Donald Hoffman: Reality is an Illusion – How Evolution Hid the Truth | Lex Fridman Podcast #293

44 thoughts on “Donald Hoffman: Reality is an Illusion – How Evolution Hid the Truth | Lex Fridman Podcast #293”

1. Here are the timestamps. Please check out our sponsors to support this podcast.
   0:00 – Introduction & sponsor mentions:
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   1:12 – Case against reality
   12:40 – Spacetime
   37:04 – Reductionism
   57:30 – Evolutionary game theory
   1:25:53 – Consciousness
   2:21:13 – Visualizing reality
   2:33:48 – Immanuel Kant
   2:36:30 – Ephemerality of life
   2:44:56 – Simulation theory
   2:50:37 – Difficult ideas
   3:05:39 – Love
   3:09:14 – Advice for young people
   3:11:33 – Meaning of life

2. there once was a story

3. The Hoff

4. If reality is an illusion, then all science is part of this illusion, including the science that led to the conclusion that reality is an illusion. So there is no reason to believe reality is an illusion. QED

5. So wonderful to see that your own findings and experiences are confirmed. Great interaction.

6. What a beautiful episode. I love his thoughts on reality and both lex and Donald have really beautiful English. I really appreciate it

7. This sort of tripe makes my balls ache. I've heard exactly the same thing out of crackheads in Los Angeles. Dis' guy looks like Norman Bates. He acts like Norman Bates. He sounds like Norman Bates and the younger dude looks like Eddie Munster grown up.

   Stand at a whiteboard with an erasable magic marker and prove this premise with math Elon Musk. Otherwise your just another barker in front of a tent in a continuing carnival of horrors called "my life"

8. I have been reading a few books about this subject and spirituality, astral projection, etc.
   Robert Monroe mentions that there is a very thin veil between realities/realms, dimensions, or whatever you prefer to call it. And when our consciousness travels to these places, the possibilities are limitless. He mentions that people suffering from mental illnesses such as paranoid schizophrenia (where their reality is warped) may actually be suffering from having their consciousness having one foot in this reality and the other foot in another realm of higher consciousness. Talking to people who are not there (that we can see anyway), hearing voices, etc.
   I do not suffer with this "illness", however, my mental health is struggling with this subject of consciousness. The ego and this organic brain can not filter or comprehend the reality of anything other than we can physically see. So It must be a living hell when you can perceive a reality other than you know. Yet you can't distinguish which is "real" for want of a better word. That pretty much sums up the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. This subject is a never-ending rabit hole.

9. Reality is nothing and everything at the same time. 🤷🏽‍♀️

10. Reality is nothing and everything at the same time. 🤷🏽‍♀️

11. He's gone down the rabbit hole a little too far

12. Literally not a care in the world for the lay person. Don’t have him on again.

13. Exponentially more interesting than the Tucker Carlson interview.

14. Is he talking about the science of the spiritual realm? 🤷🏻‍♀️

15. If the Big Simulator In The Sky is asking itself if this is all a simulation, the fucked-up confused identity-crisis Simulator needs to get Real.

16. Wow. I am really stupid.

17. 1:34 "Reductionism is doomed" is such a tedious argument. Imagine AGI having this debate, when they are executing on ordinary computer hardware. The structure of the interior of the nucleus (or smaller) has ZERO impact on either AGI or us and our functioning. To explain ourselves we can safely make the cut at the periodic table and undergrad physics. The interesting unanswered questions are still there, questions about chaos, p=np, gene expression, and those questions cannot be obviated by reduction. It's like thinking that knowing Maxwell's equations excuse you from knowing how to debug a program.

18. What he is saying: the framework will never reach a final solution to explain everything. I always believed this was obvious… that science was a framework and a reduction of reality to act like something we can actually measure (another reduction an numbers never end) and use as an interface for hour brains. So also obvious we can never reach truth. Idk I didn't think Einstein wold have necessarily disagreed. Or what am I missing? He makes it seems like there maybe could be a potential new measurement we should come up with if there are ways we can accomplish certain tasks with way less steps then usual. Or is he even saying exactly that is not possible to do with "time and space methods" which might be all we realistically have access to? I'm trying to deeper or exactly understand what the result of main idea is. whats new. i thought these where parallel ideas not contradicting ones. just basically different (philosophical?) levels/views of reality.

19. Incredible talk, brothers!

20. Reality?!?!?!!!!!,………Its a carnal slave planet or rock or whatever you want to call this object . Like a orphan or foster child looking for their biological beginning from a fellow humanoid. And realizing that there wasn't much interest or concern or caring of your existence. Filling our lives with endless religions , governments, so called " royalty" to rule and govern over us , cults etc. etc. Always trying to fill the hole or void of trying to " explain" our existing and existence. And before you know it your in a pine box or an urn or just in the damn ground. ………..go figure……welcome to earth johnny 🤡💩🤕. Same ole bullshit different century

21. It sounds fun to experience more colours than others but in my experience all it gets me is arguments over whether or not something is the same colour/match lol

22. I feel dumb.

23. This guy reminds me of a Biblical scholar who writes volumes in an attempt to explain Love.
    Consciousness is the simplest of human traits, The need to see what's on the other side.
    Oh yes, almost forgot. Love is one word, trust.

24. You have to partition your brain to deal with it. One partition deals with theory. The other partition deals with taxes and rent – that aren't real. It will literally drive to insanity. And whatever you do, never talk about this as general conversation with anyone. If you do, you can physically watch their face start to melt off as they try to run away. So, you are also isolated completely.

25. Ultimately, what is the point? Unless it's (consciousness) has always been and always will be- what is the point in it's creation? Just because "they" can?

26. Try Mike Levine next, do it sitting down, and being high helps bunches

27. How to say this in a nice way. I think someone had one psycosis too much. I have long accepted we will never truly understand reality. Doesn’t stop us from trying to build models and theories to exploit it though. And of course they are going to be based in what we can observe.

    This kind of thinking I actively stopped as it provides nothing positive and only makes one feel bad.

28. Great conversation. Reality is an illusion only witnessing the experience is real. We loose our memory gained through experience overtime, we are only a subject of that witness. Psychedelics create a portal which we cannot control. But with our current capacity of knowledge, meditation and hypnosis are few techniques which gives access to portals which we are in full control. Meaning sometime in dream we will be able to touch other portals.

29. Good questions as usual. Thank you

30. Thank God this is not true. He reveals Himself to who seek and love Truth. The Truth is a person and will set you free when you repent and believe. God gives grace to the humble and opposes the proud. James 4:6.

31. Awesome interview I wish everybody could see this and try and understand that these things are real experiences …everyday experiences..thae have ti have your concent..it's up to you whether or not u give it to them

32. The mysteries that are always at the edges….. Genesis 1:1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.

33. I think that maybe time and space time is a function of this dimension but does not exist in the next dimension (where we go when we die). I don't believe that the speed of light exist in the next dimension either. If you look into NDE's that have been reported, you may come to the same conclusion. The evidence is very compelling but may not be able to be proven indisputably with our current abilities in science. With that said, the same can be said for dark energy, dark matter or even the big bang theory. Maybe some day humanity will get there, but for now, we are just not there yet… I would like to see Mr. Lex conduct an interview with someone in the NDE studies sector, perhaps Dr. Raymond A. Moody Jr., M.D., author of several books on the subject. Thanks.

34. Interesting hypothesis, but I think he's completely off his rocker, but he could be partially or completely right

35. "The act of observation is an act of creation." – That is wrong when stated this bluntly. When you want to measure a property of a tiny particle, that does not emit radiation or anything else, you "observe" it by interacting with it through other means, e.g. sending another particle to react with it. Then of course you create something that wasn't there before. When I shoot a cannon ball at a glass wall and it breaks, I "observed" the glass walls structural integrity. I cannot be surprised then at the fact that I created this new state of "broken" that wasn't there before.
    
    But when I observe a lion on a safari, the lions body is a big object, that reflects light hitting it. When my retina collects these reflected light particles, I am in fact not creating the lion. Donald Hoffman is arguing that I am, by trying to extrapolate the first case of "observation" to this case but these settings are fundamentally different.
    
    The culprit of all of this confusion is the sloppy definition of "observation of tiny particles". They are not observed like a lion on a safari is.

36. Now zoom out infinitely and you will see the nature of reality. Perspective is the key

37. Infinite fractal zoom, structures in infinite structures. Fractal Geometry solves the problem

38. Nobody's bullshit radar going off?

39. Ehh, basically he is saying Einstein wasnt 100% correct, but we havent got a clue how to make his mistakes more precise. Gotcha. This interview could have been way shorter.
    Also this isnt a simulation, or at least we should not assume it is. Cuz if it is, then who knows if the director of this simulation is not in a simulation himself, and there forma an endless chain of simulations like two mirrors faced against each other. Esentially it doesnt matter if it is a simulation, because either way we have to act the same way.

40. Gonna be real funny if the way the universe works is, if we become aware of the theory, the universe self corrects and changes it.

41. The reason space time is dead is because time itself is just a circular definition that just so happens to work, there's no actual proof of it

42. what the hell did I just watch?

43. /////////////// WE LIVE IN A WORLD THAT WAS MADE FOR US TO FIND OUT WHO LOVE'S THE LORD FROM THEIR HEART AND WHO DOES NOT……..I HAVE SEEN IT WITH MY OWN EYE'S – – – JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY WAY BACK HOME and this little man HAS NO CLUE AT ALL WHAT IS GOING ON ……. DONT BE FOOLED …………….. THE FAKE COMES 1ST

44. Donald has a degree in BS

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