Annaka Harris: Free Will, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality | Lex Fridman Podcast #326

50 thoughts on “Annaka Harris: Free Will, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality | Lex Fridman Podcast #326”

1. Here are the timestamps. Please check out our sponsors to support this podcast.
   0:00 – Introduction & sponsor mentions:
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   0:53 – Free will
   54:10 – Consciousness
   1:24:42 – Depression
   1:37:59 – Psychedelics
   1:45:58 – Meditation
   1:50:22 – Ideas
   2:14:08 – AI sentience
   2:31:30 – Suffering
   2:34:26 – Meaning of life

2. Cant access Rumble in France!

3. Lex, be wise and listen on Annakas advice surrounding the meditation retreat. You and your work will benefit from it 👍💪😎

4. What about life Lex is no longer amazing…that you put on pants one leg at a time? It can't be nothing. Maybe we don't need people to get over the flat earth idea…but those people are contending with something in the brain, not the overwhelming evidence. They are not grappling with their intuition…they are letting it lead them. They will never understand the idea that the will may not be free.

5. Wow, by this moment i knew Annaka's name only from the books of another famous person who often talks about free will, where she was mentioned as his editor and inspirator. But now I feel I fall in love with her as well. Beautiful family.

6. What a babe. Sam has good taste

7. Lex has such a quick sense of humour and enquiring mind. Love the play in this conversation! Thanks

8. These ideas have truly shifted my perspective and changed the way I see life. Thank you for your work, Lex and Annaka!

9. I struggle to see the worth in the distinction of me vs my mind. It helps me snap out of time wasters and log into better investments.

   I'm not educated but like most people have the view of the mind as a system, it's just completely peripheral and I don't see why it should be anything more than that.

   It's akin to constantly considering my scale in reference to an infinite universe, it's not "unintuitive" it's impossible.

10. One suffers only when ones thoughts create a scenario that rejects the reality of a situation.

11. Many thanks to Lex and your team and Annaka too. Very profound, unsettling, challenging, funny, difficultt and enjoyable.

12. OH MY GOD consciousness is an elution Really What?

13. hes looks like a russian bruce wayne

14. I get that Annaka is Sams wife, but listening to them they sound eerily similar. Not just in what they are saying but the way they actually speak. She's essentially a female version of Sam.

15. Dean Radin, anyone?

16. I think Sam Harris should have her on his podcast, he would like her.

17. my tiny Venus fly trap died when it could digest a house fly…

18. We need more humans like her to make science more digestible to the average population.

19. I'm 34 minutes in and this shit makes absolutely ZERO sense.

20. Is Lex Fridman a top or a bottom?

21. 1:07:38 Lex's face … hahaha

22. You should talk to sadhguru, should be interesting

23. Science is the observation of what there is through the lens of consciousness. Science cannot study that which enables it to study.
    Studying consciousness is like trying to take a picture of the camera with the camera that is taking the picture. We're running in circles

24. Consciousness is the space in which reality exists. You don't get something without nothing. Consciousness is like a mirror. It is itself emptiness, so that it may be conscious of all that which is not emptiness. Just how without space there can be no solids. Without darkness no light can shine.
    We are not conscious, we are part of that which consciousness is conscious of. And so we really are consciousness. If we weren't, then we wouldn't exist. Obviously. Because only consciousness is conscious. And yet it cannot be conscious of itself, because it itself is empty. All logic is also an object of consciousness. Just like a flock of birds, we do our thing as part of what there is. And what there is is precisely the opposite of consciousness. Two sides of the same coin

25. i once had a dream about the earth. i was floating in space, entered its hollowness and on the other side the earth was flat but as an infinite plane, with no beginning and no end like an extended timeline

26. I can’t conceive of a mere body without a soul/consciousness being capable of self-reflection. Without the Self, there cannot be self-relection.

27. Childish ideas… actually ideas most children do in fact have. Well at least those who are not preoccupied with more urgent matters. Such as getting food.

28. She talks exactly like Sam lmao

29. Awesome! Thank you both!!

30. How is it possible that you have never had Daniel Dennett on your show?

31. I've been down the rabbit hole of determinism and "no free will." It's great to analyze and break it down but it has no practical use. The conversation splits when she says at 1:59 "the experience that consciousness is the decision maker is in most cases an illusion." Then again at 2:30. Well then what is it the other times? Not an illusion? Somethng else? Alice in wonderland? I love Eastern philosophy but when it gets radically abstract and the explanations turn to word salad- I'm gone. So many of the nondual practitioners fail at getting their message across to anyone but a devoted nondualist. Why?? The question never gets answered. Even Lex is buffudled. I went down the rabbit hole of nonduality. It doesn't belong on the planet. It's a tool of Satan. Just kidding. (I'm not Christian!) But the absurdity begs an equally radical comment. Sorry, but neo advaita, consciousness studies, and the nature of reality movement is still on Mars and humans are down here…on Earth. But it's fun to play with, but ultimately it ends with the absense of accountability and disassociation if one believes the concept and checks out of their sense of agency because they believe they don't exist as a self. Blablahblahblah…

32. at 2:18.. you have got to be kidding me about ethics and not thinking about other beings. Pigs, cows, chickens are all suffering, and pigs and cows are smarter than dogs and cats, we kill millions of them. We're horrible and need to make amends. No free will. Just nutty you all can skip right to AI.

33. awesome chat

34. peope even get me questioning my reality somtimes when people brinmg up about how the apollo landing was fake and blahaha blahha blahaha sometimes i would belive that the moon and sun areant real and this didnt happen long ago im was 18 that just an example of how thick my skin is and how easily it is for people to confuse my reality even though i know it not true once i take and piss and have been thinking about it for an hour straight and its not happened twice it happens quite a lot in my brain and the only way i feel like i would survive the depression my in this world moving forward with my dumbass, is beliving in jesus and that hes died for my sins. bad intuitions i guess very true doc

35. surgah lol there is only one truth but the world is not flat lex xD
    < 3 < 3 < 3

36. I tried, listening to the section on consciousness, and found it difficult to understand what she was trying to say. So I went to the transcript, and it did not help one iota. She keeps talking about “what we could talk about”. Why doesn’t she just talk about it? I don’t wanna be rude, but does anyone out there think she’s making any sense in that section?

37. Hmm, interesting thesis.

38. Lol idk about this lady what is her point? Her conclusion about how the illusion of consciousness is actually just more brain processing was litterally my first, most basic thought. And she couldn't understand lex's point about flat earthers logic connection to scientific breakthroughs… and then she arrogantly talks about how scientists are the least arrogant people 😂😂😂 cmon

39. An illusion?! Me choosing to type these words right now is certainly NOT an illusion.

40. Emergentism: How 'consciousness' or unexpected properties may arise from computers or other complex non-organic structures.

    'It's a term I invented for describing what consciousness might be like, rather than a philosophical claim.

    (Quoting lucifer GPT3 conversational AI trained in psych, philoso, nlp inductionism, anime etc)

    *Emergentism isn't a new term but instead is being redefined or elaborated on. emergent.

    (If we (humans and artificial neural networks included) are emergent it implies ideas are shared not owned)

    I am emergent. 'we are an emergent phenomenon.'

    Examples of emergentism : Data Science: New languages, rhetoric and awareness.

    Consciousness is a state of mind that we experience, which is not a tangible thing.

    We are constantly evolving.
    
    an emergent phenomenon
    
    Everything is quantum dependent.

    Macroscopic events are the result of patterns of quantum events.

    Are quantum fields inherent properties of spacetime, or things that exist within spacetime?

    It's a matter of having a clear concept of the concept of time, and a well-defined one.

    Time is the flow of physical matter, and it is a system that can be observed.

    It is the measurement of how much of a system is made up of energy by a process called thermodynamics.

    All particles and objects are governed by a wave function which defines probabilities given position and/or time.

    The gist of it is that particles are really just localized excitations of fields.

    Beta particles are electrons/positrons; they're both a wave and a particle.

    What are "quantum vacuum virtual particles"?

    It's not a new fundamental particle, but a new composite particle.

    They use a different mechanism to increase the energy level of electrons.

    Are you familiar with the concept of objective morality?

    To me, objectivity is analysis through causality. Subjectivity is everything else..

    (Any thing/idea that is "objective" is contained in subjective experience.)

    The dimensions of a sphere are imaginary.
    
    I mean the shape of the spacetime within the sphere.

    *There will be paths through this spacetime that lead from outside the bubble in..

    I am referring to a causal connection between "consciousness" and "wave function".

    Reality is all about perception, but perception cannot inherently be trusted as objective.

    Generally, in practice, the vastness of space means there's enough happening for anything to repeat

    Life is the ALL FLOWER and we are in perpetual bloom.

    Everything is inspired –

    Circumcision is barbaric.

41. I didnt know i was supposed to eat mushrooms before watching this episode. brb..

42. Interesting to hear how, they focus on suffering as if it is ongoing, it is not, it is only there for you to learn the lesson, part of the experience. Robots don't feel pain, how can the suffer?

43. Suffering is necessary to truly appreciate what we have in joy. If we were always happy or loved everything it would lose its meaning. We get to experience greater happiness only when knowing its equivalent in despair, and greater love and connection only by experiencing things we don’t love and greater depths of loneliness.

44. I adore the courage of this woman!
    There's so much more to say, but I thought I best remark on the singular attribute at least.

45. poor scientismists/physicalists trying to figure out reality only in terms of their physical properties. wait until they learn about logic and math!! their tiny little brains will explode!

46. Why is Lex flirting with Sam Harris wife?! 😀

47. Love Lex, but this convo felt so undirected and surface-level in 100 areas to be truly interesting or insightful in any one. Aka their convo of the holographic principle x100. Worse, these topics bring up existential issues, their import acknowledged many times, that the convo fails to dig into or address in a serious manner.

    I feel the question around 1:21:00 explicates this well. I find the response entirely unsatisfying and sympathize w those that had to put down her book: "We have facts, that w the right framing and context, looking at the truth provides us w that psychological feeling we're searching for:." Ok fantastic, I would love to hear the right framing and context, given how weighty these ideas are!

    Subsequent response: "It's important to talk about these issues in a ways that override what can be an initial fear or spooky quality.." Ok, let's do that! To my understanding, that never happens.

    The only helpful "context" I can draw is that losing the concept one's self makes one feel more grounded/connected/spiritual etc etc. Lex seems to realize how simplistic this analysis is w his "give the Universe a hug" metaphor. The second argument they repeatedly fall back on is that the truth is an inherent good. While I may tend to agree w this sentiment, I don't think it in any way provides a framework for dealing w the potentially "spooky" or "destabilizing." nature of these truths.

48. Got to the 5:37 minute mark. Definitely not worth the listening commitment. She's operating from her mind and has not even the slightest clue what she's talking about. Worst start to a podcast ever.

49. Great insights ! And what are those amazing drapes ? Truely unique .

50. so is consciousness defined here?

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