Donald Hoffman on Consciousness and Conscious Agents | Closer To Truth Chats 

One of my favorite guests in this show!

I'm glad to see the whole interview rather than just the piecemeal bits he was putting out recently. Especially for someone as far into the woo as this guy, it really helps to understand his theories when you have it all together in one block. What he's doing is definitely a step in the right direction and he's on to something surely. I do think he's made a few assumptions that he's not aware of but hopefully that will all get ironed out eventually.

Thanks for this excellent interview to Donald Hoffman

Psychedelics could be a significant portal out of our headsets into the deeper reality. What he talks about with Fermi’s Paradox lines up with alien-like experiences people using DMT and Ayahuasca have. One thing we know for certain is there is far more going on behind the scenes of what we assume as “reality”

By far one of the best clearest well thought out theory/idea I’ve heard regarding, really any subject...Donald..you rock!

We are the universe experiencing itself.

Consciousness and knowledge of higher (conscious) Agents, is what the World needs now.

again you did another great conversation uplifting our daily mundane consciousness to another level!

Thanks for sharing that interview. I was waiting for a talk of you both. Donald Hoffmann is a genius. I follow his work for now six years. Inspiring...

I love Hoffman! Truly one of the most profound thinkers in science. His concepts make me giddy. His therory is exactlly what I and many othes have experiendced directly in spiritual or trans-personal encoutners, but put in into language that can make predctions Astouding! That is- there is a living one force /energy (for want of a better word) more fundimental than space/time matter or energy, that mainfiest all infinite and seemingly seperate forms - and we are it. It is also in line with a lot of experiences people describe of seeming encounters with "aliens" or "other" intelligences, which seems impossible in the terms of our "head se"t based space time model - like time manupulation, telepathy, dissapearng and re-eppeaing, defying causalilty, creating synchronicitiess and so on. I reall think his work is as flavour of how our model of reality will look in a thousand years. I can't think of anyone who reaches so far and puts such radical insights so lucidly.

I LOVE Donald Hoffman!!!

Consciousness is for me a story of pattern classification. When we meet something new, we classify that "something" in different classes of patterns, e.g., colorless vs colorful, if colorful which color is this, then what kind of subcolor and back to the beginning beautiful vs neutral vs terrible, etc. If we see that "something" again, we use a classification template. It may happen, however, that a portion of features is different this time. So, we have to recognize and accept that fact as well as to change our picture of the Universe. Sometimes those changes may be shocking 🤣, e.g. if someone says its gender remains undefined or some beauty appears to be a dangerous criminal that has nothing to do with good and moral acts, etc

Great discussion, I so appreciate Professor Hoffmans’ mind and take on consciousness. At last. Love the art behind you!

Hoffman is very good. Gives clear explanations and straightforward statements of the problems. Martin has done great work for years. Two vets who know their stuff.

I would love to see a conversation between Jeff Hawkin and Donald Hoffman.

Beautiful artworks

If there is no time, how does the consciousness evolve or interact or experience anything? It will be static. What are implications for death and the dead? Do they lose their portals to communicate?

Love love this topic very interesting

Awesome conversation! Headset, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Space and Time, and Consciousness. I visualize a future greater than Ironman and the possibility of the 5 power stones! Haha.

Fascinating stuff....

In an example, a mathematical equation can be programmed as hardware (computation) for output, into which data can be programmed as input (software). So the programming of hardware to compute for output and the programming of data to input as software might describe consciousness?

I would love to watch a conversation beween Stephen Wolfram and Donald Hoffman

Professor Hoffman’s thoughts on consciousness are the closest I have found to my own, which of course has nothing to do with whether he is correct. My background is engineering and I look forward to reading Hoffman’s paper to see if it can provide me with any insights.

When you listen at this guy for a while, sometimes he doesn't get it, sometimes he gets it very fast and well, but one thing is great: he doesn't get convinced easily, and is almost bullshit-proof. I appreciate it.

There is real promise here. It's obvious that we won't get much more dramatic improvements in energy production, transportation, medicine etc if we keep trapping ourselves in the 4D realm. We have to look outside this reality in order to improve it.

Not sure I fully understand hard problem of consciousness; the general picture have rough idea, but the specific question eludes me.

Very refreshing how this discussion didn't give rise to the issue of dualism vs monism. Did it avoid the issue or render it a moot point?

At 3:19, What does he say? Who? I couldn’t understand! Please someone help!

Bernardo Kastrup and Rupert Spira agree

Buddha said in his Law of Dependent Origination, that for anything to exist, 3 factors must be present, 1/ A sane cognising consciousness, 2/ an organ(s) of perception, and 3/ something real out there, described as the 'basis of designation'. Thus we project our personal subjective sense organ created and utility modified version of the world onto the basis of designation, and then mistake this for real objective reality.

My brain hurts. Gonna have to watch this one again!

If 1) conscious experiences exist and 2) such experiences can cause actions, but you have already abolished space/time, how can actions be defined? Is there such a thing as an action without time?

What is the current scientific definition of consciousness?

Surely, the thing you are missing is how what we call reality must also be a model. Our own personal version of reality must be composed of us. So many very tiny aspects of us must be arranged to model reality according to external stimuli. The fuss could be over the nature of those stimuli, whether they were made of something more or less virtual.

"It is stranger than we can think". RBS Haldane

Pretty good.

So interesting! Perhaps the notion that we are in the matrix could be a thing!

I think as he even states himself, his postulates are way out there. I think Occum’s Razor is in play. When the body (brain ceases to function), subjective consciousness also ceases, just as when you go under general anesthesia. You simply cease to exist. Yes indeed, it may be many years before neuroscience has a better understanding the “hard problem” of consciousness but that doesn’t mean it can’t be solved mathematically or otherwise. As humans it’s all to easy to fall into the wish thinking trap. It was Carl Sagan who suggested it’s no more than arrogant thinking that one believes we’re at the center, that we’re the focus, the reason, the purpose of the universe. It’s not about us.

Help me understand this. If a conscious agent exists already that can "represent" the "smell of chocolate" (example) then why would it need to go to all the additional trouble of conjuring (or helping to conjure) humans in space time to manufacture and then "smell" the chocolate? Seems like a lot of effort. What exactly is the role of the human there? Is the human a necessary construct to allow the agent to experience the smell? Or is it so one human can inform another human how good it smells, thereby sharing the joy among agents? Also, Grand Theft Auto could still play itself in memory even if the video screen and steering wheel (interface) were broken. Couldn't conscious agents carry on just fine without space time and humans? Maybe that's the agent carrying on even after the human kicks the bucket?

We can't perceive thoughts with our senses, but a single thought can condition one's whole life.

13:59 “I need 2 things, conscious experiences, the taste of garlic, the smell of a rose, a headache... “ the problem is, we are giving you not just one or two things, but an infinite number of possible experiences. You see, the hard problem of consciousness is, why is there any consciousness at all, and how do conscious states relate to a brain and body. The taste of garlic is specific to garlic. Why does it have that taste as opposed to say the taste of a caramel tart? The experiences we have relate directly to the matter out there in the world which we believe stimulate them. If I give you conscious experience, I have to give you all conscious experiences, and thus, I eliminate any possible explanation of why conscious experiences have that particular character they have. And so, we don’t have ANY explanation OF conscious experiences, nor any relation to the things which seem to stimulate them.

There is more: What are "video game signals"? I have heard "sleight of hand" but never "sleight of claim" which is what I think he is doing when he claimed he was going to solve the hard problem of consciousness. So we have gone to perception to sensory experiences to video game signals. All observations are theory laden. He started with the theory of consciousness is like a video game gi and then began to camouflage the undefined and the undefinable. We are off to a great start. Sounds like magic!

Our consciousness of intentions is different from our consciousness of matter. Perhaps we need to examine more closely how we perceive intentions to give us a more useful tool to understand consciousness than the one presented by physics. Perhaps if we make progress in this we can make more progress in physics. Or not. In any case it may certainly be the case that an examination of our perception of intentions should give us another definition of time and thus "causality".

I love this new approach. Glad to see Donald Hoffman is gaining respect and podium. Getting Closer 😉.

If it would be the case that programming is conscious, and with numbers and mathematical equations being programmed; could consciousness be described by the concept and language of programming, whatever that may be?

I got a head set

You guys need to interview BERNARDO KASTRUP

It seems unlikely that we will be able to break out of our ¨headsets¨ based on all the constraints of our consciousness and more likely that we will only be able to use our consciousness to create our own new worlds.

Donald is definitely asking the right kind of quesiton. And his proposed answer is def. worth a stab, especially considering what traditions of spiritual inquiry such as Buddhism have encountered so far - it's astonishingly close to what he refers to as "realm of conscious agents" even "one agent", funny thing is that they did that in-practice rather than in theory, and their experiments are repeatable, although horrendously inefficient - for 1 person on average it takes 30-40 years to repeat the experiment fully

Is there really the taste of garlic? Or are we only experiencing the correlates of the taste of garlic so that we can agree on the objective characteristics but we experience wildly different senses of garlic? Because if that is the case each brain would need to agree with the key correlates but is under no demand of actually giving rise in the conscious experience to the same taste of garlic, and, actually, it's a tall order to do so but I like the way this guy thinks, but I think he picked some strange starting points but it may actually predict something and get us a bit closer.

What's the most important thing in a video? Right - Sound.

Interesting but who or what designed the interface?

But how is a conscious agent a fundamental parameter? Despite what the fundamental nature of reality is (i.e. if not quarks, other things more fundamental than quarks), you'd still need to structure them a certain way for a conscious agent to exist. So is this a theory of composite things?

The Infinite creates finite agents in order to experience its infinite potential.

When you consider consciousness as General Consciousness, the Einstein’s Field Equation could be a math model for explaining the consciousness.

Problem with those who are trying to downplay Consciousness is they believe that consciousness is something that the body associates itself with to stay alive.

How about the theory of consciousness booting up space-time, due to it's wave-particle duality. Consciousness goes into possibilities and, consciousness looking at the possibilities of consciousness, converts possibilities into actuality - that is, emergent space-time.

Martin is cool! Love closer to truth on PBS. I know Hoffman is a Genius but why , being a philosopher yourself didn't you hit him with the fact that his ideas are not that new. I mean Kant, Berkeley & Schopenhauer & many others said almost the same things regarding space time cause & effect & the five senses not capturing fundamental reality. Darwin wasnt popular yet so thats a interesting addition. Kant called the fundamental reality the " thing in itself" .

So if your schizophrenic is that just your consciousness screwing up or what is that? Does the brain have anything to do with consciousness? Is conscious ancient infallible

Consciousness seems to work more from the outside in.

Donald is making.some great progress and thinking in ways others are afraid of!

Mathematical measurement of increased consciousness: Neural Signal Diversity. Lets see something about this work on Sussex University:

You wake up after never being asleep. Alan Watts talked about this 50 years ago. As when you die you wake up.

So energy and matter are headset icons and all the permutations of those equal icons is the seeming infinite universe....

👍👍

At the end, Mr. Hoffman talks about mastery over space/time. However.....he has pointed out that we have no reason to believe that there exists an objective universe outside of our consciousness. But the reverse is similarly true, and is actually disproven by his own theory and research demonstrating that seeing truth doesn't result in greater fitness, quite to the contrary. If we have evolved to seek fitness, not truth, finally seeing truth, "seeing past our headsets" will not necessarily achieve mastery over that truth, over the objective reality. Not to mention that, according to his theory, evolution will be fighting us seeking truth the entire way...... (Looking at the sociopolitical state of America, along with where it seems to be headed, it appears to be following his evolution theory perfectly, with large segments of the population rejecting truth, facts, evidence, etc., while still at least appearing to being successful to end America as we know it.)......

When things are made too convoluted or abstruse....then you are "talking up a storm" whilst actually seeing very little...

I wrote today 2 rather pertinent comments (I think) on our senses versus objective reality and on consciousness. I am a bit disappointed since both non-offensive comments disappeared from this platform.

Did i hear Dr. Hoffman say, “different CONSCIOUSNESSES” - life is CONSCIOUS or there is NO LIFE - A-I WILL NEVER LIVE, SUPER COLOSSAL ALGORITHMS YES - ONE HAS TO BE CONSCIOUS TO FEEL LOVE TO FEEL HATE - A LIFE FORM IS THE PRIMARY result of and or a conduit of CONSCIOUSNESSES - a machine, at best, is a secondary element - Here in lies my problem, Dr. Hoffmans definition of the word ‘CONSCIOUSNESS’ is apparently different than my understanding of the word - i would greatly appreciate help some help here -

22:00 Portal into other consciousnesses...it seems to me that we could get a long ways there using a voluntary, participatory API, with a standardized schema of some sort. So once you have that, you can also design complicated surveys that once performed at scale, can offer a high resolution insight into human nature, perception, beliefs, perceptual inconsistencies, etc.

Consciousness is self-preservation... Everything else extends from that!

Mr. kuhn, I am yet to see a conversation, where the necessity for material interpretation of mathematics itself is stressed, instead of assuming its accuracy as, so to say, "God given". Literally, making Mathematics - The New God. That is why I am posting the same comment given below in many of your podcasts. Please respond! The book of nature "may" be written in mathematical charecters, but there is one thing much more "certain" we can say: the books of mathematics are written by, and the book of nature read by, human characters. Therefore the conclusion is obvious: the book of nature is written and read by human charecters. (I mean "the book" of nature; not nature itself. Epistemology, not ontology) And human charecters can cook any book. It follows: the book of nature is cookable. So "mathematics are" not necessarily only " for mathematicians", but let's assume, a common property of all life. Nature, obviously, doesn't indicate any purpose. But it is in our interest to proceed with the assumption that nature's purpose is a wave function that "collapses" to our own purpose the moment we set, and start acting on, the "correct" purpose. Won't it be enough if the finiteness and certainty of the laws of nature limits itself to those necessary only for eliminating the current, and preventing any future, "negative event intervals", while those relevant to the positive aspects remain eternally infinite and uncertain, so that there would always be positive surprises? Wishful thinking? As to the nature of such a purpose see my comments (Reply 6) in the comments section of your podcast: The Rise of Scientific Atheism.

3

Sounds like the movie matrix.

25:00 drop acid👽

Always a skeptic but offers no better solution....

I don't get it! He went into a whole analogy of steering wheels in video games, which I couldn't understand, and concluded that the steering wheel didn't do anything. Then later on he said Conscious Agents cause actions. I thought there weren't causes. I suspect there is something true in here somewhere but I don't see it. Where was the mathematics in this? I saw some vague references to graph theory but nothing substantial, perhaps I need to read some of his papers.

if we could explain everything, we would lose purpose. It gives reason for our existence............

cold fusion,f,or starters

Mathematics can be good way to find out consciousness, in particular with reference to particles (like in the brain) and also objects (maybe galaxies or stars). Also feel consciousness could be found examining relationship between awareness and language, also relationship between experience and free will. Wonder if logic can be used to find consciousness, especially with respect to awareness.

Hey, if anybody needs me, they can find me in Gödel's Candy Store. 🍬 🌌

Oh what a brilliant interview, thank you. Yes, spacetime cant be fundamental because we never experience or find it. Great questions, thanks.

Consciousness can only be a property of a Living Being, therefore a 'conscious agent' must be a Life-Unit. (Life-Unit-principle, - multiple life-units) Intelligence can never be artificial, devices can be programmed so they can do mental functions, but they wont be conscious, calculaters cant calculate, they just function the way they are programmed. 'Feeling' is a Eternal ability, if it didn exist, there would never had been any one feeling or sensing any thing at all. All experiences are Feeling-experiences, (first hand) sensing is the window to Life. Our sensing-organs is Motion, the object of sensing is Motion, the sensing is Motion. what would the consciousness be without Feeling, and Motion. Yeah, every one knows time-space, (periods, memories) no one can explain 'space-time', but space is part of the creation, ('tiny stuff') and time is the 'shadow' of Motion, D.H. is right it only exists in the mind/consciousness, of the Living Beings.

Being scientists cannot find the conscious particle, then is mind not a material entity?

Correlation is not causation... Raymond Tallis' _ _Seeing Ourselves: Reclaiming Humanity from God and Science_

Interesting that as technology advances the hard problem hasn’t gotten any easier….Perhaps looking for a materialist source of consciousness is the error..If the brain, with its vast neural networks is in actuality a receiver/transceiver….adding personality traits from unique genetic parings…then science will never arrive at a materialist explanation of consciousness…The brain is in charge of all those autonomic functions of the body as well… liver function etc…correlations are clearly there…but causality?

If not find intelligent alien life in universe, then multi-verse may be where intelligent alien life can be found.

So we're just some game played by some thing. That still doesn't answer anything..

I can see how his work will eventually merge with The Holographic Principle. Maybe he & Lenny Susskind should arrange a meeting in a coffee shop somewhere....

Bernardo Kastrup would make a great addition to this series.

Donald, you are 500 years ahead of the game! Almost impossible for anyone much less robert kuhn to give up on space time and understand the headset concept! Keep going!

What if I we are the consciousness of the creator? Are we a figment of a god’s imagination?

I assume that maximum abstraction we able to produce is infinite graph of converters that are infinite graphs themselves. Any thinkable algorithm we can generate via this infinite graph converters. It is a final abstraction we can imagine within world of words. But if words are labels corresponding to sounds then it is obviously any abstraction has nothing to do with realm we try to bind with labels.

If two conscious people see and perceive something in front of them, even though there perception might differ slightly due to their own personal and distinct position in tine and space, then they both share a similar consciousness. If they both feel cold, again, the same conscious experience due their similar consciousness. So their sharing a similar consciousness and similar experience(s). Conscious beings can experience our existence inside this universe and take away experiences and memories and feelings. And they can create things being that their consciousness can think and reason and dream and use our bodies and hands and muscles to make things and to appreciate things. But human did not make the moon but the still appreciate it, just as much if not more than the things humans have made. But the greater consciousness that we are attached to via these biological computer systems that we call human bodies is who made the moon and the universe. That is why we are able to appreciate it. You never see rocks staring at the Mona Lisa, but conscious beings do. In the same similar manner that they stare at the moon. And with these biological human computers, we can finally describe what a carrot tastes like, but not with words, but rather with feelings and experiences.

I an not understand how you would rate it

Lord Rutherford From Here and spent time with my people

Thos are all things that emerge

We are seeing alien intelligences - see recent senate report. Military and civilians have been running into and reporting them for decades. Great interview

Absolutely amazing. It makes wonder what if rather than conciousness bring an emergent phenomenon from the physical world, it is the physical world that is an emergent phenomenon from conciousness.

Is this any more provable than the multiverse ,almost sounds like writing a mathematical program foe a computer or anything that could understand the math could or just would be "Be" conscious.....