Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
Donald Hoffman a cognitive psychologist and Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. The interviewer is Curt Jaimungal, who has a background in mathematical physics, making this an eminently scholarly and technical talk (relative to what exists with Donald Hoffman). Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of his theory before watching this in order to be maximally edified.
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0:00 Introduction
0:35 Hoffman’s thought on the state of the country during COVID and what it entails about his theories
2:51 Why he meditates for 3 hours daily, and what type of practice it is
7:26 Hoffman’s diet and health habits
9:52 On computational psychology (Hoffman’s initial background)
13:05 Outlining (technically) the conscious agent model, and the motive force behind the lettering
16:41 Consciousness as primary to Being, as the impediment for rationalists
26:50 Why neural correlates aren’t *just* correlates, but instead can play causal role (playing devil’s advocate) and the limits of the “virtual reality” metaphor
38:44 Nima Armani Hamed’s amplituhedron, and consciousness
40:23 Local hidden variables / realism may be saved, via loopholes in Bell’s theorem
47:46 The assumption of uniform probability of fitness functions on cyclic groups, etc. is a problem for a theory that says our perceptions are non-veridical (ie. that they don’t match “reality”)
1:01:44 Evolution entails that we don’t see the truth / reality as it is
1:05:10 On the over simplification of evolutionary models (outputting down to the Real Line of dimension 1 without further structure)
1:09:17 The intensity of meditation, and fear of letting go / fear of the unknown
1:15:25 “Illusions are failures to guide adaptive behavior.”
1:16:41 The various philosophical theories on truth (correspondence, pragmatic, deflationary, etc.)
1:27:20 Spacetime as a data compression tool for conscious agents
1:32:39 On the nature of causality
1:37:50 How is reality objective, when in Hoffman’s model it’s predicated exclusively on subjective agents
1:40:00 What is “you”? What is “identity”? What is the “self”? (Eastern religions vs Western religions)
1:50:15 How does Free Will fit into a stochastic model?
1:58:59 Douglas Hofstadter’s “strange loop” model of consciousness & Tononi’s Integrated information theory vs. Donald Hoffman’s
2:14:37 Where God fits into all of this, as well as Hoffman’s definition of God
2:21:22 What happens when you die?
2:28:38 Gödel’s incompleteness theorem’s implications for Hoffman’s model
2:34:35 John Vervaeke’s other forms of knowledge which aren’t “propositional”
2:37:45 Landauer’s limit (fastidious critiques)
2:41:29 On the moon not existing when you don’t look at it
2:48:06 Do you see the same color red that I see? (and other experiences / qualia)
2:51:31 The paradox of pursuing truth, though truth is inimical (relative to fitness)
2:56:44 Where does Deepak Chopra take Hoffman’s message too far + what Jesus meant by “I am the truth / the way / the life”
* * *
I’m producing an imminent documentary Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of “when does the left go too far?” Visit that site if you’d like to contribute to getting the film distributed (in 2021) and seeing more conversations like this.
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This is it. You are the king of interviewing. The best Hoffman interview I've ever seen. Most thorough, methodical, deep and technical questions. You even asked my own personal question about goerdels theorem and it's limits on Hoffman's theory. Bravo, I can't thank you enough. I'm looking forward to your future work.
P.S. you really need to meditate, it will help in everyway. Try Hoffman's meditation method, I do the same thing he does too for a shorter amount of time.
Lots of stuff watch out for that black goo / grey goo
There's no pandemic, don't worry about being "enlightened" so much and study VIRUS ISOLATION, OR, RATHER, HOW IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE aka NOT A SINGLE ALLEGED "INFECTIOUS VIRUS" HAS NEVER BEEB SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN TO EVEN EXIST. Humanity has really taken their eye off the ball
3 hours is a long video. Can you boil it down to 6 minutes?
Hi Curt, I would appreciate your opinion on a fantastic quote by David R Hawkins from his fantastic book Power vs Force. It goes as follows – "The fallacy of logical empiricism is clear from its essential premise. To say that nothing is real unless it's measurable is already an abstract position, is it not? This proposition itself isn't tangible, visible, or measurable, the argument of tangibility is itself created from the intangible."
Just use a dream example instead of virtual reality. Imagine in your dream there are neuroscientists who have plugged electrodes on your head and associating brain waves with actions and able to correlate it. So you take that somehow brain is causing the conscious experience. Now what happens when you wake up. The neuroscientist, the brain, the actions and experience were all unreal. It was just the mind. Advaita Vedanta (AV) uses dream analogy extensively in proving consciousness as fundamental. In AV consciousness is fundamental and mind is illusive causing all experience, including universe, your body, brain etc.. Impure mind is responsible for all this show, purified mind is none other than the Self, pure consciousness. Pure Consciousness -> Reflected Consciousness in Mind-> Experience. Pure Consciousness -> Knower ->Knowledge->Knowable Objects.
Hoffman is unimpressive, stuck ina rut and not so smart. Computation is rubbish for quick change that's why the brain is semi chaotic on a knife edge. Same goes for rule-based modes. Dummies!!!
Funny these mathematicians can’t see the fake numbers duh!
;absolutely. Im sure the junkie livin in a tent is relieved."Hey stupid..youre fine. Youre just pac man!" "Oi, righty o matey. I was worried for a second."
Ok, Hoffman seems to have proven a bunch of mathematical theorems about certain mathematical objects that he has chosen to call "conscious observers". But why would his axioms be considered a good description of the notion of consciousness? For example, the axioms for a topological space devised by Hausdorff (circa 1914) have proven to accurately capture the notion of "continuity" by being extremely effective in describing key phenomena in various areas ranging from geometry to analysis, so they have proven themselves on the field, so to speak. The same can be said about the axioms for measure theory and probability theory by Kolmogorov: again, immensely fruitful and useful. Likewise, this time in the natural sciences, for the axioms of 'abstract' quantum mechanics.
Can the same be said about Hoffman's axioms for "conscious agents"? I don't think so.
So, he's basically doing Zen meditation (even if he doesn't say it).
Also, his ideas about Gödel's theorem are quite confused.
One of those arguments I need to learn more about but still haven't a I don't know if they're going to be lucid or not. Main issue is the reality we experience isn't real, however, that doesn't take away from reality being real. Solipsistic issue that was settled long ago in my opinion, and why I avoid these arguments. You can't falsify the few (non-Buddhist, Zen) ones I've heard thus far. So it's noise. Will watch this later. The Zen view is the same as the cognitive neuroscience view on this subject matter. Why I don't have problem with it. Basically, it's that we can only build a mental picture of what our sensors tell us and that picture is by definition limited. A part of what's out there and never the whole. This avoid the psychotic noise that those arguments I have heard are.
Shouldn't comment on a video before hearing Hoffman's views, but it's too late in the day for me to watch this.
People like You and Donald urgently needed! One of the best if not the best interview I've ever watched or listened. Open minded and very precised. As I wrote before, under Donald's interview for Closer To Truth: remarkable evidence that process of understanding is far beyond computation. Thank You Guys🙏👏👍
We know what TIME is from its acronym The Infinite moment experience(space/time), i think that reality is expression of some kind of energy through "fabric" which we manipulate consciously and unconsciously. And Time is our interpretation of it. It was amazing discussion.
This is fantastic!!!
No point watching its not real
LOL! Love the examples as to why the western mind does't have the capability to meditate… This guys a goof. I really hope he isn't married.
More bull shit from lunatic scientists
Assume the Quantum state. Consider 2 entities, say 2 protons p1,p2. Gravity or charge acts instantaneously so if p1 moves towards p2, transmission of signal being immediate, then the distance between p1 and p2 does not change because p2 moved instantly. This means d, the distance, = 0, which means that there are no quantum particles. The only solution is consciousness.
Think of the brain being a 2-way radio transceiver.