Reality is a User Interface: Donald Hoffman
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
- In a brilliant presentation, with game changing ideas flowing faster than we can take them in, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman describes the challenges both for science and for spirituality in the move towards a scientific theory of consciousness. He shows the evidence that, in science's quest, mathematics has already begun to describe conscious experience. He spells out the preconceptions that will have to be reconsidered by scientists: the idea of third-person science, that space and time and objects are fundamental - and by nondualists: that scriptures and teachers can be sources of authority as well as inspiration. Science and spirituality working together, he says, can explore and understand consciousness.
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HOLY Consciousness Batman! I had to pause this several times and stand up and walk around to gather myself and my senses. Mind Blown~!
yeah same
I think I'm going to have to watch this more than once.
Peggy Harris 😂😂 you speak for us all
Wonderful talk by Dr. Donald Hoffman; I believe the notion that mental perceptions are user-interfaces as opposed to veridical observations is almost certainly true. However, I believe he is making an important mistake here: the content of consciousness is not identical to consciousness. Pure consciousness is the substrate of particular experiences, not identical to those particular experiences. This does not imply a substance dualism, as it does not necessitate an ontological distinction between consciousness and its contents (the opposite, actually), but it is an important structural distinction. This is why wisdom traditions like Vedanta and Sufism state that consciousness is beyond description; it is not that particular experiences are beyond description, it is that the ground of such experiences is without properties and thus beyond any mode of formal description (e.g. mathematics). All this being said, I think Dr. Hoffman's emphasis on scientific inquiry and skepticism is tremendously important and I laud him for his sincerity.
Harish Pudukodu Excellent comment. Thank you.
Wow Donald might be into something big here. "User interface reality" so as far as I can tell we simply have no clue to what is the source of our reality. I feel alone but fascinated as well. Amazing.
Source is a signal players like to pretend they can reveal. The multiverse is infinite, and so are we. There is no beginning or end, for each os only the other even of you try to picture either. There's always more after, and before.
Even if what we perceive is simply an interface with reality, since we're stuck in this virtual reality we might as well play the game to the best of our ability.
No players ever do this. We only know what is experienced here, do not have optinal conditions at all times and can improve forever in infinite ways as all changes over time, thus nobody ever does their best here. Still, if the basic needs of all were met most would be quite satisfied and make amazing art and more left to their own devices and divine creations assuming they can be themselves and not whatever they assumed they had to be here.
User-interface theory just means that our reality is a virtual reality, a simulation, a matrix, a video game, in Universal/God's consciousness at that. ;) Tom Campbell, a former NASA physicist and consciousness explorer, is a strong advocate of this idea.
All the human evidence shows it is a simulation. E=mc2 proves it is. For only inside of a simulation would all things be made of energy.
Bingo
@@divineoracle7944 How does E=mc2 proves it? Yes we are operating in a simulation but the simulation is in our own heads constraint by the senses of what’s outside our skull.
Science, philosophy and religion all merging together looking for deeper truths, that's nice.
Hoffman’s closing expression of confidence that the world of spirituality can become humble and give up its sense of authority seems to me ungrounded and far fetched.
We can only detect distance in our minds as experiences, but experiences are infinitely close to us as experiencers.
Outstanding video, thank you Dr. Hoffman, much appreciated. Scienceandnonduality is one of my very favorite channels. Peace to you on this very nice day : )
Yes, we build up our models of reality by taking in information from first person experience (my direct sensory information input), then second person experience (your conveyance to me of your direct sensory information input), then third person (the "objective" collected sensory information input of the system we both exist within (our community)), and finally, for us aware of 4D space~time, we can sometimes add in the fourth person experience of everyone through all of space and time as far as we can imagine.
This moves in a binary (wave) growth pattern, with 0 being the collecting information stage and 1 being the output of information (map making) stage, so our human brains start at conception with stage 0, and move through stages: 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, etc. as we mature and explore reality. At each stage our brains are wired and hormoned up to focus on one of the combinations of inputs and outputs at each dimension of perspective. Which is why we seem so different as we grow up, almost like we're different people, even.
Whoa! There is no spoon.
You are the spoon, indeed!
Interesting lecture. Please read, The Soul Fallacy, by Julien Musolino. He is a cognitive neuroscience and he has written a book on consciousness and the brain. I also recommend watching the interview with him, on The Thinking Atheist podcast, which can be found on UA-cam. It is immensely interesting.
Perhaps conscious 'extensions' instead of 'agents'. And their plurality is first a duality, so they can be conscious 'arms' then extending conscious 'fingers'. Conscious 'agents' represent the need for connectivity, continuity, and a collective course that conscious 'arms' express.
at 9.00 minutes in, the two grey boxes that were one on top of the other, were the same shade of grey, but the top edge of the bottom box is much lighter and that's why the rest of it looks lighter. what he's talking about here, is what me and my mates worked out after taking magic mushrooms. when we were about 14 years old.
Would love to see a discussion between Hoffman and John Vervaeke. The flashing pictures make me think of Vervaeke’s relevance realization.
Excellent presentation. Thanks a bunch.
Great talk. I've seen many, and he mainly returns to the same points, but they are profound points and I benefit from rehearing them in order to understand their implications. One point that dropped deeper for me this time was his declaration that neurons have no causal powers. This is obvious, in a certain sense, if you understand his argument, since the brain is simply another "image" in the interface, but what it clarified is exactly *why* scientists have been so unsuccessful explaining how qualia arises from chemicals. It's because the chemicals, the brain tissue, etc.-- all of it -- really are just interface symbols. No causal powers. And the surprising thing is that we can actually expose the problem in causality with logic, as Hume and many others have done. So in a sense, logic is deeper than the interface. The actual qualities of the interface gradually become apparent under close introspection combined with logical analysis, and initial assumptions (like causality) break down as it is revealed to be a story made of symbols.
The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurons that generate endogenous electromagnetic (em) field. Synchronous firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and perception. The brain’s electromagnetic field (em) represents an integrated electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of consciousness. This evidence provides solutions to many of the problems of consciousness, such as the binding problem, and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the meaning of free will and the nature of qualia.
The electromagnetic wave function is analogue (surface area of brain) the biological neuron activity is digital; therefore the finer digital detailed information within the cranium is integrated into a coherent picture by means of the electromagnetic analogue wave function, this creates a unified field by binding the different aspects of brain activity, equals the function of mind.
The universe is both a particle and wave (light) the particle being an isolated detail of the wave, therefore consciousness is a universal phenomenon, inherent in nature.
To quote the late Stephen Hawking ‘A Brief History of Time’ “the universal force of electromagnetism controls all biological response”. It is now accepted that electromagnetism as controlling all chemical reactions, including life itself through this universal force and its influence on chemical reactions.
A new world now. Interesting!
So much for the "...but this is HARD SCIENCE" argument.
if we have sufficient consciousness to ASK a question, we have sufficient consciousness to understand the ANSWER. imho.
Our conscious experiences may not be random events; however that doesn’t necessarily make them mathematical. And just because something can be described mathematically doesn’t necessarily mean that it is mathematical in its essence. Our being in the world is a spontaneous conscious experience. It is not predictable, repeatable or objectively verifiable. As well, matter does not give rise to consciousness. Ask anyone who has been outside their body. Near death experience research has compelling evidence that explained in any theory about consciousness.
This is well said amidst a great talk by Hoffman. I wish he could respond to Lebela B. "Our conscious experiences may not be random events; however that doesn’t necessarily make them mathematical. And just because something can be described mathematically doesn’t necessarily mean that it is mathematical in its essence"
So what is the role or relationship of our brains in creating this user interface? We know they are *strongly* correlated, but the exact nature remains elusive.
Or, do you propose that the brain, too, is an image on the "screen" of consciousness?
Yes, he have said before in a another talk that what we percieve as the brain is a part of the interface, that might point to the actual processor of reality "outside" of or before consciousness.
So could the brain be seen as both A) an image on the "user interface" of consciousness, and B) a conscious agent, consisting of a hierarchy of agents? Could we say that the brain is the image of the mind viewing itself.
A) Yes. What we experience as a brain is an image or representation in consciousness.
B) Well, it depends on what you mean when you say “mind”. Sometimes the word is used to point to the entity experiencing life (you could say the person) and other times it is used to point to the content of consciousness.
We could say that consciousness is the fabric or backdrop of reality, with the one inherent quality, that it can experience whatever appears within it. Like an intelligent screen in a movie theater. Then our brain produces all the things we actually experience, (i.e. the content of a movie).
What we see on the screen in the movie theater is the pictures that roll by in front of the projector light.
The brain is a representation of that same mechanic or function, it creates the images (and all sense perceptions) that becomes “my reality”. And when we mess with the human brain, we can clearly see how that affects the person’s experience. (e.g. by taking LSD or having brain damage).
So messing with the brain alters the content, but not consciousness itself. The screen remains the same, whatever movie is shown on it.
If you are familiar with the famous “cave allegory” by Plato, it points to basically the same model of reality as Hoffman is proposing (as I see it) - And the brain would then be an image of the process of moving the objects in front of the light, casting shadows on the cave wall, that we then take to be the reality.
Nice! This is a bit like a way to open some regular mindspace.
The other side of the coin is that consciousness creates matter.. Like the double slit experiment..
hes not saying consciousness creates matter, hes sayin matter/brain is what consciousness LOOK LIKE to other conscious agents
also quantum mechances hasnt got anything to do with consciousness creates matter
NO ONE saved me a buzz of whiskey.. I am getting old.. Words are a manipulation of data.. The observer has a lot of physical, environmental and psychological factors that manipulate his/her observations.. Matter is not the deciding function but consciousness.. You can change consciousness but not the properties of matter.. How matter behaves with an observant consciousness is one of the tell tell signs.. Ergo the double slit experiment... TESLA: Energy vibrating at a frequency : and here we are the observers experiencing it.. Quantum mechanics signifies how matter (energy) can be manipulated.. The observer though limited in computing power like a windows 95 pc still gets to make decisions... Hope i make sense..
NO ONE please share your opinion. I could discuss this or try to hold my thought of observation but i do not feel the need now.. Its a merry go round.. When the coin is flipped do you really influence the outcome... (yes).. Damn if you do.. Damned if you don't.. (Imagination is just a word for anomalies like scuentists use dark matter and energy for their scientific models) That seems to be the situation.. I apologise.. Had lots of whiskey.. Like a painter painting a portrait we are left to our imagination.. If that is the purpose then it seems cruel.. Words are a hoar we fondle each other with.. Thats why we gave birth to art.. Its sadistic, romantic and beautiful.. And i assume we( you and I) live a better life.. Most people on this planet do not even get to share their mind.. Or 'being'... Godspeed.. A poem perhaps.. Or Bob Dylan for hus honesty or jeff buckely for his haunting beauty..
NO ONE knows what constitute an "observer". machines making measurements will cause collapse, even after the event has happened (quantum eraser). NO ONE understands what this is all about, not even the best physicists. NO ONE reputable scientist is claiming quantum mechanics has proven anything, as of now its just a pragmatic tool for making quantitative predictions about the world without saying anything about its ontology.
Jeff Seid the eternal philosophical question: 'I think therefore I am or I am therefore I think..' A simple observation would be how a plant finds its way through holes, drains, walls and it will find a way to grow bypassing the concrete into a small patch of soil or find a new way to spread its seeds.. Is it not matter acting or making a conscious decision to find benefit or procreate given the natural environment.. Consciousness is the driving force beyond matter and we are not unique to it.. We tend to assimilate our opinions given our limited time spans.. And even more today in the digital world.. People used to spend an entire life just to understand that their desire for enlightenment is a desire in itself.. Its never ending.. Personaly i have no problems with AI replacing me if that happens.. Cycles of evolution cannot be stopped only slowed down.. So does a conscious mind creates a machine or the opposite... Its unending..
Mind-blowing
I really really really believe he’s on to something
I think the silence refers more to some telepathic or way to communicate over a network somehow some day - I thought that’s what Neuralink was going to do. I don’t know, just curious with too much imagination.
This is good even my little brain can sense the truth here. Let’s do it!
OK Potato Head
I never look at the picture trying to absorb any details. I immediately try to determine why I’m there, what will happen, who else is there, what does it represent- no wonder nobody understands me. Looking at the picture the way you do is a great way to receive subliminal messages through- hopefully it’s just winning lottery numbers.
thank you!
If you have consciousness as a catch all, you have define it firstly?
Wait, this is essentially his 2016 talk, it's literally almost identical presentation
Yes he kinda has one message and repeats himself a lot, but theres some new stuff. The stuff about how science and spirtuality both have sacrifices to make is new I believe.
So if evolution is hiding the “truth” of reality from us then what is objective reality?
What proof is there that the brain creates conscious experience versus interprets conscious experience as that is a huge leap?
What is zero?
LoveinAll Zero is the numerical representation of value being in a non existent state when measured during that specific time.
After all it is obvious and self evident.
Clearly Rumi had a noisy neighbour.
Shunyata, and Indra's web
Space and time and matter DO exist, even when we aren't looking. Period
I haven't seen anything that support that claim, but maybe you could please go ahead and explain why they do then :)
Naw
The whole world in a theory
At 4:47 he says "there is lots and lots of words".
He should have said "there are lots and of words".
It is so hard to trust science these days :(
i sooooooo want to talk with this dude.!
This is very cool, but there is a seeming contradiction that he doesn't address. He uses an argument from evolution to say spacetime does not really exist. But evolution at least "seemingly" requires spacetime to operate. So no spacetime => no evolution, refuting the basis of his argument.
He needs to show how evolution is valid absent of spacetime.
Inb4 first post
So why my experience is so dull populated by tax collectors, utility bills and status reports followed by ill health and death?😳
up to you
Why am I even writing this comment when none of you guys really exist to read it?
I'm here...... I think!
This literally sounds like someone with mental illness trying to explain and validate his psychosis and convince me to join him.
Hide truth...? 🤔🤔🤔 And what that so called Truth means to tis person...🤔🤔🤔
He is so fucking confused, and obscured...😓
Underdeveloped Maj...😓 emotional Archetype understanding missing...
Poor speech talking about old known concepts. Nothing new.
He is Neo-Einstein
CONSCIOUSNESS is emergent, not fundamental...
End of discussion.
Naw
The deceivers of science..
Nice try, but he's wrong. About everything.
The brain alone DOES explain consciousness.
If you take away the brain... No more consciousness. PERIOD...
Naw