YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/CmieNQH7Q4w

Donald Hoffman a cognitive psychologist and Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

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0:00 Introduction

0:35 Hoffman's thought on the state of the country during COVID and what it entails about his theories

2:51 Why he meditates for 3 hours daily, and what type of practice it is

7:26 Hoffman's diet and health habits

9:52 On computational psychology (Hoffman's initial background)

13:05 Outlining (technically) the conscious agent model, and the motive force behind the lettering

16:41 Consciousness as primary to Being, as the impediment for rationalists

26:50 Why neural correlates aren't *just* correlates, but instead can play causal role (playing devil's advocate) and the limits of the "virtual reality" metaphor

38:44 Nima Armani Hamed's amplituhedron, and consciousness

40:23 Local hidden variables / realism may be saved, via loopholes in Bell's theorem

47:46 The assumption of uniform probability of fitness functions on cyclic groups, etc. is a problem for a theory that says our perceptions are non-veridical (ie. that they don't match "reality")

1:01:44 Evolution entails that we don't see the truth / reality as it is

1:05:10 On the over simplification of evolutionary models (outputting down to the Real Line of dimension 1 without further structure)

1:09:17 The intensity of meditation, and fear of letting go / fear of the unknown

1:15:25 "Illusions are failures to guide adaptive behavior."

1:16:41 The various philosophical theories on truth (correspondence, pragmatic, deflationary, etc.)

1:27:20 Spacetime as a data compression tool for conscious agents

1:32:39 On the nature of causality

1:37:50 How is reality objective, when in Hoffman's model it's predicated exclusively on subjective agents

1:40:00 What is "you"? What is "identity"? What is the "self"? (Eastern religions vs Western religions)

1:50:15 How does Free Will fit into a stochastic model?

1:58:59 Douglas Hofstadter's "strange loop" model of consciousness & Tononi's Integrated information theory vs. Donald Hoffman's

2:14:37 Where God fits into all of this, as well as Hoffman's definition of God

2:21:22 What happens when you die?

2:28:38 Gödel's incompleteness theorem's implications for Hoffman's model

2:34:35 John Vervaeke's other forms of knowledge which aren't "propositional"

2:37:45 Landauer's limit (fastidious critiques)

2:41:29 On the moon not existing when you don't look at it

2:48:06 Do you see the same color red that I see? (and other experiences / qualia)

2:51:31 The paradox of pursuing truth, though truth is inimical (relative to fitness)

2:56:44 Where does Deepak Chopra take Hoffman's message too far + what Jesus meant by "I am the truth / the way / the life"

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