Kind: captions
Language: en
what is dualism what is idealism what is
materialism
what is functionalism and what connects
with you most in terms of because you
just mentioned there's a reality we
don't have access to okay what does that
even mean and why don't we get access to
it only part of that reality why don't
we can we access it so the particular
trajectory that mostly exists in the
West is the result of our indoctrination
by a cult for 2,000 years
a cult which yes oh the castle it cost
mostly yes and for better or worse right
it has created or defined many of the
modes of interaction that we have that
has created this society but it has also
in some sense scarred our rationality
and the intuition that exists if you
would translate the mythology of the
Catholic Church into the modern world is
that the world in which you and me
interact is something like a multiplayer
role-playing adventure yes and the money
and the objects that we have in this
world this is all not real or is Eastern
philosophers would say it's my eye it's
just stuff that is it appears to be
meaningful and this embedding in this
meaning and people even it is samsara
this it's basically the identification
this the needs of the mundane secular
everyday existence and the Catholics
also introduced the notion of higher
meaning the sacred and this existed
before but eventually the natural shape
of God is the Platonic form of the
civilization that you're part of it's
basically the super organism that is
formed by the individuals as an
intentional agent and basically the
Catholics used a relatively crude
mythology to implement software on the
minds of people and get the software
synchronized to make them walk in
lockstep this basically get they get
this got online and to make it efficient
and effective and I think God
technically is just the self that spends
multiple brains as opposed to your and
myself which mostly exists just on one
brain right and so in some sense you can
construct yourself functionally as a
function is implemented by brains that
exists across brains and this is a God
with a small G that's one of the if you
ivar re
kind of talking
this is one of the nice features of our
brains it seems to that we can all
download the same piece of software oh
my god in this case and kind of share it
yes you give everybody a spec and the
mathematical constraints that are
intrinsic to information processing make
sure that given the same spec you come
up with a compatible structure okay so
that's there's the space of ideas that
we all share and we think that's kind of
the mind and but that's separate from
the idea is from from Christianity for
from religion is that there's a separate
thing between the mind as a real world
and this real world is the world in
which God exists God is the quarter of
the multiplayer adventure so to speak
and we are all players in this game and
that's the dualism you use yeah but the
fact is because the mental realm is
exists in a different implementation
than a physical realm and the mental
realm is real and a lot of people have
this intuition that there is this real
room in which you and me talk and speak
right now
then comes a layer of physics and
abstract rules and so on and then comes
another real room where our souls are
and our tool form isn't the thing that
gives us phenomenal experience and this
of course a very confused notion that
you would get and it's basically it's
the result of connecting materialism and
idealism in the wrong way so okay I
apologize but I think it's really
helpful if we just tried to define try
to define terms like what is joules and
what is idealism what is materialism for
people Adana
so the idea of dualism and our cultural
tradition is that there are two
substances a mental substance and a
physical substance and they interact by
different rules and the physical world
is basically causally closed and it's
built on a low level causal structures
of the bezier bottom level that is
causally closed that's entirely
mechanical and mechanical in the widest
sense
so it's computational there's basically
a physical world in which information
flows around and physics describes the
laws of how information flows around in
this job would you compare it to like a
computer where you have a hardware and
software the computer is a
generalization of
information flowing around basically but
you will discover that there is the new
universal principle you can define this
Universal machine that is able to
perform all the computations so all
these machines have the same power this
this means that you can always define a
translation between them as long as they
have unlimited memory to be able to
perform each other's computations so
would you then say that materialism is
this whole world is just the hardware
and idealism is this whole world is just
a software not why I think that most
idealists don't have a notion of
software yet because software also comes
down to information processing right so
what you notice is the only thing that
is real to you and me is this
experiential world in which things
matter in which things have taste in
which things have color phenomenal
content and so on and you are bringing
up consciousness ok and this is distinct
from the physical world in which things
have values in only in an abstract sense
and you only look at cold patterns
moving around so how does anything feel
like something and this connection
between the two things is very puzzling
to a lot of people of course to many
philosophers so idealism starts out with
the notion that mind is primary
materialism things that matter is
primary and so for the idealist the
material patterns that we say play and
playing out a part of the dream that the
mind is dreaming and he exists in a mind
on a higher plane of existence if you
want and for the materialist there is
only this material thing and that
generates some models and we are the
result of these models and in some sense
I don't think that we should understand
if you understand it properly
materialism and idealism is a dichotomy
but there's two different aspects of the
same thing so the via thing is we don't
exist in the physical world we do exist
inside of a store way that the brain
tells itself ok that's it let me uh let
my my my information processing I take
they take that in we don't exist in the
physical world we exist in the narrative
basically your brain cannot feel
anything new your cannot feel anything
their physical things physical systems
are unable to experience anything but it
would be very useful
for the brain or for the organism to
know what it would be like to be a
person and to feel something yeah so the
brain creates a simulacrum of such a
person that it uses to model the
interactions of the person's the best
model of what that brain this organism
thinks it is in relationship to its
environment so it creates that model
it's a story a multimedia novel that the
brain is continuously writing and
updating but you also kind of said that
you said that we kind of exist in the
head and that's all right yes that story
yeah what is real in any of this so like
there's a again these terms are you kind
of said there's a quantum graph I mean
what is what is this whole thing running
on then is this story and is it
completely fundamentally impossible to
get access to it because isn't the story
supposed to is in the brain in a in in
something in existing in some kind of
context so what we can identify as
computer scientists we can engineer
systems and test our theories this way
that may have the necessary insufficient
properties to produce the phenomena that
you're observing which is theirs itself
in a virtual world that is generated in
somebody's neocortex who that is
contained in the skull of this primate
here and when I point at this this
indexicality is of course wrong but I do
create something that is likely to give
rise to patterns on your retina that
allow you to interpret what I'm saying
right but I both know that the world
that you and me are seeing is not the
real physical world what we are seeing
is a virtual reality generated in your
brain to explain the patterns on your
retina how close is it to the real world
that's kind of the the question is it
when you have when you have like people
like Donna Hoffman let's say that like
that you're really far away the the
thing we're seeing you and I now that
interface would have it's very far away
from anything like we don't even have
anything close like to the sense of what
the real world is or is it a very
surface piece of architecture imagine
you look at the mental boat rental right
this famous thing that when a man would
discover that whoa if you
see an overall shape in there right but
you know if you truly understand it you
know it's two lines of code it's
basically in a series that is being
tested for complex numbers and in the
complex number plane for every point and
for those where this year is is
diverging you will paint this black and
where it's converging you don't and you
get the intermediate colors by taking
how far is it diverges yes right this is
gives you this shape of this fractal but
imagine you live inside of this fractal
and you don't have access to where you
are in the fractal or you have not
discovered the generator function even
right so what you see is all over oh I
can see right now is the spiral and this
variable moves a little bit to the right
is this an accurate model of reality yes
it is right it is an adequate
description is you know that there is
actually no spiral in the mailboat
fractal it only appears to like this to
an observer that is interpreting things
as a two-dimensional space and then
define certain regularities in there at
a certain scale that currently observes
because if you zoom in the spiral might
disappear and turn out to be something
different at the different resolution
right yes so at this level you have the
spiral and then you discover the spiral
moves to the right and some point it
disappears so you have a singularity at
this point your model is no longer valid
you cannot predict what happens beyond
the singularity but you can observe
again and you will see it is another
spiral and at this point it disappeared
so maybe we now have a second order law
and if you make 30 layers of these laws
then you have a description of the world
that is similar to the one that we come
up with when we describe the reality
around us it's reasonably predictive it
does not cut to the core of it so you
explain how it's being generated yeah
how it actually works but it's
relatively good to explain the
University of your entangled fence but
you don't think the tools are computer
science the tools of physics could get
could step outside see the whole drawing
and get at the basic mechanism of how
the pattern the spiral is generated
imagine you would find yourself embedded
into a mother but Franklin you try to
figure out what works and you you know
somehow have a Turing machine there's
enough memory to think and as a result
you've come to this idea it must be some
kind of automaton and maybe you just
enumerate all the possible
until you get to the one that produces
your reality so you can identify
necessary and sufficient condition for
instance we discover that mathematics
itself is the domain of all languages
and then we see that most of the domains
of mathematics that we have discovered
are in some sense describing the same
fractals this is what category theory is
obsessed about that you can map these
different domains to each other so they
are not that many fractals and some of
these have interesting structure and
symmetry breaks and so you can just
cover what region of this global fractal
you might be embedded in from first
principles yes but the only way you can
get there is from first principle so
basically your understanding of the
universe has to start with automata and
the number theory and then spaces and so
on yeah I think like Stephen Wolfram
still dreams that he's it that he'll be
able to arrive at the fundamental rules
of the cellular automata or the
generalization of which is behind our
universe
yeah it's you've said on this topic you
said in a recent conversation that quote
some people think that a simulation
can't be conscious and only a physical
system can but they got a completely
backward a physical system cannot be
conscious only a simulation can be
cautious yeah consciousness is a
simulated property that simulated itself
yeah just like you said the mind is kind
of the call it story narrative there's a
simulation in our minds essentially a
simulation and usually I try to use the
terminology so that the mind is
basically a principles that produce the
simulation it's the software that is
implemented by your brain and the mind
is creating both the universe that we
are in and the self the idea of a person
that is on the other side of attention
and is embedded in this world why is
that important that idea of herself why
is that an important feature in the
simulation it's basically a result of
the purpose that the mind has it's a
tool for modeling right we are not
actually monkeys we are side effects of
the regulation needs of monkeys and but
the monkey has to regulate is the
relationship of an organism to an
outside world that is a large part also
consisting of other organisms
and as a result it basically has
regulation targets that it tries to get
to this regulation target start with
priors they are basic like unconditional
reflexes that we are more less born with
and then we can reverse-engineer them to
make them more consistent and then we
get more detailed models about how the
world works and how to interact with it
and so these priors that you commit to
are largely target values that our needs
should approach set points and this
deviation to the set point creates some
urge some tangent and we find ourselves
living inside of feedback loops right
the consciousness emerges over
dimensions of disagreements with the
universe things that you care things are
not the way there should be but you need
to regulate and so in some sense the
sense itself is the result of all the
identifications that you're having an
identification is a regulation tracker
that you're committing to it's a
dimension that you care about do you
think is important and this is also what
locks you in if you let go of these
commitments of these identifications you
get free there's nothing that you have
to do anymore
and if you let go of all of them you're
completely free and you can enter
Nirvana because you're done and actually
this is a good time to pause and say
thank you too so a friend of mine
Gustavo Ostrom who introduced me to your
work I wanted to give him a shout out
he's a brilliant guy and I think the AI
community is actually quite amazing and
Gustav was a good representative of that
you are as well some I'm glad first of
all I'm glad the internet exists YouTube
is this where I can watch your talks and
then get to your book and study your
writing and think about you know that's
that's amazing okay
but the you've kind of described instead
of this emergent phenomena of
consciousness from the simulation so
what about the hard problem of
consciousness the can you just linger on
it like but why does it still feel like
I understand you're kind of the self as
an important part of the simulation but
why does the simulation feel like
something so if you look at the book by
say george RR martin with the characters
have plausible psychology
yeah and they stand on a hill because
they want to conquer the city below they
own that don't in it
look at the color of the sky and they
are Princip and feel empowered and all
these things why do they have these
emotions it's because it's written into
the story right Anne's written to the
story because it's an adequate model of
the person that predicts what they're
going to do next and the same thing is
helpful it's basically a story that our
brain is writing it's not written in
words it's written in a perceptual
content basically multimedia content and
it's a model of what the person would
feel if it existed so it's a virtual
person and you and me happen to be this
virtual person so if this virtual person
gets access to the language center and
talks about the sky being blue and this
is us but hold on a second do I exist in
your simulation you do you do exist I
mean almost similar way as me so they're
internal states that I that are less
accessible for me in that you have and
so on and you're my model might not be
completely adequate they're also things
that I might perceive about you that you
don't perceive but in some sense both
you and me are some puppets to puppets
that enact this play in my mind and I
identify with one of them because I
can't control one of the puppet directly
and with the other one I can create
things in between so for instance we can
go or in an interaction that even leads
to a coupling to a feedback loop so we
can sync things together in a certain
way or feel things together but this
coupling is itself not a physical
phenomenon entirely a software
phenomenon it's a result of two
different implementations interacting
with each other so this is thing so are
you suggesting I did like the way you
think about it is the entirety of
existence simulation and we're kind of
each mind is a little sub simulation
that like why don't you why doesn't your
mind have access to my mind's full state
like for the same reason that my mind
hasn't have access to its own full state
so what I mean there is no trick and
also basically when I know something
about myself it's because I made a model
yes but that of your brain is tasked
with modeling what other parts
your brain are doing yes but there seems
to be an incredible consistency about
this world in the physical sense that
there's repeatable experiments and so on
yeah how does that fit into our silly
the center of a Apes simulation of the
world so why is it some repeat why is
everything so repeatable and not
everything there's a lot of fundamental
physics experiments that are repeatable
for a long time all over the place and
so on laws of physics how does that fit
in it seems that the parts of the world
that are not deterministic are not
long-lived so if you build a system any
kind of automaton so if you build
simulations of something you'll notice
that the phenomena that endure are those
that give rise to stable dynamics so
basically if you see anything that is
complex in the world it's the result of
usually of some control of some feedback
that keeps it stable around certain
attractors and the things that are not
stable that don't give rise to certain
harmonic patterns and so on they tend to
get weeded out over time so if we are in
a region of the universe that sustains
complexity which is required to
implement Minds like ours this is going
to be a region of the universe that is
very tightly controlled and controllable
so it's going to have lots of
interesting symmetries and also symmetry
breaks that allow the creation of
structure but they exist where so the
this is such an interesting idea that
our - simulation is constructing the
narrative but my question is just to try
to understand how that fits with this
with the entirety of the universe you're
saying that there's a region of this
universe that allows enough complexity
to create creatures like us but what's
the connection between the the brain the
mind and the broader universe which
comes first which is more fundamental is
the is the mind the starting point the
universe is emergent is the universe the
starting point the minds are emergent I
think quite clearly the letter it's at
least a much easier explanation because
it allows us to make causal models and I
don't see any way to construct an
inverse cos additi so what happens when
you die to your mind simulation my
implementation ceases so basically the
thing that implements myself will no
longer be present it means if I am NOT
implemented on the minds of other people
the thing that I identify was this the
the good thing is I don't actually have
an identity beyond the identity that I
construct if I was the Dalai Lama he
identifies as a form of government so
basically the Dalai Lama gets reborn not
because he's confused but because he is
not identifying as a human being he runs
on a human being he's basically a
governmental software right that is
instantiated in every new generation in
you so his advisers they'll pick someone
who does this in the next generation so
if you identify with this you are no
longer human and you don't die in this
sense Li what dies is only the body of
the human that you run on yeah he to
kill the Dalai Lama you would have to
kill his tradition and if we look at
ourselves we realize that we're to a
small part like this most of us so for
instance if you have children you
realize something lives on in them or if
you spark an idea in the world something
lives on or if you identify it as a
society around you because you are part
that you'll not rest this human being
yes so in a sense you are kind of like a
Dalai Lama and since that you Jascha
Bach is just a collection of ideas so
like you have this operating system on
which is a bunch of ideas live and
interact and then once you die they kind
of part some of them jump off the showed
it put it the other way identity is a
software state it's a construction it's
not physically real you know identity is
not a physical concept its basic a
representation of different objects on
the same world line but identity let
lives and dies are you attached this is
it's what's the fundamental thing is
that the ideas that come together to
form identity or is each individual
identity actually a fundamental thing
it's a representation that you can get
agency over if you care so basically you
can choose what you identify best if you
want to know but it just seems if if the
mind is not real it's not that the
birth and death is not a crucial part of
it well maybe I'm silly
maybe I'm attached to this whole
biological organism but it seems that
the physical being a physical object in
this world is is a an important aspect
of birth and death like it feels like it
has to be physical to die it feels like
simulations don't have to die the
physics that we experience is not the
real physics that explain it's no color
and sound in the real world color and
sound are types of representations that
you get if you want to model reality
with oscillators right so colors and
sound in some sense have octaves yes and
it's because they are represented
properly with oscillators right so
that's why colours form a circle of
views and colors have harmonic sounds
have harmonics is a result of
synchronizing oscillators in in the
brain right so the world that we
subjectively interact with is
fundamentally the result of the
representation mechanisms in our brain
they are mathematically to some degree
universal there are certain regularities
that you can discover in the patterns
and not others but the patterns that we
get this is not the real world the world
that we interact with is always made of
too many parts to count right so when
you look at this table and so on it's
consisting of so many more molecules and
atoms that you cannot count them so you
only look at the aggregate dynamics at
limit dynamics if you had almost
infinitely many patterns of particles
what would be the dynamics of the table
and this is roughly what you get so
geometry that we are interacting this is
the result of discovering those
operators that work in the limit that
you get by building an infinite series
that converges for those parts where it
converges is geometry for those parts
where a dozen convergence chaos right
and then so all that is filtered through
with the cuts of the consciousness
that's emergent in our narrative the the
consciousness gives it color gives a
feeling gives a flavor so I think the
feeling flavor and so on is given by the
relationship that a feature has to all
the other features it's basically a
giant relational graph that is our
subjective universe the color is given
by those aspects of the representation
or the this exponential color where you
care about but you have identifications
but something means something where you
are the inside of a feedback loop when
the dimensions of of caring are
basically dimensions of this
motivational system that we emerge over
you