 Let's let's hit what you're going to be releasing. Do you have the Journal of Consciousness Studies? And we have that. So tell us about what like what is how do we test that like the hypothesis because we've been, you know, yeah, we've been talking about it so much living mirrors theory so what what do we do for proper like is there a randomized control trial like yeah yeah or do we have to use simulation technology to like to yeah yeah yeah go ahead, go ahead. So yeah, I would say computational modeling like simulating and would be one step but that's going to be, I mean, you know, technology is increasing exponentially right so maybe it's not that far away. Right now the simulations we can do a so puny we can't simulate a single cell like it's too complex as a single cell, but we can do kind of quite simple simulations with this stuff. What would be nice would be to be able to simulate a single cell. And then to say you have a bacteria, and you could effectively simulate based on the statistical physics the patterns in its environment it survive you you find out its fitness functions, and you model what you think it's structure of its consciousness should be like, you know what dimensions of photo, you know, like light sensitivity as they have, and then you do behavioral experiments where you would, you would basically test it flashlights make it respond for nutrients and stuff, and just see like does the theory predict the structure of consciousness. And that would be the kind of gold standard way of really, you know, it's not a, I guess yeah in that in that picture you would be able to just see like do does it fall out of the theory does it match up if it doesn't match up the theory is probably not right. But the other kind of more gradual approach, which is similar is that the, the actual the kind of mathematical basis of the theory is not some kind of fringe, you know, bit of bit of science, it's actually the emerging mainstream picture of how the brain works is it's been described as kind of hierarchical inference is like this idea of the Bayesian brain it's also called the free energy principle. All of this stuff is about using exactly the same mathematics as applies to the single cell to understand how the brain works and this this was as fleshed out by a guy called Koffristen as neuroscientists at the same university as me. He does wonderful work here and and this is to me is is more and more people are lining up to think of the brain in these terms. And so the living mirror theory just fits perfectly alongside it. It just says here, whilst you're doing your neuroscience studies on the human brain, as well as just saying okay I know a human brain is conscious, but I don't know what to say about any other living system. This theory gives you a way of saying well alongside your experiments you can say this is a way of thinking about which systems are conscious why they're conscious when you know we're in the universe they're conscious. And so what I hope is that people will gradually just kind of in the same way with the theory of evolution, people, there was no, there was no experiment to test it really, but the kind of gradual just seeing how it made sense of everything it just fit with all the data. Everyone gradually was like oh okay this is the right way of thinking about it. That's where I'm at personally with being like okay as someone who's always been passionate about trying to understand the mystery of consciousness. You know I've read the different things on offer, and they don't they just don't sit right with me if they had sat right with me, you know I would have stuck with those but I mean this isn't controversial no one. Yeah, we're not in a situation where we think consciousness is solved right like there is nothing where everyone's like yep this is definitely the answer. So that would be my, my hope but the problem is that it really hinges on the radical change in humanity in the kind of consciousness of humanity that you describe like what you know having more people realize what they really are. There's a sense in which, so we spoke about the idea that there is this evolutionary process there is kind of becoming and we get more and more ability to create order and control the world. And that's what's kind of got us to where we are now, but we're living so much in that side of things we're living so much in separation and control that we have these, you know, societies that are structured around progress progress progress you know use humans as a kind of to generate more material stuff. And, and we're not balanced enough into the kind of the being side of things, when you, when you're in the kind of, you know, the being side of things. That's when you can look at the plan and say, oh you're me, like we're the same thing. I totally get that you would be conscious. So I think most humans have this kind of tunnel vision of separation where after generation and generation of going on this kind of stress mode, with all of its kind of feelings of trauma and being distant from the rest of the natural world. We feel like the punchline of consciousness has to be that we are special, that we are different. That our separation, our felt separation from nature is a good thing ultimately because we are, it's what gives us our consciousness it's you know we're these, these truly different things. But I think we're just that perspective is one of this kind of stress traumatized association and tunnel vision. And if we all come back into just being, we recognize our unity with nature, we would look at a plant and recognize it as an extension of the same thing that created us. And suddenly you're like, oh okay I get it plants can be conscious that totally makes sense and we see this in people who engage in spiritual practice or after psychedelics and they really kind of see through the kind of the delusional structures and consciousness for what consciousness really is, and they're brought into this being mode more. Yeah, and I think if. So I think actually people widespread. If it turns out I'm true, my theory is true or I'm correct. I think the limiting factor will be that perspective will be people having a kind of knee jerk reaction of like no ways is that true because I, my feeling of separation is I'm so attached to it. It's the same thing with Darwin and evolution right it's like, don't tell me I'm the same as an ape like, I don't like to hear that, because I have this real feeling of like, not being at peace and struggling and being separate. So yeah, it's quite a, maybe unlike, this is why consciousness is such a tricky thing to address I think because it's so close to home we have. So what we need to do with what we are still the reality is, and so we have such emotional investment in, in what this answer is and whether it satisfies us that I think, unlike other problems, there's, yeah, that could be a big boundary to whether or not it's ever accepted as as correct, but also it could be wrong. There are two ways to hit the ball back there. The first one is, yeah, super eloquently described with the tunnel vision of separation and that slowly becoming more and more augmented and awakened and harmonized especially between the presence of seeing the the collective symphony at the same time as seeing a unique gift and artistic contribution those two things together are critical. And then on the first part that you mentioned let's talk about the mathematics here I think this is very Tom when we had him on the show in China. He was so insightful and visionary about the fact that we are literally going to need new math to understand how life works. That's so profoundly interesting because like you described, even given such extreme successes with computational capacities. How do we actually simulate the inner workings of even a single cell and how it interacts with its environment. And then how we can basically prove the idea is that that you can prove there's like a mathematics of consciousness of that cell that when it does get a like a light source as an input that it does register that and that it makes an output and that's the idea of a of a of an attempt at a deeper living mirror theory of understanding and how a multi cell organism has like a slightly more complex mathematical computation of its of understanding its of its environment is that the general trajectory alongside what mainstream is Yeah, I think where we're currently at the math is is is coming along well actually like so this again this is mainly the work of Carl Friston and what's called the free energy principle. And the existing state of it is I mean it is complicated maths. And so it's but it's, it's not, you know, it's not like inventing a whole new branch of mathematics, I guess, but it's fundamentally the the idea is that if that in order to exist minimize the kind of disorder in your boundary. If you don't minimize the disorder in your boundary you're not going to exist you're going to dissolve. And if you look at that kind of physically, the mathematics describe that physically, it's the same, you can rearrange it, and it basically says that it's the same as what's called Bayesian inference which is again this I mentioned the Bayesian brain the idea this is just a kind of branch of mathematics that's to do with how you build models of the world how you test it against hypotheses, how you test your policies against data. And in my in my theory, what I should actually make clear is that the math describes the contents of consciousness the structure. So in this picture you'd be able to say okay that primate with its three different types of photoreceptors color sensor photoreceptors has trichromatic vision it has these kind of three dimensions of color and we can map out this kind of structure. The fact of consciousness is not something that can be you know it. That's where you need to zoom out to this kind of to the universe really to the picture of the environment and the organism and like a reflection exists in the interaction between the the organism and its environment. So the question of to go back to what you said before about can it ever be proven the idea you would never be able to prove this organism has consciousness this organism doesn't have consciousness. This is just you know one of the features of consciousness is private right and I can speculate that you have it because your physiology is so similar to mine. It would be really unsurprising it'd be very surprising if you had a similar, you're a similar organism without consciousness that would just seem would seem so so weird that I'm willing to grant it to you. And then with a theory you can start to think okay I'm willing to grant it to these other organisms for these reasons, but there can never be. I can never prove that you're not a robot, you know, like a zombie is the kind of philosophical term for being with with no with no consciousness. And so the mathematics would really be making progress in terms of cashing out whether we've got a handle on how the contents are structured, but then if the theory manages to pull that off then it's good to assume that it's it's right in some fundamental way. Okay, so living mere theory is heavily grounded in the mathematics of the structure of consciousness. So I would say the basic insight is just the conceptual one we said before. You can really, we could not talk about thermodynamics at all and we could just say if you're going to exist, you need to know what's going on around you. And I think for some people they might think yeah that makes sense. That makes more sense than maybe, I don't know, saying, if your brain oscillates at 40 hertz then you're conscious that seems that doesn't seem to hold any intuitive explanation. Is it then fair to say that it's the mathematics of the living system in the way that it is coupled with its environment? Yes, so the mathematics only comes in when, you know, it's a scientific theory. So if you want to test it, you want to get precise, that's where it comes in. But you don't need to worry about the actual kind of that level of granularity to feel you've got a handle on what I'm claiming. Yeah, yeah, correct. That's kind of where we started is having the handle on it without the math, but then I see where, because I'm so interested in the actual process of getting people around the world to go, okay, what we're triangulating on and what 5000 plus years of metaphysical lineages unconsciousness across the world are triangulating on is the exact same thing. And that's why I want the math to succeed. I want the hypotheses to be proven over time and successfully over and over and over again. Yeah, and that's why I ask about the math and the complicated process of doing the simulations of the coupling of the living system with its environment. And then kind of like the idea is that the math, we're in a sense, we're watching the changes of the math. We're watching those changes to determine. Inconsciousness, you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I mean, it gets a bit. I need to be careful because if it's like you're watching it's like you're conscious of these other things. So I would say, I would say the math is the math and the theory are always just maps for the territory right so this is a picture where it's not like consciousness is just information processing it's like the computer analogy for the brain where you just assume it's this very thin kind of description of what's going on. It's really a body. It's like you have this real like existence that's happening right now, and it's a real process. And when you have a system that believes things about in about the world around it, this is what it feels like. The theory and mathematical descriptions are just maps. They're just saying, here's how it should play out if we've got a really if we've got a lot of what's going on. This is what it should look like. And so the consciousness itself is embodied in the world. And then the theories are just their descriptions that they're a language game ultimately, which is why if you if you force me to choose between science and spirituality I would choose to just meditate the rest of my life away, instead of the game of trying to put it into words and in other forms of languages is not as as not as real. It's it's a story. It's ultimately a story.