 Conscious experiences are fundamental, right? So then in under that idea Mathematical structure is only about one thing consciousness and conscious experiences and in that framework then You would girdle would be telling us that there's an infinite variety of conscious experiences with an infinite variety of different structures and most of us have no idea that there's anything else Right, this is the only candy in the store and and we're happy But this is one of boundless candies and and it's it's fun to wake up to that It may be frustrating to if we sit here and going but oh, but I can't experience them And by the way, even the mathematicians Based on girdle is incomplete this term even the mathematicians can't abstractly even begin to explore just the mathematical structures Right, but by the way, this is great job security for mathematics. This is provable job security This is you will never come to the last theorem never so this is sign up for being a mathematician because you know that you have endless employment I'm not wedded to evolutionary game theoretic kind of model of the dynamics of consciousness I have to be open to a much wider Range of possible dynamical systems, right interesting. It's in general going to be simply Some kind of dynamics on graphs. It's really critical to walk away from dogmatism. Yeah, right That's that's dogmatism is the source source of all this and you know, it seems like Most spiritual traditions would recognize that that humility is a virtue And I would include in that humility about my beliefs Humility that I could be wrong It's an anti-dogmatic kind of point of view. It's more Exploring and and if we assume that we know then we cut off Inquiry and we can't learn if you know if you're certain that you know then you're not going to be motivated to learn Someone's opinion may contradict yours. Where's my friend Alan? It's all about your perspective Who are we and what is the nature of this reality? What's up, everyone welcome to simulation I'm your host down Sakyan very pumped to be talking about conscious agent theory We have dr. Donald Hoffman joining us on the show. Hi, Don. It's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me Alan Very pumped for this episode super excited for all that you're pushing at the edge of what's known for those They don't know Don's background. He's professor recently became emeritus of cognitive sciences at UC Irvine since 1983 37 years Author of 120 plus academic papers and most recently author of the case against reality Proposing a conscious agent theory of everything and you can find his links in the bio below to his website Also his book the case against reality as well as his Twitter profile check out all those links 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 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 Getting fitness points and pro-creating. 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 Right. 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 evolution by 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 by 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 creature 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 cleared 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 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 This is 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 And 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 But also there's some overlap there that that will talk about in a little bit Would would you say that you know that 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 especially 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 multi-modal 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 transistors It said 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 So 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 and I think you did 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 idea is that there is some sort of a of an abstract Mathematical source codes that are occurring that are then 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 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 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? It's in some sense if you've been trained you have to play a game you might not be Inquisitive about who wrote the game and so even 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 is 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 very 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 what are 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 that for us to have good models And so one could go and interact 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 it's the true way to play the game Right, so there's this true way. You mean if I'm playing Grand Theft Auto I'd like to know that if I turn the whale left my car is not going to go to the right I mean that's that's a true model within Grand Theft Auto is 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 me to get a model of it So so I'm not saying that that's your true story But I'm saying it's it's an interesting way that we could try to go within the evolutionary theory But I do want to say that the 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 my 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 our 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 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 of 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 and and figure out what you think is wrong with my theorem Yeah I'm glad 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 a user interface that Whatever we hypothesize as that it must unfold a 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 Implicit like David Bohm would say is that an okay word for it? Are these okay interchangeable sorts of As long as we recognize they're just metaphors I mean the 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 Bohms, 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 disconfirm What I'm proposing and so There's a some several things that that any Real scientists would require of of my theory They would require that you know at some point before we can really take it seriously You better show how spacetime emerges And when you show a spacetime emerges you better get The sciences that we have a spacetime, you know general relativity special relativity quantum field theory or generalizations of those theories But but you can't do worse and you can't do worse than those theories You've 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 We have some hard work ahead to to um 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 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 Yeah, I want to let's let's go into the The abstract mathematics first and then I want to go into the Super macro scale conversations around The infinite candy store analogy. We'll we'll get there in a moment. So Okay in terms of the math of the conscious agents We're running what John Maynard Smith this evolutionary game theory style evolutionary simulations and there's there's there's several components to it and Correct me if if I'm wrong and then if not, we'll have you elaborate on it would the first component being a category theory And that basically being like the agents themselves And the multi agent reinforcement learning we could we could say maybe Then we have Markovian morphisms the Markovian kernels We have the the explorations that are happening We kind of called this the earlier you were talking about like a Monte Carlo tree search and a model based reinforcement learning Style for the agents to explore and morph. So the actual sets of the agents Those sets those category sets they morph over time Based on the experiences that the agents undergo And then there's a replicator equation for procreation So it's three so it's three things the replicator creation procreation And I believe you said that you don't have the quasi species model yet, which is for mutation But that though that these are kind of would you say these are kind of the abstract components is the category theory the Markovian morphisms The replicator equation the quasi species model. Is that approximately in the right ballpark? Well, certainly that's that's true when we're doing our simulations just of evolution by natural selection, right? So so john maynard smith um transformed Darwin's idea Into beautiful mathematics back in the 70s and this is called evolutionary game theory And so in fact, I use I and my graduate students, uh, Justin mark and brian marion used john maynard smith's You know evolutionary game theory to first run simulations before we had the theorems We ran the simulations just to see if it was worth our time, right? You know, you you just want to see what's going to happen Before you spend your time on the math, especially when you have limited math talents like me So so we ran the simulations first And there we did find that, uh, you know Organisms that saw reality Virtual organisms in our simulations that saw reality went extinct when they competed against ones that Of equal complexity that saw none of reality and were just tuned to the fitness payoff So so that's what led me to then go to a real mathematician chateau and precaution and pursue the theorems Now in the case of the agent dynamics um, I'm not wedded to evolutionary game theoretic Kind of model of the dynamics of consciousness I have to be open to a much wider Range of possible dynamical systems, right interesting It's in general going to be simply Some kind of dynamics on graphs. So the general mathematical arena is these graphs And dynamics on graphs, which is a fairly recent and quite complicated branch of mathematics now One constraint will be that whatever dynamics I come up with the conscious agents When I project it into the headset into space time I need to show why it looks like we get john meanard smith's specific kinds of evolutionary dynamics in the headset Right that has to come out But I don't have to put it in to begin with In the level of conscious agents that would actually be more impressive if I had some more general kind of dynamics Or some kind of different dynamics And that then very interestingly when I project it Looks like evolution by natural selection and you know evolutionary game theoretic. So right now. I'm just pursuing but Category three. I think will be a big part of it right right now. We we're using marcovian dynamics on on graphs But We're thinking that for the bigger picture of how agents interact and combine to form new agents We may have to go to a category theoretic representation that that's more general than the marcovian dynamics that we're looking at right now So maybe my little monoidal categories to begin with It's so so so interesting. So um the So the so conscious agent theory the conscious agent dynamics are occurring on graph and on Yeah, that and that's kind of the them and then the conscious agents get ascribed that alan conscious agent gets ascribed a a category set of of For example, like your your dna may be in there something a lot something like that maybe your Your your the the morphisms that that that agent undergoes May be like we described earlier this most common morphism of drinking the water Which then enables the agent to live another day because they've imbibed water Versus having the you know the rube goldberg transcendent idea of a business that they build Incessantly obsessively over five years actually gets them a very serious long-term fitness payoff um, so and which gives them a better A better stance on the hierarchy for in the replicator equation the gen their genetics will mate with the better partners genetics is it is it taking in that that level of Eventually, of course, we're going to I mean that's what we see in the interface, right? We see this kind of evolutionary dynamics and we see genes We see dna. We see this the replicator equation. We see reproductive success and failure And so those are things that That we'll have to show At least are the way from the point of view of our our spacetime headsets our interface But that's the way this dynamics looks to us through that, but it may be that it's that That that point of view Deeply misses a lot Yes That we misunderstand so it's really going on with this whole realm of conscious agents So so I don't want to in any way restrict my imagination About the dynamics Agents to anything even about sexual reproduction and fitness the whole notion of fitness And reproduction and so forth may be only an artifact Of our headset Just like spacetime Spacetime itself the very structure of spacetime is an artifact of our headset. It's not a deep insight into reality So that's the the weird thing and the fun thing about the the challenge of this is So when when I go after this theory of conscious agents and then you're asking exactly the right questions to to really expose What it means to try as a scientist To go to a level of a theory that goes beyond spacetime, right? You you you have to on the one hand be constrained ultimately by empirical things that we can measure inside our interface like dna and You know fitness and survival and so forth, but our ideas can't be constrained necessarily in this deeper realm We really have to let our imagination go and ask The really tough question Which is first, you know, what kind of deeper theory do we want to go after? So i'm going after a theory of conscious agents and consciousness Others that have I should mention tried to go a different way. I mean so Seth Lloyd was looking for something beyond spacetime and he proposed quantum bits and quantum gates So so that's mathematically precise and there's this just abstract world outside of space and time with these quantum bits and quantum gates And he was able to show how with each quantum gate the action of the gate corresponded to the curvature of little patch of Relativistic spacetime, you know gravitational, you know general relativistic spacetime and he could get You could sort of boot up general relativity from this this deeper reality Now you could of course ask him Why in the world should it be that this deeper reality is quantum bits and quantum gates? Who ordered that and why why should that be the deepest reality? And we could scratch our heads about that but but and that's a legitimate question But i'm just saying that once you go And say spacetime isn't fundamental. There's a lot. There's countless ways that we can go as scientists to look and so for me So it's it's a non-trivial choice to say i'm looking for consciousness and my motivation was simply because I think i'm conscious I think you're conscious If i'm wrong about that and I could be wrong about that then um I'm wrong about pretty much everything um And so I decided I wanted to propose a theory in which consciousness is fundamental um And see if I couldn't do the hard work of showing that spacetime Emerges is just a headset to represent all these this this think about it as a big social dynamics like the twitterverse Yeah, so they're proposing this big twitterverse of conscious agents And but since it's you know like the twitterverse there's tens of millions of twitter users billions of tweets What do we do is that you can't interact with all the tweets or the twitter users We need a visualization tool to see what's trending in new york delay Zoom out what's happening in the united states. What's happening in europe? What's happening in china zoom in what is you know, what is alan tweeting right now? So I should you a good tool would let me zoom in to just alan zoom out to what's happening at the whole night United states that's what our headset is Right now my headset Is representing most of the conscious agents with really dumb symbols like tables and chairs and so forth Not because tables and chairs are conscious Just like if I have it in my headset I've got something that's representing what's trending in the united states, you know Some red objects are doing something over here in green ops. It's not that Red objects and green objects are conscious or twitters. That's just how my interface codes the stuff because it has to give up But i'm not giving up so much when I interact with you I'm actually interacting with a specific consciousness and you're interacting with my consciousness And so so our headset in many cases will just use really crude symbols that we call just inanimate physical objects That doesn't mean anything deep. It just means that our symbols have to give up Right, there's no in this point of view. There's no fundamental distinction between living and non-living. That's an We think it's a fundamental distinction in reality. It's just where our interface Symbols are more or less insightful about the conscious agents that we're interacting with So so there's no fundamental principle distinction between living and non-living And there's no way that life just boots up from the unconscious ingredients of our interface So so this changes the whole the whole Point of view But to get right back to your your question What we have to do in this theory of conscious agents in this dynamics is not Assume john maynard smith's theory. We have to get it coming out as a projection of a deeper dynamics And so we have to ask and this is the really fun part in the creative part for scientists You have to ask Every theory Has certain assumptions What are and we want to have as few assumptions as possible, right? Because everything you assume you're not explaining So right every every time you put something into an assumption. You're saying Can't explain that so that's an assumption. So you want as few assumptions as possible And and so there's no theory of everything, right? There is no scientific theory of everything because Every theory has some assumptions that will not be explained by that theory So there's there are theories of everything except my assumptions That's that that's what science said we have theories of everything except my assumption And of course then you can get a deeper theory which tries to explain those assumptions But it'll have its own new assumptions, right? And so science always will have this limit that we only have theories of everything except my assumptions And so I so my theory of consciousness is no exception I will have a theory of consciousness except my assumptions and so my assumptions are that there are conscious experiences Like the taste of chocolate the smell of garlic the headache And that those conscious experiences can affect Other conscious experiences so they they inform Actions that affect other conscious experiences That's it. That's I just want to say those two things. So it's I mean so notice. I'm not saying anything about a self Or self-awareness or self-consciousness not saying anything about memory or learning or intelligence or problem solving There's all these things that I'm not saying They're not they're not part of the kitchen sink that I'm throwing into my theory These are all things that I'm saying. I will have to explain The only thing I'm going to let my self have is two things. There are experiences And experiences inform actions and the only actions are to Affect other experiences. That's it with those so that that minimal structure. My hope is to say Um, I can then give you a theory in which we build selves as data structures We have we can build theories out of networks of so this is going to be the dynamics of graphs is going to be Graph dynamics in which we show how to compute things like memory learning problem solving intelligence and so forth and and by the way It's a theorem from our mathematical statement of the assumptions. I just gave you there are experiences and they can affect other experiences While writing it down as Markovian kernels as we have it's it's a trivial theorem that um This framework is computationally universal and what that means is um in principle there is No limit Any theory that we could build of learning memory problem solving or intelligence using computers I can build with my theory of conscious agents. If you can do it on a computer I can build a theory in this new language of conscious agent networks So that's so so I know from the get go that I have an adequate But minimal set of assumptions that lets me build all these things I can build a theory of learning memory problem solving self and so forth out of this the two assumptions that you made about experience being fundamental and also about experiences impacting each each Other agents that then impact their actions that those are Pretty fundamental also to Ancient spirituality perennial wisdoms around the planet which we'll talk about also later so I I appreciate how you say that there's There's many different ways to up the source code mountain and Okay Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot. There's a lot of um, like brian keating just had steven wolfram and eric weinstein on and they were talking about the the nature of mathematical reality and they were They were talking about the the hopf fibration and they were talking about how That vibrational data is um is is is a is a big deal and it's happening That's happening infinitely far away and then it it emerged and then the emergence of it and and um And and to me That style of thinking and visualizing I think is also important I don't know where that lands on on the mountain towards the source code And where that would incorporate a conscious agents Or or or if that would happen downstream or whatnot so for I really appreciate how there's many different ways up the source code mountain and that there's different ways to To speak about and visualize it Then there's there's well Let's um, let's mention let's mention this. Um You gave you gave a really good just bit there a moment to go on how the The the conscious Agent Does not see The I think this this is extremely important, but like the rain of photons that are coming right now in this big Um field of nitrogen and oxygen Uh molecules in front of my face Um The electromagnetic spectrum that we only see from 400 to 700 nanometers on um the fact that we Don't see any of those things is precisely Be because we potentially designed it this way so that we could Act in the ocean that we're in To Have experiences because if you couldn't have those experiences if you were blocked by the ocean of the electromagnetic spectrum and the sea of oxygen nitrogen that you're in does that generally about right to right from an evolutionary point of view that would be the kind of argument that um you You want to evolve sensory systems that tell you what you need to know to act In ways that will keep you alive, but then you know that will keep you fit but um You want to do it as cheaply as possible, right every Calorie that you spend on Perception is a calorie that you have to go out kill something And eat it to get that calorie. So there are selection pressures for up to to dumb things down To keep our senses as simple as possible Um given the the other pressure of they have to be complicated enough to accurately report fitness At least more accurately and more fitness than than your competition. There's there's nothing that In evolutionary theory that says that you are perfect about seeing fitness either, right? So i'm not but i'm not being um A theorist that says we're we have vertical perceptions of even fitness payoffs. There's there's nothing vertical here anywhere We we have what we call Satisfying solutions in evolution, right is good enough To just beat the competition and so so and from that point of view from evolutionary point of view and again You can see my attitude is look I'm not saying that evolution by natural selection is true But i'm saying we have no better theory right that that is the best theory we've got so so until we have a better theory We've got to take it very very seriously in what it says and then try to break it, right? I mean be I can't so we have to respect it really study it and then also try to break it So so what that theory is saying is yeah, there's no selection pressures for you to know everything Quite to the contrary all you need to do is be a little bit better than the competition And so why should we see the the deep structure of the atomic nuclei or the the wavelength? structure of photons and so forth and and the fact that we in science you know Run into these things is is interesting what we're doing Is we're studying our headset Right our headset has evolved with certain Structure to it what like we have a space time that we perceive intuitively You know three dimensions of space and one dimension of time But when we actually study our perceptions more systematically We realize those you know, Einstein comes along and and uh comes up with surprising features about our interface that eventually lead to Posing that there's a minkowski structure to space time and then eventually even a curved space time Comes up with a curved space time And then when we so what's happening is we're taking the language of our senses the language of our interface that was evolved And what science has been doing Is studying our interface? We haven't been studying Objective reality. We've been studying our interface and a structure and even microphysical particles like quarks and gluons and leptons Are the physicists will tell you they're just what they call irreducible representations of the poincare group What that means that they're they're representing symmetries Of spacetime we have this spacetime format for our headset and particles are just representations of the symmetries of that of that formatting system and so So yeah, we haven't seen all this stuff and um until science came along And and what science has been doing is systematically exploring our headset Um and and and it's taken a lot of hard work, right me thousands of brilliant scientists working really really hard Which gets back at your main point which in some sense from evolution We weren't evolved to see this otherwise it wouldn't be that hard. We would just see it So so why it just takes like it takes an Einstein That it takes you know, we the people who actually figured this stuff out We we view them as absolute geniuses, right? They've been that because in some sense The the rest of us mortals would never have even thought of that. And so there are a few of us Like the einsteins and the john wheelers and and and and so forth who have these really deep insights Um, and then the rest of us, um, you know feel smart by association Yeah, it absolutely a power law of A brilliant people that have pushed the edge of what is known one billion people have been uncommon and 99 billion people have been common and Yeah, yeah, and the ones that are uncommon are the ones that Make the mutations on that universal constructor That were a part of and then that tape Then a hundred years later. We're all flying airplanes, you know uh style Yeah the um the the other the other thought for me around um The perception as you were indicating a moment ago, which I think is really valuable is that when When when one augments their user interface when one augments their perception um In a sense what they do is they they kind of like climb the ladder of abstraction um but What happens is they like they see the world in a higher resolution like when when we're talking about the electromagnetic spectrum in the sea of Of oxygen nitrogen etc that that is that's here the photons etc all all that all that we're we're we've done is we've conceptualized these things Then we've stored it, but then we don't continue seeing it all the time. So Yeah, so so this is a key insight I think is you rise to the levels of abstraction of knowing this and then you store it as a concept So like you double click in you see the higher resolution And then what you do is you zoom back out and you've stored that data and then you go about your the rest of your The whatever the function is and like you described earlier, there's many ways up this mountain So we're not just saying that it is only Procreation, but that is definitely high and Truth is also high the more that you know about truth the greater chance you have of getting a mate as well But people that are tuned specifically towards Of fitness payoffs like you indicated versus just truth payoffs Fitness payoffs will win out Over that but there is there is an an overlap there But I I appreciate that that understanding of of upgrading perception and then and then holding that as abstract concepts That you can access anytime versus not even having But yeah, that that's a good point in the sense that um even the best of scientists when they Reach some deep new understanding like quantum theory And you find that that these you know electrons and photons are in superposition states and they get entangled and so forth um The best and brightest, you know like a richard feinman will say look um If you think you understand this you don't understand this no one understands this this is just This is mind boggling stuff and and so these geniuses who who are at the forefront of understanding working on it We'll we'll say that it just shatters all of your your Intuitions and from an evolutionary point of view you could say well No surprise being we weren't in some sense evolved to understand the subatomic World and and so our our concepts and intuitions just aren't matched to it and when we get there we get there by mathematics right the We're forced to these conclusions because we we try to get some mathematics that will explain our experiments When we get the mathematics and finding oh wow finally an equation that matches the data So what does this equation entail it entails that are you you got to be kidding me? It means that there's superpositions that there is entanglement I don't even know this is and and so then you have the really brilliant people going I have no idea what what this really means all I know is that That's what the math is saying and my intuitions are are boggled and so so that's that's where we are on that and They're in terms of perceiving the truth and and and getting mates Yeah, mentioned From an evolutionary point of view there is an interesting for for our species um There's an interesting sexual selection pressure so A male that Has special linguistic or cognitive abilities can by showing off Perhaps be more attractive to females. That's just one way that you can show off You can also show off by being physically strong right and fast or muscle There's number of ways of showing off But but there are some selection pressures for for women to be more attracted to to males with Better displays of cognitive abilities and and that can lead not necessarily to truth but to just Making up really impressive stories and and just trying to look impressive. So so the alphabet soup logical fallacy Right. So so they're they're you know, just Performing in a way that makes you look impressive may or may not be necessarily moving toward the truth No, in the case of an einstein, right? But if you've stored this data like if you've stored the quantum field around the tree with the exchange that is happening of Photosynthesis between the human and the tree in terms of o2 and co2 if you've stored that data If you've stored also how you eat the apple that's went through the photosynthetic process of making the glucose and then you eat That and you go through the cellular respiration process if you've stored these pieces of data Um, and you know them and you can recall them They give you a scientific and a spiritual fitness advantage in that sense over other potential mates for whoever that that doesn't know that data Absolutely in in the following sense. I mean knowing that kind of stuff. I I know um things that Could change my behaviors that I would eat more healthily and and be more healthy that way or I could devise new technologies that allows me and my tribe to beat the others And and therefore be more fit in that so absolutely that's one thing that's driven science is The need for technologies to fight other human beings Um, so a lot of I mean so and and it works, right? It's you know, the united states is the world's superpower not because Um, we're the smartest people or the strongest people or the bravest people We just happen to have the best technology that that's that's it So it's really In that sense the fitness In evolutionary sense goes now with great technology in the past. It was um, you know Who knew how to throw sticks and rocks better and then figure out levers and then bows and arrows, right? That was a you know bow and arrow unbelievable technology Gives you an incredible advance until the other tribe figures out. Oh look what they did and they so now you get this arms race and so that is so you're right that there is in some sense this this a fitness payoff for better and better technologies absolutely and and that Um is one of the selection pressures a sexual selection pressures women will be impressed not just with brawn But also with brain in our species. Yeah So so interesting on that point. Um Let's um Let's talk about um and everything that we just mentioned Would it be fair to say that those are upgrades in perception in your multimodal user interface that these are Upgrades that we can make like if your dashboard sees Like from the old school days of how to make the bow and arrow or from today's modern day Maybe you know how to use python to program a computer that maybe that if you have those little icons on your multimodal user interface that maybe then In this interface theory of perception if I can perform some mimesis and I can learn how to do the bow and arrow Or I can learn how to do the python programming and add that to my multimodal user interface perception that then then that is The upgrades in perception augmentations and perception that enable me to climb those ladders of of fitness and abstraction and truth and stuff like that That's right. It's it's an upgrade not in the sense of the basic hardware of the brain, right? The hardware of the brain that you got is what you've got but you can because our our our brains are Have evolved to be learning algorithms and we we learn and build models and If A lot of other people around us that we see have figured out models that we might not have figured out on ourselves We can effectively be more smart because we can instead of figuring ourselves We can just adopt their model now we have their model even if we weren't smart enough to actually figure out Ourselves and so as our population has gotten bigger 7 billion or 8 billion and so forth. Yeah, you know, right? There's there's a We have that many people out there There's going to be some some real geniuses who will come up with big ideas like there'll be an einstein and we all talk about Einstein and there are a billion other people that we're not going to talk about from from 1905 that that But the the zero to one and then the one to many as peter teal would say That's right, but there is the I'll Tell the opposite side of this now and that's it's it's quite remarkable Our brains in some sense are not upgrading. They're downsizing. That's right. Yeah What is it? Is it the volume of a tennis ball? We've lost in the last 20,000 years. That's exactly right so the peak Was 15 20,000 years ago and apparently then what seems to be going on Well, what what is going on in the data is that they can measure the the volume of the of the skulls the cranium So that you can measure, you know, the brains are gone But you can see the volume that they occupied and so you can actually measure and we've lost in the last 15 20,000 years um 10 15 percent of our our brain volume of the The about the entire volume of a tennis ball is gone So it's it's truly stunning and and and apparently we got smart enough 15,000 years ago to create agriculture And with agriculture, we started to get now with to support agriculture. You need to bring Um a bigger social group. We have small social groups as hunter-gatherers But now you need to bring together bigger social groups and you had to have a bigger division of labor because You know, we had to be you tending the crops Working on the crops We could then we needed people to defend the crops because the hunter-gatherers are going to come through and just try to Steal it from you, right? So you got to now you have to have a standing army They can't be always Doing the crops and so you get this division of labor that's that's coming out. But once you get a division labor Um, I don't have to be smart about everything now if I'm a hunter-gatherer me and my small group We have to do everything or we die, right? We have to make our clothes We have to take care of ourselves when we're sick everything that we need We've got to do ourselves or steal from somebody and But you know in a greater selection pressure for being a poly mac 20 000 years ago And then the slowly we've relieved those selection pressures Today where you're just exchanging the sheet of paper for the apple instead of growing it yourself. Yeah IQ of 70 and just go to the store and get my food As you know, I mean IQ of 70 probably, you know during the 15 000 years ago I would have been run over it. So it's you know, it's so It's a use it or lose it Kind of situation or use it you only get it if you need it and since um, I don't need to do everything I don't need to be a genius at everything as much as before. I'm not and so our brains are being downsized As as also we're at least, you know, we have this access to the internet And we're moving into the genetic engineering the neuro prosthetic ages that we're getting potentially the assistance of these agi coaches and We can maybe learn how to augment our working memory to 20 Plus or minus two and maybe we can abstractly reason such novel concepts that have never been thought of before and But so maybe there is a way to kind of bounce back from that loss maybe That would be that would be good and Yeah, yeah Let's let's this is good. That that was a good bit on those augmentations. I definitely think that There's many other augmentations that that exists like entheogens is a is a prominent augmentation that exists Deep the depth of meditative experience is the deepest depths of those as well augment ones perceptions also enable them to Really understand what the pause is instead of being so reactive they can They know how to slow down and I'm just observe and then Which is game changing for your relationships with your family your friends your coworkers people online blah blah and so all of a sudden just from something that doesn't appear to have A high fitness payoff, right? It doesn't appear to have a high fitness payoff But really when you learn how to pause instead of immediately react It gives you tremendous a fitness payoff downstream I would agree in in the sense that especially like in in our society right now right most of us aren't facing on a daily basis immediate threats to our our bodies Like it is, you know, of course, I mean there are many murders in the united states and around the world but but it's you know as as pinker has pointed out and steven pinker in some of his books on the rate of Homicide is dropped dramatically over the centuries dramatically and and so we have the luxury now of Not having to look over our shoulders every moment you know Wearing whether some other human being from another tribe is going to be attacking this or so forth and so So it's it's it's interesting that If you're in a situation where you're in a war zone and There are imminent threats all the time then being Anxious and being alert is very very fit, right? It's very very important Eventually that anxiety and the cortisol that it produces will kill you But it won't kill you today and it will keep you alive today. So in that sense is more fit, but now We have this luxury We're not an imminent threat They're not imminent danger So if we're in the state of high stress and anxiety and so forth producing cortisol all the time We are unnecessarily shortening our lives if I was in a war zone I would be necessarily shorting shortening my life but to stay alive today so so with meditation and so forth we can move into greater sense of peace and reduced stress and anxiety we can reduce our cortisol levels And we can enjoy that that state of life now. It's Because of our you know from an evolutionary point of view We are programmed With a stress system, right? We have an amygdala. We have all they're there Because that's what kept us alive. We are the offspring of those who are anxious enough To be able to face the threats Successfully, right? So that's why we have this proclivity to be anxious There are variations amongst but as I mean there's this video I saw in some national geographic Show about nature or something with a bunch of monkeys in the wild But they're all the monkeys are up in the trees and in hooten hollering and so forth except for one And this one monkey was this uh, really relaxed laid-back monkey out in the grass On and while they're filming they happen to Some tiger or panther comes along and guess who he got. Yeah. Yeah that that relaxation gene just went out of the gene pool It was the only it was only the monkeys that were uptight and scared enough to stay in the trees That's that that passed on their genes and so so we we are the offspring of those who are you know anxious enough So so an evolutionary point of view, um, there's a clean reason why most of us face Stress and anxiety even when we don't have to what we feel it when we don't have to so evolution You know programmed us that way but but meditation Is something that we can now do when we have the luxury of not being in a war zone Not being attacked all the time. Then we can you know take the bull by the horn and say look, um I don't need to Be anxious all the time even though i've been programmed by natural selection to be anxious I I can choose to meditate and literally reprogram my brain circuits to be more relaxed Uh, and I will enjoy my life more and and statistically I will live longer Yeah, yeah Yeah, there's there's many of variables in our user interface that sometimes seem to uh Not have a high fitness payoff, but they're um because most of the high fitness payoffs just appear to be the short term gratifications and also the Uh things involving money But the things that are sometimes involving learning How to do things that are maybe thousands of years old like learning how to investigate your own consciousness and awareness and calm down and be become more peaceful and joyful that uh Doing that doesn't seem to immediately have a monetary or fitness payoff But it but I think there are many things like that that exist that um get you closer to to truth get you closer to peace and joy um That actually do give you better downstream fitness payoffs because that's the thing is that mates given procreation um men and women both that don't have as uh Keen of an interest for truth um They're they in a sense it feels like there's less soul There there's more soul with people that have a depth of interest in truth And also we as a society need to do a better job at creating the economic Incentives that make it so that young children can explore metaphysics and consciousness as a profession and get paid for it too So if there's you know money intertwined with truth more carefully Then maybe some of those conscious agents could win um over people that just focus on fitness And and and money so yeah absolutely and and um again as I said before you know I as a scientist I'm always just sort of Saying what different theories entail, right? And so I've been very very careful to say that this is what evolutionary theory entails and so forth But but I don't necessarily believe the theory But now what you're saying is very interesting suppose You know no now forget evolutionary theory Suppose that there's a deeper theory in which consciousness is fundamental And in some sense maybe the ceramics of consciousness is really what it's about is the exploration of consciousness That's what's really Yeah meaningful in this deeper realm of consciousness, right and and so Perfect say right yeah Then that puts a very different spin on the whole meditation thing than the spin I just gave right the spin I just gave was from an evolutionary point of view which says It's just a way of countering the the built-in anxieties that we have and So that would that was that was you know bracketed within that theory So now I'll put that theory aside and say okay, that's what that theory entailed But there's this other framework entirely different in which consciousness is fundamental and it's what it's all about So in that case the meditation might not be just a side little issue to make us more comfortable Be that that's That's when we really wake up to what we're really about that Maybe we're immersed in a game, but the point of the game isn't to win the game Maybe the point of the game is to wake up Yeah Realize who we are and maybe playing the game is a way Of more more deeply understanding Who we are as conscious beings and and so maybe most of us just don't wake up in this game So but again notice, I'm not saying that I know that this is true And that's the key thing dogmatism from my point of view is the is the the worst thing we we could ever have Yeah, autism assuming that I know the truth is the way you stop inquiry So so I always want to say this is now I'm bracketing it with this theory in a theory in which consciousness is fundamental Then it would it would have this different spin on things. And so that's what we we should always Even if that was right, you can never know that you're right. That's the weird thing about this So this is the human condition We can never know for right. We can find out many cases that were deeply wrong But but we can never so there's this deep humility that we need to have anything We claim um It's rather well, I like to think about it I I propose the theoretical framework in which I want to speak and then say within that framework This is what it entails. But of course the theory could be wrong. So here's here's what evolution entails Here's what the theory in the which consciousness is fundamental entails Um, but but maybe both theories are deeply deeply wrong. And so then let's talk about a different framework, right? And and so that's how we We yes, yes The theories as opposed to being attached to them. Yes. It's an anti dogmatic kind of point of view. It's more um Exploring and and if we assume that we know then we cut off Inquiry and we can't learn if you know if you're certain that you know, then you're not going to be motivated to learn Yeah, this is paramount um balancing excitement with uh non dogmatism because you have to have confidence in What edge you're trying to push and you have to have humility as well Exactly. You're exactly about that's that's the knife edge. I agree with you See it's not easy for us to to maintain that but it's really critical. It's so so critical um, but because especially Sometimes young people are are trying to push with confidence something that may be Actually really critical to get to the edge and beyond the edge But then there are influences of maybe parents or community or friends that are just hating on them Um, moving that forward and so the there's also the importance of of that of that confidence encouraged to to get To to that edge and to to push it and rocket it forward. It's very important Oh, absolutely. I think that that you've touched on a really important point I mean, so the the theory that I'm working on right now. I'm excited about it I've I've got energy. You know, I think I'm on to something But and so you and you need to have that kind of energy and that kind of enthusiasm to push forward, right? but then I always step back and go, but of course I could be wrong. I mean, I hope I'm not but you be but you know You have to have that that that dual understanding about the whole situation. So yeah, be motivated be excited But but not dogmatic. That's the knife edge. Yep. Yep Those are some of the codes that we are archiving from the dirty bath water is the dogmatism and the fundamentalism and we're Taking the baby out that the scientific method. We're taking out the Hierophonies these sacred divine communions and experiences objective ones that people do have and sharing those better I want to talk about the triangulation So there's obviously now we're talking about math. We're talking about science. We're talking about ancient spirituality We're talking about consciousness We're talking about all of these sacred sorts of Especially the last thousands of years that From axial ages if explosion through scientific renaissance and explosion there and scientific method and whatnot Coming together and triangulating on what this nature of reality is and that I think it's interesting as we were talking about the source code mountain and all these different ways up in exploration we we kind of We we we may have mentioned this slightly that could it be that the That the ancient perennial spiritual wisdom of everything being one integration everything being one thing and then also having the small derivations like a calculus of consciousness there are small derivatives of us nerve endings Having the conscious agent experiences and interactions and that cause actions to change and whatnot that that the triangulation of that and on The science that is being pushed from like your conscious agent theory and many others Are just pointing at this the same thing over thousands of years Or we're coming to the same thing and that kind of maybe indicates that there is that one mountaintop with many different paths I want to I want to see What you think about The the candy store analogy is very strong. It's it's very strong the the candy store analogy for the conscious agent experience and my question would be would be this I've uh, I've been I've been struggling with trying to To understand this that for thousands of years there have been ancient spiritualities that have talked about how everything That is possible already is that's what infinity is infinity is everything that is possible It's all the combinatorics that are possible are already happening and and the being Be becoming is the only being so it's just an infinite amount of becoming Eternally happening and that all the combinatorics that exist do but then there's kurt girdle and there's this incompleteness theorem And there's this idea that it's it's impossible to ever be everything It's impossible to ever be all the combinatorics possible So are we are we Are we already exploring all of the combinatorics of the infinite candy store always and always will? Or can we never explore all of the combinatorics of the infinite candy store and therefore And and and maybe The oral boros Could I can bring that in as well just that that as we evolve to whatever the godhead attractor is that we're going towards Maybe the recursive function is to just continue tasting more of the candy store Combinatorics as conscious agents and that's that transcension hypothesis at the godhead that we just go inward for more Exploring so take us on that journey of those two options and then on we'll get to that recursive godhead right so girdle when he was only I think Years old or 25 years old 25. Yep crazy when 1931 he he Did one of the most brilliant things ever in human history he he proved his incompleteness theorems and and effectively what he showed was That if you have any set of like axioms Assumptions for a mathematical system that's rich enough to do arithmetic Then he showed that there will always be statements that are true Mathematical statements that are true, but you cannot prove from your axioms that that So these are unprovable truths They're truths that are unprovable Now you can imagine the genius that it would take to prove that there are unprovable truths what he did And now if you take those truths that are unprovable and add them to your axioms You might think oh well, then I'm done, but then he proved no there will be yet new Truths that are unprovable within the richer axiom and so what this means is that there is no end to exploration of mathematical structure of it's and it seems to be An Unending exploration that That even an infinite wisdom could never get around right that there's a sense in which You can't ever be smart enough to comprehend the whole thing. This is this is pretty deep This is an exploration that in principle appears to never ever be Possible to stop in principle like the infinite, um, men, men, what benoit mandelbrot fractal zoom That's right, but this is the kind I mean there if you take the um the real line from zero to one There's an input for points, but yeah, you can see them all right There's some sense in which It's comprehensible. This is different. This is like yeah, it's it's unending and so now how it relates to the consciousness stuff and what you're talking about is um if Now I'm again bracketing with respect to a particular theory, right? So suppose we adopt the theory in which consciousness Conscious experiences are fundamental, right? So Then in under that idea Mathematical structure is only about one thing consciousness and conscious experiences and in that framework then You would girdle would be telling us that there's an infinite variety of conscious experiences with an infinite variety of different structures And that may be a little strange to a lot of people to talk about experiences being structured Right, but if you if you think about just your experience of the of the world around you There's up down left right forward and backward. There's There's a structure a three-dimensional Structure to your to your space and and there's a structure of color space It turns out that for example red is a little bit closer to orange than it is to blue Right, there's this there's there's a closeness relationship that colors have In our perceptions and everywhere there's a field called psychophysics That's been around since 1860 A guy named gustav fechner started it But in that field what we do is we study conscious experiences and their structure and their structure all over the place. So All conscious experiences They're more than mathematics. So no conscious experiences. Just mathematics but Each conscious experience is structured. So I like to think about is that The conscious experience is to the mathematical structure like the living organism is to its bones So it's like mathematics is the bones of consciousness Consciousness is not just its bones. It's it's much richer than that, but it's not less than its bones It it has to have the bones as well So so what girdle is telling us Under this theory that consciousness is all there is that's this fundamental is that there's this infinite Variety of conscious experiences with an infinite variety of Structures. So that's what I call girdle's candy story Because these are now things to be experienced like candies, right? The kid in the candy store was like, let me try this one. Well, that was great. Now. Let's try this new experience Now I love chocolate. Well, I like caramel too and I mean so what girdle is Inviting us in this in this framework is to say that there's this infinite range of conscious experiences and No consciousness of any type Even the most glorified can ever come to the end of the exploration And so there will be this endless exploration of all the possible forms of consciousness And we could actually think of girdle's theorem is telling us that that what it's about Is consciousness learning more and more about itself as it explores more and more of its possibilities But it will never end and um, and we're all perhaps Our quote-unquote we are that we are that Yeah, top tvam assi the um, we are that or i and my father are one. Yeah That's right And we're exploring it in a particular minkowski space format with objects in space and time and this is the particular little So but that's what that fits in with this headset idea like so instead of taking space and time as the final reality In this bigger girl's candy store picture it's no this headset That we've assumed was the final reality is one candy in an unbounding candy store. It's just one And what so part of the waking up is to recognize this rookie mistake That we took this chocolate as the only candy in the store. This is the whole thing. It's all about chocolate Well, no, it's not all about space and time and what's inside space and time That's just one little headset one candy in the candy store Wake up to all the infinite possibilities Again, you mentioned you mentioned this earlier something like a walt Disney or a pixar style imagination where if you do imagine what it is like to evolve a headset that is non-carbon based dna coded beings in a spacetime quantum field theory soup of natural selection That then maybe you can you can envision what other simulated designs of realities Look like and you could even wander just a couple solar systems over and think about what it would be like You could even stay in this universe if you if you want and you could explore what what alternative So so does it does it feel like that then we are already All of the infinite candy store combinatorics always happening or that we can never be that and we are always endlessly exploring that Well girdle seems to be saying we're endlessly exploring and and that that You're right that we can certainly try to imagine and explore outside of the standard spacetime kinds of things um But there are certain interesting limits to this too that we have right now So for example, if I this is one of my favorite examples of this if I ask you to imagine a specific color that you've never seen before Oh, yeah But does anything happen? That suppose you're colorblind, right? So you're you're a guy you're you're red green colorblind And and so there's this whole range of color experiences that you can't have that You know every almost every woman has and color normal men have So there's this red green distinction that you don't have But if I ask a colorblind man to imagine red Well, he can't do it, right? Just like you can't imagine a new color. I can't imagine new color So if so there are some really if I can't even imagine one Simple color. I I know colors, right? I've had lots of color experiences But all my imagination does not allow me to imagine outside the color wheel Right. Yeah, I'll tell you well. I can't I can't do it. And and yet we know that there are creatures For example, there are some women who have four color receptors Not just three. So most of us know a long medium and short wavelength cone But these women have apparently two versions of the long wavelength cone And they and in some women, they're all four of them are expressed in the retina And when you do careful tests on these women, so kimberley jamison PhD researcher here, you see Irvine who I know has she and others have done careful tests These women give clear evidence that they're That that can be interpreted that they're in a richer color world than the rest of us just like Us trichromats. We are in a richer world than the colorblind men These women are in a richer color world than us. So they're having Color experiences that I can't even imagine. I can't imagine what they I can imagine abstractly that they're having them But I can't imagine concretely any one of those experiences. And so that's the limit that we're going to have right now. It appears Our understanding of the possibilities and some says we can understand abstractly The possibility of all these realms of all the candies in the candy store. Yeah, but until you taste the candy Like yeah, four percent of people are synesthetes and um, there's Creatures that see an infrared and on the other side on the most violent like there's a different species umbelts. So the different Yeah, so species are wearing different headsets and we could you know, we can we took the channel, uh, rhodopsin for optogenetics and we took um the the uh the green fluorescent protein gfp for the For other biotech work that we've been using. So we've we we're borrowing from headsets from like user interfaces to yeah, so This is very good. If you can't imagine outside of the color wheel Of our user interface, then it's hard to like wall disney or pixar yourself out of uh into like different universe designs as well. But um, I think virtual reality does a really good job at trying to in a sense kind of like stretch out your color wheel beyond um Because when you're when you go in and these things are just getting more and more indistinguishable So the inevitably it's going to lead to a point where um, where you may be um spending um your Eight your your eight eighty years engrossed in the game because we've also hit the longevity escape velocity So you can now live because we're just home. We're just we're just we're just engineering out any of the disease We're just tuning the car or the plane. Um, we give uh to like 15 year old homeostatic capacity of our body over and over again So you can play for those 80 years And then and then take it out and then just be like wow that was vanilla. That was great And now it's like back to uh caramel for now and then uh, yeah Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I think VR will help. I agree. It'll help it stretch our imaginations It'll help to take us in different places and I think it will also help um to understand The possibility that what we assumed was the objective reality space We we have assumed the space and time and physical objects the sun and the moon and the stars These are the absolute ground of reality and But someone who's actually you know, the next generation that sort of grows up And spends a lot of the time in in virtual realities that are just as immersive and compelling as everyday life It's it's not going to be You won't have to be really a genius to take off your headset and just wonder well, what about this? This is this is just another headset. I mean, you don't have you won't have to be in einstein to do that It'll just sort of be like, uh, you know, of course, it's a possibility. I mean if I can if I With this headset in creating all these worlds that aren't there Then surely I'm creating this world around me and it's not there either. I'm I'm the creator of it Whatever the reality is This is just a headset to that reality So I think it will really help our imaginations that way. But in terms of concrete imagining of specific new kinds of color or other kinds of experiences I don't know Short of taking drugs that sort of, you know, like, you know, open the doors of perceptions in certain raw ways um, and maybe meditation Could do that. There may be some technology that will do that But what we have right now the way that scientists do it is we go there with mathematics We let mathematics take us. So for example, can you imagine a three-dimensional cube? Sure Can you imagine a four-dimensional cube? Nothing happens, right? Einstein had to be thinking in four dimensions to write down his, you know equations for general relativity He had to have a four-dimensional, but he couldn't visualize it So the mathematics was allowed Einstein to go where a visual imagination couldn't and that would go five six 10 dimensions in mathematics and we can go there Even though the mathematicians will tell you they can't visualize anything and yet there's a way that our imaginations are going there because we have this cognitive lever this tool that takes our our ability to only concretely imagine three dimensions and leverage that into the abstract ability to work in any number of dimensions But we can't visualize it. And so that's so we can use mathematics to explore Abstractly what's in girdle's candy store, but it won't actually let us taste it Wow, okay, so we will be able to Make all these novel combinatorics of candies Um, the trick is going to be to enable us to actually taste Right, that's right. That's right. Just like you mean the the simple problem though You can't imagine the specific color you've never seen before and nothing happens Yeah, if I discover all these new structures that consciousness can have and I say, okay, well imagine what it's like. Well You concretely won't be able to do it. Just like you can't imagine the specific color so so What we can do in some sense What we're getting from the mathematics is boy, are there all these really really intriguing candies out there that are beckoning And uh, I'm telling you that they're there, but you can't taste them right now Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's all there's this. Um, there's this an an infinite Catalog of of of valence of of conscious experience that is available Of such wild combinatorics that are way beyond our own color wheel and tastes of candies That right now we're just talking about but that nobody has Tasted or experienced and so we want to we want to just shatter that and and send lots of conscious agents out to experience That right and that's from this point of view from this framework in which consciousness is fundamental That's what consciousness is up to it's it's all sorts of explorations and we're and you and I are just some of those explorations We're exploring this particular candy in a particular part of the candy store And we're using minkowski space and physical objects to do it and And most of us have no idea that there's anything else, right? This is the only candy in the store and and and we're happy but this is one of the boundless candies and and It's it's fun to wake up to that it may be frustrating too if we sit here and go and but oh, but I can't experience them And by the way, even the mathematicians Based on girdle is incomplete this term even the mathematicians can't abstractly even begin To explore just the mathematical structures Right, but by the way, this is great job security for mathematics. This is provable job security This is you will never come to the last theorem never so Sign up for being a mathematician because you know that you have endless employment AGI will help us Create those novel theorems that help push the edges further. I want to I want to ask you about That oral boros so at does does it then if we are creating the the if we if we are a one that is having the Dissociative as Bernardo costra talks about experience of of the nerve endings that we are having the experience in In the reality that we ourselves have designed and made that then um That we of course must not get lost in the own The own infinite labyrinth of our creation, but we must Go towards that that whatever attractor of a of a star that we're all in a sense like orthogenically Building towards right now and is that star that we're building towards is that? A recursion is that the transcension hypothesis is that all of us as conscious agents Going through the process of making more Experi the tasting more of the candies in the store So is our recursive godhead function to just taste more candies in the infinite store that we will infinitely forever eternally be exploring Well that is the kind of idea that that i'm on pursuing here so so absolutely and and this But this question really touches on Something that you brought up before which is that there are many wisdom traditions or thousands of years that have said very very similar things And and and in some sense as a scientist I'm sort of a johnny come lately right science is sort of a johnny come lately to this but but the sciences is is coming along but but The kind of answer to the question that you just raised will require That we take all the insights from the wisdom traditions And then we also take the rigors of the scientific method in terms of theory building and careful testing and Bring these together in a synergistic interaction So that we we find out from the wisdom traditions Deep deep insights right they they were there first in terms of saying on spacetime is not fundamental Like the physical world is not fundamental And they've given us some informal pointers to what might be beyond right there's no mathematics there there are right So now now the johnny come lately science Hey, we now we now we realize that spacetime is doomed that that there's something deeper And we can now start to build mathematical models that try to capture some of the insights of the wisdom traditions And we can have this back and forth now between our intuitions on the one hand and then our attempts to make them precise And and why do we do that? Is it just to be pedantic and to be you know over the top with math? It's not that at all. It's that in some sense You don't really know what you're saying Until you say it so precisely that you could be wrong That's when You are beginning to know what you're so we will use in informal words, you know In in the wisdom traditions including words like god And if I ask you precisely what's the definition of god you you won't find it anywhere so um What we need to do is To try to make these intuitive ideas that the traditions have they're probably genuine insights make them absolutely precise so that we can then Learn and be surprised like so for einstein for example In I think realm 1907 or so he had this fundamental insight About gravity that if he was in something like an elevator that was free falling that you would you would find and you had a you know Something that could weigh you in the elevator you'd find that you were weightless You wouldn't weigh anything inside the elevator and he said that was like the happiest thought of his life because it was it was the insight That gave him the general theory of relativity, but it took him something like eight years of struggle Really tough emotional struggle sleepless nights Pulling the hair out kind of kind of stuff to turn that insight into finally In 1915 or something like that he got he wrote down the equation And that's what it really means to say if I was in an elevator I would be weightless But what and the reason you do it now is because then the mathematics Is smarter than the person who wrote it down that mathematics that einstein wrote down He didn't know it But it entailed the existence of black holes And when someone else A year later after he published it some uh Some guy in the front lines of world war one actually working on the equations discovered Um, the guy named schwarzschild Discovered this solution to einstein's equations That there are these black holes and einstein did not like it. He disbelieved in black holes for decades So here's a case where We write down our we take our ideas including these deep spiritual ideas that we've had for thousands of years We write them down mathematically not merely to be pathetic so that we can actually learn what we were talking about all along Falling in an elevator and being weightless means there are black holes Well, who would have ever figured that out and so the things that we say in the wisdom traditions They're going to mean all sorts of other things that we had no clue that they meant Until we get serious and write them down. So that's why I want to see this synergistic Interaction between science and spirituality where we take the insights from the one And the rigor of the other and then we learn we get surprised And that's that's that's the hope Wow. Yeah, that's so well articulated The you you said this in another Um In another way as well that you become a student of your theory that the equations become smarter than the genius that wrote them down that right You're you're so spot on um that that the the The flag that we plant beyond the edge of knowledge that we create hypotheses towards That just flowers a whole nother field that we weren't ready for we didn't know yet existed and The science of spirituality are those two driving forces that have gotten us So far and that to where we are and so to bring them together and harmoniously test them. I like using the The description where you think about like would have we done the manhattan project and drop nuclear bombs on hiroshima nagasaki If our science community was a little bit more spiritually ethically morally philosophically awakened, but would we also would we would we um Would would we have all of the peddling of snake oils if our scientific method was stronger to analyze those Snake oil salesmen. So there's there's that as well. So they're these things they they they come together like peanut butter and jelly Very good and I you know, there's been this long-standing antipathy between science and spirituality that Has some interesting historical roots in particular for example the the treatment of Galileo By the catholic church, you know And and and Alan Turing even in the last 100 years. Yeah, and that was yeah, that was um Society that was um That really cruelly attacked him for being homosexual sexual. Yeah, right. So so and so So there's been this long-standing antipathy between science and spirituality at least since Galileo and the catholic church and and Giordano Bruno burned at the stake. Uh, exactly. I mean that's that's the kind of stuff that that that That we don't want to have happening and and that's why it's it's really critical to walk away from dogmatism Yeah, right. That's that's dogmatism is the source source of all this and you know, it seems like um Most spiritual traditions would recognize that that humility is a virtue And I would include in that humility about my beliefs humility that I could be wrong um, and Especially when we have hundreds of different religious systems Many of which in the past have said that I'm right and all the other religions are wrong Now now we know that at most one of those hundreds could be right Right and and what's the probability that is mine? And and so so instead of going in that whole framework, it's it's rather Why not have an attitude of? Right, whatever the ultimate reality is Surely there's compassion For my ignorance and for what I got wrong and there's it's and Surely the the the most Healthy way for us to proceed is to listen to each other And to share I don't have to believe what you say you don't have to believe what I say But but I also don't need to kill you if you just disagree with me. You don't need to kill me if I disagree You know and instead we can have this this humility to listen Maybe agree to disagree um, and then maybe later on in 10 years I realized oh I was deeply wrong and You know Sharon over there. She was deeply right and I just didn't see it at the time But I've grown up and now I see it. So so just giving ourselves the time in the space to to grow up and to to learn humbly And and that's the way I feel about the science. I mean I I'll say this I love scientific theories I study them. They're incredibly beautiful and I don't think I've ever seen a true Scientific theory. I think all scientific theories that I've studied so far are deeply false They're the best we have so far Yeah, but they're good enough in many cases to tell us where they're false And that's the power of a theory where it tells you where it gets off And that's what I want in spirituality is a theory and spirituality That's good enough to tell me where it is inadequate And where it's beckoning me to now go for a deeper theory with a different level of understanding But it's all new inadequacies And Gurnal is suggesting that We will be doing this forever Don I feel like the The edge pushing that's happening around Um bringing together science of spirituality the edge pushing that's happening around Um understanding our source code. Um that that the the topics that we've talked about and Understanding that ultimate reality. Um I I feel like um the word Integral and integrality are a very important phrase there because of Just the integral and the derivative but the integral in the sense of the integration of all Perspective but the derivation in the sense of the Um each one of us having a unique experience in that candy store. Um, so yeah, yeah And in a unique artistic contribution or gift to bring to the world and and um, that that's that's the 99.9 percent genetic similarity Integral and the 0.1 percent genetic difference differentiation So that yeah, go ahead. Absolutely. I I think you raised an incredibly important point to view each person that you meet as a gift They have a new perspective that's different from yours and and rather than putting up barriers to things that are Foreign and novel to recognize that here's a chance For me to explore something that I that I might not have ever Ever explored without interacting with this person and you know, this person maybe I'm a geek that likes Mathematics and this person is an artist who likes painting and photography um I can learn from their perspective and they they can learn from mine and and I can appreciate um If I'm willing to open up and humbly listen and and really listen because I may Not have the concepts yet I may not have the Point of view to really understand what that person is saying Yeah, which case Is even more important for me to put in the time and effort because I'm going to have more to learn there There's more that I can can grow from that So so having that kind of view of our differences that they're an opportunity to learn to expand our horizons Um and to realize that that in some sense, perhaps is what life is all about is constantly expanding our horizons and constantly um enjoying new vistas Vistas that we've had we'd like to sit in our own vistas and say this is it. Yeah. Hey, you know that next mountain may have something even more fun Yeah, the constant exploration of the infinite candy store. I love this It seems to make the most sense Of the alternative being we already are all of the infinite candy store combinatorics Um eternally happening and that has a little bit more of maybe a nihilistic eternal return sense to it that we've been here before we're doing this again But the the other one the idea that there is just it's never going to end the the infinite exploration It has a little bit more adventure and it has a little bit more Darwinian metaphysical implications to it as well where we need to take this seriously. We need to take our Rock orbiting of the star very seriously because If if as above so below another spiritual wisdom is true That's also scientifically validated that if natural selection is happening here between us Natural section is all it could also be happening at this cosmic level not only in our universes, but universes competing Against one another for that recursion and how likely it is that that they themselves get to those next tastes in the the quali uh candy store That's quite possible. That would be something I would really like to explore in this dynamics and graphs of conscious agents to see what What in the world's going on here and what kind of dynamics are we using maybe to explore the candy store? Absolutely Yeah, don i'm so so grateful for this conversation. Thank you Thank you for everything that you're doing and that you've inspired so many people to think In refreshing and new ways and push the edge of what's known. We're very grateful to you. Thank you To all your lab to all your students and lab and teammates As well that that's very important the people behind the groove of the song Right. Oh, absolutely. I couldn't have done it without my graduate students and my my collaborators, you know, you know and I could name a bunch of them that that Frankly, um pushed my ideas around all the time and that's how I learned Thank you. Thank you so much and thanks everybody for tuning in. We are super grateful for you We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode Let us know what you're thinking Check out the links in the bio below to both Don's website Also his book the case against reality check that out the book links there It's one of the best books I've read would love for you guys to check it out and enrich yourselves with it and share it with other people as well Also, check out the link to don's twitter profile as well. That's in the bio below and Also support the artists the entrepreneurs the spiritual leaders the scientists around the world that you believe in in your community Support them and help them grow you can find our links in the bio below to our show You can help support us as well paypal patreon cryptocurrency. All those links are in the bio below And go and build the future everyone augment that source code tape and And build the new The new deployments of code into our world you can do it We know you can be the Michelangelo and be the The Elon musk and be the the be the ones that are just pushing the edge the rosalyn franklin's For all our females out there, of course You know be be that be that change maker And and and and do your best to unpack what our ultimate reality is along the way So much love. Thank you everyone for tuning in and we will see you soon Peace