The Tim Ferriss Show
#585: Professor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Consciousness extends beyond physicalism, viewing space-time as data in consciousness.
- Certain aspects of consciousness may survive death, allowing for endless exploration.
- Mathematical model allows for investigating consciousness properties and experimental verification.
- Consciousness explores its nature through various perspectives, enhancing self-awareness and understanding.
Deep dives
Consciousness Beyond Physicalism
Consciousness is explored as a fundamental entity beyond physicalism, where space-time and particles are considered data structures in consciousness. The brain is viewed as an icon within a subjective reality, dissolving when not perceived.
Implications of Consciousness Model
The model suggests that consciousness may extend beyond death, with the potential for certain aspects of consciousness to survive beyond bodily dissolution. Consciousness is seen as exploring its potentialities endlessly, akin to trying on different perspectives.
Testing the Consciousness Theory
The mathematical model of consciousness allows for the investigation of its properties, such as the absence of an inherent arrow of time and the projection of entropy as an outcome of the model. These attributes provide avenues for potential experimental verification in understanding consciousness.
Consciousness in Exploration
Consciousness is conceptualized as an explorer of its own nature through various perspectives, suggesting that the complexities and experiences within consciousness serve as avenues for self-awareness and understanding. The narrative offers insight into the continual exploration and learning inherent in consciousness.
Objects as Data Structures for Fitness Payoffs
In evolutionary game theory, fitness payoff functions are used to determine the success of different strategies. When organisms cluster payoff functions into objects, they create data structures for fitness payoffs, not representations of truth. Objects are tools to represent payoffs, not reflections of reality.
Scientific Theories and the Pursuit of Truth
Science is an ongoing process of developing deeper theories. Scientists must challenge and break their theories to progress. The ultimate goal is not to cling to beliefs but to rigorously understand and test theories. Newton's analogy of a child on the seashore with pebbles underscores the humility required in scientific inquiry.
Consciousness and Pure Awareness
In spiritual traditions and mathematical models, a distinction is made between pure awareness beyond time and the dynamics of consciousness. Mathematics can reflect concepts of pure awareness by using probability spaces, highlighting the limitations of conceptual structures in capturing infinite intelligence.
The Intersection of Science and Spirituality
The collaboration between science and spirituality aims to provide good pointers to truths beyond conceptual systems. Applications of mathematics to spiritual insights may bridge gaps between spiritual practices and scientific disciplines. Seeking rigorous understanding while maintaining openness to deep intelligence underscores the convergence of scientific and spiritual exploration.
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Donald Hoffman ( @donalddhoffman) received a PhD in computational psychology from MIT and is a Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is an author of over 120 scientific papers and three books, including The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences.
His writing has appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, LA Review of Books, and Edge, and his work has been featured in Wired, Quanta, The Atlantic, Ars Technica, National Public Radio, Discover Magazine, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. His TED Talk, titled “Do We See Reality as It Is?,” has almost 4M views.
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What was the Helmholtz Club, and how did it spark a scientific exploration into the meaning of consciousness? [06:19]
What is consciousness? [11:24]
How should we understand our perceptions and their relationship to reality? David walks us through the desktop interface metaphor as presented in his 2015 TED Talk, and explains why it’s unlikely (with a probability of zero) that human beings evolved to behold the naked entirety of reality. [14:08]
Why does Donald, as a cognitive neuroscientist, find this era of physicists exploring consciousness and the nature of an underlying reality we haven’t evolved to see so exciting? Also: is spacetime doomed? [20:31]
Will science ever arrive at a theory of everything? [33:00]
What is the holographic model of the universe? [37:13]
What might things look like in the next decade or two as we begin to fundamentally revise how we think of reality, matter, and the interplay of consciousness? [43:09]
How does Donald scientifically explore the concept of conscious agents? [49:48]
Is consciousness localized, or does the brain “receive” it from elsewhere? [53:20]
How does Donald think about death? [58:55]
What are Markovian dynamics? [1:05:27]
Supplementary information that might help someone who’s struggling to understand parts of this conversation. [1:07:14]
What is panpsychism, and who are some of the most influential panpsychists? [1:08:38]
Which aspects of the way we interface with reality give us effective portals into life or consciousness? [1:12:11]
Probing the deeper reality suggested by the amplituhedron, associahedron, and cosmological polytope. [1:14:51]
At which hallowed institutions are these explorations of consciousness and the nature of a deeper reality being researched, and who is leading the charge? [1:20:18]
Donald’s thoughts on the use of hallucinogenic drugs to tap into deeper reality and interact with conscious agents. [1:21:22]
Exploring a theory involving portals and morphogenesis. [1:23:18]
It’s worth considering ethnobotanical and ethnographical studies that may give us more focused insight into consciousness through a non-Western lens and even have us questioning if plants can be considered a sentient part of this consciousness. [1:27:20]
On Chris Fuchs and the outer fringes of Quantum Bayesian — aka QBism. [1:35:38]
The experiments Donald would conduct in his research with unlimited funding over the next 10 years, and with whom he would choose to work. [1:40:31]
What is Donald reading these days? [1:42:43]
Donald names some of his long-time collaborators who pair mathematics with spiritual practice, and describes how he reconciles the two in his own work. [1:47:34]
How much pushback has Donald suffered for bringing spirituality into his scientific endeavors? Has any of it been constructive? [2:00:51]
How does fitness payoff function work in evolutionary theory, and how does this support the probability of zero that humans evolved to see reality in full? [2:03:27]
Parting thoughts. [2:05:46]
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