Hoffman doesn’t say there isn’t anything out there (an illusion) he simply says we don’t perceive reality in its fullest. We have built a user interface of reality stemming from evolution. We already know that we don’t perceive 90% of reality. Gamma, X-rays, radio waves etc. evolution had created a reality that only favours fitness. I see a lot of people making this mistake when talking to others about Hoffman’s theory.
Except that's not what Hoffman says. Essentially everyone agrees that our senses don't perceive everything in reality. Hoffman's argument is that the user interface has nothing to do with reality.
@@tevintoo2275 No, Hoffman is saying our perception of reality only intersects with actual reality if there's an evolutionary pay off for the two to be homomorphic (the illusion and the actual). If there's no fitness advantage to perceiving some aspect of actual reality then we probably don't have it.
@@saturdaysequalsyouth Don's argument is that what we take to be 'reality' - our lived experience of the world - will always be different to what truly exists 'out there'. He isn't claiming that we don't experience a consistent 1:1 mapping of that external 'real' world. As he says, if you see a dangerous snake then whatever it may really be, you probably shouldn't try to pick it up.
If I remember the discussion with Donald Hoffman correctly he was emphasizing the fact that we are limited by our sensory perception and our mental processing in a way that makes it almost impossible to have a grasp on our concept of a physical reality. More so all our theories are part of that illusion. If I remember correctly he said he doesn’t “believe” in theories he just regards theories as the most useful tool at the current time. As I understand he was saying there is an informational horizon that given our sensory perception and cognition we just can’t access. he seemed to say all of our understanding of physics may have more to do with the nature of our interface with reality than the actually qualities of that reality. John seems to have a problem with there being a information horizon. Just because there is an information horizon doesn’t mean you can’t understand anything. You just can’t understand the things beyond the horizon.
Interesting I’ve never heard of Donald Hoffman but I’ve always felt we are limited to our senses and the capacity of our brain. scientific method is automatically flawed because this. I wouldn’t say we’re living in an illusion but we are very limited into understanding what’s really out there. Also I’m not religious but I don’t believe in evolution. Until an extra terrestrial comes down who has more senses, lives in more dimension, has more brain power, we’re just listening to another dude.
I feel like the problems stems from calling our perception of reality an ’illusion’. Illusion is too strong of a word when describing the aforementioned informational horizon.
But Hoffmann makes claims specifically about things "beyond the horizon" when calls everything an "illusion". >More so all our theories are part of that illusion. That's precisely the problem. His argument that everything is an "illusion" is based on illusions. All of this seems like a very confused mangling of Kant's criticism of pure reason.
@@IAn0nI When you're not a "materialist", you should have even more doubts about using the word "illusion", because for you an illusion is just an impression at odds with another class of impressions. Ie "everything is an illusion" is then completely meaningless. Hoffman does presuppose not just materialism, but he's making claims about the world prior to any observation.
Jon Vervaeke and Donald Hoffman had a conversation three months after this one, and in it, John apologized to Donald for this clip. He admitted to not having fully understood Donald before, and was surprised to see Donald hold a more reasonable position than he had anticipated. It would be good if the person running this channel makes this clear by pinning a comment or something, so that people don't come here and think this is the status quo of how John thinks about Donald.
It's good to know this. I was thinking, "They are having a conversation about Hoffman's ideas without understanding them or describing them accurately at all". Seemed bizarre.
There's a lot missing. One major point for Hoffman is that his theory isn't some pie in the sky with no real world value like Vervaeke thinks. He is actually attempting to back-calculate the mathematical equations of both classical and quantum mechanics using his conscious agent theory mathematics. He is trying to develop a mathematically workable theory of everything from this. Hoffman has explicitly said that his theory is wrong if this is not possible.
Thanks for this interesting discussion. I maybe wrong , but i think Hoffman don't use the term "simulation" . For him the way we see the world is an interface, which is quite different from a simulation. A simulation mimics something the user is already familiar with. An interface is a tool that gives the user ways to interact with a reality he would otherwise be completely clueless with , and he wouldn't survive and evolve without that interface. And an interface is not an illusion either... That is why I think the analogies with the Matrix or a vid games are wrong, these are indeed simulations that tricks users into a fake worlds they already know. Hoffman's point is that, with this interface we have, we manage to explain a "working" theory of our reality, but up to a certain point.
Interesting I’ve never heard of Donald Hoffman but I’ve always felt we are limited to our senses and the capacity of our brain. scientific method is automatically flawed because of this. I wouldn’t say we’re living in an illusion but we are very limited into understanding what’s really out there. Also I’m not religious but I don’t believe in evolution. Until an extra terrestrial comes down who has more senses, lives in multiple dimension, has more brain power, we’re just listening to another dude.
I think his point is that the simulation would eventually exist through evolution so we are in a simulation that could be within a simulation and the interface doesn't connect us with reality. We could be in the 10th simulation or the 1000000th who knows.
I think you might enjoy his latest podcast on Impact Theory. Hoffman is one of the most carefully measured and ethically diligent scientists on the planet. He's a TOTAL SCIENTIFIC BADA$$!
hoffman would think hes arguing against himself as in quantum quarks simulating an argument between two entities that really are one and the experiencing entity is just making sense of it its bunk because theres no base, fun regardless
Hoffman said in his podcast with Lex that he doesn't fully believe in any of the sciences (as they will inevitably be proven wrong in the future) but that he is obliged to use the best tools currently available to him. So I don't think he necessarily "believes" in evolution or mathematics, but he thinks they can be used as tools to show that the way we currently construct our view of reality doesn't make sense.
all we see is constructed with mathematic formula within so if we are willing to get out of it , mathematic are surely useless cause that only will lead you to turn around and around without ever getting out
A simple way to look at this is to imagine how an ant perceives the world around it. The ant sees the same things we do but has no clue what anything actually is. You only perceive what is essential to your survival.
That would also be a misconception about ants. If the aunt has no clue, then why doesn't the aunt simply craw along in a straight line all day? Or why the tree leans towards a direction where it can gain sun light? The answer is that they simply have a different system of relating to reality than the human neurological system. It is still a form of perception. What the abstract artist paints could be a better representation of our true reality than our evolutionary perception if in fact the artist has gained access to a non evolutionary form of consciousness. I think what Hoffman is getting at, there is no perceived consciousness with limits. Only that we humans limited our perceptions to a certain user interface and he has produced plenty of documentation to support that theory.
The argument is that the ant perceives thing very differently from us according to their particular sets of fitness payoffs. Their user interface would be entirely different from ours or any other species as the theory goes.
I am glad Lex defends Hoffman so vigorously here because I think Vervaeke really misrepresents what Hoffman is all about. In fact Hoffman very explicitly accounts for everything Vervaeke has thrown against him and he has done so repeatedly.
Great discussion! Would love to see him and Hoffman on together. -A simple question for both: Where do you think “novel ideas” come from? Math/Physics were once just ideas, are those made in the brain or not? If not, then maybe consciousness is the base of the “reality” pyramid, not the physical world. That’s what I got from Hoffman.
"base of reality" is not a well-defined term. Consciousness does not have to (and is unlikely to be) be a result of monism, and no one can ever refute dualism (or metaphysical pluralism). The prejudice of ontological monism is pretty grave, almost insanity of you believe in it dogmatically. So there is no a priori need to ask "where do ideas come from?" expecting a unique answer. They can come from all sorts of dynamics, maybe neural excitations, maybe a metaphysical immaterial soul "wandering" (metaphorically) in a Mindscape. justmy2centsworth
@@Achrononmaster appreciate the thoughts! Totally agree on not believing in a monolithic, dogmatic structure for anything. And I also agree with JV about the evolving of ideas through the loop of experience between the environment and yourself. The “filtering” and reconfiguration that happens in you subconscious mind. I would say that is one kind of idea. But there are also novel ideas you have when you are young (lacking experience), ideas that just pop in your head about things you have no real knowledge of. Where are those coming from? Another curious thing is that every manufactured thing/theory in our manifested material world has in it was once an “original idea”, did all that come from just interacting with nature in some filter loop? The basis of the question lies in; are our brains idea factory’s, idea antennas, or combo of both? I would say both,currently, but how weighted, who knows. By asking a simple question I feel like you can get a variety of responses, which interests me. And to your point, if anyone is to dogmatic in their answer, you can proceed with caution. ✌🏼😊
If mathematics is not "made in the brain" then consciousness is the "base of the reality pyramid"??? What is that even supposed to mean? I've always found the view that consciousness is the ground of physics to be like the belief that a flashlight illuminating a dark room creates the objects therein. Of course anything under investigation appears on the stage of consciousness, but that is no ground to believe that consciousness creates things in some outside world. Consciousness creates things as they appear to you.
Vervaeke chats with Hoffman and eventually apologizes to Hoffman after gaining a much clearer understanding. The discussion is fascinating and I think the best yet in illuminating Hoffman's ideas. ua-cam.com/video/EwTpdCVsttI/v-deo.html
Vervaeke's response here is the reasonable one. That our perceptions don't reflect reality 'as it really is' is not really a new idea, anyone who studies physics or cognitive science comes to this realization. Hoffman takes this too far.
Beyond the possibility that everything is a simulation within a simulation, even at “base reality” everything is energy, albeit in varying forms, yet essentially one thing. The fact that we can even ponder this at all, should have the whole of humanity in constant awe & gratefulness.
Hasn't science already at least partly answered this question? “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” Einstein. I love listening to Lex and his brilliant guests - so much to crack one's mind open. I hadn't heard of Dr. Vervaeke, and now I'm absolutely going to follow up and read what he has published. Super interesting guy.
A key distinction that Buddhists make that can be helpful here is that reality is not an illusion-it is LIKE an illusion. Saying it IS an illusion posits a reality in contrast (as Vervaeke also says): “this is illusion” and “that is real”. This is also how to avoid the pitfall of solipsism, which says “It’s all in my mind, and my mind is real.” This is not the Buddhist “mind only”, which basically says there is no independent essence, including in what you think is your “self”. Cheerio!
Solipsism doesn't claim that the mind is real and nothing else is, or that it is all in the mind. It is the claim that awareness is the only thing that isn't an assumption. That there is merely awareness and objects amongst awareness. Awareness could be considered consciousness I guess. It isn't stating that awareness is all there is, it is stating that awareness is the only thing that can be truly known, as the only thing that truly just is. By truly knowing something, awareness is all that exists. just a single point of awareness in a void. Everything beyond just being aware is equal to literally pretending. Solipsism is completely right. It's just awareness going along with pretending amongst a void. When solipsism is talking about the mind it's talking about this awareness, this consciousness.
He’s missing Hoffman’s points. First, Hoffman points out a paradox that he proved mathematically, if you believe in evolution, then you can’t think that we see reality. He didn’t address this. Second, Hoffman relies on evolutionary game theory, which is the mathematical underpinnings of evolution, and not biological evolution (which relies on physical objects, and life forms).
Fred, don't know much of Hoffman. To the first point, would he say "evolution" then must be false, for if true, it is necessarily not 'reality' and therefore the idea itself is self-referential incoherent? Or am I confused? Thanks for the help.
@@kylekloostra5659 Hi Kyle, this is my understanding: although evolutionary theory is almost always described within the framework of physicalism, evolutionary processes can exist without requiring a physicalist ontology--or as the guest says, an understanding of plate tectonics. Quoting Hoffman: "There is simply no principled reason why evolution requires physicalism. Evolutionary changes in genes and body morphology can be modeled by evolution whether those genes and bodies are viewed as mind-dependent or mind-independent.The mathematics does not care. Nor does the fossil evidence. A dinosaur bone dated to the Jurassic can be interpreted along physicalist lines as a mind-independent object or, with equal ease, as a mind-dependent icon that we construct whenever we interact with a certain long-existing system of conscious agents." ("Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem," 2008 (Conscious agents = the basis of the ontology that Hoffman is arguing for.)) Our physicalist understanding of evolution isn't a totally incoherent illusion or "false," in the same way that a computer icon for a trash bin isn't exactly "false." It is a symbolic representation of a nonphysical, objective process.
@@kylekloostra5659 I don’t want to speak for Hoffman, but I think he would say that evolution by natural selection is a very valuable tool of science, which has led to many breakthroughs. So as a scientific tool, it is both “real” and “valuable.” The problem comes when you ask the question, we know that evolution favors an organism tuned to fitness but are “reality” and “fitness” the same thing (or even related).He did a study, using evolutionary game theory which showed that “fitness” and “reality” are wholly unrelated, and that since there are no evolutionary pressures which would lead us to see reality, we should not believe that we do, or said in a different way the probability that we perceive reality as it truly is is zero. Now onto the self referencing issue you point out, Hoffman doesn’t see it as an issue. First, his theory rests on evolutionary game theory, the mathematics behind natural selection, not Darwinian natural selection. So in his theory the math behind the theory could be real, while the physical reality as we perceive it could be an illusion. Second, and more importantly, his point is that most people start with the belief that we see reality. If you start from that point, his theory seems ridiculous. What Hoffman is trying to get people to do is start from the point that we don’t know whether are perceptions are true or not. If you start from that point, it becomes extremely difficult to explain why it is that we accurately see reality, using any science (not philosophy). When I first heard his theory, I found it ridiculous. After I spent more time thinking about it, I was disturbed by it. Now that I’ve spent way too much time thinking about it and listening to podcasts, I find it extremely convincing. I have yet to hear anyone that has come up with a successful repudiation of what he says w/ regard to reality and evolutionary game theory. Sorry for being long winded. Hope this explains my point better.
You missed IT. Hoffman states that only Math is real. And putting theory of evolution into mathematical algorythm and running it gives us his conclusion that senses evolve not to give us real reality. AND he states, maybe theory of evolution is wrong, but is best we got right now, when we update it we will try with that modified theory....
Hoffman's theory is like a Rorschach inkblot test. People see whatever they desire to see in it. Whenever an objection is raised, the refrain is always, "It's a metaphor, it's an analogy, it's an abstraction, it's a different definition of true." Apparently not even Hoffman can articulate his theory in a rigorous or falsifiable way. That's not science. It is not even philosophy, really. It is art, perhaps.
The word 'illusion' can be quite tricky. A mirage is generally considered illusory. For e.g., if someone wants to drink the water that he sees, as a result of a mirage in the desert, then you would have to tell the person you cannot literally drink the water. In other words, what you mean is that the water is illusory. However, from a broader perspective, the mirage is real in the ordinary reality that we live in, in the sense that there are real photons creating that illusion. And that illusion can be perceived by anyone in the right location. Hence, whether it is illusory depends on the question you are asking, and the frame of reference. Otherwise there will be confusion as a result of a categorial error. The virtual reality interface has its own internal logic. This is telling us, through the logic of evolutionary game theory, that it is using an algorithm that is generating an artificial and incomplete reality. If Vervaeke objects to this, then he would also have to object to Godel's proof that arithmetical systems are incomplete, using mathematics. By the way, these types of misunderstandings are not new. The paradoxical nature of Maya is well-known in Hinduism and Buddhism and has been discussed extensively for centuries.😀
Donald Hoffmans theory is pretty interesting as is the work of Stephen Wolfram. Modern physics does not attempt to explain what is outside space time and has no theories about that.
I am not exactly sure why Vervaeke interprets Hoffman as saying that we can't stipulate that anything is true or make any claims about reality and what is. But these I think these are non-sequitors. I interpret Hoffman as a sort of pragmatist, as saying that whenever we call a description of reality true, we are doing it because it has worked when we test it through our human interface... not, as correspondence theorists claim, because we've gotten a hold of what the world is really like independently of that interface. I think if we treat Hoffman like a pragmatist - as saying not much different than what Dewey, James, Putnam, or Rorty said - all of these objections dissipate. We can call evolution true and that doesn't conflict with the idea that our interface is geared toward calling things true when they work relative to that human interface.
One of the problems with how this is framed is the idea that Hoffman is denying that consciousness has any contact with reality. Hoffman believes that when we look out at the world we're measuring something objective, and retrieving data about it, but that it's passed through a series of filters, or interfaces. Hoffman uses the metaphor of computers. You don't have to be a computer scientist, or know exactly what is goin on within the transistors of the computer to operate it, because the designer(s) of the computer interface like windows or MacOS have created an interface full of symbols (like windows, icons, etc.) to operate it more intuitively. Our sensory perception is an interface, but we make a category mistake when we take that interface for reality. It would be like us assuming there's tiny pictures, words, and documents located somewhere on a computer because we very vividly remember moving, deleting, or creating them. What we see is the interface, and we can come to understand this in multiple ways. It doesn't mean the world is an illusion, anymore than a computer user interface is an illusion. It just means we aren't seeing the world as it truly is, we're seeing it in a specific way that is tailored to our use case as homosapiens.
XD Just bring both of them and let them talk. Coz this breaks me even before the middle of the video; maybe even from the start. Donald Hoffman would mostly use different arguments.
Don's argument is that our experience of 'reality' is very different to what that reality truly is. He isn't claiming that we don't experience a consistent 1:1 mapping of that external 'real' world. As he says, if you see a dangerous snake, then whatever it may really be, you probably shouldn't pick it up.
Here's the problem and here's the concept that they talked about before is that in 100 years from now they will be laughing at our most advanced scientific understanding of today .. Don't ever get too comfortable as a scientist in this dynamic reality.
Lex, I wish more people had read Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Or the much older Life is a Dream by Calderon. Or Aristotle on whether history or poetry holds the greater truth.
It seems the difference between Hoffman and Vervaeke is that the former admits he could be totally wrong, but presents a very compelling case for his argument and proposes a way to test it. The latter speaks matter-of-factly as though what he's saying truth, despite using analogies to critique Hoffman's ideas that are not at all comparable.
Love it. Great chat. I don't think it's in terms of doors and traps but in terms of filters and veils. We do what we know is possible, there are infinite possibilities.
"Can we make a flying machine?" and "How much of the world is an illusion?" are questions in totally different categories; the former logically arises from facts and goals, the latter is thrown against reality as a petulant rebuke against it's demand that you conform to it by thinking scrupulously to live.
I think the point is that truth is an infinite regress that expands as you approach it. Illusion is the state of mind that believes it has the whole truth, of even the smallest part.
I don't think this guests fully understands Hoffman's theories and would say the math also suggests we don't see reality as it actually is. Evolution does not select for reality, it selects for breeding and survival is what I think Hoffman would explain.
Is consciousness a creation inside of time/space or does it exist independently of time/space? I think the basic problem is perception. Our biological senses perceive our surroundings, convert that information to electrical impulse data that is then interpreted by our brain for our consciousness to react to. Put that brain in a bottle on a shelf and feed it electrical impulses to simulate physical organs outputs and how would you know the difference? What, exactly do your eyes even “see” to convert to electrical impulses in the first place? Waves of vibrational energy resonating within our space time environment which our very limited senses dimly perceives as, say a green apple. We can create tech to help us sense more of our physical surroundings, like X-rays, IR ect but we are still perceiving such a tiny slice of the totality or reality.
This guy has got really mixed up in his argument that because Hoffman draws on evolutionary theory and mathmatics, that he somehow supposes them to be less illusory. The point is, to speak for him, in this illusion we take to be reality, it's most penetrating tools undermine the very notion that any of it is real. You can have a dream and imagine a tool to investigate that dream: it doesn't make the tool any more real. I'm afraid Mr Vervaecke has not understood Hoffman's arguments, although I think Hoffman is a bit crazy for exploring all this mathematically and theoretically.
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In ancient Hindu philosophy, it's not the world that's unreal, it's our sense of separateness that's an illusion. That's another way of putting it I suppose.
This is just an unsolvable debate. All this questions are so right, the debate is all necessary, but is the Ouroboros conundrum, the snake biting its own tail and doing it in the very cliff of an inescapable maddening solipsism. Because just another step in this debate would be what if everything is an illusion including you, my interlocutor? What if i is everything that is and ALL else is just my imagination? There is an impossible epistemologic problem which pins down into an ontologic one. We are facing a true abyss here, a fathomless abyss.
its always interesting to hear intelligent people saying things like 'there are only two possibilities' really? for something profound and poorly understood - perhaps at this moment I can only think of two possibilities might be more accurate.
If you are referring to what Vervaeke says at 5:50, the two possibilities adduced (given the hypothesis that my experiences are an illusion) are 1. The illusion is one that I cannot discover 2. It's an illusion but I can find out that it's an illusion In the present case, then, it does seem that the two possibilities do indeed partition the 'possibility space' without remainder. (Unless we are going to deny the Law of Excluded Middle: P or not P)
I don’t see why this is so hard. Hoffman gets it half right. Our IDEAs, our CONCEPTS about reality, ie. OUR MODLES/ SIMULATIONS (ie the way we see the word is a concept/s that are essentially the same as the terms “model” and “simulation”) are JUST concepts. All we are doing is seeing the world by through our human perspective complete with our imperfect human senses and our particular human experiential bias which including the biological. No model/simulation is perfect or can ever possibly be perfect, because a perfect simulation would need to be so complex it would have to be the universe itself. We shouldn’t even say universe because that concept rather puts a limit on it, that’s why we talk about “parallel universes” and the “multiverse” referring to infinite other universes. We should use the term reality because if we only perfectly modeled the universe it would still be an imperfect model of “reality” because then our universe would only be a small fraction of the whole system of “reality”. It’s also perfectly obviously that we cannot understand or comprehend the whole of reality anyway, if we could we’d be “God”. So Hoffman is half right because the part he gets wrong is acting like there is literally nothing until we experience it. This is philosophically nonsense. A leap into the illogical. When a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to experience it, does it still fall in the forest? Yes, something happens. When a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Such a simple question that you usually find wrong answers to. Sound doesn’t really “exist” like this, sound is an experience. There’s vibrations when a tree falls in the forest. Sound is something that only exists when there’s something around with ears and a mind that convert those vibrations into the experience we call sound. This is also why we create light, because what we call light an experience for the same reason. We use these words synonymously with the reality of what’s happening, but this gets us all confused and end up thinking that an idea of a thing, a concept of a thing, is the same thing as that reality. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The correct answer is: IT DEPENDS HOW YOU DEFINE A CHICKEN CHICKEN AND EGG. Literally any other answer is getting it wrong. There is really no such things as things. There is really no such things as events. This is not something that one needs science to discover, it’s purely logical. You have to define what you mean by a thing, and what you mean by an event. When you say some “event” happened on a certain date you’re deciding where to draw the line of importance. When did WW2 begin? There’s no such thing as an exact date because everything is connected and WW2 can be said to have “started” long before that with a different definition. Is there such thing as a cave? If you didn’t know better and only looked at our language you’d think a cave is a thing, but a cave is literally the opposite of a thing. A cave is not even something! A cave is literally NOTHING. A cave is literally emptiness within a rock. We think of a cave as a thing because it is useful to us. How many things is a net? Is it one rope? One can also define it logically as many “holes” held together with rope. One can’t say that doesn’t make sense because the holes are just space, because the cave is just space and we talk about that as if it’s a thing just as just as a house is a thing. So how do we define where to draw the line? We describe our reality in terms of what’s useful to use, we describe it. We decide where to draw the line in our concept by whatever use we happen to have for it. A blacksmith with a hammer sees the hammer as one thing. To a carpenter that makes handles for hammers he might see it as 2 things, the wooden handle attached to metal top. To a particle physicist a hammer is innumerable things, because a hammer is made up of molecules, and those molecules are made of atoms. The very word atom is a joke, because they thought they’d finally found the true things that make up everything, that is why “atom” means “that which is not cuttable”. Even if it had been, everything I just said is still true, since defining things in terms of atoms makes it useless to talk about things. Yet of course we were wrong about that as well, since atoms are not the smallest unit. After we developed more highly powered microscopes we saw there was “stuff” smaller than atoms and “thingified” those as well. So yes reality is an illusion, but only our concept of reality. That part where Lex was saying this illusion could be making us believe we’re feeling things is complete nonsense, the feelings are always real, WHAT THEY MEAN and HOW WE DEFINE THEM is what can be wrong. Our MODELS about reality, our theories, are always wrong. All we can hope for is that they are accurate in describing WHAT is happening and create accurate predictions. If you ever hope you have finally figured it out you’ll always be disappointed, because it’s impossible
Just by watching this clip and reading through the comments below I feel I've learnt more about the state of the art of the fields of Perception, Cognition and Reality than in a whole semester of Theory of Knowledge, back in the days of pursuing B.A. in Literature.
Isn't Donald arguing that the things perceived by our senses are illusory? Basically that our senses are flawed due to the filtering of unnecessary information that doesn't concern our individual survival. If so, that would also mean our thoughts and perceptions are only capable of operating withing our understanding of the universe based on those illusions. It seems to me he believes evolution is real but that even our understanding of evolution is flawed because we are using illusory tools (derived from filtered perceptions of true reality) to describe what's actually happening. I don't think he thinks all of the universe is an illusion, but it's our limited perspective. Imagine all the universe is a stream of data, but our brains filter the data that is useful. We are perceiving inaccurate pictures of the world that are based on what is truly there, thus it is technically an illusion because it all happens within the brain.
Except he doesn’t believe we have a brain unless a surgeon looks into our “skull” and projects that brain into it. And what “we experience” taking place in our individual “brain” is not, experienced in the brain at all because that is not where consciousness lies.
From Hoffman I gathered the following: What we perceive through our evolutionary minds is based on our immediate survival and continuation of our species. We do not perceive what is not required for us to perceive in order for us to accomplish those two task (survival, reproduction). And, are we as humans, limited by our perceptions or can we learn to reach beyond what we have evolutionary grown to perceive? Are we limited by spacetime, would we ever be able to comprehend outside of spacetime? Hoffman seems to think no. I like to think of it as the difference between an Atari and a PS5. We see from an Atari view while we exist in a PS5 world, could an Atari ever process and run a PS5 game?
I think that Hoffman was saying that since science has proven that the universe is not "locally real" (Nobel prize, 2022), he is going to begin his math "outside of space/time" and do the equations to prove space/time. I don't think he is saying that he has proven "concious agents" outside of spacetime, but he can prove it if the math works back toward spacetime. Ok, I'm no where near as smart as any of these people and my explanation here is probably more confusing than anything, lol. I'm still getting all of this straight in my head, too, Very interesting discussions, though, love it 😊
@8:09 we will discover that feelings are not quantifiable, that you cannot make objects have feelings because feelings and things like love are not rational and objective, they are irrational or meta-rational and very subjective. Value and attention need to be paid and these are not easy things to confine to physics or math.
Based on my own experience after a kundalini awakening and then experiencing what's known as " the light of a thousand suns", among many other experiences, hoffman is not to far off the mark. My experience was that of everything coming into existence as a single point of expression, like a movie appears on a cinema screen. The problem that science has is that its looking for the answers down an endless rabbit hole , as long as you are looking there will always be something new to see.
I have to smile it looks like Lex has been caught by Telos . The question to be answered by Lex, is how did he feel after his conversation with Hoffman and how did he feel after his conversation with Vervaeke?
The guest doesn't understand Hoffman (who by the way is only giving a reinterpretation of Shankara's (788-820 Advaita Vedanta). But the idea with practices goes back further to the Upanishadic era of Hinduism and Buddhism. To use a metaphor from the Upanishads, imagine a large number of clay pots of varying sizes and shapes (representing the "things" of existence. The illusion mentioned by Hoffman is Shankara's Superimposition Principle of "Maya" (the false notion that the "veneer" of existence (the varying sizes and shapes of the clay pots) are "real", overlooking the underlying reality (the clay = the universal Substance of the Universe, Pure Consciousness. We CAN find out about the illusion, by accessing "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. Eventually you will merge into Pure Consciousness-In-Itself, the Substance of Spinoza, the Sat-Chit-Ananda of Shankara, The "One", the Tao.
In the end V and H may not be proposing two different pathways: Hoffman speaks of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Vervaeke admits the possibility of infinitely regressing simulations.
This is a complete misrepresentation of Hoffman’s hypothesis. He is not saying, that our experience is unrelated to reality, he’s just saying that our experience is responsive and evolves, according to what is useful from an evolutionary perspective, rather than actually what is there. That is not at all like saying everything we experience is an illusion. Not even a tiny little bit of the same.
Illusoriness just isn't the simplest explanation. And I was always taught to go for the simplest hypothesis, other things being equal. The simplest hypothesis is surely that the world exists pretty much as we experience it. Why multiply entities unnecessarily? Occam's razor really does work.
When some speak of reality as a simulation often they refer to the most fundamental reality as the real. The illusion of the world is expressed in the analogy of confusing a rope for a snake.
simulation theory is based upon the mathematical formula for elements and how they differ only in atomic form by varying numbers of electrons revolving around then all be it in a fuzzy state. it appears like computer code in mathematical form.
@@Michael-tq6xm simulation theory is compatible with idealism, platonism & other such kind of ideas such as divine souls which then create lesser worlds to develop in. They would be equivalent to the highest type of civilization.
Peterson also makes a similar point Hoffman makes, and Vervaeke and Peterson disagree about it. We have a perceptual frame constituted by a description of what is, what should be, and a plan of action to connect them. This narrative structure then dictates how we perceive the world by way of the affective significance of phenomena in relation to that structure. We see the things that move us towards the goal since they trigger positive emotion, and we see the things that block us from the goal since they trigger negative emotion. Everything else, which has no affective significance in relation to the narrative structure, is not perceived. The evidence for this argument is the gorilla experiment. Similar to the fitness argument made by Hoffman. If there's no fitness advantage to something, we don't perceive it.
I never understood the argument of what is real or not. Its the relationships that are real. If I play a game and somebody steals my inventory and I hunt them down and get it back and feel accomplished, the events, the emotion, the conversations existed, be it regardless of the medium.
John, this is a great criticism. I see a lot of scientific nonsense in the comments, but John is specifically making a philosophical problem. It comes from Kant. Which is to posit some outside world which I reasonably can’t know or sense through experience. Now, Kant has some wiggle room since he makes a transcendental argument and trying to limit metaphysics. But Donald doesn’t make a transcendental argument. So Hoffman easily falls pray to the first Hegelian critique. Which is, by imposing such radical limitations, you are not leaving room to have knowledge of these limitations. John is clearly invoking this. Hoffman claims our reason is a tool for fitness, not truth, but can somehow arrive at this truth? Somehow, the mathematics and the evolution are removed from his limitations.
Suppose we were all born blind but someone was born with sight and tries to convince everyone else that there’s color. Hoffman is saying that we are all blind in a sense. His argument is good.
Did this guy even listen to Hoffman ? He basically theorizes we are perception of reality is just piece of a much grander reality . He uses the headset analogy , so when you’re playing a VR game you’re only visually perceiving what is in that virtual world but if you take the headset off you get the bigger picture
For me, it's actually Hoffman that's not tracking what Lexus trying to communicate. In fact it's my belief that lex was subconsciously hesitant to communicate it directly. And sort of teases Hoffman, and himself, by making a leading statement about the comparison between humans and the pigs. He's testing if Hoffman will reach the same conclusion hes hesitsnt to mentally touch and voice. For me it's a conclusion that I personally believe, and have been waiting for most of humanity to stumble towards for a few years now. And here it is: The creation of AGI will show us the insanity of our belief that WE are somehow SPECIAL in the universe. In short; it will show us that we are biological computers. THAT, is the illusion at which Lex is driving. THAT is the "charade constructed by our mind to keep us fed" as spoken by Lex. And hoffman just doesnt pick up on the hints lex is dropping. Lex simply lets the conversation flow in the direction Hoffman seems determined to keep it. Hoffman even touches on what i believe our perception of consciousness is: a highly recursive internal information exchange between parts of our brain. This recursive cycle extends beneath our level of conscious awareness, and so it "feels" infinitely "deep" and unique. Though in reality, it is not; its simply too complex to consciously imagine. Ultimately though, it doesnt matter if we are biological computers "playing a video game", and now we have reached the same conclusion that Hoffman states: it doesnt matter. If we are all in the video game, and there IS no other video game. Might as well play. If everything is "pointless", the idea of pointlessness loses all meaning, and everthing is back to being as meaningful as it could be.
Being a fan of Donald's interface theory, I still have to agree here. Donald loves to cherry-pick mechanics from this reality to "prove" things that happen outside, without any proof as to why those mechanics would exist there as well. Imagine a Call of Duty soldier proving that he is in a video game, but using in the process the fact that players are also soldiers, and that the "real reality" consists of polygons as well. Reality is not made up of polygons, so he didn't prove anything, even if he accidentally coincided with the truth.
As an entry point for the discussion, let's just interpret Hoffman's simulations of evolution, in which the criteria of maximizing the (artificial) organism's fitness has the "result" of making the property of "knowing objective reality", in that organism, "go extinct" (i.e., Hoffman seems to think that this is an important result for his further arguments). The easiest way to say "meh" to Hoffman's outlook via THAT data, is to just say that the simulation results only apply to life-forms like termites or beavers, or organisms with highly stereotypical and STATIC phenotypic behaviors, but that H. Sapiens are NOT like that at all, so the simulations do not fit "the data" for what H. Sapiens are like. What empirical data for H. Sapiens is inconsistent with the simulations? Consider that humans went from rocks, to swords, to atomic bombs, as interpersonal weapons. What about going from pan pipes and lyres to Moog synthesizers? In other words, H. Sapiens do not have stereotypical and static behavioral phenotypes. What H. Sapiens consider "truth" EMPIRICALLY grows with time, and Hoffman simulations do not do this. The dominant scientific intuition, which allows H. Sapiens to be this way (as opposed to be like beavers or termites), is that there is a "truth" out there that H. Sapiens has phenotypically learned to exploit, and that "reality" is open and discoverable about what kind of truths are exploitable in it. Hoffman's simulations do not discredit this. BTW, the ability to track truth and exploit it the way H. Sapiens do may not be adaptive, ultimately (e.g., the great filter hypothesis for the Fermi paradox, in the specific sense of intelligent species, such as us, being prone to self-destruction).
It seems, Hoffman's claim is that we are aware (or can be aware) of the world only like we are aware of the ''file icons'' on the corner of our computer screen, not the ''files'' as such. If so then it appears that the ''file icons'' would be the ''illusions'', while the ''files'' themselves would be the ''reality'' (that the icons stand for). This position then does not seem like denying the existence of reality, rather denying its direct accessibility in consciousness or, by direct sense experience, a' la Kant. However, we may add that, nothing seems to prevent us from being able to i n f e r (even if we couldn't be directly aware of or, experience) the existence of the files/reality when the ''icons'' are systematically consistent with our consciousness and/or direct sense experience of the icons only. This also allows both for the ''external reality'' ontology of the physical sciences and the empirical epistemology of the scientific theories plausible.
Hoffman's idea in simple words is just this: you are wearing a virtual reality headset that you cannot take off. There IS a world beyond your headset but you simply don't have access to it. What you see and interact with in your daily life (and in the virtual headset) is not connected to true reality in any discernible way.
I could interpret things wrong but it seems Vervaeke's arguments already assume some sort of world that exists as a separate entity and that we can study it to gain true knowledge ('can't separate evolution from tectonics/chromosomes/etc.'), while I think Hofmann sees evolution as a mathematically precise theory that does not need any reality/universe to exist. Also I agree with Hofmann that the world is like an illusion (just a tool/interface). Vervaeke asks 'illusory as compared to what?', and I would say compared to absolute truth. Truth that has no dependency on anything. No dependency on this world, universe, time, space, logic, knowledge, math, etc.. All this stuff is just relative truth that is useful for survival at best.
What is 'absolute truth'? Since you say it has "no dependency on this world, universe, time, space, logic, knowledge, math, etc." it seems to be a mere placeholder with no clear content. I am inclined to think that the most petty little contingent fact about what I had for breakfast this morning has more contentful truth to it than something so abstract and formal as 'absolute truth': the latter seems so... I don't know.... gassy, vapid. Illusory, even.
@@russellsharpe288 Yeah, my view of absolute truth has no clear content. But there are things that can be said that seem to point to something that is absolutely true. For example, 'I exist'. That seems to be true regardless. And I don't mean the human me, I mean ME. (To say the human me exists I have to assume things.) Or you could say 'existence exists'. Something else: sensations exist. Who knows what will happen when the body dies, but FOR ME (and I cannot deny I exist) there is also no denying that sensations exist. I my view, these sentences are less prone to being wrong then the notion of what I had for breakfast. Because then I have to assume time/past exists, and that my memory is working correctly, there was some object outside of me in some sort of 'space' kind of thing that somehow I ate, etc. I would call that a relative truth - something that is useful inside spacetime.
But you invoked absolute truth. You seem to know about it. Why isn’t absolute truth also part of the illusion. Hoffman falls so easily to the Hegelian critique. If we can’t know the real world, how do we know this about the real word. It’s a totally circular argument. Hoffman is just begging the question. He’s assumed too much.
@@mariog1490 You are right, if I were to know about absolute truth, that would be illusory. I don't know absolute truth. And a case can be made that absolute truth cannot be known, because knowing implies a separate me (a 'knower') and something to be known. The knower is part of the illusion, so any knowledge is also part of the illusion. Absolute truth exists or it is nothing. If it exists, it cannot be a separate thing. It must be all-inclusive. "If we can’t know the real world, how do we know this about the real word." --> we don't, because 'we' is an illusion.
@@timen.space. but then, how do you have knowledge of the allusion? It’s a circular argument. You’re saying “I can’t know the truth” which is a truth claim. The best anti-truth position is Nietzsche’s perspectivism.
What we call reality is an illusion in the strict sense that all phenomena, including all human experience, lack inherent essence, are transient and interdependent. That's all.
This discussions doesn't do justice to Donald Hoffman at all. He doesn't claim that his theory is built all the way on something certain - unlike Descartes. He's aware that all theories are based on assumptions (axioms) including his. Instead he points out two ways in which his theory is better than the currently prevailing materialism: 1) His theory can explain consciousness (by making it fundamental) and physicalism cannot. 2) His theory is internally consistent, unlike physicalism, which is not consistent with latest realisations in physics that space-time fundamentally doesn't exist.
John and Donald had a conversation after this, where John apologized to Donald for what he said about him on Lex' podcast, admitting that he didn't fully understand him
I don't understand what's new about Hoffman's claim, we use models for everything we see, everything is an abstraction of reality because it's too complex but that's old news, everyone knows that.
If to remove all the unnecessary metaphysics from Hoffman and Lex its all comes simple: 1. reality is a background; 2. consciousness works with an internal display not directly with reality; 3. the information on the internal display is processed; 4. the way it is processed by brain is defined by the evolutionary pressure. Looks trivial. Metaphysical buzz around it is for an attention grab. Attention = fame and money, hard to resist.
@@leontich46 just to agree with you; it seems obvious that it's an illusion. After all, all the central nervous system "sees" is a train of pulses in the form of action potentials on proximate neurons. That's it! Who knows what's "really" out there? We only have what the brain does with those pulses. Presumably the illusion is a pretty good tool for survival and reproduction thanks to evolution. But that's all it is...a tool implemented in the form of an "illusion"😂
What hoffman says makes a heck of a lot of sense to me and i have trouble discrediting it in my own mind. If what he thinks is true, it means there is an objective reality which means there are ways to see it and prove it. I get what Verveake is saying that us proving it wouldnt be possible in the reality we created as our capabilities are entirely giverned and limited by it, but i disagree. If our reality is a product of evolution, atleast part, perhaps a very large part, of it was formed early in our evolutionary timeline. We as a species have evolved exceedingly fast, especially intellectually. We went from small 4 legged rodent like creatures to this in only a few million years. Its possible, if not probable, that our intellect has outpaced our evolved reality. Even if only slightly, it'd mean we are capable of finding ways to see beyond the reality we created at least in part. Whether what we would be seeing is part of the objective reality, or just something closer to it as another step in our evolution is something to be debated and studied. Hope this makes sense, it does in my head.
I have to agree with John here, having listened to Hoffman on several occasions--I just don't understand what Hoffman is getting at beyond what has already been discussed about the nature of reality ad nauseam.
there are two channels on this platform that leave me intellectually intimidated. This one and the awesome Alien Scientist, both amazing channels but wish i could wrap my head round some of these discussions.
I think reading some introductory books on these subjects might help more than podcasts. You need to be able to pause and think and you also need a thought out progression of ideas when getting acquainted with this stuff. These podcasts jump around a bit too much from time to time.
If reality informs the illusion, and if the illusion is there to let us easier adapt to the reality, then, dude, you know, Hoffman may have a real point.
I won’t go into extreme detail but I believe we are living in both a reality and a simulation. We are realistic beings that are living in a simulated societal system. I know this doesn’t really address the full topic of discussion but I find this to be true and because we are being programmed by this way of life everyday it makes certain people question the reality of everything or the universe. In order for success you have to have a consistent pattern…
Classic example of someone who has not read Hoffman trying to critique his thoughts. This guy should withhold comment until he has a clue what Hoffman is saying.
Evolution explains what happens in the headset, but the headset is not reality. It is like saying “evolution happens in this video game.” Has nothing to do with what is really going on in the computer generating the video game.
If we do not know if reality is reality. Then how do we know that unreality is unreality? I am with John on this one. It sounds like Donald is arguing against "Cogito, ergo sum."
Hoffman reached his conclusions using computers, doing math. And guess what? Big shocker - that’s what he found: math. His argument bears the same fallacy as panpsychism and even monotheism (heck, all religions): it is human-centric. We are not the only species of animal on the planet, and we are not the only type of consciousness. Other animals and plants do not fuss about what reality they’re living in. They live in our same environment and do quite well surviving with the same basic perceptions we have. Our abstract minds can go off on these tangents, and our only tool, math, can build us a world that can kill off the rest of organic life, but it isn’t closer to reality than any other organism. This is the argument against Hoffman.
This man knows his classics he' knows logic. He isn't gas lighting and stealing words of credibility that's being used contradictory like atheists and evolutionist
Hoffman doesn’t say there isn’t anything out there (an illusion) he simply says we don’t perceive reality in its fullest. We have built a user interface of reality stemming from evolution. We already know that we don’t perceive 90% of reality. Gamma, X-rays, radio waves etc. evolution had created a reality that only favours fitness. I see a lot of people making this mistake when talking to others about Hoffman’s theory.
Except that's not what Hoffman says. Essentially everyone agrees that our senses don't perceive everything in reality. Hoffman's argument is that the user interface has nothing to do with reality.
@@tevintoo2275 No, Hoffman is saying our perception of reality only intersects with actual reality if there's an evolutionary pay off for the two to be homomorphic (the illusion and the actual). If there's no fitness advantage to perceiving some aspect of actual reality then we probably don't have it.
I love these kind of discussions. Everyone giving their two cents about their interpretation of something complex. Cool.
@@saturdaysequalsyouth perfectly stated. Read the book?
@@saturdaysequalsyouth Don's argument is that what we take to be 'reality' - our lived experience of the world - will always be different to what truly exists 'out there'. He isn't claiming that we don't experience a consistent 1:1 mapping of that external 'real' world. As he says, if you see a dangerous snake then whatever it may really be, you probably shouldn't try to pick it up.
If I remember the discussion with Donald Hoffman correctly he was emphasizing the fact that we are limited by our sensory perception and our mental processing in a way that makes it almost impossible to have a grasp on our concept of a physical reality. More so all our theories are part of that illusion. If I remember correctly he said he doesn’t “believe” in theories he just regards theories as the most useful tool at the current time. As I understand he was saying there is an informational horizon that given our sensory perception and cognition we just can’t access. he seemed to say all of our understanding of physics may have more to do with the nature of our interface with reality than the actually qualities of that reality. John seems to have a problem with there being a information horizon. Just because there is an information horizon doesn’t mean you can’t understand anything. You just can’t understand the things beyond the horizon.
Interesting I’ve never heard of Donald Hoffman but I’ve always felt we are limited to our senses and the capacity of our brain. scientific method is automatically flawed because this. I wouldn’t say we’re living in an illusion but we are very limited into understanding what’s really out there. Also I’m not religious but I don’t believe in evolution. Until an extra terrestrial comes down who has more senses, lives in more dimension, has more brain power, we’re just listening to another dude.
I feel like the problems stems from calling our perception of reality an ’illusion’.
Illusion is too strong of a word when describing the aforementioned informational horizon.
@@aarnehalen1686 indeed. Can be slightly triggering for a materialist.
But Hoffmann makes claims specifically about things "beyond the horizon" when calls everything an "illusion".
>More so all our theories are part of that illusion.
That's precisely the problem. His argument that everything is an "illusion" is based on illusions. All of this seems like a very confused mangling of Kant's criticism of pure reason.
@@IAn0nI When you're not a "materialist", you should have even more doubts about using the word "illusion", because for you an illusion is just an impression at odds with another class of impressions. Ie "everything is an illusion" is then completely meaningless. Hoffman does presuppose not just materialism, but he's making claims about the world prior to any observation.
Jon Vervaeke and Donald Hoffman had a conversation three months after this one, and in it, John apologized to Donald for this clip. He admitted to not having fully understood Donald before, and was surprised to see Donald hold a more reasonable position than he had anticipated.
It would be good if the person running this channel makes this clear by pinning a comment or something, so that people don't come here and think this is the status quo of how John thinks about Donald.
Where can the debate be watched? I would love to listen to it.
@@EM5SO On the channel "Theories of Everything". Just look for both of their names in combination and it should come up first
It's good to know this. I was thinking, "They are having a conversation about Hoffman's ideas without understanding them or describing them accurately at all". Seemed bizarre.
That's so nice. Thanks for this info!
Thanks for this, no need to finish the video. I’m stopping 3 mins in glad I saw this.
Excellent discussion. Arguing Hoffman's hypothesis in his absence could have been very one sided but Lex did a good job filling in for him.
Lol
There's a lot missing. One major point for Hoffman is that his theory isn't some pie in the sky with no real world value like Vervaeke thinks. He is actually attempting to back-calculate the mathematical equations of both classical and quantum mechanics using his conscious agent theory mathematics. He is trying to develop a mathematically workable theory of everything from this. Hoffman has explicitly said that his theory is wrong if this is not possible.
@@JudeMalachi the good job is the taken attempt for responsibiloty to defend Hoffman's standpoint, that's better
Nah this AI was mid. AI still has a lot of work.
Such a sloppy reproduction of Don's work. The moment they talked about cognition and meant consciousness I was out
Thanks for this interesting discussion.
I maybe wrong , but i think Hoffman don't use the term "simulation" . For him the way we see the world is an interface, which is quite different from a simulation.
A simulation mimics something the user is already familiar with. An interface is a tool that gives the user ways to interact with a reality he would otherwise be completely clueless with , and he wouldn't survive and evolve without that interface. And an interface is not an illusion either...
That is why I think the analogies with the Matrix or a vid games are wrong, these are indeed simulations that tricks users into a fake worlds they already know.
Hoffman's point is that, with this interface we have, we manage to explain a "working" theory of our reality, but up to a certain point.
beautiful explanation
...not bad , simulation vs interface , interesting
Interesting I’ve never heard of Donald Hoffman but I’ve always felt we are limited to our senses and the capacity of our brain. scientific method is automatically flawed because of this. I wouldn’t say we’re living in an illusion but we are very limited into understanding what’s really out there. Also I’m not religious but I don’t believe in evolution. Until an extra terrestrial comes down who has more senses, lives in multiple dimension, has more brain power, we’re just listening to another dude.
I agree 💯.
I think his point is that the simulation would eventually exist through evolution so we are in a simulation that could be within a simulation and the interface doesn't connect us with reality. We could be in the 10th simulation or the 1000000th who knows.
I would love to have Hoffman engage in discussion with people who are more sceptical to his ideas
I think you might enjoy his latest podcast on Impact Theory. Hoffman is one of the most carefully measured and ethically diligent scientists on the planet. He's a TOTAL SCIENTIFIC BADA$$!
hoffman would think hes arguing against himself as in quantum quarks simulating an argument between two entities that really are one and the experiencing entity is just making sense of it
its bunk because theres no base, fun regardless
Hoffman said in his podcast with Lex that he doesn't fully believe in any of the sciences (as they will inevitably be proven wrong in the future) but that he is obliged to use the best tools currently available to him. So I don't think he necessarily "believes" in evolution or mathematics, but he thinks they can be used as tools to show that the way we currently construct our view of reality doesn't make sense.
all we see is constructed with mathematic formula within so if we are willing to get out of it , mathematic are surely useless cause that only will lead you to turn around and around without ever getting out
A simple way to look at this is to imagine how an ant perceives the world around it. The ant sees the same things we do but has no clue what anything actually is. You only perceive what is essential to your survival.
That would also be a misconception about ants. If the aunt has no clue, then why doesn't the aunt simply craw along in a straight line all day? Or why the tree leans towards a direction where it can gain sun light? The answer is that they simply have a different system of relating to reality than the human neurological system. It is still a form of perception. What the abstract artist paints could be a better representation of our true reality than our evolutionary perception if in fact the artist has gained access to a non evolutionary form of consciousness. I think what Hoffman is getting at, there is no perceived consciousness with limits. Only that we humans limited our perceptions to a certain user interface and he has produced plenty of documentation to support that theory.
The argument is that the ant perceives thing very differently from us according to their particular sets of fitness payoffs. Their user interface would be entirely different from ours or any other species as the theory goes.
I became obsessed with the Donald Hoffman. It makes me happy that Lex brings up Donald's definition of reality in other podcasts.
So do I.
I am glad Lex defends Hoffman so vigorously here because I think Vervaeke really misrepresents what Hoffman is all about. In fact Hoffman very explicitly accounts for everything Vervaeke has thrown against him and he has done so repeatedly.
Great discussion! Would love to see him and Hoffman on together.
-A simple question for both: Where do you think “novel ideas” come from?
Math/Physics were once just ideas, are those made in the brain or not? If not, then maybe consciousness is the base of the “reality” pyramid, not the physical world.
That’s what I got from Hoffman.
"base of reality" is not a well-defined term. Consciousness does not have to (and is unlikely to be) be a result of monism, and no one can ever refute dualism (or metaphysical pluralism). The prejudice of ontological monism is pretty grave, almost insanity of you believe in it dogmatically. So there is no a priori need to ask "where do ideas come from?" expecting a unique answer. They can come from all sorts of dynamics, maybe neural excitations, maybe a metaphysical immaterial soul "wandering" (metaphorically) in a Mindscape. justmy2centsworth
@@Achrononmaster appreciate the thoughts! Totally agree on not believing in a monolithic, dogmatic structure for anything. And I also agree with JV about the evolving of ideas through the loop of experience between the environment and yourself. The “filtering” and reconfiguration that happens in you subconscious mind. I would say that is one kind of idea.
But there are also novel ideas you have when you are young (lacking experience), ideas that just pop in your head about things you have no real knowledge of. Where are those coming from?
Another curious thing is that every manufactured thing/theory in our manifested material world has in it was once an “original idea”, did all that come from just interacting with nature in some filter loop?
The basis of the question lies in; are our brains idea factory’s, idea antennas, or combo of both? I would say both,currently, but how weighted, who knows.
By asking a simple question I feel like you can get a variety of responses, which interests me. And to your point, if anyone is to dogmatic in their answer, you can proceed with caution.
✌🏼😊
If mathematics is not "made in the brain" then consciousness is the "base of the reality pyramid"???
What is that even supposed to mean?
I've always found the view that consciousness is the ground of physics to be like the belief that a flashlight illuminating a dark room creates the objects therein. Of course anything under investigation appears on the stage of consciousness, but that is no ground to believe that consciousness creates things in some outside world. Consciousness creates things as they appear to you.
Vervaeke chats with Hoffman and eventually apologizes to Hoffman after gaining a much clearer understanding. The discussion is fascinating and I think the best yet in illuminating Hoffman's ideas. ua-cam.com/video/EwTpdCVsttI/v-deo.html
Vervaeke's response here is the reasonable one. That our perceptions don't reflect reality 'as it really is' is not really a new idea, anyone who studies physics or cognitive science comes to this realization. Hoffman takes this too far.
Exactly! Thank-you…
There’s nothing more amusing than watching really smart people fumble over there ignorance.
Yeah, n1 :))
*their.
Beyond the possibility that everything is a simulation within a simulation, even at “base reality” everything is energy, albeit in varying forms, yet essentially one thing.
The fact that we can even ponder this at all, should have the whole of humanity in constant awe & gratefulness.
Hasn't science already at least partly answered this question? “Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” Einstein.
I love listening to Lex and his brilliant guests - so much to crack one's mind open. I hadn't heard of Dr. Vervaeke, and now I'm absolutely going to follow up and read what he has published. Super interesting guy.
A key distinction that Buddhists make that can be helpful here is that reality is not an illusion-it is LIKE an illusion. Saying it IS an illusion posits a reality in contrast (as Vervaeke also says): “this is illusion” and “that is real”. This is also how to avoid the pitfall of solipsism, which says “It’s all in my mind, and my mind is real.” This is not the Buddhist “mind only”, which basically says there is no independent essence, including in what you think is your “self”. Cheerio!
Solipsism doesn't claim that the mind is real and nothing else is, or that it is all in the mind. It is the claim that awareness is the only thing that isn't an assumption. That there is merely awareness and objects amongst awareness. Awareness could be considered consciousness I guess.
It isn't stating that awareness is all there is, it is stating that awareness is the only thing that can be truly known, as the only thing that truly just is. By truly knowing something, awareness is all that exists. just a single point of awareness in a void.
Everything beyond just being aware is equal to literally pretending. Solipsism is completely right. It's just awareness going along with pretending amongst a void. When solipsism is talking about the mind it's talking about this awareness, this consciousness.
He’s missing Hoffman’s points.
First, Hoffman points out a paradox that he proved mathematically, if you believe in evolution, then you can’t think that we see reality. He didn’t address this.
Second, Hoffman relies on evolutionary game theory, which is the mathematical underpinnings of evolution, and not biological evolution (which relies on physical objects, and life forms).
Fred, don't know much of Hoffman. To the first point, would he say "evolution" then must be false, for if true, it is necessarily not 'reality' and therefore the idea itself is self-referential incoherent? Or am I confused? Thanks for the help.
@@kylekloostra5659 Hi Kyle, this is my understanding: although evolutionary theory is almost always described within the framework of physicalism, evolutionary processes can exist without requiring a physicalist ontology--or as the guest says, an understanding of plate tectonics.
Quoting Hoffman: "There is simply no principled reason why evolution requires physicalism. Evolutionary changes in genes and body morphology can be modeled by evolution whether those genes and bodies are viewed as mind-dependent or mind-independent.The mathematics does not care. Nor does the fossil evidence. A dinosaur bone dated to the Jurassic can be interpreted along physicalist lines as a mind-independent object or, with equal ease, as a mind-dependent icon that we construct whenever we interact with a certain long-existing system of conscious agents." ("Conscious Realism
and the Mind-Body Problem," 2008 (Conscious agents = the basis of the ontology that Hoffman is arguing for.))
Our physicalist understanding of evolution isn't a totally incoherent illusion or "false," in the same way that a computer icon for a trash bin isn't exactly "false." It is a symbolic representation of a nonphysical, objective process.
@@kylekloostra5659 I don’t want to speak for Hoffman, but I think he would say that evolution by natural selection is a very valuable tool of science, which has led to many breakthroughs. So as a scientific tool, it is both “real” and “valuable.” The problem comes when you ask the question, we know that evolution favors an organism tuned to fitness but are “reality” and “fitness” the same thing (or even related).He did a study, using evolutionary game theory which showed that “fitness” and “reality” are wholly unrelated, and that since there are no evolutionary pressures which would lead us to see reality, we should not believe that we do, or said in a different way the probability that we perceive reality as it truly is is zero.
Now onto the self referencing issue you point out, Hoffman doesn’t see it as an issue. First, his theory rests on evolutionary game theory, the mathematics behind natural selection, not Darwinian natural selection. So in his theory the math behind the theory could be real, while the physical reality as we perceive it could be an illusion.
Second, and more importantly, his point is that most people start with the belief that we see reality. If you start from that point, his theory seems ridiculous. What Hoffman is trying to get people to do is start from the point that we don’t know whether are perceptions are true or not. If you start from that point, it becomes extremely difficult to explain why it is that we accurately see reality, using any science (not philosophy).
When I first heard his theory, I found it ridiculous. After I spent more time thinking about it, I was disturbed by it. Now that I’ve spent way too much time thinking about it and listening to podcasts, I find it extremely convincing.
I have yet to hear anyone that has come up with a successful repudiation of what he says w/ regard to reality and evolutionary game theory.
Sorry for being long winded. Hope this explains my point better.
@@emersauce Thank you, Anna
@@fredmwangaguhunga2057 Thank you, Fred, for taking the time to respond-it brings much clarity.
You missed IT. Hoffman states that only Math is real. And putting theory of evolution into mathematical algorythm and running it gives us his conclusion that senses evolve not to give us real reality.
AND he states, maybe theory of evolution is wrong, but is best we got right now, when we update it we will try with that modified theory....
how can math be real if pi doesnt resolve
its flawed
Hoffman's theory is like a Rorschach inkblot test. People see whatever they desire to see in it. Whenever an objection is raised, the refrain is always, "It's a metaphor, it's an analogy, it's an abstraction, it's a different definition of true." Apparently not even Hoffman can articulate his theory in a rigorous or falsifiable way. That's not science. It is not even philosophy, really. It is art, perhaps.
The word 'illusion' can be quite tricky. A mirage is generally considered illusory. For e.g., if someone wants to drink the water that he sees, as a result of a mirage in the desert, then you would have to tell the person you cannot literally drink the water. In other words, what you mean is that the water is illusory. However, from a broader perspective, the mirage is real in the ordinary reality that we live in, in the sense that there are real photons creating that illusion. And that illusion can be perceived by anyone in the right location. Hence, whether it is illusory depends on the question you are asking, and the frame of reference. Otherwise there will be confusion as a result of a categorial error. The virtual reality interface has its own internal logic. This is telling us, through the logic of evolutionary game theory, that it is using an algorithm that is generating an artificial and incomplete reality. If Vervaeke objects to this, then he would also have to object to Godel's proof that arithmetical systems are incomplete, using mathematics. By the way, these types of misunderstandings are not new. The paradoxical nature of Maya is well-known in Hinduism and Buddhism and has been discussed extensively for centuries.😀
Donald Hoffmans theory is pretty interesting as is the work of Stephen Wolfram. Modern physics does not attempt to explain what is outside space time and has no theories about that.
I am not exactly sure why Vervaeke interprets Hoffman as saying that we can't stipulate that anything is true or make any claims about reality and what is. But these I think these are non-sequitors. I interpret Hoffman as a sort of pragmatist, as saying that whenever we call a description of reality true, we are doing it because it has worked when we test it through our human interface... not, as correspondence theorists claim, because we've gotten a hold of what the world is really like independently of that interface. I think if we treat Hoffman like a pragmatist - as saying not much different than what Dewey, James, Putnam, or Rorty said - all of these objections dissipate. We can call evolution true and that doesn't conflict with the idea that our interface is geared toward calling things true when they work relative to that human interface.
This is an emotional topic for him, you can tell by his tone and how much energy he’s putting into it.
One of the problems with how this is framed is the idea that Hoffman is denying that consciousness has any contact with reality. Hoffman believes that when we look out at the world we're measuring something objective, and retrieving data about it, but that it's passed through a series of filters, or interfaces. Hoffman uses the metaphor of computers. You don't have to be a computer scientist, or know exactly what is goin on within the transistors of the computer to operate it, because the designer(s) of the computer interface like windows or MacOS have created an interface full of symbols (like windows, icons, etc.) to operate it more intuitively. Our sensory perception is an interface, but we make a category mistake when we take that interface for reality. It would be like us assuming there's tiny pictures, words, and documents located somewhere on a computer because we very vividly remember moving, deleting, or creating them. What we see is the interface, and we can come to understand this in multiple ways. It doesn't mean the world is an illusion, anymore than a computer user interface is an illusion. It just means we aren't seeing the world as it truly is, we're seeing it in a specific way that is tailored to our use case as homosapiens.
XD Just bring both of them and let them talk. Coz this breaks me even before the middle of the video; maybe even from the start. Donald Hoffman would mostly use different arguments.
Wasn't Hoffman's use of a VR video game merely a metaphor and not a definition of reality?
Then he should call himself a poet and not a scientist.
Yes. Lex Friedman is effectively taking Hoffmans metaphor hostage, and forcing it to be a definition of reality.
Don's argument is that our experience of 'reality' is very different to what that reality truly is. He isn't claiming that we don't experience a consistent 1:1 mapping of that external 'real' world. As he says, if you see a dangerous snake, then whatever it may really be, you probably shouldn't pick it up.
Bravo Dr Vervaeke !!! Lex, unfortunately, didn't manage to understand some major points of professor.
A Hoffman Vervaeke debate will be epic.
Already happened bud 😂😂😂
@@youssefsmith382 good catch bud. Theories of everything episode 6 months ago. Hehe
@@Telios12 edited comment🤣🤣🤣👊
@@youssefsmith382 from one bud to anotha. Bud brothahood yo! 😂😂😂👊
Neuroscientist Anil Seth would be good for this topic, he uses the term “controlled hallucination” which I think gets at the concept better
Hoffman is doing a fantastic work.
Here's the problem and here's the concept that they talked about before is that in 100 years from now they will be laughing at our most advanced scientific understanding of today .. Don't ever get too comfortable as a scientist in this dynamic reality.
Lex, I wish more people had read Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Or the much older Life is a Dream by Calderon. Or Aristotle on whether history or poetry holds the greater truth.
It seems the difference between Hoffman and Vervaeke is that the former admits he could be totally wrong, but presents a very compelling case for his argument and proposes a way to test it. The latter speaks matter-of-factly as though what he's saying truth, despite using analogies to critique Hoffman's ideas that are not at all comparable.
Love it. Great chat. I don't think it's in terms of doors and traps but in terms of filters and veils. We do what we know is possible, there are infinite possibilities.
"Can we make a flying machine?" and "How much of the world is an illusion?" are questions in totally different categories; the former logically arises from facts and goals, the latter is thrown against reality as a petulant rebuke against it's demand that you conform to it by thinking scrupulously to live.
I think the point is that truth is an infinite regress that expands as you approach it. Illusion is the state of mind that believes it has the whole truth, of even the smallest part.
I don't think this guests fully understands Hoffman's theories and would say the math also suggests we don't see reality as it actually is. Evolution does not select for reality, it selects for breeding and survival is what I think Hoffman would explain.
Hoffman's essential error (that of all skeptics) is the self-refuting argument "You can never know / be certain"
Perhaps absolute reality is not something that can be 'known'. Knowing may just be another tool for survival.
Is consciousness a creation inside of time/space or does it exist independently of time/space? I think the basic problem is perception. Our biological senses perceive our surroundings, convert that information to electrical impulse data that is then interpreted by our brain for our consciousness to react to. Put that brain in a bottle on a shelf and feed it electrical impulses to simulate physical organs outputs and how would you know the difference? What, exactly do your eyes even “see” to convert to electrical impulses in the first place? Waves of vibrational energy resonating within our space time environment which our very limited senses dimly perceives as, say a green apple. We can create tech to help us sense more of our physical surroundings, like X-rays, IR ect but we are still perceiving such a tiny slice of the totality or reality.
This guy has got really mixed up in his argument that because Hoffman draws on evolutionary theory and mathmatics, that he somehow supposes them to be less illusory. The point is, to speak for him, in this illusion we take to be reality, it's most penetrating tools undermine the very notion that any of it is real. You can have a dream and imagine a tool to investigate that dream: it doesn't make the tool any more real. I'm afraid Mr Vervaecke has not understood Hoffman's arguments, although I think Hoffman is a bit crazy for exploring all this mathematically and theoretically.
Jpop has always been far more superior than kpop ..no debate.. ..i dont think kpops knew about Jpop but glad they never found out about it.. that's why the youth is lost coz they focused on Kpop when Jpop been around since the 70's and was always better,.. tough
In ancient Hindu philosophy, it's not the world that's unreal, it's our sense of separateness that's an illusion. That's another way of putting it I suppose.
Don't take away my Simulation Theory. It's the only thing keeping me sane. Knowing this is not real.
How can your experiences not be real lol?
@@Al-ji4gd I don't understand that either. If Someone is playing us how would they control everyone's thoughts and feelings
This is just an unsolvable debate. All this questions are so right, the debate is all necessary, but is the Ouroboros conundrum, the snake biting its own tail and doing it in the very cliff of an inescapable maddening solipsism. Because just another step in this debate would be what if everything is an illusion including you, my interlocutor? What if i is everything that is and ALL else is just my imagination? There is an impossible epistemologic problem which pins down into an ontologic one. We are facing a true abyss here, a fathomless abyss.
The ad following this clip on the nature of reality said GET REAL 😂
roflmao
its always interesting to hear intelligent people saying things like 'there are only two possibilities' really? for something profound and poorly understood - perhaps at this moment I can only think of two possibilities might be more accurate.
If you are referring to what Vervaeke says at 5:50, the two possibilities adduced (given the hypothesis that my experiences are an illusion) are
1. The illusion is one that I cannot discover
2. It's an illusion but I can find out that it's an illusion
In the present case, then, it does seem that the two possibilities do indeed partition the 'possibility space' without remainder. (Unless we are going to deny the Law of Excluded Middle: P or not P)
I don’t see why this is so hard. Hoffman gets it half right. Our IDEAs, our CONCEPTS about reality, ie. OUR MODLES/ SIMULATIONS (ie the way we see the word is a concept/s that are essentially the same as the terms “model” and “simulation”) are JUST concepts. All we are doing is seeing the world by through our human perspective complete with our imperfect human senses and our particular human experiential bias which including the biological. No model/simulation is perfect or can ever possibly be perfect, because a perfect simulation would need to be so complex it would have to be the universe itself. We shouldn’t even say universe because that concept rather puts a limit on it, that’s why we talk about “parallel universes” and the “multiverse” referring to infinite other universes. We should use the term reality because if we only perfectly modeled the universe it would still be an imperfect model of “reality” because then our universe would only be a small fraction of the whole system of “reality”. It’s also perfectly obviously that we cannot understand or comprehend the whole of reality anyway, if we could we’d be “God”.
So Hoffman is half right because the part he gets wrong is acting like there is literally nothing until we experience it. This is philosophically nonsense. A leap into the illogical. When a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to experience it, does it still fall in the forest? Yes, something happens. When a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Such a simple question that you usually find wrong answers to. Sound doesn’t really “exist” like this, sound is an experience. There’s vibrations when a tree falls in the forest. Sound is something that only exists when there’s something around with ears and a mind that convert those vibrations into the experience we call sound. This is also why we create light, because what we call light an experience for the same reason. We use these words synonymously with the reality of what’s happening, but this gets us all confused and end up thinking that an idea of a thing, a concept of a thing, is the same thing as that reality.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The correct answer is: IT DEPENDS HOW YOU DEFINE A CHICKEN CHICKEN AND EGG. Literally any other answer is getting it wrong.
There is really no such things as things. There is really no such things as events.
This is not something that one needs science to discover, it’s purely logical.
You have to define what you mean by a thing, and what you mean by an event. When you say some “event” happened on a certain date you’re deciding where to draw the line of importance. When did WW2 begin? There’s no such thing as an exact date because everything is connected and WW2 can be said to have “started” long before that with a different definition.
Is there such thing as a cave? If you didn’t know better and only looked at our language you’d think a cave is a thing, but a cave is literally the opposite of a thing. A cave is not even something! A cave is literally NOTHING. A cave is literally emptiness within a rock. We think of a cave as a thing because it is useful to us.
How many things is a net? Is it one rope? One can also define it logically as many “holes” held together with rope. One can’t say that doesn’t make sense because the holes are just space, because the cave is just space and we talk about that as if it’s a thing just as just as a house is a thing.
So how do we define where to draw the line?
We describe our reality in terms of what’s useful to use, we describe it. We decide where to draw the line in our concept by whatever use we happen to have for it.
A blacksmith with a hammer sees the hammer as one thing. To a carpenter that makes handles for hammers he might see it as 2 things, the wooden handle attached to metal top. To a particle physicist a hammer is innumerable things, because a hammer is made up of molecules, and those molecules are made of atoms.
The very word atom is a joke, because they thought they’d finally found the true things that make up everything, that is why “atom” means “that which is not cuttable”. Even if it had been, everything I just said is still true, since defining things in terms of atoms makes it useless to talk about things. Yet of course we were wrong about that as well, since atoms are not the smallest unit. After we developed more highly powered microscopes we saw there was “stuff” smaller than atoms and “thingified” those as well.
So yes reality is an illusion, but only our concept of reality. That part where Lex was saying this illusion could be making us believe we’re feeling things is complete nonsense, the feelings are always real, WHAT THEY MEAN and HOW WE DEFINE THEM is what can be wrong.
Our MODELS about reality, our theories, are always wrong. All we can hope for is that they are accurate in describing WHAT is happening and create accurate predictions. If you ever hope you have finally figured it out you’ll always be disappointed, because it’s impossible
Just by watching this clip and reading through the comments below I feel I've learnt more about the state of the art of the fields of Perception, Cognition and Reality than in a whole semester of Theory of Knowledge, back in the days of pursuing B.A. in Literature.
Isn't Donald arguing that the things perceived by our senses are illusory? Basically that our senses are flawed due to the filtering of unnecessary information that doesn't concern our individual survival. If so, that would also mean our thoughts and perceptions are only capable of operating withing our understanding of the universe based on those illusions. It seems to me he believes evolution is real but that even our understanding of evolution is flawed because we are using illusory tools (derived from filtered perceptions of true reality) to describe what's actually happening. I don't think he thinks all of the universe is an illusion, but it's our limited perspective. Imagine all the universe is a stream of data, but our brains filter the data that is useful. We are perceiving inaccurate pictures of the world that are based on what is truly there, thus it is technically an illusion because it all happens within the brain.
Except he doesn’t believe we have a brain unless a surgeon looks into our “skull” and projects that brain into it. And what “we experience” taking place in our individual “brain” is not, experienced in the brain at all because that is not where consciousness lies.
From Hoffman I gathered the following: What we perceive through our evolutionary minds is based on our immediate survival and continuation of our species. We do not perceive what is not required for us to perceive in order for us to accomplish those two task (survival, reproduction). And, are we as humans, limited by our perceptions or can we learn to reach beyond what we have evolutionary grown to perceive? Are we limited by spacetime, would we ever be able to comprehend outside of spacetime? Hoffman seems to think no. I like to think of it as the difference between an Atari and a PS5. We see from an Atari view while we exist in a PS5 world, could an Atari ever process and run a PS5 game?
I think that Hoffman was saying that since science has proven that the universe is not "locally real" (Nobel prize, 2022), he is going to begin his math "outside of space/time" and do the equations to prove space/time. I don't think he is saying that he has proven "concious agents" outside of spacetime, but he can prove it if the math works back toward spacetime.
Ok, I'm no where near as smart as any of these people and my explanation here is probably more confusing than anything, lol. I'm still getting all of this straight in my head, too,
Very interesting discussions, though, love it 😊
@8:09 we will discover that feelings are not quantifiable, that you cannot make objects have feelings because feelings and things like love are not rational and objective, they are irrational or meta-rational and very subjective. Value and attention need to be paid and these are not easy things to confine to physics or math.
Based on my own experience after a kundalini awakening and then experiencing what's known as " the light of a thousand suns", among many other experiences, hoffman is not to far off the mark.
My experience was that of everything coming into existence as a single point of expression, like a movie appears on a cinema screen. The problem that science has is that its looking for the answers down an endless rabbit hole , as long as you are looking there will always be something new to see.
I didn't need John Vervaeke to tell me that Donald Hoffman is full of shit to know that Donald Hoffman is full of shit.
Anon commenter knows more than a stanford grad 😂
@@Thurnishaley6969 I don't need a degree from Stanford to recognize when someone is using weasel words to make a ridiculous claim.
I have to smile it looks like Lex has been caught by Telos . The question to be answered by Lex, is how did he feel after his conversation with Hoffman and how did he feel after his conversation with Vervaeke?
The eastern religions have known this for thousands of years, they call it "maya", what is real is timeless and infinite.
The guest doesn't understand Hoffman (who by the way is only giving a reinterpretation of Shankara's (788-820 Advaita Vedanta). But the idea with practices goes back further to the Upanishadic era of Hinduism and Buddhism. To use a metaphor from the Upanishads, imagine a large number of clay pots of varying sizes and shapes (representing the "things" of existence. The illusion mentioned by Hoffman is Shankara's Superimposition Principle of "Maya" (the false notion that the "veneer" of existence (the varying sizes and shapes of the clay pots) are "real", overlooking the underlying reality (the clay = the universal Substance of the Universe, Pure Consciousness. We CAN find out about the illusion, by accessing "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. Eventually you will merge into Pure Consciousness-In-Itself, the Substance of Spinoza, the Sat-Chit-Ananda of Shankara, The "One", the Tao.
In the end V and H may not be proposing two different pathways: Hoffman speaks of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Vervaeke admits the possibility of infinitely regressing simulations.
This is a complete misrepresentation of Hoffman’s hypothesis. He is not saying, that our experience is unrelated to reality, he’s just saying that our experience is responsive and evolves, according to what is useful from an evolutionary perspective, rather than actually what is there. That is not at all like saying everything we experience is an illusion. Not even a tiny little bit of the same.
Illusoriness just isn't the simplest explanation. And I was always taught to go for the simplest hypothesis, other things being equal. The simplest hypothesis is surely that the world exists pretty much as we experience it. Why multiply entities unnecessarily? Occam's razor really does work.
I think the word "illusion" is being misused in this argument.
When some speak of reality as a simulation often they refer to the most fundamental reality as the real. The illusion of the world is expressed in the analogy of confusing a rope for a snake.
simulation theory is based upon the mathematical formula for elements and how they differ only in atomic form by varying numbers of electrons revolving around then all be it in a fuzzy state. it appears like computer code in mathematical form.
@@Michael-tq6xm simulation theory is compatible with idealism, platonism & other such kind of ideas such as divine souls which then create lesser worlds to develop in. They would be equivalent to the highest type of civilization.
Peterson also makes a similar point Hoffman makes, and Vervaeke and Peterson disagree about it. We have a perceptual frame constituted by a description of what is, what should be, and a plan of action to connect them. This narrative structure then dictates how we perceive the world by way of the affective significance of phenomena in relation to that structure. We see the things that move us towards the goal since they trigger positive emotion, and we see the things that block us from the goal since they trigger negative emotion. Everything else, which has no affective significance in relation to the narrative structure, is not perceived. The evidence for this argument is the gorilla experiment. Similar to the fitness argument made by Hoffman. If there's no fitness advantage to something, we don't perceive it.
I never understood the argument of what is real or not. Its the relationships that are real. If I play a game and somebody steals my inventory and I hunt them down and get it back and feel accomplished, the events, the emotion, the conversations existed, be it regardless of the medium.
John, this is a great criticism. I see a lot of scientific nonsense in the comments, but John is specifically making a philosophical problem. It comes from Kant. Which is to posit some outside world which I reasonably can’t know or sense through experience. Now, Kant has some wiggle room since he makes a transcendental argument and trying to limit metaphysics. But Donald doesn’t make a transcendental argument. So Hoffman easily falls pray to the first Hegelian critique. Which is, by imposing such radical limitations, you are not leaving room to have knowledge of these limitations. John is clearly invoking this. Hoffman claims our reason is a tool for fitness, not truth, but can somehow arrive at this truth? Somehow, the mathematics and the evolution are removed from his limitations.
Suppose we were all born blind but someone was born with sight and tries to convince everyone else that there’s color. Hoffman is saying that we are all blind in a sense. His argument is good.
Did this guy even listen to Hoffman ? He basically theorizes we are perception of reality is just piece of a much grander reality . He uses the headset analogy , so when you’re playing a VR game you’re only visually perceiving what is in that virtual world but if you take the headset off you get the bigger picture
Lex always goes all in on simulation theory!
Philosophy is the mother of science 😉
For me, it's actually Hoffman that's not tracking what Lexus trying to communicate. In fact it's my belief that lex was subconsciously hesitant to communicate it directly. And sort of teases Hoffman, and himself, by making a leading statement about the comparison between humans and the pigs. He's testing if Hoffman will reach the same conclusion hes hesitsnt to mentally touch and voice. For me it's a conclusion that I personally believe, and have been waiting for most of humanity to stumble towards for a few years now. And here it is: The creation of AGI will show us the insanity of our belief that WE are somehow SPECIAL in the universe. In short; it will show us that we are biological computers. THAT, is the illusion at which Lex is driving. THAT is the "charade constructed by our mind to keep us fed" as spoken by Lex. And hoffman just doesnt pick up on the hints lex is dropping. Lex simply lets the conversation flow in the direction Hoffman seems determined to keep it. Hoffman even touches on what i believe our perception of consciousness is: a highly recursive internal information exchange between parts of our brain. This recursive cycle extends beneath our level of conscious awareness, and so it "feels" infinitely "deep" and unique. Though in reality, it is not; its simply too complex to consciously imagine. Ultimately though, it doesnt matter if we are biological computers "playing a video game", and now we have reached the same conclusion that Hoffman states: it doesnt matter. If we are all in the video game, and there IS no other video game. Might as well play. If everything is "pointless", the idea of pointlessness loses all meaning, and everthing is back to being as meaningful as it could be.
Being a fan of Donald's interface theory, I still have to agree here. Donald loves to cherry-pick mechanics from this reality to "prove" things that happen outside, without any proof as to why those mechanics would exist there as well. Imagine a Call of Duty soldier proving that he is in a video game, but using in the process the fact that players are also soldiers, and that the "real reality" consists of polygons as well. Reality is not made up of polygons, so he didn't prove anything, even if he accidentally coincided with the truth.
As an entry point for the discussion, let's just interpret Hoffman's simulations of evolution, in which the criteria of maximizing the (artificial) organism's fitness has the "result" of making the property of "knowing objective reality", in that organism, "go extinct" (i.e., Hoffman seems to think that this is an important result for his further arguments). The easiest way to say "meh" to Hoffman's outlook via THAT data, is to just say that the simulation results only apply to life-forms like termites or beavers, or organisms with highly stereotypical and STATIC phenotypic behaviors, but that H. Sapiens are NOT like that at all, so the simulations do not fit "the data" for what H. Sapiens are like. What empirical data for H. Sapiens is inconsistent with the simulations? Consider that humans went from rocks, to swords, to atomic bombs, as interpersonal weapons. What about going from pan pipes and lyres to Moog synthesizers? In other words, H. Sapiens do not have stereotypical and static behavioral phenotypes. What H. Sapiens consider "truth" EMPIRICALLY grows with time, and Hoffman simulations do not do this. The dominant scientific intuition, which allows H. Sapiens to be this way (as opposed to be like beavers or termites), is that there is a "truth" out there that H. Sapiens has phenotypically learned to exploit, and that "reality" is open and discoverable about what kind of truths are exploitable in it. Hoffman's simulations do not discredit this. BTW, the ability to track truth and exploit it the way H. Sapiens do may not be adaptive, ultimately (e.g., the great filter hypothesis for the Fermi paradox, in the specific sense of intelligent species, such as us, being prone to self-destruction).
It seems, Hoffman's claim is that we are aware (or can be aware) of the world only like we are aware of the ''file icons'' on the corner of our computer screen, not the ''files'' as such. If so then it appears that the ''file icons'' would be the ''illusions'', while the ''files'' themselves would be the ''reality'' (that the icons stand for). This position then does not seem like denying the existence of reality, rather denying its direct accessibility in consciousness or, by direct sense experience, a' la Kant.
However, we may add that, nothing seems to prevent us from being able to i n f e r (even if we couldn't be directly aware of or, experience) the existence of the files/reality when the ''icons'' are systematically consistent with our consciousness and/or direct sense experience of the icons only. This also allows both for the ''external reality'' ontology of the physical sciences and the empirical epistemology of the scientific theories plausible.
Hoffman's idea in simple words is just this: you are wearing a virtual reality headset that you cannot take off. There IS a world beyond your headset but you simply don't have access to it. What you see and interact with in your daily life (and in the virtual headset) is not connected to true reality in any discernible way.
"That's such a philosophical argument" is a strange rebuttal from Lex half way through.
I could interpret things wrong but it seems Vervaeke's arguments already assume some sort of world that exists as a separate entity and that we can study it to gain true knowledge ('can't separate evolution from tectonics/chromosomes/etc.'), while I think Hofmann sees evolution as a mathematically precise theory that does not need any reality/universe to exist.
Also I agree with Hofmann that the world is like an illusion (just a tool/interface). Vervaeke asks 'illusory as compared to what?', and I would say compared to absolute truth. Truth that has no dependency on anything. No dependency on this world, universe, time, space, logic, knowledge, math, etc.. All this stuff is just relative truth that is useful for survival at best.
What is 'absolute truth'? Since you say it has "no dependency on this world, universe, time, space, logic, knowledge, math, etc." it seems to be a mere placeholder with no clear content. I am inclined to think that the most petty little contingent fact about what I had for breakfast this morning has more contentful truth to it than something so abstract and formal as 'absolute truth': the latter seems so... I don't know.... gassy, vapid. Illusory, even.
@@russellsharpe288 Yeah, my view of absolute truth has no clear content. But there are things that can be said that seem to point to something that is absolutely true. For example, 'I exist'. That seems to be true regardless. And I don't mean the human me, I mean ME. (To say the human me exists I have to assume things.) Or you could say 'existence exists'. Something else: sensations exist. Who knows what will happen when the body dies, but FOR ME (and I cannot deny I exist) there is also no denying that sensations exist.
I my view, these sentences are less prone to being wrong then the notion of what I had for breakfast. Because then I have to assume time/past exists, and that my memory is working correctly, there was some object outside of me in some sort of 'space' kind of thing that somehow I ate, etc. I would call that a relative truth - something that is useful inside spacetime.
But you invoked absolute truth. You seem to know about it. Why isn’t absolute truth also part of the illusion. Hoffman falls so easily to the Hegelian critique. If we can’t know the real world, how do we know this about the real word. It’s a totally circular argument. Hoffman is just begging the question. He’s assumed too much.
@@mariog1490 You are right, if I were to know about absolute truth, that would be illusory. I don't know absolute truth. And a case can be made that absolute truth cannot be known, because knowing implies a separate me (a 'knower') and something to be known. The knower is part of the illusion, so any knowledge is also part of the illusion.
Absolute truth exists or it is nothing. If it exists, it cannot be a separate thing. It must be all-inclusive.
"If we can’t know the real world, how do we know this about the real word." --> we don't, because 'we' is an illusion.
@@timen.space. but then, how do you have knowledge of the allusion? It’s a circular argument. You’re saying “I can’t know the truth” which is a truth claim. The best anti-truth position is Nietzsche’s perspectivism.
What we call reality is an illusion in the strict sense that all phenomena, including all human experience, lack inherent essence, are transient and interdependent. That's all.
This discussions doesn't do justice to Donald Hoffman at all. He doesn't claim that his theory is built all the way on something certain - unlike Descartes. He's aware that all theories are based on assumptions (axioms) including his.
Instead he points out two ways in which his theory is better than the currently prevailing materialism:
1) His theory can explain consciousness (by making it fundamental) and physicalism cannot.
2) His theory is internally consistent, unlike physicalism, which is not consistent with latest realisations in physics that space-time fundamentally doesn't exist.
John and Donald had a conversation after this, where John apologized to Donald for what he said about him on Lex' podcast, admitting that he didn't fully understand him
@@candaniel thank you, will check it out.
I don't understand what's new about Hoffman's claim, we use models for everything we see, everything is an abstraction of reality because it's too complex but that's old news, everyone knows that.
If to remove all the unnecessary metaphysics from Hoffman and Lex its all comes simple:
1. reality is a background;
2. consciousness works with an internal display not directly with reality;
3. the information on the internal display is processed;
4. the way it is processed by brain is defined by the evolutionary pressure.
Looks trivial.
Metaphysical buzz around it is for an attention grab. Attention = fame and money, hard to resist.
@@leontich46 just to agree with you; it seems obvious that it's an illusion. After all, all the central nervous system "sees" is a train of pulses in the form of action potentials on proximate neurons. That's it! Who knows what's "really" out there? We only have what the brain does with those pulses. Presumably the illusion is a pretty good tool for survival and reproduction thanks to evolution. But that's all it is...a tool implemented in the form of an "illusion"😂
What hoffman says makes a heck of a lot of sense to me and i have trouble discrediting it in my own mind. If what he thinks is true, it means there is an objective reality which means there are ways to see it and prove it. I get what Verveake is saying that us proving it wouldnt be possible in the reality we created as our capabilities are entirely giverned and limited by it, but i disagree.
If our reality is a product of evolution, atleast part, perhaps a very large part, of it was formed early in our evolutionary timeline. We as a species have evolved exceedingly fast, especially intellectually. We went from small 4 legged rodent like creatures to this in only a few million years. Its possible, if not probable, that our intellect has outpaced our evolved reality. Even if only slightly, it'd mean we are capable of finding ways to see beyond the reality we created at least in part. Whether what we would be seeing is part of the objective reality, or just something closer to it as another step in our evolution is something to be debated and studied.
Hope this makes sense, it does in my head.
It is a mistake to talk about Donald Hoffman's theory in his absence. Lex does not convey Hoffman's theory accurately.
I have to agree with John here, having listened to Hoffman on several occasions--I just don't understand what Hoffman is getting at beyond what has already been discussed about the nature of reality ad nauseam.
John changed his mind on Donald
He just disagrees with Hoffman to remain relevant… it gets him interviews on UA-cam
Hoffman doesn't say it's an illusion at all. That's a complete butchering of what he's said in multiple interviews.
there are two channels on this platform that leave me intellectually intimidated. This one and the awesome Alien Scientist, both amazing channels but wish i could wrap my head round some of these discussions.
I think reading some introductory books on these subjects might help more than podcasts.
You need to be able to pause and think and you also need a thought out progression of ideas when getting acquainted with this stuff. These podcasts jump around a bit too much from time to time.
@@aarnehalen1686 good advice
@DJ 808 Audiovision👍
Ya, Lex basically blasts this dude without even trying and I love it.
Can Mario come to know he's a character in a video game?
Hoffman wins 🏆
They're arguing against their misunderstanding of Donald's theorem. If you're going to challenge his ideas, Don should be there to argue his points.
If reality informs the illusion, and if the illusion is there to let us easier adapt to the reality, then, dude, you know, Hoffman may have a real point.
And they hadn't even started contextual conversation around temporal entanglements. The compass is spinning round the clock.
I won’t go into extreme detail but I believe we are living in both a reality and a simulation. We are realistic beings that are living in a simulated societal system. I know this doesn’t really address the full topic of discussion but I find this to be true and because we are being programmed by this way of life everyday it makes certain people question the reality of everything or the universe. In order for success you have to have a consistent pattern…
Classic example of someone who has not read Hoffman trying to critique his thoughts. This guy should withhold comment until he has a clue what Hoffman is saying.
Evolution explains what happens in the headset, but the headset is not reality. It is like saying “evolution happens in this video game.” Has nothing to do with what is really going on in the computer generating the video game.
If we do not know if reality is reality. Then how do we know that unreality is unreality? I am with John on this one. It sounds like Donald is arguing against "Cogito, ergo sum."
Did the speaker provide a standard of realness?
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I like Mr. Hoffman .
Phooey on this dude .
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Hoffman reached his conclusions using computers, doing math. And guess what? Big shocker - that’s what he found: math. His argument bears the same fallacy as panpsychism and even monotheism (heck, all religions): it is human-centric. We are not the only species of animal on the planet, and we are not the only type of consciousness. Other animals and plants do not fuss about what reality they’re living in. They live in our same environment and do quite well surviving with the same basic perceptions we have. Our abstract minds can go off on these tangents, and our only tool, math, can build us a world that can kill off the rest of organic life, but it isn’t closer to reality than any other organism. This is the argument against Hoffman.
This man knows his classics he' knows logic. He isn't gas lighting and stealing words of credibility that's being used contradictory like atheists and evolutionist