How a Spiritual Worldview Explains Consciousness - Joscha Bach

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher.Animism is the view that everything in the universe is alive and conscious. Is such a worldview absurd? Or might it help make sense of life, evolution, and consciousness?In this podcast, learn how Joscha came to understand spirits as "self-organizing software agents", how life is animated by non-physical software patterns, how non-physical patterns animate societies, as well as where emotions actually come from, the nature of consciousness, the future of AI consciousness, God and the deep nature of ultimate reality, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Joscha's Realization about Spirits04:16 Software & Brains07:08 Mind vs. Brain12:04 Where are Spirits before Incarnation?14:20 Software at Different Layers of Reality18:14 Ghosts22:42 Humans vs. Computers26:39 Artificial Intelligence28:45 The Hard Problem of Consciousness29:05 Understanding Consciousness and Its Implications32:05 The Nature of Consciousness36:52 Emotions, God, & The Outer Mind41:48 Hemispheric Differences in the Brain45:45 Conscious AI48:30 Collective Agents and Societal Dynamics52:38 Metaphysics & God53:30 Martyrs in Cells and Humans59:10 Origins of RealityFind Joscha:X: https://x.com/PlinzCalifornia Institute for Machine Consciousness: https://cimc.ai/Liquid AI: https://www.liquid.ai/Find Jack:Substack: https://substack.com/@jackroycroftsherryX: https://x.com/jack_roycroft