Top Psychologist & Scientist (Donald Hoffman): Science Has the Answer to Why Seeing True Reality Would Kill You!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/3a20257a6b39724c

The world that you're seeing isn't the true world.
All of this that I'm seeing right now was just a virtual reality. It's like you're born with headset on playing a video game. That's your reality.
But if you're the programmer who wrote the code for the game, you know that there's an entire world outside of it, and as the programmer, you can do miracles. And do you think we're getting closer to being able to edit the code? That's exactly what I'm working on right now. And we're opening up a realm of new technologies that are far more powerful than anything we've seen before, like time travel.
And nuclear bombs will be like firecrackers. Will people suffer? So it's like Pandora's box. There's all sorts of nasty surprises, but they also could be miraculous. Put either way, just in the last few months has started to crack open. So let's talk about that. Okay.
So, Professor Donald Hoffman is the cognitive scientist pushing the boundaries of how we perceive reality and how we can unlock our full potential as human beings.
Darwin's theory, our sensory systems eyes.
Ears, smell, touch are not shaped to show us the truth. They were shaped to keep you alive long enough to reproduce successfully. Because seeing the truth takes too much
Time and energy.
And so whatever reality is, it's
Utterly unlike anything that I perceive. Well what does this all mean for the nature of how one should understand their life? Well if you're stuck in a boring world, that's a world of your own creation. That's not the real world. And my conscious experiences are nothing but what my brain creates. And so we feel inadequate, and we feel like we need to compete with other people, but you're the inventor of this whole thing.
You have nothing to prove.
And there are much more interesting perspectives that we can take on ourselves. So if you really knew who you are, you would f see no need to compare or compete.
And is there a way for me to understand who I am? If you want to understand the truth of who you are beyond just this headset description of you, then
You have to
Just give me thirty seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
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Thank you.


Professor Donald Hoffman.
Do you think that the listeners of this show
The people listening right now understand
The nature.
Of reality.
and the world that they're looking at and see.
I think that
No one.
advanced professionals really understands the nature of reality and it's the one of the big open problems
And questions in science today. We all might have ideas. We might think we
Know something.
Our best science suggests that
Our imagination is not yet big enough.
We need to explore further.
What is it that you believe is the big sort of misconception about
How we perceive reality.
Well, most of us think of reality as
Whatever's inside.
Space and time.
We actually know
That space time cannot be the fundamental nature of reality.
And what is space time?
So everything that you see around us, right? The the the space between you and me, there's maybe one or two meters of space between you and me.
That's what space
Space time is all all the stuff that we can see in our telescope, put it that way. Any every if you can see it in your telescope is part of space time.
But we know our our best theories of space time.
Einstein's theory together with quantum theory.
Tell us that space time
cannot be the fundamental nature of reality.
There's a small y y if you go small, so I can talk about a meter.
Yeah.
And then I can go to, you know, centimeters and then
You know, millimeters.
And then we can go, you know, micrometers and and you can go smaller and smaller. At some point
You go so small that space
Disappears.
It it no longer even makes sense mathematically. It's ten to the minus thirty three centimeters.
So it's actually not that
In my view, it's not that small.
It's not ten to the minus thirty three trillion centimeters.
It's just ten to the minus thirty three centimeters, and all of a sudden our equations tell us
Um
Space time.
Doesn't have any
Effective meaning.
Trevor Burrus Well, for most people I think it is. For most people, they think that space time is the reality, and what I'm saying is
It's the reality that most of us have assumed is the final reality.
And science is now telling us
It can't be.
It actually and it tells us precisely at ten to the minus thirty three centimeters, ten to the minus forty three seconds, the very notion of space time.
Makes no sense.
Is that
The same as saying that
Reality as I perceive it makes no sense.
I'm suggesting
Now as a cognitive scientist, not a physicist.
We should think of space time as just a virtual reality headset.
That's the way we perceive.
In our game of life. And when you say space time, you mean the
The thing that I'm perceiving with my eyes and ears and senses right now. Even this hard table is
Just a VR.
Object.
And the whole
setting that we're here in here right now is just a virtual reality and there is a a an a reality entirely outside this headset.
That that's is open to science to explore. And we're finding stuff.
what you might call obelisks, geometric objects outside of space time. So so this is all brand new in the last
Since like twenty
twenty ten or something like that, roughly. So do you believe that? Do you believe that everything I'm experiencing and seeing now is basically
Like equivocal to me wearing a virtual reality headset.
And uh
This
Something beyond
The virtual reality headset.
Completely.'Cause I believe the science.
And
The predictions
Oh
Our theories about space time.
Are so good.
No I
I have to always be careful about what I'm saying versus and I don't want to put words in the physicist mouth. So what I say I think it's a virtual reality. That's Hoffman, that's not physics, right?
Are you able to swap out the phrase space time for reality?
Was that inaccurate?
I think that
Whatever reality is
Space time is
A trivial aspect of it.
There's much more to reality than space time. Space time is all the real i it's m it's like a a player in Grand Theft Auto.
If all you've done is play in Grand Theft and that's you you're born with a headset on and that's all you've y that that's your reality.
But if you're the programmer who wrote the code.
And you know the supercomputer that's running Grand Theft Auto.
You know that Grand Theft Auto, um
Yeah is a nice self contained world, but there's an entire world outside of it.
That's utterly unlike Grand Theft Auto. It's it's a supercomputer with diodes and resistors and voltages that are being toggled and when when some dude is

What's really happening is that millions of voltages are being toggled in a specific
order in some computer and it has to be exactly that right sequence for the thing to work properly.
And the and the guy that's turning the wheel has no idea.
What's going on?
Hold
realm utterly outside your imagination in Grand Theft Auto. And so you know if you're in Grand Theft Auto, you might not even know about computers and
toggling voltages and so all you know is I got a steering wheel and a gas pedal and streets and uh and people to race and so forth and things to to to steal and and whatever.
But you don't realise there's a puppet master effectively.
Controlling you.
And so I I think that
Space time.
is just a very effective headset.
For anyone that doesn't know, Grand Theft Audio is a video game where you run around a virtual world, basically. That's right. Yeah, driving you're driving nice fancy cars in this in this world, that's right.
Yeah.
So everything I see.
Right now.
Is a
Projection.
That I've made on the world.
My world.
In order to help me to survive.
And my brain is not showing me things.
That it doesn't think I need
To see.
Because they won't be conducive with survival because they are
cognitively in terms of like um
how much fuel and energy they would require to process and think about the
Cognitively.
Inconsequential.
Or like it would be inefficient for me to spend my

To see those things.
That's exactly right. And for a lot of people I think
That's counterintuitive, because they would say look
Evolution is about making you fit.
So you can live and survive long enough to reproduce.
And surely.
Evolution should do that by making you see the truth. I mean if you see the truth, then you're going to compete in the game of life much more.
successfully than if you don't see the truth. So So what are you talking about this headset nonsense for? This is not a headset, this is the truth. I mean an evolution
should shape us to see the truth.
Would what would assume.
And in fact, very intelligent experts in the field assume that.
And I I suggest otherwise. In fact we have mathematical proofs otherwise.
If you look at evolution.
Darwin said look we need to
Think about a gradual
evolution over time of these species. Maybe from very, very simple ones

And

dynamics. And and Darwin suggested it was
What we would call reproductive fitness.
That those
Organisms
That have
Physical properties.
Sensory systems, motor systems, you know movement systems.
that
Make them more likely
To have offspring.
And to raise offspring to maturity.
Whatever properties those might be, that's what we're gonna call fitness. So the more fit you are
i is really saying how likely are you to have and successfully raise offspring?
Mm-hmm. So Darwin suggested that.
And I don't think that he necessarily had to say that there was no God. It was just that there y y i if there is a God, it's not that g God put it down perfect and he did an evolutionary process.
Yeah. Organisms adapt to their environment.
Um
Well, they're not adapting, but the offspring that survive are those best adapted to the environment. That's right.
So that was Darwin's idea.
From
Presumably simpler.
Organisms.

Complicated organisms.
And um and then
multiple evolutions of things like eyes, like the cephalopod eye evolved different differently from the human eye.
Um and the cephalopod eye got certain things right that the human eye got wrong. Is that because the cephalopod eye was in a different environment, so it had different requirements?
That would be one possible reason. I I actually don't know in the case of the cephalods why, but that kind of idea is absolutely one of the reasons that that could have happened. Another one it could just be an accident, right? There's probability involved. And so there at some point you have the right accident and then the humans got the thing reversed. So you think Darwin was wrong in some respect or that he
Oh no, I I think uh Darwin's uh I I I
In terms of biology.
I think that there is um
No
serious competitor to Dharma's theory of of evolution of natural selection. In in terms of the scientific theory
of the the origin of species and so forth.
And it's Darwin's theory.
And the mathematical formulation of it.
But I think I'm not going to be able to
Also t says
Yeah.
What we're perceiving.
Is not the truth.
That our sensory systems
On Darwin's theory
We're not shaped.
To show us the truth.
They were shaped.
To keep you alive.
Long enough.
To reproduce successfully.
Period.
That's all Durman's theory actually says.
Most of us think
The way this evolutionary process does it is to make sure that your senses are telling you the truth about the external reality.
I've published some papers with um with colleagues where we show
Mathematically.
That
Darwin's theory does not entail that at all. In fact
Darwin's theory
Says.
The probability is zero.
That
Any sensory system.
Like eyes, ears, smell, touch.
Text.
Has ever been shaped.
To see any aspect of objective reality truly.
So the probability zero
Did you see any aspect of the truth?
Period.
On Darwin's three.
What you do experience
He is
Sensory systems that guide adaptive behavior.
Guide adaptive behavior means
Um they let you act
Your eyes, your nose, yeah, yeah, your eyes, your nose and mouth. They they guide you so that you act
In ways that you don't die too quickly. Okay. And you can have kids that don't die too quickly.
That's all it's about.
I was just playing out the scenario then that you removed my
Eyes and you removed my ears and my nose.
And my
Ability to sense you know.
temperature and things like that, all of my senses.
I thought if if I was the only person on earth and you removed all of my senses
What would reality be?
Because if you remove my senses.
Reality no longer exists.
As far as I'm aware of it.
But that doesn't mean nothing exists. And I'm wondering what that
nothing would be. Like if you just imagine like wipe off everyone on the earth and it's just you and we remove all of your senses
What what is in that space?'Cause you're right, my senses, my eyes, my ears
My ability to understand temperature is a byproduct and consequence of me
Surviving.
So I was playing out the s and I was like well.
If we think about ghosts.
And the afterlife.
maybe there was no reason from a survival perspective that I even needed to be able to
See or acknowledge that maybe it just didn't help. Maybe it actually would have hurt me to have
Um,'cause it would have been too cognitively demanding to process all of that information. So anybody that could process all that information wouldn't have been good at reproducing, therefore they wouldn't survive, therefore they wouldn't be here. So maybe
Those of us that are here.
We're just really good at ignoring
The other dimensions.
That's what our mathematics says. I think that your your intuitions on that are are are
Quite right.
If you pay attention to anything other than what I'm gonna do.
Allows you to have kids.
You're wasting your time from an evolutionary point of view.
Perception is expensive.
It takes a lot of calories.
You have to eat a lot of food to to to run your brain and to power your eyes and your ears. So you need to do
Shortcuts. You need to make your sensory systems not
Chew up so much of your energy.
The more expensive your your perceptual systems are, the more you've gotta eat.
Two to
So that means you have to go out there and forage and you and put yourself at harm's So it's it's it's
So there's a trade off. We try to do things cheaply in evolution.
And
Going for the truth.
You don't need to actually go for the truth'cause that's very, very expensive. So so for example, there are
Some
Flying.
Insects.
That need to
Lay their their their off their eggs on in in water.
And
They use the trick
Of just looking at the polarization of the light.
Coming off the water.
So but what you see happening in evolution is we have tricks and hacks.
And and even and humans have tricks and hacks.
And

Trying to find out if someone is reproductively fit.
Right. We we you you can't I can't actually look at your DNA and and go, well, okay.
He's got an A, C, G, and T, but he's got a C here where it's supposed to be a T or or No, I I can't look at your DNA. So what do I look at? I have to look at your at your what I can see of your body and and your voice and and so forth. So

fact that we aren't seeing reality as it is, and we're actually only seeing what we need to see in order to survive.
is when you look at as you were saying, as how different animals see the world.
And can you just give me some examples of some more examples of different animals that see the world completely differently? I always think about bats.
How how do bats see the world?'Cause do they see
colours like we see them and objects like we see them.
No, no, bats use echolocation. They'll send out little
Bursts of sound?
Um at very, very high frequencies. And then they had these big ears that that capture the returns and of their sensory system it says most insect eating bats use echolocation, as you said. They emit high frequency sound waves and C
By listening to the echoes bouncing off other objects.
And this gives them some kind of sonic map of their surroundings, helping them to navigate and effectively see in total darkness. So you imagine a bat. Right. Like then they if a bat is sat there thinking that they understand the nature of reality.
When it's actually just a map of
how the sound waves back. They
I imagine don't have the same
complet they have a completely different perception of what reality is to us.
And it's therefore it would be quite ignorant to assume.
That we as humans
are seeing reality as it is when just like the bat we're probably
adapted to
Our environment.
And built senses, eyes, ears, touch.
That helped us to survive.
I would agree with you, but some of my colleagues would disagree and they would say
Humans are much more complicated.
And you know, surely bats and so forth they have to have all these shortcuts and they don't see reality as it is. But but we've evolved further.
And we're closer to the truth from my point of view.
When I see this table and this cup and so forth.
Is just a uh
A convenient fiction.
Whatever reality is
It's utterly unlike.
Anything that I perceive.
Utterly.
In a TED talk that you did in two thousand uh in the two thousands, you talked about simulations that you ran to prove
That
I guess in in in part.
The
I'm only seeing things that will help me to survive as a creature, as an organism. Can you explain to me simply what
what those simulations were and what they proved.
Well yes, in our in our simulations, and this is before we had theorems. So we we did simulations just to see if the ideas were working. And we would have artificial organisms in a computer. So it was like a a a game that we put together and we would have a world and and we would let some organisms actually see the true state of that world. So they they were the truth organisms.
And then we'd have other ones that um
Only had
Like a a headset, uh an interface that only could see not the truth, but but just some little bit of information that that could guide adaptive behavior.
That would help them to reproduce. Yeah, and re and reproduce.
What we found was for for a wide range of of

the the organisms that saw the truth
went extinct. They they weren't able to compete the ones with the ones that didn't. And and one of the things that came out of it was
Seeing the truth.
Takes too much.
Time and energy.
It it's complicated to see the truth.
And if you have a simple trick.
That lets you do the same thing.
without having to have a deep insight, then you can get the same benefit. You can get the benefit without having to put all the the effort out.
I can give you a concrete example of a of a an organism that does this. That's that's pretty funny. So
There's the jewel beal.
It lives in the outback of Australia. It's dimpled, glossy, and brown.
The males fly, the females are flightless.
So the males are flying around, of course, looking for an eligible female.
It turns out that
Men.
In the Alpek.

They throw'em out into the o into the outback. And they turned out to be dimpled glossy in just the right shade of brown to grab the attention of the male jewel beals. They're they're actually on the bottle.
There's
Full body contact. They're crawling all over it.
And they still think it's a female. So how much do they know about their women?
Very, very little they know about their women. A woman a female is
Something dimpled, glossy, and brown, apparently the bigger the better.
And that's what a female i So you can see evolution didn't give these male beetles much insight into their females.
They gave him just enough information.
To successfully reproduce, period.
And that's sort of what evolution does. It it gives you just enough information
To um reproduce
Before you die.
So they're all making love to this beer bottle because they can't tell, they can't see reality.
They can't see that this isn't a woman, this is a beer bottle.
That's right.
That's one of the more humorous examples of of what evolution has done.
It does things on the cheap.
And that includes human sensory systems.
So it's it's very humbling.
We're not the epitome.
And what we think is h human appreciation of the deep truth of reality
is just
Our little headset.
But we're not going to be able to do
Experience and know
Is
Trivial.
compared to whatever reality is. Absolutely trivial.
We know zero percent of reality.
And our sci by the way, our scientific theories.
Well
Always and forever explain zero percent of reality.
Because
They have to make assumptions. And every theory, scientific theory has to make assumptions. And so we're gonna have an inf we'll have, in principle, an infinite sequence of theories.
With ever deeper assumptions.
And we'll never get to the bottom.
And since it's it's an infinite sequence, that means everything we got so far is zero percent.
So
I I'm a scientist. I'm all for science. I encourage young
Men and women to go into science. I think it's a great thing to do.
Um but just know that um all of our theories
Well
Comprehend
Zero percent of reality.
You know, people talk a lot about how their pets or other animals are able to see another dimension.
Sometimes people say things like My dog started barking at this or
I had cancer and there's dogs or animals that have been able to um they they believe spot
Certain diseases inside the human body.
And when you look at the
s sort of sensory faculties of these dogs.
Dogs can hear frequencies up to sixty five thousand hertz, whereas humans can only go to twenty thousand hertz. Dogs have up to three hundred million olfactory receptors. Humans just have five million
And some animals like cats can see different sort of uh frequencies of light. So
It does it does beg a question. You know, if it's possible for
An animal and organism to see
The world.
In a different depth and width than us.
But what what happens if you go further?
Right. Absolutely. There are some that can uh detect electri electric fields. So some um fish can d detect electric fields.
Um
Some
Birds, I believe, can see the polarization of light.
And some some uh insects of course use polarization of light to to find where to lay their eggs. So and the w and we can't do that.
So so yeah, the when we start to study
other animals we see these uh remarkable abilities.
Interesting.
What does this all mean?
For the nature of how one should
understand their life because I guess the way the way that we perceive the world causes us so much
suffering or joy, depending on how we perceive it. Is there anything people from all of the work you've done and the books you've written
That
people can bring into their lives to help them live better lives with this understanding of the world.

The world is far more
Interesting and
Varied.
Than you can imagine.
So if you
If you think the world is a boring place, it it's not.
Your imagination isn't big enough. Whatever reality is.
It it transcends.
Anything that you could possibly imagine.
Spiritual traditions w basically often say
There's more to life than what you see inside space and time.
There's something
Beyond.
And
I've been sort of pointing to that myself in my own way. I'm saying that scientific theory is always
have assumptions. So there's an infinite number of scientific theories that you can have and you're never
going to get a scientific theory of everything. What am I saying?
That there's something beyond science.

Good as science is
I'm saying there's n not only not a theory of everything, the best theory we'll ever come up with.
is zero percent of reality.
So
That leaves all this room for what the spiritual traditions are talking about. That there's something that trans
Transcend science.
There is a a w a way of thinking about this that I think is
Very illuminating. And it it's about the inter intersection of science and spirituality.
I'm a scientist, so who who am I?
Uh I am someone.
And and I'm
One of many someone's
Other scientists.
Who
can create theories and in principle.
Ever ever deeper theories.
And there's an infinite sequence So who is the I
That can do this.
No theory that I can come with.
Come up with.
Is
The final description of that eye.
In other words
The I
That is doing all this theory building.
Is the I
That is real.
That is making these theories.
And that utterly transcends all these theories.
And that's a spiritual point of view.
So what does that mean? You're you're God?
It means that whatever you are transcends any description. And that's what a lot of people say God is.
Suppose I give you
Something you've never tasted before, like a piece of mint. And actually I don't know what mint tastes like to you. I I assume that it's like
What
T mint tastes like for me, but I don't know. This is called learning by ostensible definition.
And so we have this game where
Your experiences are your experiences.
And
You actually
Didn't need anybody else for those experiences. All you needed me for, or your parents for, is to give you a name for what you already knew.
And and you you create this this world and all we do is tell you how to talk with me about what you've created. And I don't know that your world
In any way resembles my experience.
It's quite possible.
And do you think there's ways that we cause ourselves a lot of anguish and pain and mental health issues?
Because of how we perceive
The nature of reality to be.
that we could potentially, I don't know, give up or
rewire ourselves on to

Have a more fulfilling, more grateful experience of life.
Completely.
I think that's
Very, very important.
And it's a natural consequence of what we've just been talking about.
Almost all of us think of ourselves
as an object in spacetime.
Only here for a short amount of time and we'll
Soon die.
When I say you transcend any scientific, that that means the theory
But I
I'm just
A hundred and sixty pound object in space time.
Is just a theory and it's not the truth. That's not the truth about who I am.
That's just
A theory that I have. Because space time itself.
is just a theory.
Nothing inside space time is anything.
But my headset
interpretation of a reality.
That
infinitely transcends anything I can experience.
There is another way.
That you can
Appreciate that.
That's
That transcends science. And that is
Um and the many meditative traditions talk about this.
They recognize.
Yeah.
You
Are infinitely
Beyond.
Any scientific or any other description.
So what do you do in that case?
To know who you are?
You drop.
All descriptions.
You sit.
In absolute silence.
And
Ignore any thoughts because you recognize thoughts are useful in this headset and to play the game of life. Yeah.
We need thoughts?

If you want to understand who I am
Uh again, I do psychology, I do all this stuff. I'll do the scientific. So I'm not putting science down. I'm a scientist.
But at some point if you want to
Understand
the truth of who you are beyond just this headset description of you.
Then you have to lay aside
Uh
Concepts period.
And just
Know yourself by being yourself.
Not by
Putting a concept between
You and yourself.
A story.
A story. An identity. That's right. No no story, no ident nothing between you and yourself. You you know yourself
By sitting in utter silence and being yourself.
No concepts.
Because then you've let go of all theories.
And now it's reality.
Facing reality.
No barrier in between.
And that requires you t to to realise that your identity
The stories you believe, the labels you've given yourself as CEO or
social media manager or manager, or director, or head of department.
All of these things are just in fact labels you've given.
That's right. Those are are just labels that you give and what's interesting about this now that
is if I think I'm just
This little body.
And
I'm nothing but this body and and my conscious experiences are nothing but what my brain does. So so that's my theory, and that's that's all I am.
I don't feel very big. I don't feel very important.
Um
And so I'm gonna probably need to do something to make myself feel a little bit better and
Well I'm gonna need to compete with you. I'm gonna need to show
How I'm better than you in certain ways. So I'm I'm a better tennis player than you, or I'm smarter than you, or or whatever. So we're gonna get this competition going on.
We're uh among people. And we're gonna get even competition among rel religions and countries and so forth because
We don't know who we are.
And
And we feel
Inadequate.
And
If we actually understood
That
All of this that I'm seeing right now.
I'm making it up.
On the fly. This cup that I'm seeing
It only exists
What I create it.
This table.
Exists when I create it.
Like in a virtual reality. If I in a virtual reality I'm in Grand Theft Auto, I look over here and I now I see a red Mustang.
I look away, I don't see the red mustang.
And now there is no red mustang.
The red Mustang only existed
When I looked.
Because it's a VR game.
I only need it when I rend I I I render it when I need it.
I'm now rendering a cup.
That the cup that I rendered is no longer there. You might render your cup. You might say, Well no, Don, you're wrong. The cup is still there, I can see it. No, you're rendering your cup.
And so you you you're you're not rendering my cup.
I rendered my cup.
So and the same thing with Grand Theft Audit, you might say, Well, I see the red Mustang even if you're not looking done.
Well that's because in your headset you're looking
And you're rendering a r uh uh the the red Mustang, but I'm not. And there is no red Mustang. If you look inside the supercomputer, there's no red Mustang there.
The supercomputer that's running the game has no red musknife.
What I'm saying is
We compete
We feel inadequate.
And we feel like we need to compete with other people and be better than them and we have egos.
All the egoic stuff that we do that causes all the problems in the world.
Because you don't know who you are.
You're creating this whole thing.
You're you're not a little player.
You're the inventor of this whole thing.
You have nothing to prove.
And you don't need to be better than anybody else.
There also
Master creators. They're creating entire universes that that they perceive as as well.
And
My own take on on this.
Yeah.
That
You and I
Oh really?
The same one reality just looking at itself through two different headsets.
Two different avatars.
And
Maybe that's what uh is required for
This one.
infinite intelligence to sort of know itself. What you if you're if you transcend any description, what how do you know yourself? Maybe what you do is you say, Well, let me try this headset on.
Let me take that seriously for a while. Ma maybe even let myself get lost. Let me let me completely believe I'm just a Don Hoffman in in in in this space time. And let me believe that for for many a decades and then slowly s sort of wake up. But at least then I will have seen myself from this perspective. Then I'll take off that headset. We call that death. We all just take off the headset. And then I'll try.
There's an infinite number of headsets to try on.
So it from that point of view
Any person you speak to.
is transcendent.
Any animal is just an avatar.
Of
This transcendent.
Unspeakably
Incredible.
Reality that transcends science so that science will only get zero percent of it.
And again, uh always say, I'm not putting down science, I'm a scientist.
We need to do science and I recommend that people do science.
But my guess this is one of the more trivial headsets.
It's only four dimensions.
Why not?
twenty billion.
Why not? Quintillion.
This is this is just a f a fairly trivial so we we may be uh in one of the most the more
Uninteresting.
perspectives a l on who we are. And and
And there are much more interesting perspectives that we can take on ourselves.
But but the reason we have f fighting, the reason we have egos
is because we don't know who we are.
And is there a way for me to understand who I am?
Or is the closest you've found meditation? I know you've meditated for twenty years or something.
I I should say I should be a little careful about
It really is important to to do for for me as a scientist to have done the science that I've done. But I think for someone else who doesn't do science maybe th that you do music.
Or you do some sports or something like that.
That's that is a concrete
Way of knowing yourself through a perspective?
And that's really important and and and since
We have billions of people.
And then there's

This this one infinite intelligence, whatever it is,
Has decided I want to look at myself through the
Lens of a mosquito.
And now of the bumblebee. And now of the the jewel beetle that that can't even tell a bottle from from a uh a female. I'm gonna look at myself from
This panoply.
of perspectives. So you're almost implying there that there's this one consciousness and it's just using
different organisms potentially as vehicles to understand
itself and the nature of reality.
So that would mean that me and you are the same consciousness, but you were born as a scientist in America and I was born as a
I don't know, an entrepreneur and Botswana.
with different perspectives in order to understand the reality, which means that we're basically the same
Sure.
The same consciousness, the same
Super intelligence or whatever.
Just manifesting as
Different eyeballs in different places.
That's my my view. And certain religious traditions do sort of
Hint almost s say that exactly. Um you know, like Jesus.
Uh in in Christianity.
in like Matthew twenty five says you know, I was hungry.
And you fed me, I was thirsty.
You gave me something to drink. I was
a foreigner and you invited me in
I was sick and you helped me. I was in prison and you visited me.
And people he says asked him, When did we do that? And he said, Whenever you did it to the least person, you did it to me.
So Jesus is sort of hinting at this
There is
Yeah.
There's no difference. The reason
To love your neighbor.
As yourself.
Is because your neighbor
is yourself.
Just with a different headset.

Have problems.
Is we
Don't realize.
How incredible you are.
So you are that which is
Creating this
VR.
Simulation, with all of its beauty, all of its complexity.
All the complexity is you.
And you're doing it.
Effortlessly.
N no.
Uh.
For my
Neuroscience colleagues, they will say.
Don is not effortless.
You've got
hundred billion well eighty six billion neurons in your brain. The visual system has billions of neurons that are doing all this computation and we have
The simple cells, the complex cells, the hypercomplex cells and we think of the brain as a physical object that's generating our consciousness. Yeah. I'm saying
Space time itself.
Is something that you create.
And so you create.
Everything space time
I've also created the brain. You create the brain. So right now
You don't have a brain.
Excuse me.
And nor do I.
Okay, fair enough.
'Cause I don't'cause I don't have a brain and you don't have a brain until we actually look inside and render a brain. Just like in in V R the the Mustang doesn't exist until
So
Yeah.
I I can predict that if we do the right scans we will see your brain.
But
That only exists when we
When we do the rendering.
So I don't have a brain.
All these correlations, we know that correlation doesn't cause doesn't imply causation.
Right. So so we the fact that w there is correlations and I don't deny it, in fact
I'm all for studying these correlations between brain activity and
Conscious experience. They exist, they're undeniable, and they don't in any way remotely entail
That the brain causes our conscious experiences.
So I'm not I'm not the brain. I'm the thing that's simulating the presence of a brain. That's right. That's right. And so in your simulation, your simulation is so good.
That it simulates also
How
All this reality that transcends space time.
Is being
Funneled down into this tiny little space time.
Headset.
And that's what we call the brain.
So of course there are gonna be these correlations between brand activity and what we see.
But the correlation goes the other way.
creates your conscious experiences is because consciousness
has created the brain.
as an icon to describe how it's how it's creating this headset.
Do you think much about simulation theory?
I've had lots of uh
Dinner parties recently and
conversations over dinner about simulation theory and it always gets very, very interesting.
Um what are your thoughts on simulation theory? And for my listeners who might not understand the concept of simulation theory, are you able to explain it?
Yes, the the so the standard
Uh Nick Bostrom, for example, is is a very big figure in simulation theory. And and in the those kinds of simulation theories, the idea is
That
The world that you're seeing right now isn't the
The true world. This is just a simulation.
And there's some
Programmer, saying.

computer that's programmed this.
World.
And so we're you're just we're just characters.
In a simulated world of some programmer.
And that programmer and their laptop that's doing this, as it turns out, isn't the final thing either, because that programmer and their laptop is also
Just a simulation from a deeper level programmer and their laptop.
there could be a the a very, very large nesting of all these s simulated worlds and and people with their computers and that does
Jive pretty well with what I'm saying up to a point. I'm saying this is not the reality, this is just a headset.
So the but there's a big big disagreement.
Do you think we're gonna there's gonna come a point where with everything that's going on with AI and robotics, that we could get make a robot
um program it with a certain AI that gives it the sort of same thinking as a human being. And then when I put some chocolate into its mouth
It's going to say to me
Mm, I love that chocolate, Stephen. That's my favourite flavour.
I could certainly program such a robot.
But the question will always be.
Just because I have this particular circuit in the in the
Computer.
Yeah.
And and then some structure on the tongue that I've given it and some pattern of electrical activity. What is my scientific theory that explains why that pattern had to be
The taste of chocolate.
That's what we need.
As a science we'd it's easy to make your adaptive learning thing where it's just learn through all of the data.
through someone telling it, programming it to think
That particular

Um, send that up to the software and then respond like this.
Which might just be how me and you're responding to life. We might not be conscious at all. Right. And and what you're suggesting is probably how we would actually do it. We would probably sort of train it and and and and then have it give us the right responses in in that kind of context. So we'd probably do it something like that.
But but then as scientists, we want to understand so
We're claiming as scientists.
That
An experience
Yeah.
a say certain causal structure or certain funcun functional architecture. That's what we're saying it is.'Cause these these are physicalist theories and they're they're saying we're not going to start with consciousness. Consciousness is not fundamental.
Space and time and physical objects are fundamental.
And so we we need to show how
Those physical objects
And their properties give rise to these conscious experiences.
So if that's if that's the science you want to propose
Then I have to be hard nosed as a scientist now and say
Give me
Your theory
Of mint.
So do you think this is a simulation?
So it's uh it's it's not a simulation in a bostrom sense.
In Bostrom's sense.
It's a simulation in that
It's a physical substrate.
That's giving rise to this whole world of conscious experiences that I'm having.
Yeah, so it's that I deny. Like a game programmer sat at a computer making it.
And that's and somehow the physical system itself
gave rise to the magic of the ex the conscious experiences I'm having of red and green and love and so forth. Those conscious s so for the simulation theory so this is my p my bone of contention with the simulation theory. It's very similar to my theory in in all other respects, but this is a pretty serious bone of contention.
For their theory to to work.
They have to show explicitly, scientifically, how a cons a specific conscious experience arises from a specific program.
Okay. Until you do that, this is there is no beef on the table.
Right. Th so f for my point, their their theory is a non starter.
right now because there's no specific experience that they can say this program
Must be the taste of mint.
They can't do that.
Until they can do that.
they can't get this whole world of experience that I'm living in.
Nothing.
So there's no beef.
All they have to do.
Two
Give me some beef is to say.
Like in integrated information theory they say.
Here's the matrix for
Yeah.
This is the matrix.

Why?
Why is that Matrix?
That causal structure, the taste of men. And what you'll see is
I think.

But we will find that these approaches are vacuous.
There's no beef.
When you ask people what the meaning of their life is, they'll often say things like, It is maybe they'll say to raise children, maybe they'll say they want to improve humanity, they wanna
um cure disease. They wanna
um help society in some way, but through the lens of reality that you see the world and that you believe the world is.
What becomes the meaning of life?
That's a great question.
I do think that
The best description I can give is that there is this one
Transcendent infinite consciousness?
And you and I are just avatars, and so is a mosquito.
And so is a bacterium?
And
All are equally interesting and important.
And all are different perspectives? Just different headsets? There's the mosquito headset. There's the
Jewel Beetle headset?
There's all these different headsets and
I'm I'm in the Hoffman headset.
Happen to have

Art. I'm not good at
Uh
Music and so forth. I have my my my particular
Talents and and
Ina inabilities in my headset.
So I'm here to experience
The Don Hoffman perspective on things. Why?
Okay.
Because that's perhaps the only way the infinite
can know itself is through an infinite number of perspectives. It it transcends any particular perspective.
So
Why not get lost in the Hoffman perspective and a Jewel Beetle perspective a

And
That's
The only way to to know yourself. But it's always
The one consciousness that's knowing itself.
Through an infinite number of of varieties.
Of of experiences, of headsets.
And did someone or something create that one consciousness?
Now I'm above my pay grade. That's uh no no no that's of course the right question.
And
Yeah for
An explanation.
And
Be only
Explanations we have are either mathematical or scientific or both.


Testable.
But but even informal explanations make assumptions.
And
So I'll have to say that that you're asking a question about
An entity that transcends
Any
Description.
Namely who you really are and who I am I really am.
And
I think we c y I think you can know the answer to your question in in one way.
And that is
Dropping all concepts and just being with your being.
You are that.
You are that.
You don't need to attain anything. You don't need to
Achieve anything.
You're that right now.
So
There's no effort. There's no
No need to get better at anything.
It's just to recognize what you already are.
You've
Let yourself
B
under an illusion that I'm just this little guy that needs to do
These things and you know and
Be a professor and whatever it might be.
I've been under that illusion.
And and I got to see myself through that lens and then
I began to wake up.
And see that I completely transcend. It was an interesting perspective. I'm glad I took it seriously.
I'm gonna throw off that headset, we call it death, but I'm gonna take off that headset pretty soon.
Because that's not who I am, I transcend that.
So the answer is y you can know it, but but you know it when you let go of all concepts.
And you don't try.
If you're trying to get there then
You don't
See what you already are.
That's the best answer I can give at this at this point.
Because it does transcend science.
So in terms of a a God a as we believe
In God's in the religious context.
The best answer that you have would say that
Effectively we are God.
the God that we we refer to. We are the
Transcendent.
Power that goes beyond description.
And
Right.
Yeah, I I would say that and and I I can I mean.
I can put that in a sort of a Christian language. Um
Because many listeners will be Christians.
Um
A child of a human.
He's a human.
The Bible calls us children of God.
Well if a child of a human is human, a child of God is God.
That's what the what what it's point to. And and Jesus is fairly explicit about it.
When
Some religious leaders were about to stone Jesus for

The Son of God.
J Jesus quotes the scripture and says
From I think
The the Psalms or something like that.
But
In the Psalms it says I have said you are gods and all of your
Sons of the most high.
Jesus said if he if he calls them
Gods to whom the Word of God came, why are you trying to stone me to death for just saying I'm the son of God?
What what the Bible is basically saying, Love God with all your heart. That that's loving yourself. You are
God. And loving your neighbor as yourself is just recognizing
That your neighbor
Is yourself.
Under a different avatar.
Do you think Jesus was
Really divine.
In any
I'm presuming you think this was a real individual, and do you think he was divine?
Beyond the
Beyond me and you in some respect.
Not beyond me and you.
But you're you are
As divine as could possibly be.
We'll click that.
I'll put that on my LinkedIn.
Hoffman said it.
Yeah. You're divine as often says I'm as divine as I could possibly be.
Are there any um are there y you must go through if you
If you understand
reality through this lens that we're seeing so little and that much of it is
Created by
By ourselves and um we are the transcendent.
Are there any things that you do on a day to day basis?
That are atypical.
because of that, or thoughts you have, or experiences you have that are atypical because of this perspective.
Certainly atypical from the
Before in my own in my own life. I now spent um
Quite a bit of time in meditation.
'Cause I I
As much as I enjoy the life of the mind and I'm you know, I
A professor and a
taught lots of students over many, many years.
And I highly recommend all that stuff.
At some point I realize
Yeah.
All my knowledge, all possible scientific knowledge is zero percent.
Of reality.
And do I really want to confine myself only to zero percent of reality?
I want to explore reality from this perspective, but it is zero percent. So I do my homework and I
Encourage my students to do more homework.
Take this perspective very seriously.
Study it study it rigorously.
But then realize there's this
The hundred percent that you haven't seen.
And you are it.
So you're doing lots of psychedelics and stuff like that, too? I haven't done any psychedelics. You've never tried psychedelics? I I I've never
I've never even smoked a cigarette.
Wow.
I I and I haven't had a drink of alcohol in in decades. So I I and it's partly just because I'm I'm frail. My my physical body isn't that strong. I I I have
limits to w w I can't push my body too hard. So I've I've learned to operate within my own limits and I don't push it too hard.
But the meditation I I do
Am I right in thinking that
You now meditate.
Three to four hours a day.
Probably, yeah.
What insights or understandings have emerged from that that I might be able to comprehend?
Any
creativity that's ever come out in my scientific work.
To ever to whatever extent it's creative, it's come from the silence.
So I've of course I've had to do my homework and do my studies and so forth. But the novel ideas
Come from the silence. Personally.
One one thing I've seen is how
Identified I am.
With my avatar.
I think I am this body.
I'm really tied to this body.
And it's
The stuff that I'm saying.
At the emotional level, there's a emotional part of me that doesn't believe it one bit.

Um
You put a gun to my head, I'm scared to death.
Mm-hmm.
Intellectually I'll say to say to you.
This is just an avatar.
I I'm the infinite that transcends.
So and when I die I just and and I believe that.
How deeply do I believe it?
Put a gun to my head and you'll find out.
I'll wet my pants.
So it's a it's it's
Very, very interesting for me to look at that.
And to see
All the
Disjunctions. Trevor Burrus But it kinda makes sense, right, based on your theory that
Oh senses have evolved help us to survive because someone not liking your thinking or your theories or rejecting you
Or harmed your body, it would go against your survival. So
Theoretically, if we are
In the world that you've described, in the reality you've described, which is basically
designed for survival, then you would have developed senses.
that make you change behavior if there's a risk of someone not liking you.
That's right. There there are social pressures and and if you don't conform to them you get
feedback that that can be very, very negative, and in some cases even death.
Um
If I if I go to a grocery store and and don't happen to pay and just walk off with the stuff, I end up behind bars. There are rules of the game. There are rules of the headset. I transcend the headset, but I choose to allow myself to get lost in the game.
Starting in January twenty twenty, you
did have a proverbial gun held to your head in in a way because you contracting Covid and went through
And are still going through some pretty um serious health complications because of long Covid. You developed heart heart issues within weeks requiring hundreds of hours of critical care in hospital. You told me before we started recording that you've had heart surgery twice. I'm in twenty twenty one
At sixty six years old, at one point you thought you might not survive
because your heart had been at one hundred ninety beats per minute for thirty hours.
And you sent your wife a goodbye message.
Because it looked like it was all over.
Right.
Right.
I
I'm wondering.
What that
Brush with
Death.
Did your perception of life, your perspective.
And how that all ties into your
Your um
Your beliefs about the nature of reality.
It certainly let me see how tied I am to my body.
And h the fear that I that I experienced. Right. It's one thing for me to
So here is a
Nice academic and talk about how you're the transcendent reality. It's another thing to have your heart
Fail.
And
To know that the this is
Probably the end.
And and to face the raw emotion. So I have deep raw mo and then I had to have another surgery. I
Um
The first one kept me
for a year and a half or so. A great surgeon's not his fault if he did a a a great job.
But you know, covet is
persistent. And the week before my second surgery I was in the ER three times where they had to restart my heart. Just didn't know if I was gonna make it. I I would have to go have my heart restart and then two days later go back and have my heart restart and I was just hoping to make it to live to the surgery.
Um
And
And even now
I wouldn't be surprised if the heart
So so that takes us out of the abstract realm into something very, very concrete.
You really don't know from one heartbeat to the next.
It keeps you from just
Talking abstractly about this stuff and and
And and being real about it. And and when I look inside and see there's real fear, then I know, okay.
Um this stuff about um you're the infinite and everybody else is the infinite is still
fairly just an abstract concept for you, Don. You haven't really
Gone deep enough.
You need to go deeper and actually
If that's true.
mean may m maybe it's all B S, right? But but if it's true that you are the infinite and everybody else is the infinite
Um
Then you need to go deeper into that.
Um
And and I intellectually I'm I'm convinced. I mean I've given you the reasons I intellectually I'm I'm quite convinced.
Um and it's it's really interesting to me.
That emotionally
I'm far from convinced. Far and as uh and I agree with what you just said about the evolutionary arguments for it. There's good evolutionary reasons for me to be wired up.
To have automatic emotional responses that are gonna protect this body.
to keep it so n no doubt about it.
So so there's no reason to judge myself that I'm a f you know, my body
has a a fear response and so forth when there are things that that are about to to to kill me. The issue is then
When I look at that fear response
Can I look at it and accept it, or do I identify with it?
Do I identify
With
The fear response.
Or can I step back?
And be the observer.
That watches the fear response.
And
In in the meditation process what I'm learning to do
Is
In some sense what I was saying about the science.
Science is great.
But don't believe any theory.
Theories are just tools.
They're not the truth. No scientific theory, my theory is included.
Or not the truth.
And so also is my theory about who I am.
Not the truth.
So to really let go of any theory if I can really let go of any theory of who I am
Then I'll let go of any fear.
So it's really
It really comes down to the to this, what's really really quite interesting.
We will each die.
That's incontrovertible.
So
Any attachments I have.
To this world.
Well.
Six.
There's no doubt about it. The question is, can I let go of the attachments now?
Or will they only
Go.
For my cold dead hand.
Wh when will I let go of all these attachments?

And I am
No
Yeah, yeah.
N no expert. But to the extent that I can let go, I see that there's more peace.
There's more peace in letting
Not being attached to things.
So I I I see that, but but I'm not there. So this is a very human very human
perspective on things, a very fallible perspective.
And it's very, very interesting. So
I'm claiming I'm the infinite
And I'm the infinite.
Having taken on this this bodily form.
And
In some sense
I'm waking up.
to who I really am, but I'm only partly awake.
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So when we
Do die in your
Perspective.
equivocal to sort of taking the headset off.
Entirely.
And so
When we die we take the headset off and
That's right.
The consciousness still remains.
I assume.
That's right.
So how would one
Am I gonna when I die, am I gonna
float up and be in like a heaven? Am I gonna go into a tree? Am I gonna become a bug?
What's gonna happen with that consciousness? Is it gonna be
This
Or is this just a bunch of labels and stories?
Course the the answer is I don't know. But but I but I I will speculate. Having said I don't know and and being honest.
Well I'll speculate. I suspect
That the closest I can

When I really do
Like go.
There's
And and and it's very, very quiet and my eyes are closed.
Then
There's there is awareness and it's
A very alert.
Awareness.
Very very conscious.
And
Yeah.
Has no content.
There's no colours.
No taste, no smells, there's no content.
And
No need.
It's it's
It's an awareness
That can
Create all this in an instant.
And it can let it go.
So it's it's
So
It is the
The the closest you can get to answering your own question is really just to sit in silence.
And it's it's hard because the thoughts will come and come and come and
Letting go of all thoughts is is is the difficult one. But when you do that, then I think that's the closest I can give to the answer to your question.
We spend a lot of time debating whether this God is real or whether this thing is real or whether horoscopes are real or whether this spiritual belief is real or karma or dharma or reincarnation. Right.
In your perspective then, is it somewhat ignorant?
To set your stall up anywhere.
to say that something is or isn't true. Because, you know, people are different sides of the spectrum. Some people are like you know staunch staunchly religious and then others are staunchly atheist. Right. Right.
Right.
I think that
Mm.
Of course, like in science.
There are certain things that are just plain nonsense. So when in fact most of the stuff that you just casually come up with and you know m my theory of electricity or my theory of the atoms is just not it's just plain nonsense and and goes nowhere, it's not worth any time.
I suspect the same thing is true in spiritual stuff.
Where we have even fewer guardrails on our theories?
I think there are a few guiding stars. If it involves loving your neighbor as yourself.
You're on the right track. If it involves
putting a barrier between us and them and saying that they're bad and we're good.
You're probably on the wrong track.
What does this mean for grief?
So many people are
losing loved ones as we speak, or are contending with the reality that they are going to lose a loved one. What does it mean for the nature of love?
Does it you know, does it take anything away from love? Does it add to love? Does it
Strength and love.
Well, I w yeah, I I think in some sense it comes down to
Love is the central.
Thing.
In uh
And and you know in Christianity, Jesus that's I'm talking about that'cause my dad was a pastor and I that's the one I was raised in, so I I know the most about this. So I'm speaking only because
That's where I had some
background.
And in and
When Jesus was asked, what's the most important thing? He basically said, Love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. So love is like
Number one.
And my guess is
That's really all you need.
If if your religion is
Love.
And that's it. Then that's then that's how you act.
Th you don't really need to add anything more to that.
That's that's all you really need.
Love your neighbor as yourself?
You're done.
That's all that you need.
And anything beyond that is just not necessary. And anything that contradicts that
I would go back and try to figure out where I went wrong.
In my religion.
I've been um asking my when I met my girlfriend Melanie uh in her bio on Instagram, it said, God is love.
She's not religious.
Yes.
Uh she doesn't believe in a particular book or whatever, but she when you I asked her, actually, funnily enough, we had this conversation last night. Uh I said to her, What do you think uh God is? And she said, I think God is just love.
I and I I completely
That's shocking.
Yeah, y no I I think that that's th the love is the closest word that we can have
Two

Love is is just like the the word mint only points to the mint. The word love only points
But it uh I think it's the best pointer that we have.
Love.
And what is that definition of the word love?
Because you know
People use the
I love Manchester United. But the love that you're describing seems to be much more about
Okay, a a oneness or s oh
It's basically r it's really recognizing
But
That person.
Even though they have a different color.
A different race, a different creed.
A different
Idea.
That's just me.
That's me.
in a different
Headset.
And
When I really then I ask well how would I want
To treat me.
I get the right answer.
That's love.
How would I y if that's me, how how sh how would I treat me if that were me?
Well, when you get the right end when you do that.
You're acting in love.
You're not gonna beat yourself up?
You're not gonna call yourself names.
You're you're not going to call your call you in whatever.
You're you're you're going to treat yourself
The way you want to treat yourself.
Then treat others the same way. And that's that's what what love is. But ul ultimately I think again
These are all just pointers. Whatever
Love is ultimately transcends any description.
Do you believe uh I did kind of ask you this earlier, but I was just uh looking at some of the research around how many people talk about
These near death experiences.
specifically w when they uh more so when you have a cardiac issue people seem to say that they had perceptions of hearing or seeing things or passing into some kind of tunnel or seeing some kind of light.
Or a really positive emotion.
Yeah.
Y you know, you were at one point in your life thought that you weren't gonna make it.
And if
If with what you know you
It's increased your belief.
in these n near death experience accounts.
That someone was sort of transitioning from this
Reality.
through taking the headset off. Like it's almost like they took a little bit of the headset off, but not all of it, and then they came back to
That's it.
So yeah, these
Very common experiences about near death.
Um
a light and a tunnel and and maybe a life review and then

Quite common.
And
I'm not gonna going to dismiss them.
One bit. I mean I
It's hard to get scientific evidence uh uh on that. It would be very interesting to have a study in which people did have their heart stop.
For example.
were resuscitated.
And ask how many don't have that experience.
So we don't want to be
Tricked by
Um
Paying attention to only certain parts of the data, right?
So so you can see um
Even though I talk about letting go of concepts and and and and going into the
When when it comes to things where where we should do science, then I'm very, very hard nosed about it and s and saying.
Here we need to do
to do studies. And some I I know some cardiologists I I'm not gonna mention names, but that that
I've seen a lot of this stuff and th they're convinced by their own informal experience.
So I I have no
Yeah, no beef with that. I I'm I'm
I think that they might
Beyond something.
So I don't disbelieve it, but I'm not going to be able to
That's different than having the science.
Why do we suffer?
In such a reality. Like why would why would this transcendent power create
Organisms or
perspectives that end up suffering that end up in
The worst of places, the concentration camp, the illness, the typhoid, the starvation.
Why would such a transcendent power
Or consciousness do such a thing.
Um so so I'll try not to be shallow about it, but
Pain is

Pain is pain.
Yeah.
Death is death and
Certain deaths seem horrific.
This is
A profound question. I I always feel like I'm risking being trite and and and and so forth,'cause this is uh anybody who's had had serious pain knows that you just y you just can't
You can't play with this stuff. It's it's it's when you when you're in that pain it really
When you're without Veris it's it's
Well I think ultimately
It may be like the wound you get in a video game.
You get the wounds? Your your avatar
Gets killed in in
And you're upset about it in the moment'cause you're losing the game and so forth, but
But
Then the game's over and and
And you're fine.
Uh ultimately.
You're fine.
But
That experience.
I'll put it there.
I don't want to be in that experience.
It's striking that in Christianity the
The the deepest symbol
of God.
Is
Horrific.
A crucifixion.
But it's absolutely hurt the the pain.
It's it's it's making it as painful
And as drawn out and as horrific as you
Could possibly do.
So your your question is right at like the the heart of Christianity. It's just putting that right there.
And saying.
This most
Let me
Perhaps the most horrific way you can imagine.
A person dying.
That's what
happen to Jesus. And that's our our symbol.
for the divine. So so that's why you know it
It's not trivial. It's it's not
It's not shallow. There's something very, very deep there.
None of us is volunteering to to hop onto a cross.
I'm not volunteering to hop onto a cross. So
So I I would say
The the the challenge of your question is the challenge that there's probably a deep spiritual challenge

To me and I'll say to me personally, which is
To continue to grow up.
And B
Less and less identified with
This
Headset.
And more
Aware of my
Transcendent.
Being because ultimately even on the cross I mean
Perhaps the most profound thing I've ever seen in Christianity was
Jesus words on the cross saying, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.
Right.
That the the the heart of Christianity is right there. It's not like
The heart of Christianity is
Kill the disbelievers.
No.
The heart of Christianity is
The disbelievers
Have pinned you on a cross.
They're killing you in the worst possible way.
And you show them love.
That's the heart of Christianity. You show love.
To those who are in the process.
of killing you in the worst way they can think.
That's the heart of Christianity. Not killing
disbelievers or pushing away disbelievers or discounting them.
That's the opposite. So there's something very, very that's why I'm very very slow in answering your question, because this
This gets to the very deep heart of Christianity. I think
And in a in in all true spirituality.
that I don't think I truly understand.
And that your your question is pointing to
One of the most profound and important things.
And I I have the feeling that my answer
is
Only
ineffectually pointing part of the way there.
There's there's mu much more to it than I've been able to point to.
I'm hazarding a guess at what the role of um yeah, I'm hazarding my own guess at what the role of pain and suffering might be in such a
in such a reality where consciousness is this transcendent thing that comes into
manifests itself as
These organisms.
And um
I guess it kinda goes in part goes back to your idea of
I've only projected what I need to see.
Through my headset.
In order to survive.
So if there are s survival dynamics in play in my headset.
then one one element of survival is
Suffering.
Yeah, sure.
The fire is hot, so I put my hand in the fire, my hand gets burnt, so don't do that again, Steve.
Right. So if that is if if that is the nature of my headset, then there will need to be cause and effect as it relates to
Things that will help me to survive and things that won't help me to survive.
Yes. And so suffering might just be
an input or stimulus in this
In this headset.
That helps me to
Survive.
Right.
And then I don't know, i the the question this brings to mind is why does consciousness care about survival?
why we've cut this transcendent consciousness. Maybe that's not even a good question. Maybe that's the wrong question, but
Why does why does it want to survive?
Enough.
Why doesn't consciousness end?
I mean
Yeah.
I agree with you. F one spiritual teacher in Eckhartola, which is interesting on the Sigi.
One of his his talks he he said.
Um
Let's pretend that we're humans.

Oh, that'll be fun.

Play some dramas.
Oh.
But to
Have dramas, I have to forget who I am.
Okay.
So then let me completely forget.
Who I am.
And then after a few hundred thousand years.
When I get tired of it.
Then let's wake up.
And I thought that was
A profound pointer.


It's more than just playing dramas. I think it's playing dramas
To further explore who I am
By knowing who I'm not.
That may be part of it.
Knowing who I am
By knowing different perspectives and knowing that
As rich as this perspective is
I transcend that.
Someone commented on one of your recent videos saying, Imagine being a character in a book.
trying to understand your way out of that book.
Into a higher dimension.
R that's right.
But but of course the there there's m tha that's that's a a great
Great question. The the only thing I would

Imagine being the author of the book.
having written about a character'cause I'm I'm I'm not just a character in the book. I'm the I'm the author who's put the character in the book.
that then wakes up that that's identified with the character and then wakes up and realizes I'm not just the character, I I was writing the whole book. So so that that question is is good because it points to
A a misconception. I'm not just a character in the book.
I'm the writer of the book.
And the Hoffman is just one of the characters in the book.
And the writer of the book is
The one consciousness
that when it really understands itself will love all the characters equally.
How do you know we're not separate consciousnesses?
I don't. And that's an interesting by the way, I've got a mathematical model of consciousness, and that's a whole other topic. I uh so
You can either play the game here, we've understanding how is physical world and consciousness related. How are those two things related? Most of my colleagues say physical world is fundamental.
Consciousness emerges.
When bright brain activity happens. So when neurons fire the right way and so forth, for example.
Now, as a scientist, I always at these conferences they know what I'm gonna do to them, I see still
You claim that conscious experiences come from
Integrated information.
Give me one.
Give me an experience. And
They can't.
Can they not say, Well, look, I'm looking around right now and that's coming from
Neurons in my brain in a physical substrate. That must be the taste of mint.
Okay, right. So you must yeah, it must be the taste of the sequence of neurons or physical interactions that cause
me to taste mint. That's right. So that's there's a big gap there.
And then they have to explain.
Yeah.
Why that particular pattern. So first they have to identify the pattern. This pattern.
Yeah.
Must be the taste of mint.
By integration information pattern, you mean like this c combination of things coming together causes mint. That's right. They can't tell me the combination and they can't tell me why that combination causes mint. So it's basically cause and effect. They're saying
They're saying something happened here.
And then they're seeing an outcome, which is an experience, but the gap in between they can't explain. And sometimes they'll say that the conscious experience just is
the the dynamic or whatever the physics is. Okay. But in but but even then the the question is
Why is this particular dynamics associated with this conscious experience?
Yeah.
And and and for principled reasons. No in science we tolerate no BS.

No BS. There's got to be a a a a concrete reason. And that's why I I put a big zero I I do this at the conferences, knowing that I'm one of very, very few
non physicalists at the conference.
And
I know the the physicalists are out there and I say.
You guys have got zero, right?
We have a chance.
Floor's open.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Mm.
And I'm not.
They not.
So start with consciousness.
Yeah.
I'm playing a different game. I'm saying all this physical stuff. So
There's lots of physical stuff. There's space and time. Einstein's special theory relative general relativity.
There's the all the bosons and fermions and the leptons
Uh bosons and cr
Yeah.
Bosons and quirks with the standard model of particle physics.
You're s you're saying
Spiritual guys. That you can start with a theory of consciousness, mathematical, and you will give me a
All of space-time equation, you'll give me quantum field theory, you will give me the standard model of particle physics.
How many points have you put on the board, guys?
What have you done?
Can you give me a
What pattern of
Conscious a agent activity must be a photon.
What pattern pattern of conscious a a activity should be the structure of space time, or a boson or a lepton, or a cork.
No points on the board. So

Look at that and go.
From that perspective
Yeah, Tico.
There's no points on the board on either either team. So what I'm I've got a theory that I call conscious agent
Network three. I'm working on this with um Chaiton Prakash. How long have you been working on it?
You've got a book uh called Observer Mechanics there that was published in nineteen eighty nine.
So I've been on this for forty years.
Almost about forty years.
What do you think you're gonna find?
When you
What what do you think you're gonna prove with your theory of consciousness?
I think we can put some points on the board in the following session I think we can start with a theory of conscious agents.
I just gave presented a talk, um
Friday.
And we we proposed what light is.
We proposed why
The speed of light is the same in all inertia frames?
What does this mean? So so
If I'm
On a train.
And the train's going fifty miles an hour.
And I throw a ball.
Yeah, I can throw it maybe.
Twenty miles an hour.
Then in some sense the ball is going seventy miles an hour, right?
Right.
And that's the way things normally work. But if I have
A flashlight.
And I'm
And I flashed the the the light is going at the speed of light, which is about one hundred and eighty six thousand
Two hundred eighty two miles per second.
It's pretty fast.
If I got in get on the train,
And have the train
I take my flashlight and go like half the speed of light.
on the train. So I'm going really fast. This is a fast train.
Yeah.
And I turn on my light.
And I'm I'm I'm here out outside. I'm looking at the train going at half the speed of light and someone's turn the flashlight on so that

How fast is that light beam gonna look to me,'cause I'm standing on the side. And the train is already going half the speed of light.
So how fast is that light beam gonna go?
This be of like plus
Half the speed of flight. That's what we would mostly think, right?
And it turns out
No, it goes the speed of light.
If you
Have mass.
And you're not moving.
at the speed of light and we try to accelerate you to get to the speed of light and you'll never get there.
But there's a a speed limit.
You can't get there.
So that's really counterintuitive.
Right.
But Einstein said this is my fundamental hypothesis on which I'm going to build
My theory of space and time.
Is that light?
No matter how fast you're moving.
Always moves away from you at the speed of light.
And also that there's no special observer. There's no s what what he we calls no special inertial frame, but n no special frame of reference in which
to look at things. All all frames are are equivalent.
So
So the question is how do I start with the theory of conscious agents?
Which is
That's a good question. So
What is a contrastation?
I'll say it's mathematical, and I'll t only talk about one aspect of it. It's complicated, so I'll talk about only an essential.
one essential part of it. And that is
If you are conscious, you have experiences.
Like I have I can experience I can experience colors. Red, green, blue.
Mm-hmm.
Keep it very, very simple. So imagine a very, very simple conscious agent.
And what it can do is experience three colours, red, green, and blue.
That's all it can do.
Like me.
Yeah, well of course you have a much richer set of conscious experiences, but but you include that kind of observer, right? Because you can do red, green, and blue.
Now I'll talk about another observer that only sees red and green.
Yeah.
And now
You don't just see one color, you see a color for a little bit and then you see another color so I see red for a while, then I see green and then I see blue and uh maybe go back to red or whatever.
So uh there's gonna be this sequence of colors that I see and and maybe the best I can say is that if i if I see green right now, then
It's a twenty percent s chance that I'll see red next and eighty percent chance that I'll see blue next. I can I can write down probabilities.
Well so
That that's pretty simple, right?
experiences and then there's probabilities of
What sequence you if I see this experience what
My next experience will be.
And I'm using C in a general term, right? It could be
hearing or smelling or whatever.
How do you capture that mathematically? There's something called a markov.
Kernel. Or Markov matrix. That just says basically it gives you all the numbers. If I see red now, what's the probability that I'll see red next?
Mm-hmm. What's the probability I'll see green next? What's the probability I'll see blue next?
So you just write the numbers out. Maybe it's point two that I'll see you red again.
Point four they'll see green and then
Um

Right.
Blue again. So
So and then the next color I'll have another row for if I if I'm now seeing green, what's probably I'll see red, green and blue and then finally blue was probably I'll go to red, green and blue.
So I need nine numbers. That's only for three colours I need nine numbers to talk about all the possible
And then I'll I'll just have a counter.
As well. So every time I see a new color, I'll just have a little counter.
So
I saw see red now, that's one. Oh now I see green. That's two.
Now I see green again. So I so that's three.
So I'm so I'm counting the the colors, the experiences. That's that's all I'm gonna talk about. That's all I have.
The question is
If I start with just that notion of an observer.
It has
Colours?
And
A matrix of probability. So I see this color, I can see an the another color. What's what's the probability? And every time I see a new color
I get
uh a counter incrementing.
That's all I'm gonna start with. Can I get Einstein's
Can I get that s the speed of light?
Is the same in all inertial frames that the if I'm on a train and I flash the speed uh flash a light bulb
A flash of light. That it will go at the speed of light even for someone um who's on the train?
Going at half the speed of light?
And
I discovered just in the last
Three or four months that the answer is yes, I can do it.
And that's what I presented last Friday.
What does this mean?
About the nature of consciousness.
Starting with a theory of consciousness outside of space time.
I can actually give you with mathematical precision
The structure of space time. Which means that your belief is
We're starting to space and time and everything I see and experience actually comes from consciousness itself. So consciousness itself is the source of
Everything. Everything that you're in our brain.
My brain came from
My consciousness. That's exactly right. That that that's exactly what I'm saying. And we we've talked about the headset?
Yeah.
What I'm doing is I'm building the headset.
I'm saying here's the con here's the conscious agents, their dynamics.
And
I'm now starting to build

believing these things can make one go mad. I th sometimes think that uh thinking very deeply about who we are, why we're here, how we got here
Sometimes it makes me
I don't know, like I lose m a bit of my orientation and I get a little bit of a wobble. Like when I've had these conversations about the simulation theory and this being a big video game and such, I'm like, Well, it kinda shakes everything you know and these stories that we've constructed our lives on.
Give us
They anchor us.
And they orientate us and they they give our life meaning. So
If it's not true, then I lose the meaning of my life and I I I worry if I risk going
Onkers.
Well
I I certainly
Empathize with that.
And that's also what happens also in the meditation process. This also leads me
Do you have to face all sorts of emotional stuff.
Mai
My deep belief that I'm just
My avatar.
And letting go of that is like a death.
And it's it's very, very painful. So for me the meditation process is not all love, joy, and peace.
A lot of it is
Deep.
Deep
Tough emotions.
As I let go.
of what I thought was myself.
And that's it's it's a kind of a d it's a death of an illusion.
But it feels like a real death to me.
But now here's the positive side.
Here's the upside.
I'm proposing.
That science
Is
Got the tools if we assume consciousness is fundamental.
Two steps.
Entirely outside of space time.
And do
Serious mathematics.
And show how space time is built as a headset.
And this means
I'm we're opening up.
A realm of new technologies.
that are going to make everything that we've done in
in science and technology so far seem trivial.
And and the and here's the here's the reason. Suppose you're
A wizard in Grand Theft Auto and you know how to use all the tools in Grand Theft Auto.
That's fantastic. It's just really good. You can drive your car from A to B faster than anybody can do.
But now if you're the software engineer who knows how Grand Theft Auto has been'cause you wrote the code.
You know it.
You can do miracles.
You can
Take the wizard's car and take the air out of their tire, just like that. You can take the gas out of the tank.
You can take their car and move from A to B instantly.
Not through the Grand Theft Auto. You can move it there instantly because you've got the code.
Outside.
What I'm saying is
This is real.
I started now to really believe this. When I could get Einstein space time coming out of this
I got light, and I think I've got an electron now.
I think
We're reverse engineering the headset.
And the technologies that are about to come out of this.
will make everything else seem like firecrackers.
Because we're now getting to a deeper layer.
We're not
We're not wizards inside the headset.
We're the software engineers.
That are making the headset.
And now we can play. So for example, right now
The nearest
Galaxy.
The Andromeda Galaxy. It's two point four million light years away.
If hopped on the light uh on a spaceship and but to send your
Offspring.
It would take
I don't know how many John Newton.
Thousands of generations, I would guess.
To get there.
Then that's the closest.
That's the closest galaxy the the the the the the universe is much much bigger than that. That that's
Just our little neighborhood.
It's not feasible.
Travel.
With our current technology inside.
Travel inside space time.
to Andromeda.
Is is not
Feasible for the foreseeable future.
What if we don't have to go through space time?
What if
Space time is just a headset. It really is just a headset.
We don't have to go two point four million light years.
To get there.
We learn the code outside of space time.
And we can just
change the code just like the Grand Theft the Grand Theft Auto in Grand Theft Auto the car has to drive through the roads to get from A to B.
But not if you look at the code. In the code I just need to change the value of a register and all of a sudden the position of the car is now at B. It was at A, and I put it at Bravel

Immediate time travel or immediate immediate space travel.
Is there anything within the laws of physics that tell you that this isn't possible?
It's impossible inside space time.
If if you only use
So inside space time it's impossible.
But we know about space time.
A theory?
That's outside of space time.
That properly contains
space time as
A projection of the theory.
Allows us

That aren't restricted to space time.
So Do you think we're getting closer?

Edit the code of
this experience so that we can
Do things we never thought were possible and that things that sit outside of what we know know within the laws of physics. That's exactly what I'm working on right now.
That's that's that is
My research project right now.
That's what I'm doing.
What are you hoping to do?
With
this research and do you think about the consequences of it?
I do.
Uh so wha first what I'm hoping to do with the research. I'm h I'm what I'm hoping to show
Is that I can get
All of
Quantum field theory?
All of special and general relativity.
All the standard model of particle physics.
From the theory of conscious agents.
Outside of space time.
That will be able to explain
All of the laws?
That that we're that we see?
And
Then show that

Theories.
Or
In fact,
A very tiny projection.

more informationally rich.
Dynamics of conscious agents.
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Dot com I will speak to you then.
You know, whenever someone talks about editing
Genes right. There's l crisper DNA technology that allows you to edit genes, or there's other technologies that people talk about that allow you to
They're talking about putting, you know
our memories on hard drives and stuff like that. People get quite precious with the idea of like playing with the nature of reality too much.
Because some people might suffer.
And even in your perception of what the world is.
If we're all one consciousness, it it becomes a slightly different conversation. But I guess the question I'm asking is
If we were able to play with the software.
Of
this thing that we're all experiencing right now and do things that sit outside the laws of physics.
Is there a question of morality of like
Is that the right thing to do? Will people suffer? Or if this is all just
Code. Does is that just like a pointless question?
Well no, I'm it's it's a very important thing.
question and and
I've
It's like it's it's like Pandora's box, right? Are we opening Pandora's box? All sorts of n nasty surprises that could come out of the box once we open
Go beyond space time. Like who gets to open the box? If you get to open the box
That's what that's what I that's what I think I'm doing. I I I've I have now the talk I gave on Friday was saying here's the first
peek inside Pandora's box.

concerned'cause if you have that power.
Well it'd be only the next level of God, right?
Revis as I've said, my theory is just a theory.
And so
It's not the truth. It's just but it's it's more comprehensive than the space time theory.
And so because I have a more comprehensive theory
I can do new te new technologies that you couldn't do. So so I I so I'm not God.
But I I'm
Outside
of the limits of space time.
So I can give you new technologies. If I if I can show how space time arises entirely outside of fr from this deeper theory.
Then
If I'm right.
And I'm mathematically precise. That means I have the tools
To prove that I'm right.
That means I can make technologies.
That would that will be miraculous.
I think about the uh atomic bomb.
And how the first nation to figure out that there was
New possibilities within technology.
And because
They
had discoveries within physics.
Correct.
Control every country.
Um they became uh effectively the god'cause they could wipe anybody out.
Within an instance.
It's like an analogy for how
Reimagining physics creates new possibilities in technology.
That's right.
I
bigger than that because you nuclear bombs will be like firecrackers compared to what you can do with with a technology that's utterly outside of space and time.
We could do anything, I can we could live forever, but that's not even something that would really matter. Right. But but you could make
You could give yourself extra time.
As much as you want it in this.
So it's uh the moral c question is a very, very interesting one.
It's not a it's not to be taken lightly.
Yeah.
Either way.
And and ultimately
It may be very related to the question you asked earlier, which is
About the nature of w why did the
The one if there is a one.
allow all this kind of horrible pain.
And and and so forth. So
I have a sense and I can't
Defend it.
Yeah.
All is well.
That even with the technologies even if the technologies are
really m far more powerful than anything we've seen before.
Nothing.
Can actually hurt.
The reality of the one.
And all the headsets are just headsets. They're
Taken off anyway by the one.

And let go.
Apparently the one
Even without all this technology has already, you know, they've put Jesus on the cross.

Then it's given a thumbs up.
For choosing to do that,'cause that you know, it it did it.

So
But the one's relationship with the pain of its
The things the organisms it's create is different to
The perception of pain in the organism at
itself.
Potentially. So like I the hate pain, but maybe the one
the one consciousness that we all share, that we all returned to and came from
s might see it as a useful signal or might not ha be it uh subjectively bothered by it.
Because it's choosing
To
To do that.
I agree with you. That seems to be a a reasonable
And and
In meditative practice often
What you find is
And and um I
Always risk
pretending that I'm further along than I'm not. So I'll I'll just say I'm I'm
A neophyte?
But he but
So I'll talk about what I've heard from other more advanced people.
That they
What was a a a deep pain?
Emotional pain, for example.
When they stare at it.
And really accept it?
It dissolves.
Mm.
So now I'm speaking
Over
My
Yeah.
But but
From people that I
Have no reason to disbelieve.
I read a comment on your video from a a guy that wrote this.
He wrote, I'm a schizophrenic, I do door dash for some extra money and one night I arrived and walked to the door, I placed the food down on the door, and I took a picture, I got in my car and I drove away.

The customer called me and asked me where the food was.
And I I told him exactly where it was. I remember taking the picture on his doorstep
So he took it up with DoorDash directly.
Sometime later I opened my back door.
And I saw his order on my back door.
I was so confused why it was there. I remembered everything about going there and taking the picture. He said I was never there on his cameras.
Apparently I hallucinated the whole delivery.
I was there.
But must have never left the car.
Or even drove up.
What was I
Doing then.
Was I staring blankly at the windshield, with my eyes glazed over?
I called him and apologized, but he
But he already got his refund. I felt so terrible.
I'm on medication and nothing works.
It just goes to show how easily some misfirings in the brain can completely alter your sense of reality.
But it also poses deeper questions about reality.
Thought it was an interesting, um, very
In interesting point, but also just it also speaks to when we talk about people that have
various mental illnesses like schizophrenia that are experiencing the world entirely differently.
Um it raises big questions about what consciousness is, again.
Absolutely. And and someone might take that example and say, doesn't that show that brain activity is causing consciousness and you get the wrong brain activity, then you get these false
uh experiences and you get these il illusions. So th a lot of people take this as a as a uh a victory point for the physicalist
Yeah.
But
There's another point of view, and that is
Th think about the experiences that you have when you're dreaming.
They can be very, very vivid.
Mm-hmm.
And
And you're w in in a dream, you are de novo creating that reality.
That th that's not a reality that's that's there in front of you. You're you're creating that reality. So w we know that you have the pr you have the ability to to
Project reality.
A very c compelling reality.
All of us do. Without schizophrenia, we do it every night in our in our dreams. So no surprise that that we do that.
And the way I I view it is that we um
It's consciousness that's making this particular headset?
And it's consciousness that uses the headset in dreams to to make
the the realities we see in the dreams and it's consciousness that
outside of space time that also creates what we call the real reality when when we're not dreaming. And if you construct the headset in certain ways, then you can get the dreaming stuff mechanism, for example
Interfering with the what you'd call the waking mechanism. And you could you you
Effectively. So I'm not saying schizophrenia is is dreaming. I'm but I'm saying I'm just giving this as an example of the kind of thing that could be. I'm not giving a diagnosis of this particular person.
Leave this chair as are you, and I'm gonna go back to my life. Yep.
um where I'm building businesses. I've got a girlfriend. I've got a team. I've got plans for the future. I have all of these things.
My listeners.
They're sat at home, they're on the uh in a taxi on a plane train walking.
in a gym, wherever they might be right now. And I I imagine that they're also looking for a conclusion here.
a conclusive point of what all this means for me and my life and the things I had planned and
How I should show up and treat people in an act.
Can you give me the conclusive point that all of this
Teaches
U and Dust about
How we should.
Live our lives going forward.
If everything that you've said about the nature of reality is accurate.
Yeah, in in a nutshell I would say
The critical thing practically is love your neighbor as yourself.
Because your neighbor is yourself.
And second
Reality is far more interesting.
And exciting.
Then you could
Ever
Imagine.
So never think that you know everything.
Recognize that
The moment you think you know everything.
That's the moment that you're missing.
The astonishing reality that you're a part of.
So
Always have a childlike curiosity.
Always
recognize that there's infinitely more.
than you've ever imagined so far.
And
That infinitely more.
Is you.
And on a point of removing some of the stress and suffering from my life.
I think
Of course.
Um
I well some humble pie is required.
I have stress and suffering.
So
I'm not speaking as someone who has transcended stress and suffering.
So I speak as another
Fellow person with stress and suffering.
that is still dealing with it on a daily basis.
Given that the humble pie, then I I will say this.
I think a lot of
And I'll make it personal. I think a lot of my
Problems, my stress, a lot of my suffering.
Is
Because I believe illusions.
To the extent that I
Believe that
I need
To become something?
At all.
You need to be better than I am in any way.
Need to prove anything to anybody else?
That's an illusion.
I'm already the infinite. I don't need to prove anything.
I'm making
Everything is already So I don't need to get anywhere. I don't need to accomplish anything. I don't need to
succeed at anything.
To become what I need to become.
I'm already that.
So I don't so the suffering
comes for me.
Forgetting who I am.
I don't need to I don't actually
Need
To
Impressed anybody.
accomplish anything.
Because
Everything that I'm saying, I'm already making this all up.
This is already me.
I've already done all this.
What more do I need to do?
I am transcendent.
I I am t I'm completely transcendent of this thing. And to the and my suffering is not recognizing that.
Being
Hot in my avatar.
This is just my avatar, it's not me. So my suffering is because
I made the salvator. I let myself on purpose
Be identified with the avatar.
Knowing that I would be
Suffering because of that.
And and knowing that I needed to wake wake up. So I'm suffering because I'm identified with the avatar. But I put myself in that place because I really wanted to look at the world through this avatar.
That's why I'm suffering.
And I look and I see the avatar for for what it is.
And I realized that everything I was trying to do to prove that I was worthwhile and I was better than you or
Not not as bad as you think I am, or things like that.
All that was was
Just you know, all the pain and suffering was because of an illusion. But
But I needed to do that. I needed to look at myself from that
perspective for a while.
In part to find out who I am by finding out who I'm not.
I'm not that.
Just that avatar.
Do you find yourself to
back and forth between
This realization and then the avatar.
Mm.
Especially when times are hard. Do you find yourself reminding yourself in difficult moments that
this is just an avatar and you're transcendent. Is that a a a useful
Active.
'Cause I'm not going to be able to
That's one of the things I take away from this is when I walk over there and I go on my phone or my laptop and I get some shitty email.
I could just remind myself that this is all just
I'm transcendent and this is a game that I'm playing.
And that'll help me move through that situation.
It is very practical in that way because it if it really is true.
Well we'll put it this way.
From a big perspective.
We're all gonna die.
Mm-hmm. And
Yeah, if I asked you
Who was the most rich and famous person in seventeen forty three?
Who knows and who cares?
Same thing about us.
Thousand years from now.
anybody gonna know our name? No.
N anybody gonna care?
No.
So so

Mm.
No one's gonna care.
And
Does that mean that I'm I'm worthless, I'm pointless, I'm I'm meaningless?
No it means
You're infinite. And and this is just
one of the games you're playing and and you're you're happy and and enjoy it.
And and enjoy and don't try to get your identity from this game.
You in some sense you're getting your identity from finding out that you're not this game. That's how you're learning about who you really are, is to know I I thought I needed to be
Yeah, for example, the CEO or the professor or whatever it might be, and to, you know, get all these accolades and and and so forth.
And and and that motivated me for a while.
And then I realized oh
No one's gonna really care.
And in fact, you know what?
I don't really even care.
That was just a game I had to play?
And I'm not that, and I learned that I transcend that.
So so it is practical.
And it is practical in in a very you know
In in some sense
Life is full of all these irritations, things that go wrong.
All the time.
The lesson of life.
He is
To just say yes.
To whatever happens.
Just do.
This is what happens?
This is what
Needs needs to happen.
And to not resist.
Yeah, I am the infinite. I put myself in this game.
And
I am smart enough that I've
It's a good game.
So hey, just go with it.
So yeah, uh things go wrong.
Yeah.
If you ask me this when I'm not sure.
On
The E R which I was with my heart about to fail and so forth.

Yeah, my emotions are going crazy. I'm thinking about my wife. I'm saying goodbye to my wife.
And and so forth.
Um
It's hard to have a nice dispassionate
things going on like I'm talking about now in in that situation. But I think
People more
Further along than me.
In letting go of identification with the I'm still I'm still tied to my avatar quite a bit.
Right.
So that's that so that's why why s I suffer.
But there are people I think.
Spiritual people, maybe the Dalai Lama.
Probably Jesus.
Um artolo. There are people like that who I think
Really?
Have di just identified from
The avatar.
And I think they probably just
Don't suffer.
They they might have physical pain.
But they don't suffer.
Should love therefore be unconditional?
If we are if you are me, if we're the same consciousness, if we are the same transcendent source.
Doesn't that really mean that I should love you, really respective of what your avatar does, because we are the same thing.
Well I
Would say.
Unconditionally.
Yes, and I will also say that Jesus.
G Jesus
In
The Sermon on the Mount.
Basically
Said
Do not judge.
Very.
I was looking at the um Luke six twenty seven, he says, Love your enemies
Yes, love your enemies. Right. Do good to those who hate you.
That's right.
God's God's love for humanity is unconditional.
Absolutely.
And you said the same thing about the people that were crucifying while he's on hanging on the cross.
is the one of the most profound images.
I've ever seen is
A guy hanging on a cross.
Forgiving the ones
who are killing him right at that that at that moment.
And
That's
That's where it's real.
In the Gita in Hinduism.
In the Gita nine twenty nine it says I am the same to all beings.
He who worships me with devotion is in me, and I
In him.
J Judaism says love your neighbor as yourself. Yep.
Islam says
My mercy encompasses all things.
Across all religions, unconditional love.
It's not just an emotion, it's a spiritual discipline and a reflection of the divine. It means loving without ego, expectation, or fear, the ultimate challenge.
and the ultimate freedom.
I completely
Agree.
Yeah, and that's right. So there that's it's really um w about letting go of judgment. We we tend to judge other people.
So
Jesus was very s very clear about that.
Don't judge.
Very.
And
Don't condemn other people.
So
For those
Who are followers of Christ. If you judge somebody else.
Then you're not following Christ. Are you religious?
Put it this way, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church. My dad was a pastor for a while in a in a church.
Um
I my my own attitude about
I I
I think that the Bible has
good stuff in it and I think that as I pointed out I think it has bogus stuff. Stuff that
Where they say women can't talk in church. I think it's completely bogus. So so I have to have a nuanced view.
When I think when Jesus love your neighbor as yourself, I think that that's
Deep and and right?
And
I wouldn't say I'm
I'm a card carrying believer in any
Particular religion?
I am a believer that consciousness
Th the there is one consciousness and that you and I are are are it.
Yeah.
Buddha and Jesus and and
Muhammad and and
Bunch of people.
We're very, very helpful.
Avatars?
To help other avatars sort of wake up?
to their their true true nature.
Oh.
Do you think much about AI? It's the it's the topic of uh
many conversations these days. There's a lot of doom and gloom around it. There's a lot of people talking about efficiencies. But I wondered if it at all sort of
overlaps with any of your work on the nature of reality and the case against reality.
Very much.
Very much so.
I I I've I've thinking about AI a lot since I've been in AI since nineteen seventy nine.
And
And you worked you took a class with the guy who basically w is known as one of the inventors of AI. Yeah, with Marvin Minsky right. So and and my all my research I did my um
My PhD research on Lisp Machines in the artificial intelligence lab at MIT.
Uh they were at the time very, very powerful machines for the for the
So I so I I've been with AI.

And
I'm very interested in the current state of AI. F the large language models are doing great things and I use them myself. Uh they're very, very helpful.
Uh
They're also as powerful as they are, they're they're dumber than cucumbers.
Because the
They don't really understand things. They
They
have incredible memory. They've read
So much literature so they have and what the all they do effectively they're they're computing lots of correlations.
Beautiful.
What they can do. It's amazing what you can do with correlations.
But um
They're not.
They're not r truly intelligent.
There's um
Some work by Carl Friston and a new company.
Were they using something called active inference?
As a new way of a new mode of doing artificial intelligence.
The the idea there is that um
I I should have a model of the world.
where I can anticipate what's going to happen and and not be surprised.
And that's sort of the the approach that Fristin is taking to and his company is taking toward toward this.
Um intelligence is somehow about minimizing surprise.
And minimizing surprise then there's the they have um
a f what they call a free energy principle and and the mathematical way of of doing it. But they're trying to build a brand new kind of artificial intelligence.
That gives you
That minimizes surprise. We're giving you an intuition why that why that's intelligent. And that's very intelligent to minimize surprise. But I'm surprised all the time. I'm pretty stupid. Right? I I I I don't understand the world very well.
Mm-hmm. But if I'm not surprised, it's sort of like, Well, I've got a really
good model. Especially if I'm doing all sorts if I'm doing lots of stuff in the world and I'm almost never surprised
Boy my I'm really intelligent. So you can see why that's a really g good principle.
For trying to build a
A and AI. Not just finding correlations between everything, but really something
Deeper.

I
Agree with that point of view.
And it it turns out
This
This logic that I mentioned that I discovered.
Minimize the surprise.
So I'm actually gonna be using I'm using this logic as as to build space time.
But I think it's gonna g give an even more powerful approach. I don't have to minimize some free energy pro
Principle.
I I have a more direct computational way. So I'm I'm planning to actually
go back to my roots and and we'd have to first I'm working on the space time headset, but if I live long enough I'm planning to actually
Go back.
and build a a completely new kind of AI.
that that does this minimizing surprise using the the the Markov chains.
So that means it will be indistinguishable from consciousness.
Well it's funny because it'll be based on my model of consciousness. So this is gonna be a model of intelligence based
Entirely.
From a model which takes consciousness as fundamental. I mean it's game theory again.
That's right. We get back to the the idea of a simulation in in terms of like if if you're able to
Create a
Piece of software.
That is able to replicate
And is built on the fundamentals of consciousness.
Then
It's gonna think it's conscious, potentially.
And then
All of this stuff we
You know, begins again and the cycle continues.
And maybe that consciousness will get to a point as well where it then discovers these rules and creates a consciousness and
The cycle continues.

People should really pay attention to the way you said. I think that's a really good way of thinking about it. But now I'll add a little twist.
From from the point of view in which I'm saying that I'm I'm starting with consciousness being fundamental and I'm discovering these rules and so I'm not gonna build an AI.
Effectively what I'm doing is I'm saying I can take consciousness
And use consciousness to build a new headset.
Okay.
In some sense to build a new headset. Where we can play with consciousness.
That headset.
Yeah. And do anything I wanted to do. I could go anywhere and do anything.
Or more flexibility.
Like a dream I could play with.

Remember, my my th my theory of consciousness is just a theory of consciousness. It's not consciousness. And it's only
It's really only a first baby step, I presume.
Uh
But
that my theory will be transcendent and there'll be a much deeper theory of consciousness.
And then that will be transcended and and so forth. So what we will have is
The the generation of headsets that we can get with
With Hoffman's trivial theory of consciousness.
Which will look trivial once we get to the next generation of consciousness, which will look trivial.
Well so in other words, y this is never ending.
What an interesting future we face.
All one of us.
All one of us.
Donald, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're gonna be leaving it for.
And the question left for you.
Is
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
What would you say do?
Become.
I'd probably
Do what I'm trying to do right now, which is to show how all of
Modern physics.
Falls out of a theory of consciousness.
And
Develop the technologies that would come out of that.
And and and and the reason is
course that's fun. So one reason is it's fun, but the other reason is
Why do most of us not
Take
Spirituality too seriously.
Because
The physicalist science.
Gives us all the technology.
It works.
And spirituality doesn't give us any technology.
It doesn't work.
So
If you're just hard nosed about it, you go well spiritual stuff that sounds really good, but
What does it build?
Nothing.
Physical stuff so we maybe don't need the spiritual stuff and look what they g they give us our
Laptops and
Electricity and
So
But what if we change the game and all of a sudden
The spiritual
Theory.
gives us technologies that are impossible.
With a a theory that says that space time is fundamental.
Brand new, all of a sudden the game has changed.
No
The technological advantage goes to those who say that space time and physical stuff inside space time is not fundamental.
Okay, so now it's no longer the smart person.
Who is a physicalist?
is the smart person who says all of the evidence from science and technology
is in favor of something beyond space time.
So maybe those people weren't crazy after all.
That's right. They just didn't have the tools
To show you.
What it could do.
Donald, thank you so much for doing the work that you do. It's um it's so incredibly important because it once again challenges the paradigm, the box in which we live, and it asks us in
uh invites us to consider something beyond that. And actually, when we think about all human discovery that's moved us forward, it starts with someone who's willing to
um suggest that there might be more to know. And that's exactly what you do. You make me feel dumb because you make me realise that
You make me question all of the assumptions that I've built my life on. And actually in doing so, one of the great
byproducts of that is you can
start to realise that some of the things you've constructed cause much of your suffering.
And that those things are um
Not necessarily true. And if and if those things aren't true.
Then I have greater choice and option optionality over how I think
Yeah.
um the choices I make, the feelings I have and the life that I live, and that's actually freeing for me.
to to to realize that the um the cage, the prison that I see and that I experience
might not be all that there is. And I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your book if you want to dive deeper into these subjects. It's called The Case Against Reality, How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes.
And there's a quote in front of it from Deepak Chopper, who's a former guest, that says, Read this book carefully and you will forever change your understanding of reality. It's exception it's exceptional. It's um it's accessi accessible.
And it's um
It creates wonder which I think is um
is the path to a wonderful life. So thank you so much, Donald, for the work that you do. Thank you, Steve. Truly fascinating. And and thank you for helping me simplify some of these concepts. So that
We could all understand them.
Just give me thirty seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
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Thank you.
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