attention close
your eyes pay attention to what's behind
me like oh holy smoke It's s scary I
mean it's like nothing there's no
quality there at all how did I not
notice that my entire life we're so
immersed in the simulation we buy it so
much yeah I mean uh you could see this
with with children right with
persistence you know you could do the
peekaboo game you can hide from them and
appear and they're fully tricked and in
the same way we're fully tricked there's
nothing behind us and we assume there
is that's really interesting these
theories are pretty
heavy you as a human being as a mortal
human being how has these theories been
to you personally like are there good
days and bad days when you wake up and
look in the mirror and the fact that you
can't see anything behind you the fact
that it's render like is there
interesting
quirks you know you know n with his if
you gaze long into the abyss the abyss
gazes into you um how's this theories
these ideas change you as a
person it's been very very
difficult the stuff is not just abstract
Theory building because it's it's about
us sometimes I realized that there's
this big division of me my my mind is
doing all the science and and coming
with these conclusions and the rest of
me is not integrating I just like I
don't believe it I just don't believe
this I mean it seems so as I start to
take it seriously it's get I get scared
myself it's
like but it's very much then I read
these spiritual traditions and realize
they're saying very very similar things
it's like there is a lot of conversion
so for me me I
have the first time I thought it might
be possible that we're not seeing the
truth was in
1986 it was from some mathematics we
were doing and when that hit me it hit
me like a ton of bricks I had to sit
down it was it it
really it was scary it was really a
shock to the system and then to realize
that everything that has been important
to me like
you know getting a
house getting a car getting a reputation
and so
for well that car is just like the car I
see in the virtual reality it's it's
there when you perceive it and it's not
there so the whole question of you know
what am I doing and why what what's
what's worthwhile doing in life
clearly getting a big house and getting
a big car I mean we all knew that we
were going to die so we we we we tend
not to know that we tend to hide it
especially when we're young before age
30 we don't believe we're going to die
but yeah we factually maybe know that
you're you kind of are supposed to yeah
but but they'll figure something out and
and we'll be the generation that the
first one that doesn't have to die
that's the kind of thing but but when
you really face the fact that you're
going to
die and then when you when I start to
look at it from this point of view that
well this thing was an interface to
begin with so what I'm really is what
I'm going to be doing just taking off a
headset so I've been playing in a
virtual reality game all day and I I got
lost in the game and I was fighting over
a Porsche and I I I I shot some guys up
and I punctured their tires and but got
the Porsche now I take the headset off
and what was that for nothing it was
just it was a data structure and the
data structure is gone so so all of the
wars the fighting and the reputations
and all this stuff you
know we're it's just a
headset so now and so my theory says
that intellectually my my mind my my
emotions Rebel all over the place it's
it's like I you know and so so I have to
medit I meditate a lot what percent of
the day would you say you spend as a
physicalist um sort of living life
pretending your car
matters your reputation matter like like
how much uh with that Tom W song I like
my town with a little Drop of Poison how
much poison do you allow yourself to
have I think my default mode is
physicalist right I think that that's
just the default I I when I'm
not being conscious yeah consciously
attentive intellectually consciously
attentive cuz if you're just you're
still if you're tasting coffee and not
thinking or drinking or just taking in
the sunset you're not being intellectual
you're but you're still exper in it so
it's when you turn on the the like the
introspective machine that's when you
can start and turn off the Thinker when
I actually just start looking without
thinking huh so that's that's when I
feel like I all of a sudden I'm starting
to see through sort of like okay part of
part of the addiction to the interface
is all the stories I'm telling about it
it's really important for me to get that
really important to to do that so I'm
telling all these stories and so I'm all
wrapped up almost all the Mind stuff
that's going on in my head is about
attachment to the interface and so what
I found is
that the essentially the only way to
really detach from the interface is
to literally let go of thoughts alt
together and then all of a sudden um
even my ident of you know my whole
history my name my education and all
this stuff is almost irrelevant because
it's just now here is the present
moment and this is this is the reality
right now and all of that other stuff is
an interface story but this conscious
experience right now this is the only
this is the only reality as far as I can
tell the rest of it a story and but that
is again not my default that is I have
to make a
really conscious choice to say okay I
know intellectually this is all an
interface I I'm going to take the
headset off and so forth and and and
then immediately sink back into the game
and just be out there playing the game
and and get lost in so I'm always lost
in the game unless I literally
consciously choose to stop
thinking isn't it it
terrifying to acknowledge
that to look beyond the
game isn't it uh scares the hell out of
me it really is
scary because I'm so attached I'm
attached to this body I'm attached to
the interface are you ever worried about
breaking your brain a bit meaning like
it's
uh I mean some of these ideas when you
think about reality even with like I
Stein just realizing you said interface
just realizing that
light you know that there's a speed of
light and you can't go fast than the
speed of light and like what kind of
things black holes and can do with light
even that can mess with your head yes
but that's still space time that's a big
mess but it's still just SpaceTime it's
still a property of our interface that's
right but you but it's still like even
so
even Einstein realized that this
particular thing some of the stories you
tell ourselves is constructing
interfaces that are o oversimplifying
the way things work um because the it's
nice the stories are nice stories are
nice this rep I mean just like video
games they're
nice right but Einstein was a realist
right he was a famous realist in in the
sense that he he was very explicit on
1935 paper with um podos and Rosen the
the epr paper where he he he they said
if without in any way disturbing a
system I can predict with probability
one the outcome of a
measurement then there exists in reality
that element right that that value that
and we now know from quantum theory that
that that's
false that Einstein's idea of local
realism is is strictly speaking false
yeah and so we can predict we can set up
in quantum theory you can set up and
there's a there's a paper by Chris
fuches Quantum basian ISM where he he
Scouts this out it was done by other
people but he gives a good presentation
of this where they have a sequence of
like something like nine different
Quantum measurements that that you can
make and you can predict with
probability one what a particular
outcome will be but you can actually
prove that it's impossible that the
value existed before you made the
measurement so you know with probability
one what you're going to get but you
also know with certainty that that value
was not there until you made the the
measurement so the so we know from
quantum theory that the act of
observation is an act of fact
creation and that is built into what I'm
saying with this Theory Of Consciousness
if Consciousness is
fundamental SpaceTime itself is an act
of fact creation it's it's an interface
that we create Consciousness creates
plus all the objects in it so local
realism is not
true quantum theory is is established
that also non-contextual realism is not
true and that that fits in perfectly
with this idea that Consciousness is
fundamental these things are these exist
as data structures when we create them
as as as Chris fuke says the act of
observation is an act of fact creation
but I must say on a personal
level I'm having to
spend I spend a couple hours a day
just sitting in meditation on this and
facing the
rebellion in me that goes to the core it
feels like it goes to the core of my
being Rebellion against these ideas so
so here it's very very interesting for
me to look at this because so here I'm
I'm a scientist and I'm a person the
science is really clear local realism is
false non-contextual realism is false
space time is doomed it's it's very very
clear it couldn't be
clearer and my my emotions Rebel left
and right when I sit there and say okay
I am not something in space and
time something inside of me says you're
crazy of course you are and I'm
completely attached to it I'm completely
attached to all this stuff I'm attached
to my body I'm attached to the headset
I'm attached to my car attached to
people I'm attached to all of
it and and yet I know as a absolute fact
I'm going to walk away from all of it
I'm going to
die it'll you know
in fact I almost died last year I co
almost killed me it I I I sent a goodbye
text to my wife so I was I I thought I
was you really did I sent her a goodbye
I I was in the emergency room and uh it
had attacked my heart and it been at 190
beats per minute for 36
hours I I couldn't last much longer I
knew I like they couldn't stop it so so
that was that was it so that was it so
so texted her goodbye from the emergency
room I love you goodbye kind of thing
yeah right yeah that was it so so were
you
afraid yeah scares the H of you right
but there there is there was you're just
feeling so bad anyway that that all you
know you that that sort of you're scared
but you're just feeling so bad that in
some sense you just wanted to stop
anyway
yeah so so I've I've I've been there and
faced it just just a year ago how did
that change you by the way having having
this intellectual reality that's so
challenging that you meditate on that
you is just an interface and one of the
one of the hardest things to come to
terms with is that that means that you
know it's going to
end um how did I change you having come
so close to the reality of it it's not
just an intellectual reality it's it's a
reality of death it's it's forc i' I've
meditated for 20 years now
then I would say averaging 3 or 4 hours
a day
um but it's put a
new urgency but urgency is not the right
word because that that it's it it's
riveted my attention I'll put it that
way it's really riveted my attention and
um I've really paid I spent a lot more
time looking up what spiritual
Traditions
say I don't by the way again not taking
it with a you know take it all with a
grain of salt but on the other hand I
think it's stupid for me to ignore it so
I try to listen to the best ideas and
and to sort out nonsense from and it's
just we all have to do it for ourselves
right it's it's not easy so what makes
sense and I have the advantage of some
science so I can look at what science
says and try to compare with spiritual
tradition I try to sort it out for
myself and but then I also look at
realize that there's another aspect to
me which is this whole emotional
aspect the I I I seem to be wired
up as evolutionary psychology says I'm
wired up right all these defensive
mechanisms you know I'm I'm inclined to
lie if I need to I'm inclined to to be
angry to protect myself to have an
ingroup and an outg group to try to make
my reputation as big as possible to try
to demean the outg group there's all
these things that evolutionary
psychology is is spot on it's it's
really brilliant about the human
condition and yet I think Evolution as I
said evolutionary theory is a projection
of a deeper Theory where there may be no
competition so how so I'm in this very
interesting position where I feel like
okay according to my own Theory I'm
Consciousness and maybe this is what it
means for Consciousness to wake up it's
not not easy it's it's it's almost like
I have I feel like I have real skin in
the game it really is scary I I really
was scared when I was about to die it it
really was hard to say goodbye to my
wife it really it really pained
and to then look at that and then look
at the fact that I'm going to walk away
from this anyway and it's just an
interface how do I so it's it's trying
to put all this stuff together and
really grocket so to speak not just
intellectually but grocket at an
emotional level what are you afraid of
you silly evolved organism that's gotten
way too attached to the
interface what are you really afraid of
that's
right is there uh very personal you know
it's very very personal yeah yeah I mean
speaking of that text what do you think
is uh this whole love thing what's the
role of love in
our human
condition this interface thing we have
this is it somehow interweaved
interconnected with Consciousness this
attachment we have to other humans and
there deep like some um this some
quality to it that seems very
interesting
peculiar well there there are two levels
I would think about that there there
there's love in the sexual sense and
then there's love in a deeper sense and
in the sexual sense um we can give
evolutionary account of that and and so
forth and I think that's pretty clear to
people um in in in this deeper
sense right so of course married you're
my love my wife in a sexual sense but
there is a deeper sense as well that
when I was saying goodbye to her there
was a there was a deeper much deeper
love that was really at play there
that's one place where I think that the
mixed bag from spiritual Traditions has
something right when they say you know
love your neighbor as yourself that that
some in some sense Love Is Fundamental I
think that they're on to
something something very very deep and
profound
and every once in a while I can get a
personal glimpse of that when I
especially when I'm in
the space with no thought but when when
I can really let go of
thoughts I get little glimpses of a of
of a love in the sense that I'm not
separate there it's a it's a love in the
sense that I'm not different from that I
you know yeah if you and I are separate
then then there's I can fight you but if
you and I are the
same if there's a union there the
togetherness of it yeah what what uh
who's
God all those Gods the stories that been
told throughout history you said through
the spiritual Traditions what do you
think that is is that us trying to find
that common thing at the core oh well in
in in
many Traditions not
all the one I was raised in so my dad
was a Protestant
Minister we tend to think of God as a
being but I think that that's not right
I think the closest way to think about
God is being period not a being but
being the the very ground of being
itself is God I think that's the the
deep and and from my point of view
that's the ground of consciousness so
the ground of conscious being
is what we might call God but but the
word God has always been you know for
example you don't believe the same God
as my God so I'm going to fight you or
we'll have wars over because the being
the specific being that you call God is
different from the being that I call God
and so we fight whereas if it's not a
being but just being and you and I share
being then you and I are are not
separate and there's no reason to fight
we're both part of that one being and
and loving you is loving myself because
we're all part of that one being the
spiritual Traditions that point to that
I think are
pointing in a a very interesting
Direction and that does seem
to match with the mathematics of the
conscious agent stuff that i' I've been
working on as well that it it really
fits with that although that wasn't my
goal is there uh you
mentioned you mentioned that the young
physicist that um you talk to or whose
work you follow have quite a lot of fun
breaking with the traditions of the past
the assumptions of the past uh what
advice would you give to young people
today in high school in college not just
physicists but uh in general how to have
a career they can be proud of how they
can have a life they can be proud of how
to make their way in the world from the
lessons from the wins and the losses in
your own life what what what little
insights could you pull out I would say
the universe is lot more interesting
than you might expect and you are a lot
more special and interesting than you
might expect you might think that you're
just a
little tiny
irrelevant 100 PB 200
lb person in a vast billions of light
years across
space and that's not the case you are in
some sense the being that's creating
that space all the time every time you
look so waking up to who you really are
outside of space and
time as the author of space and time is
the author of everything that you
see the author of space and time
that's you're the author of space and
time right and I'm the author of of
space and time and space and time is
just one little data structure many
other consciousnesses are creating other
other data structure they're authors of
of various other things so so realizing
and and then realizing that that um I
had this feeling growing up going in
College reading all these textbook oh
man it's all been
done yeah if I'd just been there you
know 50 years ago I could have
discovered this stuff but they know it's
all in the textbooks now well believe me
the textbooks are going to look silly in
50 years and it's your CH your chance to
write the new textbook so so of course
study the current textbooks you have to
understand them you there's no way to
progress
until you understand what's been done
but but
then the only limit is your imagination
frankly that's the only limit the
greatest books the greatest text books
ever written on Earth are yet to be
written
exactly uh what do you think is the
meaning of this whole thing what's the
meaning of life from your limited
interface can you can you can you figure
it all out like why why so you said the
universe is kind of trying to figure
itself out through through us uh why
why yeah that's the closest I've come
so I'll give you so I will say that I
don't know but but but I'll here's my
guess right that's a good first sentence
that's a good starting point and and
maybe that's going to be a profound part
of the final answer is to start with the
I don't know it's quite possible that
that that's really important to start
with the I don't know my my guess is
that if consciousness is fundamental and
of girdle girdle's incompleteness theem
holds here and there's infinite variety
of
structures for Consciousness to some
sense
explore
um that maybe that's what it's about
this is something that anuka and I
talked about a little bit and she
doesn't like this way of talking about
it so I'm going have to talk with some
more about this way of talking but right
now I'll just put it this way and I'll
have to talk with her more and see if I
say it more clearly but the way I'm
talking about it now is
that there's a sense in
which there's
being and then there's experiences or
forms that come out of being that's one
deep deep
mystery and the the question of that you
asked what is it all about somehow it's
it's related to that why does being
why doesn't it just stay without any
forms why does it why why do we have
experiences what why should why why not
just have when you close your eyes and
you pay attention to what's behind you
there's nothing but there's
being why is why don't we just stop
there why didn't we just stop there why
did we create all tables and chairs and
the Sun and Moon and and people all this
really complicated stuff why and and
all I can guess right now and I'll
probably kick myself in a couple years
and say that was dumb but but all I can
guess right now is that
somehow Consciousness wakes up to Itself
by knowing what it's not so here I am
I'm not this body I sort of saw
that it was sort of in my face when I
sent a text goodbye but then as soon as
I'm better it sort of like okay I I I
sort of don't want to go there right I I
I okay so I just so I my body might go
back to the standard I own my body and
you then I want to get that car and even
though I was just about to die a year
ago so that comes rushing back so so
Consciousness immerses itself
fully
into a particular
headset gets lost in it and then slowly
wakes up just so can escape and that is
the waking up but he needs to have needs
to know what is not it needs to to know
what you are you have to say oh I'm not
that I'm not that that wasn't important
that wasn't
important that's really powerful Don let
me just say that um because I've been a
longterm fan of yours and we were
supposed to have a conversation during
this very difficult moment in your life
let me just say you're truly special
person and I for one and I know there's
a lot a lot of others that agree I'm
glad that you're still here with us on
this Earth if for a short
time um
so whatever um whatever the universe
whatever plan it has for you that
brought you close to death to maybe
Enlighten you some kind of way um I
think I think has a has an interesting
plan for you you're one of the TR truly
special humans and it's a huge honor
that you would sit and talk with me
today thank you so much thank you very
much Lex I really appreciate that thank
you thanks for listening to this
conversation with Donald Hoffman to
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now let me leave you some words from
Albert Einstein relevant to the ideas
discussed in this
conversation time and space are modes by
which we think and not conditions in
which we
live thank you for listening and hope to
see you next time