 All right, Don, obviously we were both extremely passionate about metaphysics, the nature of reality, the nature of being, the nature of consciousness. And this seems to be obviously seems to be the most first principled question that we must have children and adults caring about. But one of the big arguments that you propose is that the reality that that is that this is actually makes it so that we are tuned to not that fitness function we are not tuned to the fitness function of understanding who we are metaphysics but we are rather tuned to those points in procreating. So you would, would you say that that is the main sort of reason why there's so few people that are studying metaphysics nature of consciousness this type of stuff. Okay, so, so, yeah, what I'm up to is what we do in science all the time right as we take our best current theories, and we push them, we try to find out what they entail, and we try to find surprising implications of the theories and we try to break them. And that's the goal is to push our theories to the limits, try to break them and, and then we learn something and then we try to go to the next theory and so that's what I'm doing with the theory of natural selection I'm really just saying, you know, whether or not the theory itself is true right we, you know, I'm not claiming that the theory of evolution with natural selection is true. It's the best tool we have so far it's an incredibly powerful tool, we have nothing better. So that's what I've got to study. And so the question is, according to that tool according to evolution but natural selection, would we be shaped to see objective reality whatever that objective reality might be. And most people would think intuitively of course we you know, you know, it makes you more fit. If you see the truth, right if you mean surely someone who sees reality as it is is going to be more fit and have more kids than someone who doesn't but you know those intuitions are strong but the math of the theory of evolution with natural selection is very very clear. The probability is zero that any of our senses, not just for humans but for any person will ever be shaped to see any aspect of the structure of reality, whatever reality might be. So it's, it's, it's, again, I want to make sure it's clear that this is from, from a scientist point of view. It's not like I'm saying evolution is true and you know deal with it I'm saying no. This is just, I mean, this is our best theory so far. And we may come up with a better theory but here's what our current theories say, and it's a surprise. And it's a mathematical theorem. So if we don't like it we may need to try to adjust the theory of evolution with natural selection, or we may have to live with it and say well no this is the way it is. It's very profoundly important because when we look around ourselves at the world at large, we don't see people obsessively compulsively studying truth and wanting to understand the nature of reality. And a lot of the time we think that oh well that's maybe based on the economics and the incentive systems that make it for people to just funnel in as cogs into like an economic machine. There's been lots of philosophical conversations around the desacralization and the, and the, there's not as much divinity not as much, a little bit more nihilism maybe given today's entrance into the AI age. And so, this is extremely, extremely important that children born to the world adults today are wondering what is, what is consciousness what is this awareness, do we share this conscious awareness, how do I study this word that's infinity how do I study this word that is eternity. What is a theory of everything what does that even mean why should we care about it. So part of it seems to be yes some economical incentive structures need to be pointed towards that direction for people to study truth rather than just the procreation and getting points for in that sense. Well, there's some overlap there that that that we'll talk about in a little bit, would, would you say that, you know, you've used this analogy so many times and it that's just because it's so salient and it's so relevant and young people today that are the millennials Gen Z and Generation Alpha for sure understand this more than the older generations do. But the idea that that we ourselves are as a as a desktop user interface or as a as a virtual reality headset that we ourselves. When we use these objects like this glass of water, I know that I sip from the glass of water and it gets me the fitness points in terms of not dehydrating and continuing to live so that I can procreate. Now, now that object has a higher weight than does the object of me reading about Shri Aurobindo and the mother Miral Fossa and their understandings of metaphysics. And so, so the idea is that this is an icon in my in my on my on my user interface on my multimodal user interface it's an icon, but underlying this icon at the very depths, which we're, which we'll get into here in a moment there is some sort of a, there is some sort of a source code of that object I don't manipulate the mathematics the voltages the registers etc. I don't manipulate those things just like when you play Grand Theft Auto, or World of Warcraft or Minecraft, you yourself don't go in, and you don't when you drive a car you're not manipulating the codes that do the left all you do is you turn left in the car. And that sort of these theories around desktop interfaces these theories around virtual reality headsets. It's interesting because they're what is kind of the cutting edge technologies that exist today but also they are in a sense the most relevant ways of of conceptualizing this theory. It's a really good job at at putting them together in order to get this interface theory of perception in order to get this conscious agent theory, but that's this general ideas that there is some sort of a of an abstract mathematical source codes that are occurring that are creating some sort of a holographic space time for us to then be conscious agents inside of that then we interact with the user interface of objects for the fitness points of procreation is that approximately correct. Right. So, so that's right. The theory of evolution by natural selection clearly entails that our senses have been shaped not to show us the truth, whatever the truth might be. And by the way, to prove the theorem we didn't have to actually assume we knew the truth. We could prove it without knowing what the truth is which is very very interesting that the math is allows us to do that. But it and so it the theory of evolution with natural selection clearly entails that Using the kind of metaphors you were talking about. It's not like our perceptions were shaped to be a window on the truth. They're more likely to be shaped as a user interface, like a game interface to a computer where, if you're, as you say, as you're playing Grand Theft Auto that you might have no idea that there are voltages and magnetic fields and insides of trillions of, of, you know, silicon, you know, transistors and so forth in a computer. You would have no idea that that's what you're really playing with. And as you said, from an evolutionary point of view, there's very little constraint on from natural selection for us to want to understand ourselves at this deeper level, right. In some sense, if you've been trained to play a game, you might not be inquisitive about who wrote the game and so if you ask most kids who are playing games who wrote it that was like, I don't care. Well, do you know about the voltages magnetic fields? Who gives a rep? I mean, I just want to play the game. And so you can, yeah, there is some notion from evolution that might point in a different direction and that is that that our species from an evolutionary point of view is a bit unusual in that many species occupy a small number of niches, maybe very specific niches, and they have a limited set of fixed strategies that only work in certain small niches. And we've evolved a frontal lobe that has the ability to make models, and we can play with these models of our environment and see what would happen in various circumstances and see if we would be injured so we could die in our model as opposed to dying in person in the environment. And so one could imagine how that kind of capacity, which was originally evolved to model our environment and how it's hurting us or helping us, that we could then all of a sudden sort of co-op that to reflect on other things, right? We're model builders, and all of a sudden we start to wonder, and part of the thing is there's a sense in which we want our models to be right, because if our models aren't right, they won't protect us, right? So there is again going to be this built in wish for us to have good models. And so one could go in that direction and try to come up with an evolutionary story about how our species might be sort of selected to want to have some kind of notion of truth that sort of maybe builds on this model building thing, which wasn't about truth, it was about staying alive, but there was a sense of truth of the model in the sense that it's the true way to play the game, right? So if I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, I'd like to know that if I turn the wheel left, my car's not going to go to the right. I mean, that's a true model within Grand Theft Auto. It's not true in terms of the diodes and resistors and the voltages, but it's true within the context of the game. And so one could try to craft a story like that where evolution sort of shaped us to be model builders in the game, and we wanted our model of the game to be accurate. And that then extended to a few people more philosophically going, whoa, could this just be a game? And could I try to get a model of it? So I'm not saying that that's a true story, but I'm saying it's an interesting way that we could try to go within the evolutionary theory. But I do want to say that the next step that I've taken about conscious agents is entirely independent. Nothing about conscious agents is dictated by the theory of evolution by natural selection. All I'm doing there is I'm saying evolution by natural selection is telling us that there's a reality that's different from space and time and physical objects. It's utterly different from it. And so as a scientist, I'm trying to think, okay, well, okay, so it's not space and time and physical objects, what is it? And since I'm interested in consciousness and what's called the hard problem of consciousness, how are conscious experiences like the taste of chocolate and the smell of garlic related to brain activity. And I'm trying to solve that problem. That's why I sort of said, okay, let me propose that consciousness is the fundamental reality. And as a scientist, I need to give a mathematically precise definition of what I mean by consciousness. And so it ended up being as I studied it with my wonderful colleagues, Chetan Prakash and Manish Singh and Chris Fields and others who work with me. It's not by any means by myself alone. That we came up with sort of this network model of it's like a vast social network of conscious agents, but that's a separate hypothesis. One could buy the argument from evolution by natural selection that we don't see the truth. And then say, but I don't like your theory about conscious agents. I'm gonna put something else for the reality. So that's perfect. Or you could say I don't like any of them. But then to look at the theory of evolution of natural selection and figure out what you think is wrong with my theorem. I just want to add that you're bringing up the sort of whatever we end up hypothesizing as an ultimate reality that is beyond what seems to be just a user interface that whatever we hypothesize as that it must unfold. Quantum field theory, a space time and an evolution by natural selection. So that's really some keys that whoever is trying to conceptualize whatever it may be at the most abstract mathematical level happening, it has to unfold those three keys but it also it also has to unfold. The conscious agents experience that has a combinatorial essence to it that that I interact with the cup I drink the water that's a very, very common experience amongst conscious agents is drinking water. It's a lot less of a common experience among conscious agents to have a Rube Goldberg book or music or company idea and execute that into the world so there are these rarities. And then there are these more commonalities. I want to, I want to ask you about, would it would it be fair to also kind of call this like in a, you know, is this is source code, an okay word for it is implicate like David Bowman would say is that an okay word for it or these okay interchangeable sorts of that play as long as we recognize they're just metaphors mean the real point of the theorem for natural selection is that there is a reality whose structure is utterly unlike any structure of our perceptions, almost sure. And so, so, you know, so we can use various metaphors. And the source code is a great one if I'm thinking about it as a user interface absolutely. David Bomes, you know, brilliant brilliant quantum theorist, his implicate order, trying to think out of the box there. But as you, as you pointed out, whatever we put in that deeper realm, whether it's source code or implicate order or in my case, a network of conscious agents. If we're going to do science, we can't just wave our hands. We have to have a mathematically precise statement in my case of conscious agent networks and as you pointed out, then there have to be testable predictions that in principle could what I'm proposing. And so there's a some several things that that any real scientists would require of my theory, they would require that, you know, at some point before we can really take it seriously, you better show how space time emerges. And when you show a space time emerges, you better get the sciences that we have a space time, you know, general relativity, special relativity quantum field theory, or generalizations of those theories. But, but you can't do worse, you can't do worse than those are you got to do those theories are better, and also evolution by natural selection and so. So this is not just well I think it's consciousness and wave our hands and so forth. I think we have some hard work ahead to to, for example, make specific predictions about how the dynamics of conscious agents can tell us precisely the say that the amplitudes for scattering events at the large Hadron Collider. But we have to be able to do that kind of of concrete prediction. Eventually, I mean I can't do it right right now. I my team are working on it but but I absolutely accept that until we have that kind of prediction testable prediction. We're not there yet.