Conscious Agents and Decision-Making

One of our favorite interviews ever (originally posted in 2019): We have NO CLUE how consciousness emerges from 3 pounds of wet goo. Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman takes us deep into his research that makes a bold claim: we’ve been attacking the problem BACKWARDS.

The implications of his theories just may change everything you think you know about reality and our place in it. Take the Red Pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes…

Here's the original video and transcript of our interview.

We dive into the Interface Theory of Perception (how evolution hides the truth about reality in favor of a dumbed down user interface that only shows us “fitness” payoffs that help us survive), the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” and how we simply have no idea how consciousness could emerge from physical matter, the theory of Conscious Realism (how reality is really a mathematically-definable social network of conscious “agents” and our perceptions are simply the interface by which we exchange experience with other conscious agents), the math behind conscious agent theory, implications for artificial intelligence (AI), what happens when we die, the limitation of resources in the universe, synesthesia, psychedelics, spirituality, medicine, and much much more.

1:22 Are we machines? Don’s motives for studying reality & his background in artificial intelligence & mathematics

6:38 Evolutionary game theory and how organisms are tuned to see fitness payoffs, not objective reality

11:46 The “Grand Theft Auto” analogy of perception as interface/symbolic representation

14:41 Differentiating solipsism & why we don’t just see SOME objective reality, we see NONE of it (YOU are the author of space and time)

21:06 The hard problem of consciousness and WHY it’s hard from a physicalist perspective

28:38 Conscious agent theory: consciousness is fundamental (rather than emerging from matter)

39:36 Challenging perceptual psychology; Piaget and object permanence

7:06 Amplituhedron and projecting quantum mechanics and relativity from conscious agent theory

50:42 Impact this theory can have on modern medicine and our limited understanding of mental health disorders

01:01:44 Deeper down the rabbit hole, and what happens when we die?

01:08:40 Artificial intelligence as a way to open new interfaces into the conscious agent realm

01:27:58 Examining Evolutionary Psychology; its relation to consciousness and resource limitation, logic & reason as tools of social persuasion

01:40:30 Psychedelics and meditation as tools to hack our perceptual interface and experience other conscious agents

01:47:02 Synesthetes as a glimpse into interface theory, evolution, and more

Prof. Donald Hoffman, apart from being a brilliant scientist, is a wonderful and warm human being in person. Check out our first audio-only conversation from 2018 here, and my take on his theory of consciousness here.

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