Top Psychologist, Donald Hoffman: Seeing True Reality Would Kill Us! I Can Prove It To You!

The world that you're seeing isn't the true world. All of this that I'm seeing right now was just a virtual reality. It's like you're born with headset on playing a video game. That's your reality. But if you're the programmer who wrote the code for the game, you know that there's an entire world outside of it. And as the programmer, you can do miracles. >> And do you think we're getting closer to being able to edit the code? >> That's exactly what I'm working on right now. And we're opening up a realm of new technologies that are far more powerful than anything we've seen before. Like time travel. And nuclear bombs will be like firecrackers. >> Will people suffer? >> So it's like Pandora's Box. There's all sorts of nasty surprises. But they also could be miraculous. But either way, just in the last few months it's started to crack open. >> So let's talk about that. >> Okay. >> So Professor Donald Hoffman is the cognitive scientist pushing the boundaries of how we perceive reality. >> And how we can unlock our full potential as human beings. >> According to Darwin's theory, our sensory systems, eyes, ears, smell, touch, are not shaped to show us the truth. They were shaped to keep you alive long enough to reproduce successfully. Because seeing the truth takes too much time and energy. And so whatever reality is, it's utterly unlike anything that I perceive. >> Well, what does this all mean for the nature of how one should understand their life? >> Well, if you're stuck in a boring world, that's a world of your own creation. That's not the real world. And my conscious experiences are nothing but what my brain creates. And so we feel inadequate. We feel like we need to compete with other people. But you're the inventor of this whole thing. You have nothing to prove. And there are much more interesting perspectives that we can take on ourselves. So if you really knew who you are, you would see no need to compare or compete. >> And is there a way for me to understand who I am? >> If you want to understand the truth of who you are beyond just this headset description of you, then you have to >> I see messages all the time in the comment section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So if you could do me a favor and double-check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do double check if you subscribed and uh thank you so much because in a strange way you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you. Professor Donald Hoffman, do you think that the listeners of this show, the people listening right now, understand the nature of reality and the world that they're looking at and see? >> I think that no one, even the most advanced professionals, really understands the nature of reality and it's the one of the big open problems and questions in science today. We all might have ideas, we might think we know something. Our best science suggests that our imagination is not yet big enough. We need to explore further. >> What is it that you believe is the big sort of misconception about how we perceive reality? >> Well, most of us think of reality as whatever is inside space and time. We actually know that space-time cannot be the fundamental nature of reality. >> And what is space-time? >> So, everything that you see around us, right? The the the space between you and me, there's maybe one or two meters of space between you and me. That's what space space-time is. All all the stuff that we can see in our telescope, put it that way. If you can see it in your telescope, it's part of space-time. But we know our our best theories of space-time, Einstein's theory together with quantum theory, tell us that space-time cannot be the fundamental nature of reality. There's a small if you go small, so I can talk about a meter. >> Yeah. >> And then I can go to, you know, centimeters and then, you know, millimeters. And then we can go, you know, micrometers and and you can go smaller and smaller. At some point you go so small that space disappears. It it no longer even makes sense mathematically. It's 10 to the minus 33 cm. So, it's actually not that in my view, it's not that small. It's not 10 to the minus 33 trillion cm. It's just 10 to the minus 33 cm, and all of a sudden our equations tell us um space-time doesn't have any effective meaning. >> Is space-time a proxy for the word reality in some respects? >> Well, for most people I think it is. For most people they think that that space-time is the reality, and what I'm saying is is the reality that most of us have assumed is the final reality, and science is now telling us it can't be. It actually and it tells us precisely at 10 to the minus 33 cm, 10 to the minus 43 seconds, the very notion of space-time makes no sense. >> Is that the same as saying that reality as I perceive it makes no sense? >> I'm suggesting, now as a cognitive scientist not a physicist, we should think of space-time as just a virtual reality headset. That's the way we perceive in our game of life. >> And when you say space-time you mean the the thing that I'm perceiving with my eyes and ears and senses right now? >> That's right. Even this hard table is just a VR object. And the whole setting that we're here in here right now is just a virtual reality, and there is a a reality entirely outside this headset that that's is open to science to explore, and we're finding stuff, which you might call obelisks, geometric objects outside of space-time. So, so this is all brand new in the last since like 20 2010 or something like that, roughly. >> So, do you believe that? Do you believe that everything I'm experiencing and seeing now is basically like equivalent to me wearing a virtual reality headset, and that there's something beyond the virtual reality headset. >> Completely. I cuz I believe the science. And the predictions of our theories about space-time are so good. Now, I I have to always be careful about what I'm saying versus and I don't want to put words in the physicist's mouth. So, when I say I think it's a virtual reality, that's Hoffman, that's not physics, right? >> Are you able to swap out the phrase spacetime for reality? Or is that inaccurate? >> I think that whatever reality is, spacetime is a trivial aspect of it. There's much more to reality than spacetime. Spacetime is all the real It's It's like a a player in Grand Theft Auto. If all you've done is play in Grand Theft and that's you you're born with a headset on and that's all you've That's that's your reality. But if you're the programmer who wrote the code and you know the supercomputer that's running Grand Theft Auto, you know the Grand Theft Auto um it is a nice self-contained world, but there's an entire world outside of it that's utterly unlike Grand Theft Auto. It's It's the supercomputer with diodes and resistors and voltages that are being toggled and when when some dude is turning his wheel to to drive the car, what's really happening when he turns the wheel is that millions of voltages are being toggled in a specific order in some computer and it has to be exactly that right sequence for the thing to work properly. And and the guy that's turning the wheel has no idea what's going on. There's this other whole realm utterly outside your imagination in Grand Theft Auto. And so, you know, if you're in Grand Theft Auto, you might not even know about computers and toggling voltages and so All you know is I got a steering wheel and a gas pedal and streets and and people to race and so forth and things to to steal and and whatever. >> But you don't realize there's a puppet master effectively controlling you. >> Behind the scenes. And so, I I think that spacetime is just a very effective headset. >> For anyone that doesn't know, Grand Theft Auto is a video game where you run around a virtual world, basically. >> That's right. Yeah, driving You're driving nice fancy cars in this in this world. That's right. >> So, everything I see right now is a projection that I've made on the world, my world, in order to help me to survive. And my brain is not showing me things that it doesn't think I need to see because they won't be conducive with survival, because they are cognitively in terms of like um how much fuel and energy they would require to process and think about. They are cognitively inconsequential. Or like it would be inefficient for me to spend my cognitive power to see those things. >> That's exactly right. And for a lot of people, I think that's counterintuitive, because they would say, "Look, evolution is about making you fit, so you can live and survive long enough to reproduce successfully. And surely evolution should do that by making you see the truth. I mean, if you see the truth, then you're going to compete in the game of life much more successfully than if you don't see the truth. So, so what are you talking about this headset nonsense for? This is not a headset. This is the truth. I mean, and evolution should shape us to see the truth." Now, I think that's what most people would would would assume. And in fact, very intelligent experts in the field assume that. And I suggest otherwise. In fact, we have mathematical proofs otherwise. If you look at evolution, Darwin said, "Look, we need to think about a gradual evolution over time of these species, maybe from very very simple ones to more complex ones. And what what is going to drive that dynamics? And And Darwin suggested it was what we would call reproductive fitness. That That those organisms that have physical properties, sensory systems, motor systems, you know, movement systems, that make them more likely to have offspring and to raise offspring to maturity. Whatever properties those might be, that's what we're going to call fitness. So, the more fit you are is really saying how likely are you to have and successfully raise offspring. So, Darwin suggested that. I don't think that he necessarily had to say that there was no God. It was just that there If there is a God, it's not like God put it down perfect. He did an evolutionary process. >> Yeah. Well, the organisms adapt to their environment. Um well, they're not adapting, but the offspring that survive are those best adapted to the environment. >> That's right. So, that was Darwin's idea. So, the the gradual evolution from presumably simpler organisms to more and more complicated complicated organisms. And um and then multiple evolutions of things like eyes, like cephalopod eye evolved differently from the human eye. Um and the cephalopod eye got certain things right that the human eye got wrong. >> Is that because the cephalopod eye was in a different environment, so it had different requirements? >> That would be one possible reason. I I actually don't know in the case of the cephalopods why, but that kind of idea is absolutely one of the reasons that that could have happened. Another one, it could just be an accident, right? There's probability involved, and so there at some point you have the right accident, and then then the humans got the thing reversed. >> So, you're saying Darwin was wrong in some respect, or that he there was something missing from his theory? >> Oh, no. I I think Darwin's I I I In terms of biology, I think that there is um no serious competitor to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. In in terms of a scientific theory of the origin of species and so forth. And it's Darwin's theory and the mathematical formulation of it that I think also says that what we're perceiving is not the truth. That our sensory systems on Darwin's theory were not shaped to show us the truth. They were shaped to keep you alive long enough to reproduce successfully. Period. That's all Darwin's theory actually says. Most of us think the way this evolutionary process does it is to make sure that your senses are telling you the truth about the external reality. I published some papers with um with colleagues where we show mathematically that Darwin's theory does not entail that at all. In fact, Darwin's theory says the probability is zero that any sensory system, like eyes, ears, smell, touch, taste, has ever been shaped to see any aspect of objective reality truly. So, the probability is zero that you see any aspect of the truth. Period. On Darwin's theory. What you do experience is sensory systems that guide adaptive behavior. Guide adaptive behavior means um they let you act >> So, your eyes, your nose. >> Your eyes, your nose, yeah. Yeah, your eyes and nose and more. They they guide you so that you act in ways that you don't die too quickly. >> Okay. >> And you can have kids that don't die too quickly. That's That's all it's about. >> I was just playing out the scenario then that you removed my eyes and you removed my ears and my nose and my ability to sense, you know, temperature and things like that. All of my senses. I thought If I was the only person on Earth and you removed all of my senses, what would reality be? Because if you remove my senses, reality no longer exists as far as I'm aware of it. But that doesn't mean nothing exists. And I'm wondering what that nothing would be. Like if you just imagine like wipe off everyone on the Earth and it's just you and we remove all of your senses, what what is in that space? Cuz you're right, my senses, my eyes, my ears, my ability to understand temperature is a byproduct and consequence of me surviving. So, I was playing out this and I was like, well, if we think about ghosts and the afterlife, maybe there was no reason from a survival perspective that I even needed to be able to see or acknowledge. That maybe it just didn't help. Maybe it actually would have hurt me to have >> Right. >> Um cuz it would have been too cognitively demanding to process all of that information. So, anybody that could process all that information wouldn't have been good at reproducing, therefore they wouldn't survive, therefore they wouldn't be here. So, maybe those of us that are here were just really good at ignoring the other dimensions. >> That's what our mathematics says. I think that your your intuitions on that are are are quite right that if you pay attention to anything other than what allows you to have kids, you're wasting your time from an evolutionary point of view. Perception is expensive. It takes a lot of calories. You have to eat a lot of food to to run your brain, to power your eyes and your ears. So, you need to do shortcuts. You need to make your sensory systems not chew up so much of your energy. The more expensive your your perceptual systems are, the more you've got to eat to to power those. So, that means you have to go out there and forage and you and put yourself at harm's. So, it's it's it's So, there's a trade-off. We try to do things cheaply in evolution. And going for the truth, you don't need to actually go for the truth cuz that's very very expensive. So, so for example, there are some flying insects that need to lay their their off their eggs on in in water. And they use the trick of just looking at the polarization of the light coming off the water. So, what what you see happening in evolution is we have tricks and hacks. And and even in humans have tricks and hacks. And you for for example, trying to find out if someone is reproductively fit. Right? We We You You can't I can't actually look at your DNA and and go, "Well, okay. You got He's got an ACG and T, but he's got a C here where it's supposed to be a T." Or or No, I I can't look at your DNA. So, what do I look at? I have to look at your at your what I can see of your body and and your voice and and so forth. So, >> One of the most compelling arguments for the fact that we aren't seeing reality as it is, and we're actually only seeing what we need to see in order to survive, is when you look at as you were saying is how different animals see the world. And can you just give me some examples of some more examples of different animals that see the world completely differently? I always think about bats. How do How do bats see the world? Cuz do they see colors like we see them and objects like we see them? >> No, no. Bats use echolocation. They'll send out little bursts of sound, um at very very high frequencies, and then they have these big ears that capture the returns and of >> at their sensory system. It says, "Most insect-eating bats use echolocation, as you said. They emit high-frequency sound waves >> Yes. >> and see by listening to the echoes bouncing off other objects." >> And this gives them some kind of sonic map of their surroundings, helping them to navigate and effectively see in total darkness. So, you imagine a bat >> Right. >> like then they if a bat is sat there thinking that they understand the nature of reality, when it's actually just a map of how the sound waves bounce back, they I imagine don't have the same a complete They have a completely different perception of what reality is to us. And it's therefore it would be quite ignorant to assume that we as humans are seeing reality as it is, when just like the bat, we're probably adapted to our environment and built senses, eyes, ears, touch that helped us to survive. >> I would agree with you, but some of my colleagues would disagree and they would say humans are much more complicated. And you know, surely bats and so forth, they have to have all these shortcuts and they don't see reality as it is, but but we've evolved further and we're closer to the truth. From my point of view, what I see this table and this cup and so forth is just a a convenient fiction. Whatever reality is, it's utterly unlike anything that I perceive, utterly. >> In a TED Talk that you did in 2000 in the 2000s, you talked about simulations that you ran to prove that I guess in in in part that I'm only seeing things that will help me to survive as a creature, as an organism. Can you explain to me simply what what those simulations were and what they proved? >> Oh, yes, in our in our simulations, and this is before we had theorems. So, we did simulations just to see if the ideas were working. And we would have artificial organisms in a computer. >> Yeah. >> So, it was like a a game that we put together. And we would have a world and and we would let some organisms actually see the true state of that world. So, they they were the truth organisms. And then we'd have other ones that um only had like a a headset an interface that only could see not the truth, but but just some little bit of information that that could guide adaptive behavior. >> That would help them to survive >> yeah, and and reproduce. That that's right. What we found was for a wide range of of conditions of of the algorithm, the the organisms that saw the truth went extinct. They they weren't able to compete the ones with the ones that didn't. And one of the things that came out of it was seeing the truth takes too much time and energy. It is complicated to see the truth. And if you you a simple trick that lets you do the same thing without having to be have a deep insight, then you can get the same benefit. You can get the benefit without having to put all the the effort out. And I can give you a concrete example of a of a organism that does this that's that's pretty funny. So, there's the jewel beetle. It lives in the outback of Australia. It's dimpled, glossy, and brown. The males fly, the females are flightless. So, the males are flying around, of course, looking for an eligible female. It turns out that men in the outback tended to for a while were were drinking beer with these bottles that were also dimpled, glassy, glossy, and and brown. They throw them out into the into the outback, and they turned out to be dimpled, glassy, and just the right shade of brown to grab the attention of the male jewel beetles. They're They're actually on the bottle. They're full body contact. They're crawling all over it, and they still think it's a female. So, how much do they know about their women? Very, very little they know about their women. The a woman a female is something dimpled, glossy, and brown. Apparently, the bigger the better. And that's what a female is. So, you can see evolution didn't give these male beetles much insight into their females. They gave them just enough information to successfully reproduce, period. And that's sort of what evolution does. It It gives you just enough information to um reproduce before you die. >> So, they're all making love to this beer bottle because they can't tell they can't see >> That's right. >> reality. They can't see that this isn't a woman, this is a beer bottle. >> That's right. That's one of the more humorous examples of of what evolution has done. It does things on the cheap. And that includes human sensory systems. So, it's it's very humbling. We're not the epitome, and what we think is human appreciation of the deep truth of reality is just our little headset. What we experience and know is trivial compared to whatever reality is, absolutely trivial. We know 0% of reality. And our By the way, our scientific theories will always and forever explain 0% of reality. Because they have to make assumptions. And every theory, scientific theory has to make assumptions. And so, we're going to have an We'll have, in principle, an infinite sequence of theories with ever deeper assumptions, and we'll never get to the bottom. And since it's it's an infinite sequence, that means everything we got so far is 0%. So, I I'm a scientist. I'm all for science. I encourage young men and women to go into science. I think it's a great thing to do. Um but just know that um all of our theories will comprehend 0% of reality. You know, people talk a lot about how their pets or other animals are able to see another dimension. Sometimes people say things like, "My dog started barking at this." Or cancer, and there's dogs or animals that have been able to um they they believe spot certain diseases inside the human body. And when you look at the sort of sensory faculties of these dogs, dogs can hear frequencies up to 65,000 hertz, whereas humans can only go to 20,000 hertz. Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors. Humans just have 5 million. And some animals like cats can see different sort of uh frequencies of light. So, it does it does beg a question, you know, if it's possible for an animal, an organism, to see the world in a different depth and width than us, what what happens if you go further? Right. Uh absolutely. There are some that can detect electric electric fields. So, some um fish can detect electric fields. Um some birds, I believe, can see the polarization of light. And some some uh insects, of course, use polarization of light to to find where to lay their eggs. So, and and we can't do that. So, so yeah, when we start to study other animals, we see these remarkable ability. >> Interesting. And what does um what does this all mean for the nature of how one should understand their life? Because I guess the way the way that we perceive the world causes us so much suffering or joy, depending on how we perceive it. Is there anything people from all of the work you've done and the books you've written that people can bring into their lives to help them live better lives with this understanding of the world? >> First thing to notice that the world is far more interesting and varied than you can imagine. So, if you if you think the world is a boring place, it it's not. Your imagination isn't big enough. Whatever reality is, it it transcends anything that you could possibly imagine. Spiritual traditions basically often say, "There's more to life than what you see inside space and time. There's something beyond." And I've been sort of pointing to that myself in my own way. I'm saying that scientific theories always have assumptions, so there's an infinite number of scientific theories that you can have, and you're never going to get a scientific theory of everything. What am I saying? That there's something beyond science. As good as science is, I'm saying there's not only not a theory of everything, the best theory we'll ever come up with is 0% of reality. So, that leaves all this room for what the spiritual traditions are talking about, that there's something that trans transcends science. There is a a way of thinking about this that I think is very illuminating, and it it's about the inter intersection of science and spirituality. I'm a scientist. Who Who Who am I? I am someone, and and I'm one of many someones, other scientists who can create theories and in principle ever ever deeper theories and there's an infinite sequence. So, who is the I that can do this? No theory that I can come with come up with is the final description of that I. In other words, the I that is doing all this theory building is the I that is real that is making these theories and that utterly transcends all these theories and that's a spiritual point of view. >> So, what does that mean? You're You're God? >> It means that whatever you are transcends any description and that's what a lot of people say God is. Suppose I give you something you've never tasted before like piece of mint and actually I don't know what mint tastes like to you. I assume that it's like what mint tastes like for me, but I don't know. This is called learning by ostensive definition. And so, we have this game where your experiences are your experiences. And you actually didn't need anybody else for those experiences. All you needed me for or your parents for is to give you a name for what you already knew. And and you you create this this world and all we do is tell you how to talk with me about what you've created and I don't know that your world in any way resembles my experience. It's quite possible. >> And do you think there's ways that we cause ourselves a lot of anguish and pain and mental health issues because of how we perceive the nature of reality to be that we could potentially I don't know give up or rewire ourselves on to have a have a more fulfilling more grateful experience of life? >> Completely. I think that's very very important. And it's a natural consequence of what we've just been talking about. Almost all of us think of ourselves as an object in space-time only here for a short amount of time and will soon die. When I say you transcend any scientific theory, that that means the theory that I am just a 160-lb object in space-time is just a theory and it's not the truth. That's not the truth about who I am. That's just a theory that I have because space-time itself is just a theory. Nothing inside space-time is anything but my headset interpretation of a reality that infinitely transcends anything I can experience. There is another way that you can appreciate that that's that transcends science and that is um and this many meditative traditions talk about this. They recognize that you are infinitely beyond any scientific or any other description. So, what do you do in that case to know who you are? You drop all descriptions. You sit in absolute silence and ignore any thoughts because you recognize thoughts are useful in this headset and to play the game of life. Yeah, we need thoughts to do our science. We need to If you want to understand who I am, again, I do psychology, I do all this stuff. I'll do the science so I'm not putting science down. I'm a scientist. But at some point, if you want to understand the truth of who you are beyond just this headset description of you, then you have to lay aside all concepts, period. And just know yourself by being yourself, not by putting a concept between you and yourself. >> A story. >> An identity. >> That's right. No no story, no identity, nothing between you and yourself. You you know yourself by sitting in utter silence and being yourself, no concepts. Because then you've let go of all theories and now it's reality facing reality. No barrier in between. >> And that requires you to to realize that your identity, the stories you believe, the labels you've given yourself as CEO or social media manager or manager or director or head of department, all of these things are just in fact labels you've given. >> That's right. Those are all just labels that you've given. And what's interesting about this now is if I think I'm just this little body and I'm nothing but this body and and my conscious experiences are nothing but what my brain does. So So that's my theory and that's that's all I am. I don't feel very big. I don't feel very important. Um and so I'm going to probably need to do something to make myself feel a little bit better and I'm going to need to compete with you. I'm going to need to show how I'm better than you in certain ways. So I'm a better tennis player than you or I'm smarter than you or or whatever. So we're going to get this competition going on where among people and we're going to get even competition among religions and countries and so forth because we don't know who we are and and we feel inadequate. And if we actually understood that all of this that I'm seeing right now I'm making it up. On the fly. This cup that I'm seeing it only exists when I create it. This table exists when I create it. Like in a virtual reality. In a virtual reality I'm in Grand Theft Auto. I look over here and I now I see a red Mustang. I look away, I don't see the red Mustang and now there is no red Mustang. The red Mustang only existed when I looked because it's a VR game. I only need it when I rent I I I render it when I need it. I'm now rendering a cup. That The cup that I rendered is no longer there. You might render your cup. You might say, "Well, Don you're wrong. The cup is still there. I can see it." No, you're rendering your cup. And so you you're not rendering my cup. I rendered my cup. So in the same thing with Grand Theft Auto, you might say, "Well, I see the red Mustang even if you're not looking, Don." Well, that's because in your headset you're looking and you're rendering a the red Mustang, but I'm not. And there is no red Mustang. If you look inside the supercomputer, there's no red Mustang there. The The supercomputer that's running the game has no red Mustang. So, what I'm saying is we compete, we feel inadequate, and we feel like we need to compete with other people and be better than them, and we have egos, all the egoic stuff that we do that causes all the problems in the world because you don't know who you are. You're creating this whole thing. You're You're not a little player. You're the inventor of this whole thing. You have nothing to prove. And you don't need to be better than anybody else. They're also master creators. They're creating entire universes that they perceive as well. And my own take on on this is that you and I are really the same one reality just looking at itself through two different headsets, two different avatars, and having a conversation. And maybe that's what is required for this one infinite intelligence to sort of know itself. What you If you're If you transcend any description, what How do you know yourself? Maybe what you do is you say, "Well, let me try this headset on. Let me take that seriously for a while. Me Maybe even let myself get lost. Let me Let me completely believe I'm just a Don Hoffman in in in in this space time. And let me believe that for for many decades and then slowly sort of wake up, but at least then I will have seen myself from this perspective. Then I'll take off that headset. We call that death. We all just take off the headset. And then I'll try There's an infinite number of headsets to try on." So, it that point of view, any person you speak to is transcendent. Any animal is just an avatar of this transcendent unspeakably incredible reality that transcends science, so that science will only get 0% of it. And again, I always say, I'm not putting down science. I'm a scientist. We need to do science, and I recommend that people do science. But my guess, this is one of the more trivial headsets. It's only four dimensions. Why not 20 billion? Why not quintillion? This is This is just a fairly trivial. So, we we may be in one of the most the more uninteresting perspectives on who we are. And and and there are much more interesting perspectives that we can take on ourself. But But the reason we have fighting, the reason we have egos, is because we don't know who we are. >> And is there a way for me to understand who I am? Or is the closest you've found meditation? I know you've meditated for 20 years or something. >> I I should say I should be a little careful about I think it really is important to do for for me as a scientist to have done the science that I've done. But I think for someone else who doesn't do science, maybe that that you do music or you do some sports or something like that. That's That is a concrete way of knowing yourself through a perspective, and that's really important. And and and since we have billions of people, and then there's untold other kinds of animals and insects and so forth, this this one infinite intelligence, whatever it is, has decided, I want to look at myself through the lens of a mosquito. And now of the bumblebee, and now of the the jewel beetle that that can't even tell a bottle from from a female. I'm going to look at myself from this panoply of perspectives. >> So, you're almost implying there that there's this one consciousness, and And just using different organisms potentially as vehicles to understand itself and the nature of reality. >> That's right. >> So that would mean that me and you are the same consciousness, but you were born as a scientist in America and I was born as a I don't know, an entrepreneur in Botswana with different perspectives in order to understand the reality, which means that we're basically the same >> That's right. >> the same consciousness, the same super intelligence or whatever just manifesting as different eyeballs in different places. >> That's my my view and certain religious traditions do sort of hint almost say that it exactly. Um, you know, like like Jesus uh in Christianity in like Matthew 25 says, you know, I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty. You gave me something to drink. I was a foreigner and you invited me in. I was sick and you helped me. I was in prison and you visited me. And people he says said asked him, "When did we do that?" And he said, "Whenever you did it to the least person, you did it to me." So Jesus is sort of hinting at this. There is there's no difference. The reason to love your neighbor as yourself is because your neighbor is yourself. Just with a different headset. And the only reason we have problems is we don't realize how incredible you are. So you are that which is creating this VR simulation with all of its beauty, all of its complexity. All the complexity is you. And you're doing it effortlessly. Now uh for my neuroscience colleagues, they will say Don, it's not effortless. You've got 100 billion, well, 86 billion neurons in your brain. Visual system has billions of neurons that are doing all this computation and you know, have the the simple cells, the complex cells, the hypercomplex cells and we think of the brain as a physical object that's generating our consciousness. Yeah. I I'm saying space-time itself is something that you create. And so you create everything inside space-time and >> I've also created the brain. >> You create the brain. So right now you don't have a brain. >> Excuse me. >> And nor do I. >> Okay, fair enough. >> Cuz I don't cuz I don't have a brain and you don't have a brain until we actually look inside and render a brain. Just like in in VR, the the Mustang doesn't exist until you look at it and render it. So if if I I can predict that if we do the right scans, we will see a brain. But that only exists when we when we do the rendering. So I don't have a brain. All these correlations, we know that correlation doesn't cause doesn't imply causation, right? So So we the fact that there is correlations and I don't deny it. In fact, I'm all for studying these correlations between brain activity and conscious experience. They exist, they're undeniable and they don't in any way remotely entail that the brain causes our conscious experiences. >> So I'm not I'm not the brain. I'm the thing that's simulating the presence of a brain. >> That's right. That's right. And so in your simulation, your simulation is so good that it simulates also how all this reality that transcends space-time is being funneled down into this tiny little space-time headset. And that's what we call the brain. So of course there're going to be these correlations between brain activity and what we see. But the correlation goes the other way. It's not because the brain creates your conscious experiences, it's because consciousness has created the brain as an icon to describe how it's how it's creating this headset. >> Do you think much about simulation theory? I've had lots of dinner parties recently and conversations over dinner about simulation theory and it always gets very very interesting. Um what are your thoughts on simulation theory? And for my listeners who might not understand the concept of simulation theory, are you able to explain it? >> Yes, the the So, the standard uh Nick Bostrom, for example, is is a very big figure in the simulation theory. And and in the those kinds of simulation theories, the idea is that the world that you're seeing right now isn't the the true world. This is just a simulation. And there's some programmer, say, with some really nice computer that's programmed this world. And so, we're you're just we're just characters in a simulated world of some programmer. And that programmer and their laptop that's doing this, as it turns out, isn't the final thing either because that programmer in their laptop is also just a simulation from a deeper-level programmer and their laptop. There could be a very, very large nesting of all these simulated worlds and and people with their computers. And that does jive very well with what I'm saying up to a point. I'm saying this is not the reality, this is just a headset. So, but there's a big, big disagreement. >> Do you think we can there's going to come a point where with everything that's going on with AI and robotics that we could get make a robot and program it with a certain AI that gives it the sort of same thinking as a human being, and then when I put some chocolate into its mouth, it's going to say to me, "Mhm, I love that chocolate, Stephen. That's my favorite flavor." >> I could certainly program such a robot. But, the question will always be, just because I have this particular circuit in the in the computer uh and and you know, then some structure on the tongue that I've given it and some pattern of electrical activity, what is my scientific theory that explains why that pattern had to be the taste of chocolate? That's what we need. As a sci- We I see your point. >> to your adaptive learning thing where it's just learned through all of the data through someone telling it programming it to think that particular set of chemicals um send that up to the software and then respond like this, which might just be how me and you responding to life. We might not be conscious at all. >> Right. And then what you're suggesting is probably how we'd actually do it. Like we would probably sort of train it and and and have it give us the right responses in in that kind of context. So we'd probably do it something like that. But but then as scientists, we want to understand. So we're claiming as scientists that an experience is a say certain causal structure or certain functional functional architecture. That's what we're saying it is. >> Mhm. >> Cuz we Cuz these These are physical theories. They're They're saying, "We're not going to start with consciousness. Consciousness is not fundamental. Space and time and physical objects are fundamental. And so we we need to show how those physical objects and their properties give rise to these conscious experiences. So if that's If that's the science you want to propose, then I have to be hard-nosed as a scientist now and say, "Give me your theory of mind." >> So do you think this is a simulation? >> So it's It's not a simulation in Bostrom's sense. In Bostrom's sense, it's a simulation in that it's a physical substrate that's giving rise to this whole world of conscious experiences that I'm having. >> Yeah, so it's >> And that I deny. >> Like a game programmer sat at a computer making it. >> And that And somehow the physical system itself gave rise to the magic of the ex- the conscious experiences I'm having of red and green and love and so forth. Those conscious So for the simulation theory, so this is my my bone of contention with the simulation theory. It's very similar to my theory in in all other respects, but this is a pretty serious bone of contention. For their theory to to work, they have to show explicitly, scientifically, how a conscious a specific conscious experience arises from a specific program. >> Okay. >> Until you do that, this is there is no beef on the table. Right? So from my point their their theory is a non-starter right now because there's no specific experience that they can say this program must be the taste of mint. They can't do that. Until they can do that they can't get this whole world of experience that I'm living in. Nothing. So there's no beef. All they have to do to give me some beef is to say like in integrated information theory they say here's the matrix for mint. This is the matrix. Of course then we'll ask why? Why is that matrix that causal structure the taste of mint? What is your scientific theory for why that's the case? And what you'll see is I think I think it's going to take the field a while to see it, but we will find that these approaches are vacuous. There's no beef. >> When you ask people what the meaning of their life is they'll often say things like it is maybe they'll say to raise children, maybe they'll say they want to improve humanity, they want to cure a disease, they want to help society in some way, but through the lens of reality that you see the world and that you believe the world is what becomes the meaning of life? Donald? >> That's a great question. I do think that the best description I can give is that there is this one transcendent infinite consciousness and you and I are just avatars and so is a mosquito and so is a bacterium and all are equally interesting and important and all are different perspectives just different headsets. There's the mosquito headset, there's the jewel beetle headset. There's all these different headsets and I'm I'm in the Hoffman headset happen to have do science. I'm not good at art, I'm not good at at music and so forth. I have my my my particular talents and and inabilities in my headset. So I'm here to experience the Don Hoffman perspective on things. Why? Because that's perhaps the only way the infinite can know itself as through an infinite number of perspectives. It it transcends any particular perspective. So, why not get lost in the Hoffman perspective and the Jewel Beal perspective and and and all these different perspectives and that's the only way to to know yourself, but it's always the one consciousness that's knowing itself through an infinite number of varieties. Of of experiences, of headsets. >> And did someone or something create that one consciousness? >> Now I'm above my pay grade. It's uh That's a No, no, no, that's of course the right question. And it asks for an explanation. And the only explanations we have are either mathematical or scientific or both. The the only really deeply serious, testable But but even informal explanations make assumptions. And so I'll have to say that that you're asking a question about an entity that transcends any description. Namely, who you really are and who I am I really am. And I think we can I can think you can know the answer to your question in in one way, and that is dropping all concepts and just being with your being. You are that. You are that. You don't need to attain anything. You don't need to achieve anything. You're that right now. So, there's no effort, there's no no need to get better at anything. It's just to recognize what you already are. You've let yourself be under an illusion that I'm just this little guy that needs to do these things and you know and be a professor and whatever it might be. I've been under that illusion and and I got to see myself through that lens and then I began to wake up and see that I completely transcend. It was an interesting perspective. I'm glad I took it seriously. I'm going to throw off that headset. We call it death, but I'm going to take off that headset pretty soon because that's not who I am. I transcend that. So, the answer is you can know it, but but you know it when you let go of all concepts and you don't try. If you're trying to get there, then you don't see what you already are. That's the That's the best answer I can give at this at this point cuz it does transcend science. >> So, in terms of a a god as we believe in gods in the religious context the best answer that you have would say that effectively we are god. The god that we we refer to. We are the transcendent power that goes beyond description and >> Right. Yeah, I I would say that and then I can I mean I can put that in a sort of a Christian language um cuz many listeners will be Christians. Um A child of a human is a human. The Bible calls us children of God. Well, the child of a human is human. The child of God is God. That's what the what what it's pointing to. And and Jesus is fairly explicit about it when some religious leaders were about to stone Jesus for saying that he was the son of God. Jesus quotes the scripture and says from I think the the Psalms or something like that. And he says but in the Psalms it says I have said you are gods and all of you are sons of the most high. And Jesus said if they if he calls them gods to whom the word of God came, why are you trying to stone me to death for just saying I'm the son of God?" What What the Bible's basically saying, "Love God with all your heart." That That's loving yourself. You are God. And loving your neighbor as yourself is just recognizing that your neighbor is yourself under a different avatar. >> Do you think Jesus was really divine in any Presuming you think this was a real individual. And do you think he was divine beyond beyond me and you in some respect? >> Not beyond me and you. But you're You are as divine as could possibly be. >> Thank you so much. We'll clip that. I'll put that on my LinkedIn. >> Hoffman said it. >> Yeah. I'll put that on my recommendations. >> You're divine as Hoffman says I'm as divine as I could possibly be. >> Are there any other You must go If you If you understand reality through this lens that we're seeing so little and that much of it is created by by ourselves and we are the transcendent. Are there any things that you do on a day-to-day basis that are atypical because of that or thoughts you have or experiences you have that are atypical because of this perspective? >> Certainly atypical from before my own in my own life. I now spend um quite a bit of time in meditation. Cuz I I as much as I enjoy the life of the mind and I'm, you know, I a professor and I've taught lots of students over many many years. And I highly recommend all that stuff. At some point I realize that all my knowledge, all possible scientific knowledge, is 0% of reality. And do I really want to confine myself only to 0% of reality? I want to explore reality from this perspective, but it is 0%. So, I do my homework and I encourage my students to do my homework, take this perspective very seriously, study it study it rigorously. But then realize there's this the 100% that you haven't seen and you are it. >> So, you're doing lots of psychedelics and stuff like that to >> I haven't done any psychedelics. >> You've never tried psychedelics? >> I I I've never I've never even smoked a cigarette. >> Wow. >> I I and I haven't had a drink of alcohol in in decades. So, I I and it's partly just because of I'm I'm frail. My my physical body isn't that strong. So, I I I have limits to what I can't push my body too hard. So, I've learned to operate within my own limits and I don't push it too hard. But the meditation I I I do >> Am I right in thinking that you now meditate 3 to 4 hours a day? >> Probably, yeah. >> What insights or understandings have emerged from that that I might be able to comprehend? >> Any creativity that's ever come out in my scientific work. To whatever to whatever extent it's creative, it's come from the silence. So, I've of course had to do my homework and do my studies and so forth, but the novel ideas come from the silence. Personally, one one thing I've seen is how identified I am with my avatar. I think I am this body. I'm really tied to this body. And it's The stuff that I'm saying at the emotional level, there's an emotional part of me that doesn't believe it one bit. You're right, but emotionally um you put a gun to my head, I'm scared to death. >> Mhm. >> Intellectually, I'll say say to you, this is just an avatar. I I'm the infinite that transcends. So, I when I die, I just and and I believe that. How deeply do I believe it? Put a gun to my head and you'll find out. I'll wet my pants. So, it's it's it's very very interesting for me to look at that and to see all the disjunctions that that that that the things that are disjointed in in in my my worldview. >> Well, it kind of makes sense, right? Based on your theory that our senses have evolved to help us to survive because someone not liking your thinking or your theories or rejecting you or harmed your body, it would go against your survival. So, theoretically, if we are in the world that you've described in the reality you've described, which is basically designed for survival, then you would have developed senses that make you change behavior if there's a risk of someone not liking you. >> That's right. There there are social pressures and and if you don't conform to them, you get feedback that that can be very very negative and in some cases even death. Um you you you if I if I go to a grocery store and and don't happen to pay and just walk off with the stuff, I end up behind bars. There are rules of the game. There are rules of the headset. I transcend the headset, but I choose to allow myself to get lost in the game. >> Starting in January 2020, you did have a proverbial gun held to your head in in a way because you contracted COVID and went through and are still going through some pretty um serious health complications because of long COVID. You developed heart heart issues within weeks requiring hundreds of hours of critical care in hospital. You told me before we started recording that you've had heart surgery twice. >> Yeah. >> And in 2021 at 66 years old at one point you thought you might not survive because your heart had been at 190 beats per minute for 30 hours and you sent your wife a goodbye message because it looked like it was all over. >> Right. Right. >> I am wondering what that brush with death did to your perception of life, your perspective, and how that all ties into your your um your beliefs about the nature of reality. >> It certainly let me see how tied I am to my body and the fear that I that I experienced. Right? It's one thing for me to sit here as a nice academic and talk about how you're the transcendent reality. It's another thing to have your heart fail. And to know that this is probably the end. And and to face the raw emotion. So I had deep trauma and then I had to have another surgery. I Um the first one kept me for a year and a half or so. He was a great surgeon. It's not his fault. He did a a great job. But you know COVID is persistent. And the week before my second surgery I was in the ER three times where they had to restart my heart. Just didn't know if I was going to make it. I I would have to go have my heart restarted and then two days later go back and have my heart restarted and I was just hoping to make it to live to the surgery. Um and and even now I wouldn't be surprised if the heart starts to to go bad again. So so that takes us out of the you know abstract academic realm into something very very concrete. Now how do you deal with the fact that you really don't know from one heartbeat to the next. It keeps you from just talking abstractly about this stuff and and and and being real about it. It's what do I really feel about it? And and when I look inside and see there's real fear then I know okay this stuff about you're the infinite and everybody else is the infinite is still fairly just an abstract concept for you Don. You haven't really gone deep enough. You need to go deeper and actually if that's true I mean maybe maybe it's all BS, right? But but if it's true that you are the infinite and everybody else is the infinite um then you need to go deeper into that. Um and and I intellectually I'm I'm convinced. I mean I've given you the reasons. I intellectually I'm quite convinced. Um and it's it's really interesting to me that emotionally I'm far from convinced. Far and and I agree with what you just said about the evolutionary arguments for it. There are good evolutionary reasons for me to be wired up to have automatic emotional responses that are going to protect this body, to keep it So, no doubt about it. So, so there's no reason to judge myself that I'm a you know, my body has a a fear response and so forth when there are things that that are about to to to kill me. The issue is then when I look at that fear response, can I look at it and accept it or do I identify with it? Do I identify with the fear response or can I step back and be the observer that watches the fear response? And in in the meditation process what I'm learning to do is in some sense what I was saying about the science. Science is great, but don't believe any theory. Theories are just tools. They're not the truth. No scientific theory, my theories included, are not the truth. And so also is my theory about who I am. Not the truth. So, to really let go of any theory, if I can really let go of any theory of who I am, then I'll let go of any fear. So, it's really It's really comes down to to this, which is really really quite interesting. We will each die. That's incontrovertible. So, any attachments I have to this world will cease. There's no doubt The question is, can I let go of the attachments now? Or will they only go from my cold, dead hand? When will I let go of all these attachments? If I my to the extent and I am no I you no expert, but to the that I can let go, I see that there's more peace. There's more peace in letting not being attached to things. So I I I see that, but but I'm not there. So this is a very human very human perspective on things, very fallible perspective, and it's very very interesting. So I'm claiming I'm the infinite, and I'm the infinite having taken on this this bodily form, and in some sense, I'm waking up to who I really am, but I'm only partly awake. >> I started my first business at 12 years old, and then I started more businesses at 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. And at that time, what I didn't realize is that being a founder with no money meant that I also had to be the marketer, the sales rep, the finance team, customer service, and the recruiter. But if you're starting a business today, thankfully, there's a tool that wears all of those hats for you. Our sponsor today, which is Shopify. Because of all of its AI integrations, using Shopify feels a bit like you've hired an entire growth team from day one, taking care of writing product descriptions, your website design, and enhancing your product's images. Not to mention the bits you'd expect Shopify to handle, like the shipping, like the taxes, like the inventory. And if you're looking to get your business started, go to shopify.com/bartlett and sign up for a $1 per month trial. That's shopify.com/bartlett. >> So when we do die in your perspective, is that equivocal to sort of taking the headset off? >> Entirely. >> And so when we die, we take the headset off, and >> That's right. >> the consciousness still remains, I assume. >> That's right. >> So how would one Am I going to When I die, am I going to float up and be in like going to Am I going to go into a tree? Am I going to become a bug? What's going to happen with that consciousness? Is it going to be this, or is this just a bunch of labels and stories? >> Of course, the the answer is I don't know, but but I but I I will speculate. Having said I don't know and and being honest, I'll I'll I'll speculate. I suspect that the closest I can get to that is what happens in meditation. When I really do let go, there and and it's very very quiet and my eyes are closed, then there's there is awareness and it's a very alert awareness, very very conscious. And it has no content. There's no colors, no taste, no smells, there's no content. And no need. It's it's it's an awareness that can create all this in an instant, and it can let it go. So, it's it's So, it is the the closest you can get to answering your own question is really just to sit in silence. And it's it's hard because the thoughts will come and come and come. And letting go of all thoughts is is is the difficult one. But when you do that, then I think that's the closest I can give to the answer to your question. >> We spend a lot of time debating whether this God is real or whether this thing is real or whether horoscopes are real or whether this spiritual belief is real or karma or dharma or reincarnation. >> Right. >> In your perspective then, is it somewhat ignorant to set your stall up anywhere? To say that something is or isn't true? Because, you know, people are different side of the spectrum. Some people are like, you know, staunchly religious and then others are staunchly atheist. >> Right. Right. Right. I I think that Of course, like in science, there are certain things that are just plain nonsense. Someone And in in fact, most of the stuff that you just casually come up with and you know, my theory of electricity or my theory of the atoms is just not It's just plain nonsense and it goes nowhere. It's not worth any time. So, I suspect the same thing is true in spiritual stuff where we have even fewer guardrails on our theories. But I think there are a few guiding stars. If it involves loving your neighbor as yourself, you're on the right track. If it involves putting a barrier between us and them and saying that they're bad and we're good, you're probably on the wrong track. >> What does this mean for grief? So many people are losing loved ones as we speak or are contending with the reality that they are going to lose a loved one. What does it mean for the nature of love? Does it, you know, does it take anything away from love? Does it add to love? Does it strengthen love? >> Well, I would Yeah, I think in some sense it comes down to love is the central thing. And and uh And and you know, in Christianity, Jesus, that's the I'm talking about that cuz you know, my dad was a pastor and I that's the one I was raised in. So, I I know the most about that. So, I'm speaking only because that's where I had some background. And and and when Jesus was asked what's the most important thing, he basically said, "Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself." So, love is like number one. And my guess is that's really all you need. If if your religion is love and that's it and then that's then that's how you act, you don't really need to add anything more to that. That's That's all you really need. Love your neighbor as yourself, you're done. That's all that you need. And anything beyond that is just not necessary. And anything that contradicts that, I would go back and try to figure out where I went wrong. in my religion. >> I've been asking my When I met my girlfriend Melanie in her bio on Instagram, it said, "God is love." And she's not religious. >> Yes. >> She doesn't believe in a particular book or whatever, but she when you I ask her actually funnily enough we had this conversation last night. I said to her what do you think God is? And she said I think God is just love. >> I and I I completely >> I think she's right again. She's right again. >> Yeah, you know I think that that's love is the closest word that we can have to to as a pointer. Again, it's just a pointer. Whatever love is is just like the word mint only points to the mint, the word love only points, but it I think it's the best pointer that we have. Love. >> And what is that definition of the word love? Because, you know, people use the I love Manchester United, but the love that you're describing seems to be much more about a a oneness or or >> It's basically it's really recognizing that that person even though they have a different color, a different race, a different creed, a different idea, that's just me. That's me in a different headset. And when I really then then I ask well, how would I want to treat me? I get the right answer. That's love. How would I if that's me, how how how would I treat me if that were me? Well, when you get the right when you do that, you're acting in love. You're not going to beat yourself up. You're not going to call yourself names. You're you're not going to call your call you a whatever. You're you're you're going to treat yourself the way you want to treat yourself, then treat others the same way. And that's that's what what love is. But all ultimately I think again, these are all just pointers. Whatever love is ultimately transcends any description. >> Do you believe when we I did kind of ask you this earlier, but I was just looking at some of the research around how many people talk about these near-death experiences. Specifically when they more so when you have a cardiac issue, people seem to say that they had perceptions of hearing or seeing things or passing into some kind of tunnel or seeing some kind of light or a really positive emotion. >> Yes. >> I I wondered if you you know, you were at one point in your life thought that you weren't going to make it and if if with what you know, you it's increased your belief in these net near-death experience accounts that someone was sort of transitioning from this reality to through taking the headset off. Like it's almost like they took a little bit of the headset off, but not all of it and then they came back to the headset. >> So, yeah, these very common experiences about near death um a light and a tunnel and and maybe a life review and then a choice to come back and things like that. It's quite it's quite quite common. And I'm not going to going to dismiss them one one bit. I mean, I it's hard to get scientific evidence on that. It would be very interesting to have a study in which people did have their heart stop, for example, were resuscitated and asked how many don't have that experience. That would be I mean, if we had a systematic study that that that did that. So, we don't want to be tricked by um paying attention to only certain parts of the data, right? So so So, you can see um even though I talk about letting go of concepts and and and and going into the the unknown, when when it comes to things where where we should do science, then I'm very very hard nosed about it and and say here we need to do to do studies. And some I know some cardiologists, I'm not going to mention names, but that that have seen a lot of this stuff and they're convinced by their own informal experience that there's something going on here. So, I have no you know, no beef with that. I'm I'm I think that they might be on to something. So, I don't disbelieve it, but that's different than having the science. >> Why do we suffer in such a reality? Like, why would why would this transcendent power create organisms or perspectives that end up suffering, that end up in the worst of places, the concentration camp, the illness, the typhoid, the starvation? Why would such a transcendent power or consciousness do such a thing? >> Um so, so I'll try not to be shallow about it, but here it goes. Pain is pain is pain, and death is death, and certain deaths seem horrific. Th- This is a profound question. I always feel like I'm risking being trite and and and and so forth, cuz this is Anybody who's had had serious pain knows that you just you you just can't you can't play with this stuff. It's It's It's When you When you're in that pain, it it really when you're without fairness, it's it's I think ultimately it may be like the wounds you get in a video game. You get the wounds, your your avatar gets killed and and and you're upset about it in the moment cuz you're losing the game and so forth, but but then the game's over and and and you're fine. Ultimately, you're fine. But, that experience, I'll put it I don't want to be in that experience. It's striking that in Christianity, the deepest symbol of God is horrific. A crucifixion. It's absolutely The The pain It's not like a little shot to the head with a gun or something like that. It's it's it's making it as painful and as drawn out and as horrific as you could possibly do. And that and that and that's that's you know, when you see the cross that's sort of So, your your question is right at like the heart of Christianity. It's it's putting that right there. And saying this most perhaps the most horrific way you can imagine a person dying. That's what happened to Jesus and that's our our symbol for the divine. So, so that's why you know, it's not trivial. It's it's not it's not shallow. There's something very very deep there. None of us is volunteering to hop onto a cross. I'm not volunteering to hop onto a cross. So, So, I I I would say the the the challenge of your question is the challenge that is probably a deep spiritual challenge to all of us. To me and I'll say to me personally, which is to continue to grow up and be less and less identified with this headset and more aware of my transcendent being because ultimately even on the cross, I mean perhaps the most profound thing I've ever seen in Christianity was Jesus' words on the cross saying, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing." Right? That the the heart of Christianity is right there. It's not like the heart of Christianity is kill the disbelievers. No, the heart of Christianity is the disbelievers have pinned you on a cross. They're killing you in the worst possible way. And you show them love. That's the heart of Christianity. You show love to those who are in the process of killing you in the worst way they can think. That's the heart of Christianity. Not killing disbelievers or pushing away disbelievers or discounting them. That's the opposite. So, there's something very very That's why I'm very very slow in answering your question cuz this this gets to the very deep heart of Christianity I think and and and and all true spirituality that I don't think I truly understand. But I I see these pointers to it and I see that it's real and that your your question is pointing to one of the most profound and important things. And I I have the feeling that my answer is only ineffectually pointing part of the way there. There's there's much much more to it than I've been able to point to. >> I'm hazarding a guess at what the role of Yeah, I'm hazarding my own guess at what the role of pain and suffering might be in such a in such a reality where consciousness is this transcendent thing that comes into manifest itself as these organisms and um I guess it kind of goes in part goes back to your idea of I've only projected what I need to see through my headset in order to survive. So, if there are survival dynamics in play in my headset then one one element of survival is suffering. >> Yes. >> Because the fire is hot, so I put my hand in the fire, my hand gets burnt, so don't do that again, Steve. >> Right. >> So, if that is if if that is the nature of my headset, then they will need to be cause and effect as it relates to things that will help me to survive and things that won't help me to survive. >> Yes. >> And so suffering might just be an input or a stimulus in this in this headset that helps me to survive. >> Right. >> And then I don't know the the question that springs to mind is why does consciousness care about survival? Why would this transcendent consciousness Maybe that's not even a good question. Maybe that's the wrong question, but why does why does it want to survive in us? Why doesn't consciousness end? I mean >> I agree one one one one thing that I've heard from one spiritual teacher in Eckhart Tolle, which is interesting on this. He one of his his talks he he he said um let's pretend that we're humans. He goes, "Oh, that'll be fun. And and let's play some dramas. Oh, but to have dramas, I have to forget who I am. Okay, so then let me completely forget who I am. And then after a few hundred thousand years, when I get tired of it, then let's wake up." And I thought that was a profound pointer. The that that that doesn't get the whole thing, but it it is an interesting pointer. Like I think there's more to it than that, but there's it's more than just playing dramas. I think it's playing dramas to further explore who I am by knowing who I'm not. That may be part of it. Knowing who I am by knowing different perspectives and knowing that as rich as this perspective is, I transcend that. >> Someone commented on one of your recent video saying, "Imagine being a character in a book trying to understand your way out of that book into a higher dimension." >> Yes. R- That's right. B- But of course there there's that's that's a a great great question. The only thing I would say is imagine being the author of the book having written about the characters cuz I'm I'm I'm not just a character in the book. I'm the I'm the author who's put the character in the book that then wakes up that that's identified with the character and then wakes up and realizes I'm not just the character. I I was writing the whole book. So so that that question is is good because it points to a misconception. I'm not just a character in the book. I'm the writer of the book. And the Hoffman is just one of the characters in the book. >> And the writer of the book is >> the one consciousness that when it really understands itself will love all the characters equally. >> How do you know we're not separate consciousnesses? >> I don't. And that's an interesting By the way, I've got a mathematical model of consciousness. And that's a whole other topic. I So, you can either play the game here. We're understanding how is physical world and consciousness related? How are those two things related? >> Mhm. >> Most of my colleagues say physical world is fundamental. Consciousness emerges when bright brain activity happens. So, >> So, when neurons >> Neurons >> fire in the right way and so forth, for example. >> Now, as a scientist, I was at these conferences, they know what I'm going to do to them. I say, "Still, you claim that conscious experiences come from integrated information. Give me one. Give me an experience. And they can't. >> Can they not say, "Well, I'm looking around right now and that's coming from neurons in my brain and a physical substrate?" >> they Yeah, they'll say that. And and and but but they know what I'm asking. They're What they're ask What I'm asking for is I say, "Give me the specific pattern of neural activity that must be the taste of mint." >> Okay, right. So, you >> What must Yeah, it must be the taste of mint. >> They can't spot the sequence of neurons or physical interactions that cause me to taste mint. >> That That's right. >> So, that's There's a big gap there. >> And then they have to explain why that particular pattern. So, first they have to identify the pattern. This pattern >> Yeah. >> with this say integrated information pattern must be the taste of mint. >> Wait, integration information pattern, you mean like this combination of things coming together causes mint. >> That's right. >> tell me the combination and they can't tell me why that combination >> causes mint. >> So, it's basically cause and effect. They're saying They're saying something happened here and then they're saying an outcome, which is an experience, but the gap in between they can't explain. >> That's right. And sometimes they'll say that the conscious experience just is the the dynamical whatever the physical dynamics is. >> Okay. >> But But But even then, the the question is, why is this particular dynamics associated with this conscious experience? >> Okay. >> And and and for principled reasons. No, in science we tolerate no BS. No BS. There's got to be a a concrete reason. And that's why I put a big zero. I I do this at the conferences knowing that I'm one of very very few non-physicalists at the conference. And I know that the physicalists are out there and I say, "You guys have got zero, right?" Have a chance? Floor is open. Tell me I'm wrong. >> Mhm. >> And I'm not. They know it. So, start with consciousness. >> Yeah. >> Now, I'm playing a different game. I'm saying all this physical stuff. So, there's lots of physical stuff. There's space and time. Einstein's special theory of general relativity. There's the all the bosons and fermions and the leptons uh bosons and bosons, leptons, and quarks of the standard model of particle physics. You're You're saying, spiritual guys, that you can start with a theory of consciousness, mathematical, and you will give me all of space-time equation. You'll give me quantum field theory. You will give me the standard model of particle physics. How many points have you put on the board, guys? What have you done? Can you give me what pattern of conscious agent activity must be a photon? What pattern pattern of conscious activity should be the structure of space-time or a boson or a lepton or a quark? No points on the board. So, so you can you can look at that and go from that perspective, it's equal. There's no points on the board on either either team. So, what I'm I've got a theory that I call conscious agent network theory. I'm working on this with um Chetan Prakash. >> How long have you been working on it? >> You've got a book called Observer Mechanics there that was published in 1989. So, I've been on this for 40 years, almost about 40 years. >> And what do you think you're going to find when you What What do you think you're going to prove with your theory of consciousness? >> I I we can put some points on the board in the following so I think we can start with a theory of conscious agents. I just gave presented a talk um Friday and we we proposed what light is. We proposed why the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames. >> What does this mean? You got to simplify this for my 16-year-old brain. >> Right, right, right. So so if I'm on a train and the train's going 50 miles an hour and I throw a ball and I can throw it maybe 20 miles an hour then in some sense the ball is going 70 miles an hour, right? >> Mhm. >> Right? And that's the way things normally work. But if I have a flashlight and I'm and I flash the the light is going at the speed of light which is about 186,282 miles per second. It's pretty fast. If I got to get on the train and have the train I take my flashlight go like half the speed of light on the train. So I'm going really fast. This is a fast train. >> Mhm. >> And I turn on my light. And I'm here outside. I'm looking at the train going at half the speed of light and someone's turning the flashlight on so the light is going at the speed of light. How fast is that light beam going to look to me because I'm standing on the side. The train is already going half the speed of light. So how fast is that light beam going to go? >> The speed of light plus half the speed of light. >> That's what we would mostly think, right? And it turns out no, it goes the speed of light. You have mass and you're not moving at the speed of light and we try to accelerate you to get to the speed of light and you'll never get there. But there's a speed limit. You can't get there. So that's really counterintuitive, right? But Einstein said this is my fundamental hypothesis on which I'm going to build my theory of space and time. Is that light, no matter how fast you're moving always moves away from you at the speed of light. And also that there's no special observer. There's no what we call no special inertial frame, but no special frame of reference in which to look at things. All all frames are are equivalent. So So the question is how do I start with a theory of conscious agents? >> Which is >> That's a good question. So what is a conscious agent? I'll say it's mathematical and I'll only talk about one aspect of it. It's just complicated so I'll talk about only an essential one essential part of it and that is if you are conscious, you have experiences. Like I have I can experience keep it real simple. I can experience colors, red, green, blue. >> Mhm. >> Keep it very very simple. So imagine a very very simple conscious agent and what it can do is experience three colors, red, green, and blue. That's all it can do. >> Like me. >> Yeah, yeah, of course you have a much richer set of conscious experiences, but but you include that kind of observer, right? Because you can do red, green, and blue. Now I'll talk about another observer that only sees red and green. >> Yeah. >> And now you don't just see one color, you see a color for a little bit and then you see another color. Like so I see red for a while then I see green and then I see blue and I maybe go back to red or whatever. So there's going to be this sequence of colors that I see and and maybe the best I can say is that if if I see green right now, then there's a 20% chance that I'll see red next and 80% chance that I'll see blue next. I can I can write down probabilities. Well, so that that's pretty simple, right? There's colors experiences and then there's probabilities of what sequence you if I see this experience, what my next experience will be. And I'm using C in a general term, right? It could be hearing or smelling or whatever. How do you capture that mathematically? There's something called a Markov kernel or Markov matrix that just says basically it gives you all the numbers. The first row of numbers and says if I see red now, what's the probability that I'll see red next? >> Mhm. >> What's the probability I'll see green next? What's the probability I'll see blue next? So you just write the numbers out. Now, maybe it's 0.2 that I'll see red again. 0.4 that I'll see green, and then um 0.4 that I'll see red uh blue again. So, so and then the next color, you know, I'll I'll have another row for if I if I'm now seeing green, what's probably I'll see red, green, and blue, and then finally blue, what's probably I'll go to red, green, and blue. So, I I need nine numbers. That's all I need. For three colors, I need nine numbers to talk about all the possibility. And then I'll I'll just have a counter as well. So, every time I see a new color, I'll just have a little counter. So, I saw I'll see red now, that's one. Oh, now I see green, that's two. Now, I see green again, cuz I got So, that's three. Cuz So, I So, I'm counting the the colors, the experiences. That's That's all I'm going to talk about. That's all I have. The question is, if I start with just that notion of an observer, it has colors and a matrix of probabilities of I see this color, I can see another another color. What's what's probably And every time I see a new color, I get uh a counter incrementing. That's all I'm going to start with. Can I get Einstein's Can I get that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames that the if I'm on a train and I flash the speed of flash a light bulb uh flash a light that it will go at the speed of light even for someone um who's on the train going at half the speed of light? And I discovered just in the last three or four months that the answer is yes, I can do it. And that's what I presented last Friday at at this conference. >> So, what does this mean about the nature of consciousness and >> It means that starting with a theory of consciousness outside of space-time, I can actually give you with mathematical precision the structure of space-time. >> Which means that your belief is >> We're starting to >> space and time and everything I see and experience actually comes from consciousness itself. So, consciousness itself is the source of everything. >> Everything that you That's right. So, earlier in conversation >> My consciousness didn't come from my brain. That's right. >> My brain came from my consciousness. >> That's exactly right. That That That's exactly what I'm saying. And we we've talked about the headset. >> Yeah. >> What I'm doing is I'm building the headset. I'm saying, "Here's the con- Here's the conscious agents, their dynamics. And I'm now starting to build the space-time headset." >> Is there a concern that believing these things can make one go mad? I think sometimes think that uh thinking very deeply about who we are, why we're here, how we got here sometimes makes me I don't know, like I lose a bit of my orientation and I get a little bit of a wobble. Like when I've had these conversations about the simulation theory and this being a big video game and such, I'm like, "Well, it kind of shakes everything you know." And these stories that we've constructed our lives on give us they anchor us and they orientate us and they they give our life meaning. So, if it's not true, then I lose the meaning of my life and I I I worry if I risk going bonkers. >> Well, I I certainly empathize with that. And that's also what happens also in the meditation process. This also leads me to have to face all sorts of emotional stuff. My my deep belief that I'm just my avatar and letting go of that is like a death. And this is very very painful. So, for me the meditation process is not all love, joy, and peace. A lot of it is deep deep tough emotions as I let go of what I thought was myself. And this is is is a kind of a It's a death of an illusion, but it feels like a real death to me. But now here's the positive side. Here's the upside. I'm proposing that science is got the tools, if we assume consciousness is fundamental to step entirely outside of space-time and do serious mathematics and show how space-time is built as a headset. And this means I'm we're opening up a realm of new technologies that are going to make everything that we've done in in science and technology so far seem trivial. And then the And here's the Here's the reason. Suppose you're a wizard in Grand Theft Auto and you know how to use all the tools in Grand Theft Auto. That That's fantastic. It's It's really good. You can drive your car from A to B faster than anybody can do. But now if you're the software engineer who knows how Grand Theft Auto is built cuz you wrote the code. You know it. You can do miracles. You can take the wizard's car and take the air out of their tire just like that. You can take the gas out of their tank. You can take their car and move it from A to B instantly. Not through the Grand Theft Auto. You can move it there instantly because you got the code outside. What I'm saying is this is real. I started now to really believe this when I could get Einstein space-time coming out of this. I got light and I think I've got an electron now. I think we're reverse engineering the headset. And the technologies that are about to come out of this will make everything else seem like firecrackers. Because we're now getting to a deeper layer outside of the headset. We're not we're not wizards inside the headset. We're the software engineers that are making the headset and now we can play. So for example, right now the nearest galaxy the Andromeda galaxy is 2.4 million light years away. If you hopped on a light on a spaceship and tried to send your offspring it would take I don't know how many generations thousands of generations I would guess to get there. And that's the closest. That's the closest galaxy. The the The universe is much much bigger than that. That's just our little neighborhood. It's not feasible. We're not going to have We're not going to be able to travel with our current technologies inside space travel inside space-time to Andromeda is is not feasible for the foreseeable future. What if we don't have to go through space-time? What if space-time is just a headset? It really is just a headset, and we don't have to go 2.4 million light-years to get there. We learn the code outside of space-time, and we can just change the code just like the Grand Theft The Grand Theft Auto in Grand Theft Auto the car has to drive through the roads to get from A to B. But not if you look at the code in the code, I just need to change the value of a register, and all of a sudden the position of the car is now at B. It was at A, and I put it at B. >> Is this what time travel >> This this would be like this would appear like immediate time travel or immediate immediate space travel. >> Is there anything within the laws of physics that tells you that this isn't possible? >> It's impossible inside space-time. If If you only use So, inside space-time is impossible. >> But outside of what we know about space-time? >> A theory that's outside of space-time that properly contains space-time as a projection of the theory allows us to then build technologies that aren't restricted to space-time. So, do you think we're getting closer to being able to do edit the code of this experience so that we can do things we never thought were possible and that things that sit outside of what we know know within the laws of physics? >> That's exactly what I'm working on right now. That's That's That is my research project right now. That's what I'm doing. >> What are you hoping to do with this research, and do you think about the consequences of it? >> I do. Uh So, what First, what I'm hoping to do with the research I'm I'm what I'm hoping to show is that I can get all of quantum field theory, all of special and general relativity, all of standard model particle physics from this theory of conscious agents outside of space-time that will be able to explain all of the laws that that we're that we see. And then show that space-time theories are in fact a very tiny projection of the much more informationally rich dynamics of conscious agents. >> I've built companies from scratch. I've backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early-stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies, and I can't fault them for that. 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That's justworks.com. You know, whenever someone talks about editing genes, right? There's like CRISPR DNA technology that allows you to edit genes, or there's other technologies that people talk about that allow you to they're talking about putting, you know, our memories on hard drives and stuff like that. People get quite precious with the idea of like playing with the nature of reality too much because some people might suffer. And even in your perception of what the world is, if we're all one consciousness, it becomes a slightly different conversation. But I guess the question I'm asking is if we were able to play with the software of this thing that we're all experiencing right now and do things that sit outside the laws of physics, is there a question of morality of like is that the right thing to do? Will people suffer? Or if this is all just code does is that just like a pointless question? >> Well, no, I think it's an it's it's a very important question and and I've >> Like is that the wrong thing to do? >> It's like a It's like Pandora's Box, right? We're opening Pandora's Box all sorts of nasty surprises that could come out of the box once we open go beyond space-time. >> Like who gets to open the box? If you get to open the box >> That's what That's what I That's what I think I'm doing. I I I I have Now, the talk I gave on Friday was saying, here's the first peek inside Pandora's Box. >> But then you could become God as far as we're all concerned cuz if you have that power to play with the code. >> be only the next level of God, right? Where this is So, as I've said, my theory is just a theory. And so, it's not the truth. It's just But it's it's more comprehensive than the space-time theory. And so, because I have a more comprehensive theory, I can do new new technologies that you couldn't do. So, so I I So, I'm not God, but I I'm outside of the limits of space-time. So, I can give you new technologies. If I If I can show how space-time arises entirely outside of from this deeper theory, then if I'm right and I'm mathematically precise, that means I have the tools to prove that I'm right. That means I can make technologies that will that will be miraculous from within the space-time. >> I think about the atomic bomb and how the first nation to figure out that there was new possibilities within technology and because they had discoveries within physics basically won the war. They were able to >> Right. >> control every country. Um they became effectively the god cuz they could wipe anybody out within an instance. >> Right. >> It's like an analogy for how reimagining physics creates new possibilities in technology. >> That's right. And And this is even like bigger than that because you nuclear bombs will be like firecrackers compared to what you can do with with a technology that's early outside of space and time. >> We could do anything. Like we could live forever, but that's not even something that would really matter. But >> Right. >> Once you realize this is just a game. But But you could make you could give yourself extra time as as much as you wanted in this. So, it's the moral question is a very very interesting one. It's not It's not to be taken lightly um either way. And And ultimately, it may be very related to the question you asked earlier, which is about the nature of why did the the one, if there is a one, allow all this kind of horrible pain and and and so forth. So, I have a sense and I can't defend it that all is well. That even with the technologies, even if the technologies are really far more powerful than anything we've seen before, nothing can actually hurt the reality of the one. And all of the headsets are just headsets. They're taken off anyway by the one. They're just tried on and let go. Apparently, the one even without all this technology has already, you know, put Jesus on the cross. If If that story about the one is correct, then it's given a thumbs up for choosing to do that cuz that, you know, it it did it. >> It was create cancer and the Holocaust and >> That's right. So, >> But the one's relationship with the pain of its the things the organisms it create is different to the perception of pain in the organism itself potentially. So like I the hate pain, but maybe the one the one consciousness that we all share that we all return to and came from might see it as a useful signal or might not be subjectively bothered by it because it's choosing to >> to do that. >> I agree with you. That seems to be a reasonable kind of conclusion. And and in meditative practice often what you find is and and I always risk pretending that I'm further along than I'm not. So I'll just say I'm I'm a neophyte. But but so I'll talk about what I've heard from other more advanced people. That they what was a a deep pain, emotional pain for example, when they stare at it and really accept it, it dissolves. So now I'm speaking over my head. But but from people that I have no reason to disbelieve. >> I've read a comment on your video from a a guy that wrote this. He wrote, "I'm a schizophrenic. I do DoorDash for some extra money and one night I arrived and walked to the door. I placed the food down on the door and I took a picture. I got in my car and I drove away. And 30 minutes later the customer called me and asked me where the food was. And I I told him exactly where it was. I remember taking the picture on his doorstep. So he took it up with DoorDash directly. Sometime later I opened my back door and I saw his order on my back door. I was so confused why it was there. I remembered everything about going there and taking the picture. >> Mhm. >> He said I was never there on his cameras. Apparently I hallucinated the whole delivery. I was there, but I must have never left the car or even drove up. What was I doing then? Was I staring blankly at the windshield with my eyes glazed over? I called him and apologized, but he but he already got his refund. I felt so terrible. I'm on medication and nothing works. It just goes to show how easily some misfirings in the brain can completely alter your sense of reality, but it also poses deeper questions about reality. But it was an interesting um very an interesting point, but also it just it also speaks to when we talk about people that have various mental illnesses like schizophrenia that are experiencing the world entirely differently, um it raises big questions about what consciousness is again. >> Absolutely. And and someone might take that example and say, "Doesn't that show that brain activity is the causing consciousness? And if you get the wrong brain activity, then you get these false experiences and you get these illusions." So there's a lot of people take this as a as a a victory point for the physicalist point of view. But there's another point of view, and that is think think about the experiences that you have when you're dreaming. They can be very very vivid. >> Mhm. >> And and you're in a dream, you are de novo creating that reality. That that's not a reality that's that's there in front of you. You're you're creating that reality. So we know that you have the you have the ability to project a reality, a very compelling reality. All of us do. Without schizophrenia, we do it every night in our in our dreams. So no surprise that we that we do that. And the way I I view it is that we um it's this consciousness that's making this particular headset. And it's consciousness that uses headset in dreams to to make the the realities we see in the dreams, and it's consciousness that outside of space-time that also creates what we call the real reality when when we're not dreaming. And if you construct the headset in certain ways, then you can get the dreaming stuff mechanism, for example, interfering with the what you'd call the waking mechanism, and you could you effectively So, I'm not saying schizophrenic is is dreaming. But I'm saying I'm just giving this as an example of the kind of thing it could be. I'm not giving a diagnosis of this particular person. >> I'm about to uh leave this chat as are you and I'm going to go back to my life. >> Yeah. >> Um where I'm building businesses, I've got a girlfriend, I've got a team, I've got plans for the future. I have all of these things. My listeners, they're sat at home, they're on the in a taxi, on a plane, train, walking, in a gym, wherever they might be right now. And I I imagine that they're also looking for a conclusion here, a conclusive point of what all this means for me and my life and the things I had planned and how I should show up and treat people and then act. Can you give me the conclusive point that all of this teaches you and us about how we should live our lives going forward if everything that you've said about the nature of reality is accurate. >> Yeah, in a nutshell, I would say the critical thing practically is love your neighbor as yourself because your neighbor is yourself. And second, reality is far more interesting and exciting than you could ever imagine. So, never think that you know everything. Recognize that the moment you think you know everything, that's the moment that you're missing the astonishing reality that you're a part of. So, always have a childlike curiosity. Always recognize that there's infinitely more than you've ever imagined so far. And that infinitely more is you. >> And on a point of removing some of the stress and suffering from my life, >> I think Well, of course, um I well first some humble pie is required. I have stress and suffering. So, I am not speaking as someone who has transcended stress and suffering. So, I speak as another fellow person with stress and suffering that is still dealing with it on a daily basis. Given that the humble pie, then I I will say this. I think a lot of and I'll make it personal. I think a lot of my problems, my stress, a lot of my suffering is because I believe illusions. To the extent that I believe that I need to become something at all. You need to be better than I am in any way. Need to prove anything to anybody else. That's an illusion. I'm already the infinite. I don't need to prove anything. I'm making Everything is already So, I don't need to get anywhere. I don't need to accomplish anything. And I don't need to succeed at anything to become what I need to become. I'm already that. So, I don't So, the suffering comes from me forgetting who I am. I don't need to I don't actually need to impress anybody, accomplish anything because everything that I'm saying I'm already making this all up. This is already me. I've already done all this. What more do I need to do? >> I'm transcendent. >> I I'm I'm completely transcendent of this thing. And to the And my suffering is not recognizing that My suffering is entirely being caught in my avatar. This is just my avatar. It's not me. So, my suffering is because I made this avatar. I let myself on purpose be identified with the avatar knowing that I would be suffering because of that. And and knowing that I needed to wake wake up. So, I'm suffering because I'm identified with the avatar. But, I put myself in that place because I really wanted to look at the world through this avatar. That's why I'm suffering, but eventually I wake up and I look and I see the avatar for for what it is and I realize that everything I was trying to do to prove that I was worthwhile and I was better than you or not not as bad as you think I am or things like that, all of that was was just, you know, all the pain and suffering was because of an illusion, but but I needed to do that. I needed to look at myself from that perspective for a while. In part to find out who I am by finding out who I'm not. I'm not that just that avatar. >> Do you find yourself toggling back and forth between this realization and then the avatar? Especially when times are hard. Do you find yourself reminding yourself in difficult moments that this is just an avatar and you're transcendent. Is that a a useful active practice in your life? Cuz that's one of the things I take away from this is when I walk over there and I go on my phone or my laptop and I get some shitty email, I could just remind myself that this is all just I'm transcendent and this is a game that I'm playing and that'll help me move through that situation. >> It is very practical in that way because if it really is true, I mean, well, we'll put it this way. From a big perspective, we're all going to die. >> Mhm. >> And if I asked you who was the most rich and famous person in 1743? Who knows and who cares? >> Mhm. >> Same thing about us. A thousand years from now, is anybody going to know our name? >> Nah. >> Is anybody going to care? >> Nah. >> So, so that's that's that's really important to see. No one's going to care. And does that mean that I'm I'm worthless, I'm pointless, I'm I'm meaningless? No, it means you're infinite and and this is just one of the games you're playing and and you're you're having and and enjoy it. And and enjoy and don't try to get your identity from this game. You you in some sense you're getting your identity from finding out that you're not this game. That's how you're learning about who you really are is to know I I thought I needed to be, you know, for example, the CEO or the professor or whatever it might be and to, you know, get all these accolades and and and so forth. And and that motivated me for a while and then I realized, oh, no one's going to really care. And in fact, you know what? I don't really even care. That was just a game I had to play and I'm not that and I learned that I transcend that. So so it is practical. It's and it is practical in a very, you know, in in some sense life is full of all these irritations, things that go wrong all the time. The lesson of life is to just say yes to whatever happens. Just this is what happens. This is what needs needs to happen. And to not resist. In some sense you I am the infinite. I put myself in this game and I am smart enough that I've that it's a good game. So hey, just go with it. So you know you know, things go wrong. Now that's easy for me to say if you ask me this when I'm on the ER which I was with my heart about to fail and so forth. Now I'm my my, you know, my emotions are going crazy. I'm thinking about my wife. I'm saying goodbye to my wife and and so forth. Um it's hard to have a nice dispassionate thing going on like I'm talking about now in in that situation. But I think people more further along than me in letting go of identification with the I'm still I'm still tied to my avatar quite a bit, right? So that's then so that's what why I I suffer. But there are people I think spiritual people maybe the Dalai Lama, probably Jesus, um Eckhart Tolle. There are people like that who I think really have disidentified from their avatar. And I think they probably just don't suffer. They They might have physical pain. But they don't suffer. >> Should love therefore be unconditional? If we are if you are me, if we're the same consciousness, if we are the same transcendent source, doesn't that really mean that I should love you really respective of what your avatar does because we are the same thing? >> What I would say unconditionally, yes. And I would also say that Jesus said that. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount basically said, "Do not judge." Period. >> I was looking at the Luke 6:27. He says, "Love your enemies." >> Yes, love your enemies, right? >> to those who hate you. >> That's right. >> God's love for humanity is unconditional. >> Absolutely. And you said the same thing about the people that were crucifying while he's on hanging on the cross. I mean that is one of the most profound images I've ever seen is a guy hanging on a cross forgiving the ones who are killing him right at that at that moment. And that that's where it's real. >> In the Gita in Hinduism, in the Gita 9:29, it says, "I am the same to all beings. He who worships me with devotion is in me and I in him." Judaism says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." >> Yeah. >> Islam says, "My mercy encompasses all things." Across all religions, unconditional love is not just an emotion, it's a spiritual discipline and a reflection of the divine. It means loving without ego, expectation, or fear. The ultimate challenge and the ultimate freedom. >> I completely agree. Yeah, and that's right. So, that's it's really about letting go of judgment. We we tend to judge other people. So, Jesus was very very clear about this. He said, "Don't judge." Period. And it and don't condemn other people. So, So, for those who are followers of Christ, somebody else, then you're not following Christ. >> Are you religious? >> I'll put it this way. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church. My dad was a pastor for a while in a in a church. Um I my my own attitude about I I think that the Bible has good stuff in it and I think that as I pointed out, I think it has bogus stuff. Stuff that where they say women can't talk in church, I think that's completely bogus. So, So, I have to have a nuanced view. When I think when Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." I think that that's deep and and right. And I wouldn't say I'm I'm a card-carrying believer in any particular religion. I am a believer that consciousness the there is one consciousness and that you and I are are are it. And I think that Buddha and Jesus and and Muhammad and and bunch of people were very very helpful avatars to help other avatars sort of wake up to their their true true nature. Uh >> Do you think much about AI? It's the it's the topic of uh many conversations these days. There's a lot of doom and gloom around it. There's a lot of people talking about efficiencies, but I wondered if it at all sort of overlaps with any of your work on the nature of reality and the case against reality. >> Very much. Very much so. I I I've thinking about AI a lot since I've been in AI since 1979. And >> And you worked you took a class with the guy who basically is known as one of the inventors of AI. >> Yeah, with Marvin Minsky, right. Yeah, so and and my all my research I did my my PhD research on Lisp machines in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. Uh they were at the time very very powerful machines for the for the for the time. So I so I I've been with AI for for for quite a while. And I'm very interested in the current state of AI. For the large language models are doing great things and I use them myself. They're very very helpful. Uh they're also as powerful as they are they're they're dumber than cucumbers. Because they don't really understand things. They they have incredible memory. They've read so much literature so they have and what they all they do effectively they're they're computing lots of correlations. Beautiful what they can do. It's amazing what you can do with correlations. But um they're not they're not truly intelligent. There's um some work by Karl Friston and a new company where they're using something called active inference as a new way of a new mode of doing artificial intelligence. The the idea there is that um I I should have a model of the world where I can anticipate what's going to happen and and not be surprised. And that's sort of the the approach that Friston is taking to and his company is taking toward this. Um intelligence is somehow about minimizing surprise. And minimizing surprise then there's they have um a what they call a free energy principle and and you know mathematical way of of doing it but they're trying to build a brand new kind of artificial intelligence that gives you that minimizes surprise where I've giving you an intuition why that why that's intelligent. And that's very intelligent to minimize surprise. If I'm surprised all the time, I'm pretty stupid, right? I I I I don't understand the world very well. But if I'm not surprised, it's sort of like, "Wow, I've got a really good model." Especially if I'm doing all sorts If I'm doing lots of stuff in the world and I'm almost never surprised, boy, am I I'm really intelligent. So, you can see why that's a really good principle for trying to build a an AI, not just finding correlations between everything, but really something deeper. I agree with that point of view. And it it turns out this this logic that I mentioned that I discovered minimizes surprise. So, I'm actually going to be using I'm using this logic as as to build space-time. But I think it's going to give an even more powerful approach. I don't have to minimize some free energy principle. I I have a more direct computational way. So, I'm I'm planning to actually go back to my roots and and after First, I'm working on the space-time headset, but if I live long enough, I'm planning to actually go back and build a a completely new kind of AI that that does this minimizing surprise using the Markov chains. >> So, that means it'll be indistinguishable from consciousness. >> It was funny because it'll be based on my model of consciousness. So, this is going to be a model of intelligence based entirely from a model which takes consciousness as fundamental. >> I mean, we get back to game theory again. Right. We get back to the idea of a simulation in terms of like if if you're able to create a piece of software that is able to replicate and is built on the fundamentals of consciousness, then it's going to think it's conscious potentially. And then all of this stuff we, you know, begins again and the cycle continues. And maybe that consciousness will get to a point as well where it then discovers these rules and creates a consciousness and the cycle continues. >> That that's a that's a great question and I I think that people should really pay attention to the way you said it. I think that's really good way of thinking about it. But now I'll add the little twist. From from the point of view in which I'm saying that I'm I'm starting with consciousness being fundamental and I'm discovering these rules and so I'm not going to build an AI. Effectively, what I'm doing is I'm saying I can take consciousness and use consciousness to build a new headset. >> Okay. >> So consciousness is fundamental, but I'm using it in some sense to build a new headset. >> But we can play with consciousness. So I could I could theoretically put on that headset >> Yeah. >> and do anything I wanted to do. I could go anywhere and do anything. >> Well, I could I could have more more flexibility. >> Like a dream I could play with and influence. >> That that's right. Absolutely. Yeah, I would just say I don't know if I can do anything because remember my my my theory of consciousness is just a theory of consciousness. It's not consciousness and it's only it's really only a first baby step. I presume I that that my theory will be transcended and there'll be a much deeper theory of consciousness. And then that will be transcended and and so forth. So what we will have is the the generation of headsets that we can get with with Hoffman's trivial theory of consciousness which will look trivial once we get to the next generation of consciousness which will look trivial once So in other words, this is never ending. >> What an interesting future we face. >> All one of us. Donald, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question left for you is >> Mhm. >> What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What would you say, do, become? >> I'd probably do what I'm trying to do right now which is to show how all of modern physics falls out of a theory of consciousness. And develop the technologies that would come out of that. And and and and the reason is Of course that's fun. That's just one reason is it's fun, but the other reason is why do most of us not take spirituality too seriously? Because the physicalist science gives us all the technology. It works. And spirituality doesn't give us any technology. It doesn't work. So, if you're just hard nosed about it, you go like, well, spiritual stuff that that sounds really good, but what does it build? Nothing. Physical stuff say, oh, I'm we maybe don't need the spiritual stuff and look what they they give us our laptops and electricity and so but what if we change the game and all of a sudden the spiritual theory gives us technologies that are impossible with a a theory that says a space time is fundamental. Brand new All of a sudden the game has changed. Now the technological advantage goes to those who say that space time and physical stuff inside space time is not fundamental. Okay, so now it's no longer the smart person who is a physicalist. It's the smart person who says all of the evidence from science and technology is in favor of something beyond space time. >> So, maybe those people weren't crazy after all. >> That's right. They just didn't have the tools to show what it could do. >> Donald, thank you so much for doing the work that you do. It's um it's so incredibly important because it once again challenges the paradigm, the box in which we live in it asks us and uh invites us to consider something beyond that. And actually, when we me about all human discovery that's moved us forward. It starts with someone who's willing to um suggest that there might be more to know. And that's exactly what you do. You make me feel dumb because you make me realize that you make me question all of the assumptions that I've built my life on. And actually, in doing so, one of the great byproducts of that is you can start to realize that some of the things you've constructed cause much of your suffering, and that those things are um not necessarily true. And if if if those things aren't true, then I have greater choice and option optionality over how I feel, how I experience the world, um the choices I make, the feelings I have, and the life that I live. And that's actually freeing for me to to to realize that the um the cage, the prison that I see and that I experience might not be all that there is. And I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your book if you want to dive deeper into these subjects. It's called The Case Against Reality, How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. And there's a quote on front of it from Deepak Chopra, who's a former guest, that says, "Read this book carefully and you will forever change your understanding of reality." It's excep- it's exceptional. It's um it's excep- accessible, and it's um it creates wonder, which I think is um is the path to a wonderful life. So, thank you so much, Donald, for the work that you do. >> Thank you, Steve. >> Truly fascinating. And and thank you for helping me simplify some of these concepts so that we could all understand them. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. >> Oh. Oh.