Transcription
Before we can go further, we have to define you because this is one of the areas that when I'm listening to you talk, I always want to be like, "Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. We got to, we got to define that because I want to know what you mean." Um, okay. So, we're going to do this in, I think, a very specific way.
So, there's the vision of the Matrix and you've got Thomas Anderson inside of the Matrix, but the him that's outside of it is literally in a pod. He's bald. He hasn't moved his muscles ever. He's never used his eyes. But he's in a knowable location and you can go and find him and that's the real world and when you take the red pill you send a disruption signal that they can track and they can go get him. So that would be a a version of you which is startlingly similar to the you in the headset but you're outside the game.
Then you've got my version which is you're an NPC. You are um a program. You're pure computation. Um you're hardcoded. You have no free will. Like you're you're just doing NPC video game stuff. It feels like you have free will. I got that. But nonetheless, uh and so there is no you outside of the game. The idea of outside of the game plus you is literally nonsensical. So if you think of a character in a game, that character only exists because there is a program that is running that person and person in quotes of course. If you tried to take that character's code and run it even in a different game on a similar engine, it wouldn't work. If you then tried to take it and run it out in the real world, it's literally just like code. It would just sit there on a piece of paper. It it you wouldn't even have a sense that it represented an NPC. It would literally just be lines of code.
And so then we've got a third option, which is what I thought you were going to say, which is um consciousness is fundamental. It is one thing. There is one consciousness which in my defense I've heard you say a gazillion times, right? And if there is one consciousness, it is basically broadcasting into the headset these experiences for whatever reason. And I've heard you and many other people say it's the universe trying to understand itself from all these different angles. Uh which if that is the final take, then we can go down that road. Um okay. So those feel like the three options of you, right?
So one being distressingly close to how you see yourself in the headset, one being there is no you. It's you're the you in the game is it period. End of story. There's no taking the headset off. That's your view, right? That's my view. And then there's the well, it's sort of you, but consciousness is one fundamental thing. And the you in the headset can't really be experienced outside of the headset. That's a headset only exclusive. Um, and so I've heard you say dying is removing the headset and realizing that you're part of the one, right?
Okay. Uh, does one of those accurately reflect your view or is there a different? I would say that your the third one is the closest to to my view. Okay. But it's only close. It's not precise. That That's right. It's it's Well, put it this way. It's it's the closest that I can come right now to saying something precise about what I think.
Okay. So you know there's something wrong but you're not yet sure what that is. In in this in the following sense that every scientific theory is always provisional that my view is that every scientific theory starts with assumptions and you know that that can't be the final word. So when I say I'm going to assume as a scientist I'm saying I'm going to assume that there is one consciousness and that it is usefully described by an infinite set of different kinds of Markov chains that are all related and we can in a way we can talk about. So that's so that's going to be my theory. So there is one consciousness and it has all these complicated um branchings into subconsciousnesses and even smaller subconsciousnesses and that whole thing is is the fundamental layer and then from that I can create our spacetime you know three dimensions of space one dimension of time I could create one with with five dimensions a billion dimensions of space I could create things any headset that you can want.
Is right now and I'll trust you cuz I'm not sure what the answer is going to be. But is right now the right time to go into how consciousness gives birth to the mathematics that give us the artificial but useful within the headset spacetime? Sure. This is I perfect. It's never going to be easy, but it's not right.
So, we'll put let's really pin down. So the closest thing that you can get to right now is that to take off the headset is to return to the one, right? One consciousness. Consciousness is fundamental. There is nothing else, right? Um everything else is a layer on top of that. Now um before we get to the mathematics, do you believe that the metaphor of the headset is meant to communicate something that is inherently computational? I would think that's that's perfectly fine. The the idea that I've got is that they're all these conscious agents, but we can write down mathematically what how how we're going to describe them. And that mathematics allows us to think of them as computational.
We don't reduce. So computational is a very important word to me in that computational is making clear that this is being run on something that energy is somewhere being consumed in order to run the um all the code that is going to say the Donald Hoffman inside of the um headset has all of these different properties. The way your cells divide, uh the way that your DNA comes together to form your physical structure, that you're a part of the human species, like all of that has to be computed. And then there are things like um physics and weight distribution, aging, like all of that stuff goes into the you that's inside of the headset. So to me, when I say computational, that's what I'm talking about. It's mathematics. It's energy to run the computations. And you're taking inputs which have been coded somehow some way. So this in your if you say yes to this, what you're saying is consciousness writes computer code. And once that code is written, then it can be run. It can be computed quite literally. And that's why it has to be um efficient because so much effort from my thinking is that goes into making it efficiently computed. Does all of that feel true or did I get something wrong?
That's all true from a perspective. So, so the idea would be that the very notion of computation of of a universal Turing machine, a universal notion of of of computation. Well, when you say a Turing machine, do you just mean inputs become outputs? Well, it's in in in computer science there we have the notion of automata theory and formal automata and and hierarchy of them. And so we have a notion of the various kinds of levels of computational sophistication that you can have and the ultimate is a universal Turing machine which which can compute anything. And and so what makes something a universal Turing machine? It well so this is Alan Turing was the one who defined it. It it has a it's a machine that has a finite set of states and a finite set of transition rules has a start state a set of halt states and uh you can show show that if it has a certain level of complexity in the transition rules effectively and and if it has an potentially infinite tape you have as much tape as you need for for what you're doing then then it's in some sense computationally universal there there's everything that can be computed it can be computed by universal Turing machine and and also the universal Turing machine can sort of simulate any particular Turing machine. So basically it has the rules by which it knows how to run the computations.
That That's right. And and it's what Turing did that was brilliant was he he made this very very simple. He he basically had a set of small set of states and a start state, some halt states and then a set of transition rules and and and in fact so when I said that Markov chains are computationally universal, you you can effectively model Turing's machines with a subset of Markov chains. So they include Turing's notion of computation as a subset of the possible Markov chains. So, so it's now the notions that you were bringing up are very very important physical notions about energy and time and and the effort that's required for certain computations, but that will be now a headset specific aspect of the computation as seen through a headset.
So, yes, but remember we're trying to get to you. We're trying to figure out how you define you. Okay? And what I'm saying is the computation is necessary to have any intelligible sense of you that people will understand. I think part of the reason that people find this conversation interesting is it's dealing with death. And so, hey, if I'm in a computational universe, maybe I can transcend this. Maybe there's a way for me to get out of the matrix. Maybe there's a way for me to skip around to my code and be young again or whatever. Um, I have a whole story that one day I will tell uh about a guy that is obsessed with figuring out if you can flip the database entry for him, it's on his wife, from zero, which means dead, to one for alive.
Yes. Uh, and I think this is all what haunts people and or what makes this conversation so interesting, right? And where I always terminate is that there is no getting out of the quote unquote matrix because at some point you have to accept computational or not, we are biological creatures and I can completely disrupt who you think you are with chemicals. So imagine what I can do with a chemical that can make your ego feel like it's dissolving. Uh now imagine how startling it would be to not even be computational in nature anymore. You're just one with the uh consciousness. Like that would be so it wouldn't be you. Like part of what makes you you is that you're scared of spiders or that you love ketchup or you know whatever. All of that is gone. And so what would it even mean to say you at that point? Okay. And that's where it's like I want to start drawing distinctions. One because I think it makes the um the setup of what this is, what's possible, what's not possible. We can actually have the conversation. But then it also brings up the sort of finitness of the you factor. So for instance, some people will find great relief from death anxiety at uploading their consciousness, but once they really think about it, they'll realize they have no experiential connection with that duplication. So it would be the exact same as cloning you, but you can't experience the clone. The clone's going to go do its thing and be its own separate entity that has literally nothing to do with you other than from a starting point, you guys are identical. And so that's where I want to really ground this.
Very good. That great points. So I I would say a couple things. I'll put something out there that's sort of stunning to start off with. I'm a cognitive neuroscientist and I will I will claim that I have no neurons unless they're observed. The rendering thing that you were talking about before. So my body.
Let me let me uh stress test that. I would say that you don't believe you have no neurons. Um I think what you really mean is they are encoded. They're just not running. So the computation to make them turn an input into an output is dormant.
And so there we might disagree because I I'm actually saying, you know, like retinal ganglion cells, that's a kind of of neuron that's that's in me. Yeah, retinal ganglion cells do not exist unless they're perceived. They literally do not exist. There is let me try one more time a different way. Okay. Uh when you think of computer code and that code turns into a character, right? I will agree that we're simulating eyeballs or we're simulating vision, we're simulating sound. And so you could certainly say that the eyes they're not real at all ever. Um but what I'm getting at is are you saying that um those never exist? So those cells never exist and they are merely a simulated thing.
That's that's right. They if some neuroscientist looked inside my brain with some kind of correct apparatus, they would see neurons. Yes. And that would be their perception. Those neurons would exist only in their perception and they were actually never my neurons. So, so I'm literally saying the render is really a render and nothing is there. So the chemical we talk about chemicals in space and time and and so forth neurons I'm saying those absolutely do not exist except in the instant of a render. So if a neuroscientist opens a brain and looks then that neuroscientist has neural experiences and that's all that neurons are.
Do you actually dealing with is something much different than neurons? But is the nonvisual mathematics of the neurons firing still running and that's what makes you you and it's just the visual layer that fails to render or are you saying that the the thing we call Donald Hoffman is entirely a broadcast signal that is received and that's what animates you. I would say that that Hoffman is a particular rendering program that other people can see and that I experience and that I'm not fundamentally I don't most of us identify with our bodies and with the things that are going through our head but if you start you know a meditation process for example and you start to just go into silence and you just start to look at your emotions and you look at all the things that are so important to And you look and you find that you can you can just sort of step back and say well I thought that that was me. I thought that the love of doing this particular thing which I still love was me. Well no I can I can step back and I can look at that and say that is something I could do or or not do but I am not that. I transcend that. So when you actually spend time just looking at yourself, all the things that you think are you, you can step back and say, "No, I am more like the silence that's looking at all this stuff. I'm looking at my love of, you know, basketball. I'm looking at my love of eating, you know, whatever it is. I like to eat some pancakes or something like that. I can look at all the things that I think are or you know, I'm an entrepreneur and this is really, really important to me. That's who I am." I can look back at look at that and say, "You know what? I did that. I can walk away from it. That's not who I am. So there is a sense in which when you go into complete silence and just watch all the emotions, watch all the thoughts and watch other people's emotions and thoughts, you realize um yeah, we're we're we're sort of lost in the game. That's not you. That's you lost in the game. And I can step back and just say, okay, well, how is the game rendered? How am I getting sucked in? Um I'm not a little thing trapped in the game. I am capable of stepping back looking at the whole game disidentifying. So for me being a professor doing all the academic stuff very very important getting papers published I can look back at that and go you know what I did that. That's not me. It was important to me. I thought it was me for a long time. I identified with it. My whole personal identity was tied up with it. But you know what? At one point I was tied up with toys in the sandbox as a 5-year-old. And if someone stole my toy, I fell apart. I was I was destroyed because someone stole my toy. But now I can step back and go, "Oh, no. That was just that rendering of me." And you know, I went through that render, I can step back. So even my most advanced scientific stuff that I want to do, that's not me. That's just me playing in a sandbox with some toys. And so I can always step back. So my idea is is really we transcend this so much that we can actually we're smart enough that we can actually figure out the code that that's rendering us and what we thought is ourselves in this thing. We can actually render that code. And if we do that, I mean this here's the proof, right? I'm claiming an empirical thing. We will be able to understand the first layer of software outside of spacetime. We will be able to build spacetime. We will be able to build um models that work completely inside spacetime. And once we know how to do that, we will have technologies that will look like magic. We will not be bound by the speed of light. We will not be bound by the rules of the game because we now understand the software behind the game. We're no longer the players in the game. We re we we transcend the game. We So I'm claiming Tom transcends spacetime. Whatever Tom is is not stuck in this body. Is not stuck in the entrepreneur game at all. Tom transcends that completely. And but for some reason, this one consciousness chooses to go in with both feet, go into the avatar, get lost completely, identify with the kid and the 5-year-old in in the sandbox and the toys, and really cry when someone steals my toys, really cry when my paper doesn't get published, really cry when someone dies. Really. So, I really I'm I'm in the game, but then I can step back and go, "Wow, that was a perspective on the deeper me, whatever I am. I'm really glad I spent 70, 80, 90 years as Tom Villu, but now I'm stepping out." That that was a that was a great ride. Now,
Do you think you'll have memories of that? I don't see why you shouldn't be able to have the memories and look at them just like I have a memory of being a 5-year-old um crying because someone stole my toy in the sandbox.
What is the mechanism by which memories are formed? Well, of course in sides spacetime we would talk about synaptic connections and so forth. So in in the headset we would use that kind of thing in neuroscience. Um in in the Markov chain model that I am working on, it would be um in the memory of the transition probabilities of these matrices. But how would you store that memory? If I have a Ferrari and then I completely disassemble it and I make a blender and if I go to the blender and I say that blender is a dope car, right? That people be like that's nonsensical. And I'm like yeah, yeah, but it's the same parts from the Ferrari. And then people be like sure, but it doesn't drive. And so the thought that those are the same thing, like not really. So for me, the one consciousness just is completely unrelated to these, you're going to hate this language, these skin suits that it wears inside of the headset. And you may have an image of the one consciousness that is so radically different than what I'm imagining, uh that we'll just never be able to really have the same conversation.
But to me it we are our biology. And so the second you tell me I transcend my biology, I'm like, "Oh, it's not me." And while I agree with you on all of the like we'll be able to do things that are magical, but for instance, if I went in and gave myself uh you know 190 IQ, I'm not me anymore because I'm not a guy with 190 IQ. And so the second I began interfacing with the world in that fundamentally different way, my personality would just be fundamentally different. And so whether it be remnants, whether it be things that I recognize or somebody else recognizes, maybe there might be overlap, but it's like that stuff, if I'm a mosquito, I'm not me. Like it's just the way that data is processed is so fundamentally different. So that's where I'm like, I don't think you remains a coherent statement. In the same way that you say below the Planck scale, spacetime is just incoherent. I would say the concept of you is incoherent outside of the headset.
Well, I think that's a an interesting and reasonable point of view. I would just say that if you look back at your life, the 5-year-old Tom, 5-year-old Don had what they thought they were, things that were very, very important to them that if you said, "Look, you take these toys away from me, take my sandbox away from me, you've destroyed my world." And what else is