"whatever reality is it's not what you see what you see is is just an Adaptive fiction the following is a conversation with Donald Hoffman professor of cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine focusing his rese..."

"which this is the Lex Freedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Donald Hoffman in your book the case against reality why Evolution hid..."

"and fitness does not have to be connected to truth is the claim and that's where you have an approach towards zero of probability that we have evolved human cognition human consciousness whatever it i..."

"with probability measures um there's no uh the probability is zero the the reason there's an exception for probability measures so-called Sigma algebras or or um Sigma of classes is that for any scien..."

"there's no requirement in standard evolutionary theory for uh Fitness payoff functions for example to preserve any specific structures of objective reality so you can ask the technical question this i..."

"you've there's a million things to ask here but first of all just in case uh people are not familiar with your work let's sort of Linger on the big bold statement here MH which is the thing we see wit..."

"of perceptions so it's an Adaptive set of perceptions full stop we want to think the perceptions are real so so their perceptions are real as perceptions right they are we are having our perceptions b..."

"that process it turns out means hiding the truth and giving you um a eye candy so what's the difference between hiding the truth and forming abstractions uh layers upon layers of abstractions over the..."

"good luck you know going from that to the data structures and then the voltages and the I mean good luck there's just no way so what's interesting about this is that our scientific theories are precis..."

"very useful reductionism has been useful but it's over and it's time for us to go beyond when you say SpaceTime is doomed is it the space is the is the is it the time is it the very hardcoded specific..."

"that kind of scattering thing so like apparently for people who are into this that's sort of something that happens so often you need to be able to find it and get rid of those because you already kno..."

"trick now you need to go deeper and and show but by the way this is doesn't mean we throw away everything we've done not by a long shot every new idea that we come up with Beyond SpaceTime must projec..."

"far and it has to stop and there's something Beyond and that framework the very framework that is space and time itself now of course evolution by natural selection is not telling us about like Einste..."

"forward from Newtonian physics uh to Quantum Mechanics these are all in your view interfaces um are we getting closer to objective reality how do we know if these interfaces in the process of science ..."

"mathematically precise and there'll be theories perhaps of everything except those assumptions because assumptions are we say please grant me these assumptions if you grant me these assumptions then I..."

"where where you really deviate very very far away from um from the underlying reality or do you not never get in trouble for this can you just completely drift far far away from the underlying reality..."

"learn from our negative example right exactly right right right so power does corrupt and I think that you can think about that again from an evolutionary point of view but I think that your question ..."

"Neuroscience because before we thought that when we looked in the brain we saw neurons and neural networks and and uh you know Action potentials and and synapses and so forth and that's that that was ..."

"doesn't exist SpaceTime itself is like the Cube It's a data structure that your sensory systems construct whatever your sensory systems mean now because we now have to even not even take that for gran..."

"that as we go to smaller scales in SpaceTime we will find more and more fundamental laws and that's been very useful for space and time for centuries reductionism for centuries but but now we realize ..."

"precisely where that has to stop at 10- 33 cm and 10- 43 seconds and I would be impressed if it was 10 - 33 trillion CM I'm not terribly impressed at 10 Theus 33 cm I don't even know how to comprehend..."

"Einstein how do we get Beyond Einstein and quantum theory to something deeper then we have to actually let go and and if we're going to do like this automata kind of approach it's it's critical that i..."

"makes the thing work I don't know if you can sort of comment on that in terms of using Neuroscience to understand the human mind and neurons are we really far away potentially from uh understanding in..."

"it's not what you see what you see is is just an Adaptive fiction so of just to linger on this fascinating bold question that shakes you out of your dream state does this fiction still help you in bui..."

"but nevertheless scientific because the scientific method would still be what we would use all the way down for the conceptual understanding unfortunately you still don't know if you went all the way ..."

"being my guess is that the best scientists will do both and that the act of being will be a place where they get many of their ideas and that they then pull into the conceptual realm and I think many ..."

"systems where there's the girdle limits um that we have to that and that may be if if Consciousness is is important and fundamental that may be what Consciousness at least part of what Consciousness i..."

"mean and the same thing the physicists are doing they're taking the best tools and looking at what what they entail but I don't I I think that science now has enough experience to realize that we shou..."

"theories I am doctrinaire about this we should use the best tools we have right now that's we and with with humility well so let me ask you about Game Theory there's um I Love Game Theory uh evolution..."

"limits of Game Theory so I've gotten some push back from professional colleagues and friends who have tried to rerun simulations and try to mean the idea that we don't see the truth is not comfortable..."

"happen infinitely often in principle yeah but Infinity as far as I and I look up outside off and I walk around and I look at people I have never seen Infinity in real life that's an interesting issue ..."

"breaking thought just common sense reasoning that something can happen and is yet probability of it happening is 0% that doesn't that doesn't uh compute for common sense computer right um this is wher..."

"and faithness functions and evolution period right well that's a fair rejoinder and I think that um that that was the tool that we used and if if someone says here's a better mathematical tool and her..."

"simulations they were assuming that you couldn't carve the world up into objects that uh and so we said well let's relax that assumption allow organisms to create data structures that we might call Ob..."

"functions originate what gives birth to the fitness functions so if there's a giant black box of that just keeps giving you Fitness functions what are we trying to optimize you said that water um has ..."

"energy are most of the energy and matter that's out there our interface just plain flat out hides them mhm the only way we get some hint is because gravitational things are going wrong within our so s..."

"this idea that uh the line between living and non-living is very important because that's that's a thing that would emerge before you have Evolution the idea of death um so that seems to be an importa..."

"there's an organism MH so you're defining an organism and also you're Define that organism by the fact that it can move and it can be come alive which you kind of think of as moving combined with the ..."

"is something slightly different and that is like when I when I look at you all I see is skin hair and eyes right that's all I see but I know that there's a deeper reality I believe that there's a much..."

"now when I look at a cat I'm creating something that I still call living and I I still think is conscious when I look at an ant I create something that I still would call living but maybe not consciou..."

"clear because this easy to Mis I'm not saying a proton is conscious just like I'm not saying your face is conscious your face is a symbol I create and then delete as I look and so your face is not con..."

"particles more generally so quirks leptons and gluons and so forth well the reason for that is because those are just symmetries of SpaceTime more technically they're irreducible representations of th..."

"because we're all uh there's a lot of similarities a lot of it Rhymes so you start to make a lot of inferences you build up this model of a person you have a pretty sophisticated model what's going on..."

"might be missing the red cone photo receptor they found that the dichromats had an outsized influence on the final ways that the whole Space of colors was carved up and and labels attached you needed ..."

"of complexity in their their organization and their Dynamics certain kind of network abilities for example so there's there are those who say for example that um Consciousness arises from orchestrated..."

"forth um there's a tension schema Theory which again is how neural network processes representing to the network itself its attentional processes that could be Consciousness um there's Global workspac..."

"possible that our Assumption of SpaceTime is not just doomed but is wrong well if we believe that it's fundamental that's wrong but if we believe it's a useful tool that's right but it could see but b..."

"doomed in the sense that it's wrong is reductionism which is saying SpaceTime is fundamental right right the idea that that somehow being smaller in space and time or SpaceTime is a fundamental nature..."

"deeper understanding of what's beyond space time we'll also refer we'll return again to this question of Dynamics because you keep saying that SpaceTime is doomed but mostly focusing on the space part..."

"what you as a scientist have to do is to pick what you think are the minimal assumptions that are going to allow you to boot up a comprehensive theory that is the trick so what do I want so what what ..."

"feels like something and so th so I'm going to grant that in this Theory there are experiences and they're fundamental in some sense so conscious experience so they're not derived from physics they're..."

"consciousnesses that said I should clarify that the black hole of Consciousness is uh the the the home cat I'm pretty sure cats lack uh is the embodiment of evil and lack all capacity for Consciousnes..."

"structure that includes a probability measure the probability space of of possible conscious experiences and what and a marvian kernel which describes how if this agent has certain conscious experienc..."

"if I want to talk about so there's no notion of learning memory problem solving intelligence self agency so none of that is fundamental so and the reason I did that was because I want to assume as lit..."

"what conscious networks network of conscious networks of conscious agents helps you what first of all what that looks like uh and I don't just mean mathematically of course maybe that might help build..."

"of Consciousness means to to researchers notice that I'm changing the problem I'm I'm not trying to boot up conscious experiences from the Dynamics of neurons or silicon or something like that I'm say..."

"now this is very similar to something that Max tegmark has said but I want to distinguish it he has this his level four uh Multiverse idea he he thinks that mathematics is fundamental and and so that'..."

"Consciousness basically the set of possible experiences you can have in that subjective way as opposed to the me the underlying mechanism CU you say that you know having a extra color receptor uh ex y..."

"one big conscious agent infinitely complicated but fortunately we can for analytic purposes break it down all the way to in some sense the simplest conscious agent which has one conscious experience o..."

"in terms of the hard problem of Consciousness is to show how dynamical systems of conscious agents could lead to what we call space and time and neurons and brain activity in other words we have to sh..."

"that's the idea okay the magic of it that chocolate is delicious so so there's a mathematical kind of thing that we could say here how it can emerge within this system of uh networks of conscience age..."

"top level how I would think about that that would get at this Consciousness without form this this is going to be really this is really tough because it's Consciousness without form versus the various..."

"the infinite Consciousness that transcends any particular content well do you think of that as a mechanism as a thing like the rules that govern the Dynamics of the thing outside of SpaceTime isn't th..."

"a teenager especially the S when we thought that we were so smart and we knew it all so it would be interesting to explore your ideas by contrasting you mentioned anuka anuka Harris you mentioned um P..."

"the same page she rightly has cautioned me to when I talk about conscious agents to point out that the notion of agency is not for is not fundamental in my my theory the notion of self is not fundamen..."

"the the and the slight the specific choices of a word within a particular sentence within the context of a sentence can have so much uh such a difference in meaning it's quite fascinating especially w..."

"comprehend to visualize to conceptualize a Consciousness that's not connected to like this particular organ ISM well I have a a way of thinking about this whole problem now that's that's that comes ou..."

"theorem three line proof that if you have a stationary Marian Dynamics any projection that you make of that Dynamics by conditional probability and if if you want I can State a little bit more even mo..."

"line proof sure so what but the Assumption of stationarity we we're using a lot of terms that people won't understand doesn't doesn't matter the uh so there's some kind of so marvian Dynamics is uh ba..."

"myself right uh what am I tuning in am I plugging into something am I a projection simple trivial projection into space time from some much larger organism that I can't possibly comprehend how the hel..."

"yeah but you're saying I'm I'm trying to understand how the limited resources that give rise to um so so first the thing gives rise to time it gives rise to limited resource that gives rise to evoluti..."

"the self this then will be be really interesting in terms of how it starts to interact with certain um spiritual Traditions right where they will say that there is a notion of self that needs to be le..."

"things one is um the physicalist framework that my scientific colleagues almost to a person have adopted and that I adopted too until I the reason I I walked away from it was because I I uh it became ..."

"information and this I've asked this of Julio Toni a couple times back in the 90s and then just a couple years ago asked Julio okay so great inte great information so we're all interested in explainin..."

"taste of chocolate or whatever one they want so you're saying it's impossible they're saying it's just hard yeah me my attitude is okay no one said you had to start with neurons or physical systems in..."

"don't create much Consciousness if maybe not any or maybe pany because they create the most Elementary kinds of simple conscious experiences but you need more complicated physical systems to boot up t..."

"fundamental then I can understand see then the whole picture starts to come into Focus why my my colleagues are brilliant right these are really smart people I mean Francis Crick worked on this for th..."

"I'm stipulating less I'm saying okay the psychist perspective well it's actually what I call the conscious realist perspective panus are are effectively dualists right they're saying there's physical ..."

"pretty pictures that give us a deeper sense of the truth of reality I think that we will incrementally be able to do that I think that for example the picture that we have of electrons and photons int..."

"still certainly you wouldn't have gone there and so here's a case where the experiments and then a desperate mathematical move sort of we use those as a flashlight into the deep fog right where're and..."

"feel the beauty of it you know in the way that humans feel beauty right are we screwed I don't think we're screwed I I think that we get little hints of it from from psychedelic drugs and so forth we ..."

"different parts of the the deeper Consciousness and give new Windows on it and so in that way maybe yes psychedelics could open up new portals in the sense that they're taking something that's already..."

"you could it's just much easier to Intuit the world um it's very it's practical to think all right there's a neural network and what are the different ways fascinating uh capabilities can emerge from ..."

"outside of SpaceTime that are actually core to how this whole thing works is uh is a bit paralyzing because it's like oh we're not we're not 10% done we're like 0.001% done is the immediate feeling ce..."

"this Timeless Dynamics looks like the big bang and the entire evolution of space in other words I see how my whole Space interface so not just the uh the projection is just doesn't just look like Spac..."

"without time and that's what what we're up to that's we we want to to get so the whole story that we've we've been telling ourselves about Big Bang and how brains evolv in Consciousness will come out ..."

"right so K was an idealist transcendental idealist and he he basically had the idea that um we don't see nature as it is we impose a structure on nature he and and so in some sense I'm saying somethin..."

"went too too far on that but but in in in general the idea that we don't start with space time that space and time is in some sense the forms of our perceptions yes absolutely and I would say that you..."

"here I could just if he saw what I was doing he would say he would understand it and immediately take off with it and go places that I couldn't he would he would have there would be uh right there wou..."

"kind of impact does it have a lot and it's it's sort of scary um we all know that life is ephemeral and spiritual traditions have said wake up to the fact that you know anything that you do here is go..."

"at it and and then if Joe turns his headset the right way he'll see his Porsche it's it's not it's not even the same Porsche that I see he's creating his own Porsche so these things are exceeding ephe..."

"pre-existing SpaceTime we assume that that that mansion and that car exists independent of us and that somehow we these little things can have our sense of self and importance enhanced by having that ..."

"have some insights yeah they have wisdom they have certain wisd they have I can point to nonsense I won't go into it but I can also point to lots of nonsense so so the the issue is to then to look for..."

"delete so this so this is completely radical restructuring of how we think about um possessions about identity about survival of death and and and so forth this is is completely transformative but the..."

"evolution and so on that's uh that's just surface waves and there's a much deeper ocean that we're we're trying to figure out here so how does you said you said this some of the stuff you're thinking ..."

"this conscious agent Dynamics it turns out that the stationary dynamics that I was talking about the the the where the entropy is increasing all the stationary Dynamics are sketched out by permutation..."

"just the high level thing yes so the the the high level is the long-term behavior of the conscious agent dyamics so that's a projection of just looking at the long-term behavior I'm hoping will give r..."

"we live in a simulation so the Nick bostrom's idea about the the simulation is typically couched in a physicalist framework yes so there's the bottom level there's some programmer in a physical SpaceT..."

"entirety of the universe is simulated but how efficiently can you um create interfaces that are convincing to to all other entities that can appreciate such interfaces how little does it take cuz you ..."

"an immersion experience to give you the feeling that you have a body to to get you to take it real and and there's actually a lot of really good work on that right now and it it turns out it doesn't t..."

"you just close your eyes and look at your experience in front of you be aware of your experience in front of you what you experience is just like a model dark gray but there's all sort of there's some..."

"being yeah I I personally uh now you haven't been to that side of the room I been to that side of the room so for me memories I start um I start uh playing the engine of memory replay which is like I ..."

"much yeah I mean uh you could see this with with children right with persistence you know you could do the peekaboo game you can hide from them and appear and they're fully tricked and in the same way..."

"myself it's like but it's very much then I read these spiritual traditions and realize they're saying very very similar things it's like there is a lot of conversion so for me me I have the first time..."

"well this thing was an interface to begin with so what I'm really is what I'm going to be doing just taking off a headset so I've been playing in a virtual reality game all day and I I got lost in the..."

"the sunset you're not being intellectual you're but you're still exper in it so it's when you turn on the the like the introspective machine that's when you can start and turn off the Thinker when I a..."

"tell the rest of it a story and but that is again not my default that is I have to make a really conscious choice to say okay I know intellectually this is all an interface I I'm going to take the hea..."

"attached to this body I'm attached to the interface are you ever worried about breaking your brain a bit meaning like it's uh I mean some of these ideas when you think about reality even with like I S..."

"I'm going to die it'll you know in fact I almost died last year I co almost killed me it I I I sent a goodbye text to my wife so I was I I thought I was you really did I sent her a goodbye I I was in ..."

"tradition I try to sort it out for myself and but then I also look at realize that there's another aspect to me which is this whole emotional aspect the I I I seem to be wired up as evolutionary psych..."

"of a love in the sense that I'm not separate there it's a it's a love in the sense that I'm not different from that I you know yeah if you and I are separate then then there's I can fight you but if y..."

"and loving you is loving myself because we're all part of that one being the spiritual Traditions that point to that I think are pointing in a a very interesting Direction and that does seem to match ..."

"see the author of space and time that's you're the author of space and time right and I'm the author of of space and time and space and time is just one little data structure many other consciousnesse..."

"structures for Consciousness to some sense explore um that maybe that's what it's about this is something that anuka and I talked about a little bit and she doesn't like this way of talking about it s..."

"much Lex I really appreciate that thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Hoffman to support this podcast please please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me..."