Donald Hoffman – Why Did Consciousness Emerge?

46 thoughts on “Donald Hoffman – Why Did Consciousness Emerge?”

1. Just an interesting way to think of reality…

   Seems like our individual experience in totality is like an apex of the limitation that is required for there to be differentiation in reality.

   The human conceptual mind able to structure forms through this apex that can distinguish differentiation. Ultimately forming a structure we call self, to represent that which is limited.

   But the apex exists like an aperture with the potential to realize itself as the mutual connection of every other crest of reality.

   Experience is the “one/only thing” and what the ego claims as its individual perspective is simply a form within an apex of reality. A thought structure overlaid on the realized limitation of reality which is “my experience” no matter “where” that experience is.

2. HOw about this for a reason consciousness evolved: Because when you are conscious of yourself, you are simultaneously conscious of the sameness of others and that their relation to themselves through consciousness is similar to your, and their actions and reactions occur for similar reasons as your own. So animals that share this understanding of the self will naturally be able to anticipate the actions of others and cooperate and think and converse in ways that animals without it could never achieve. (thanks, Daniel Dennett).

3. No matter how you turn it, assumptions are speculative. For now, Hoffman's view is an unsubstantiated fictitious narrative.

4. 2:36 What this guy is saying is nothing but baloney. Yes there is a brown table in front of him and not a kind of icon of something else here. Thanks to this, he can have a nice cup of coffee when talking silly. At least, if he is not sure, he can asked the guy who built and sold it. He surly would tell him that he's not a kind of IT guy who write code, but actuaaly a guy whol build and sell real furnitures.

5. Interesting. It seemed that Dr. Donald Hoffman has been watching too many Hollywood science fiction films. Driving the truth to extinction. Evolution was not understood by Darwin. Nor has consciousness by psychologists. Therefore, everything that emerges from consciousness is false. An interesting theory makes it not true, to be the reality of the fact.

   Psychology cannot provide us with the answers. Yet philosophy has problems presenting some reasonable answers also. 

   Metaphysician philosopher

6. There is sure god reasons for consciousness would evolve. I think it have evolved more or less independently in human and birds.

7. This is one of the most naive, and arrogant opines about consciousness. The man is living dunning kruger and his deficiency is why academia has failed the most easiest question as to the construct of consciousness. He speaks with such unfounded hubris…his work further damages the comprehension of consciousness.

8. Quantum information is fundamental underlying…
   Quantum Mind emerge, Quantum Body emerge,
   Mind and Body entanglement..Consciousness emerge.
   Spacetime emerge,
   Holographic principal.

9. It’s easy to tell a story about what consciousness is when you never define consciousness other than saying it is “that”.
   (Bats flying out of a door)

10. So where was the consciousness before we evolve?

11. After doing DMT, this makes sense

12. Before you can even ask the question, "Why did Consciousness Emerge?" You first need to find out who or what is asking the question. Follow the question to it's source, can you physically locate a thinker or one that has this question? Where did this question originate. That is the true source of all questions at the core and a far more important one to ask. When you discover the answer to that one thing, there will be no further need of any questions as there will no longer be a questioner.

13. Essentially he is proposing the most sophisticated idea that God actually exists. The way he explains it sounds less silly than outdated religious contexts. When you use phrases like "physical reality emerged from consciousness" instead of "God said let there be light", its more plausible for those who have cancelled religious spirituality.

14. I am not buying it. Consciousness is a physical process and a product of evolution. I don’t need a theorist with a bunch of phd degrees to tell me what I see and feel is an illusion. The fact that quacks have always existed and continue to should not alarm us but at the end of the day we should hope that the truth will be known. I feel the same about parallel universes as the reputable scientific community agrees that they may exist Science cannot tell us if they do or do not!!!!

15. Does anyone else realise that Hoffman is just making baseless claims and putting forth unverifiable ideas that are not even logically consistent? That’s not science! It is a best just a philosophy. If cognitive perception does not reflect reality then whatever he is perceiving and formulating also do not necessarily reflect reality.

16. Fascinating to ponder that conscious thought, encouraged by evolution, could lead to the ultimate expression of what it means to be human

17. It's just terminology being interchanged. He's describing fundamental field of consciousness which can be substituted for the term quantum mechanics, or the field or chi. It's the same metaphor of an underlying structure we don't yet understand. No need to rewrite history, just agree on what label to use

18. So now there is a new question: why does consciousness make matter appear

19. I think this is the closest to truth we have yet achieved.

20. All matter comes from consciousness as the Gnostic Jesus stated two thousand years ago and recorded in The Gospel of Thomas:

    “If the body came into being because of consciousness that is a wonder, but if
    
    consciousness came into being because of the body this is a wonder of wonders.”

21. consciousness is an eternal element…there was a time when there was no universe but the consciousness is always..when you get enlightened, the universe will dissappear..

22. This man is confidently delusional, a dangerous but necessary step for any belief systems proper development. He's essentially fused two layers of existence together conceptually (consciousness and objective reality), claimed they are inseperable and fundamental (1 is not), and convinced himself he can't be questioned. The real issue is he's convinced himself the rest aren't real i.e. morality, social, logical, emotional, living body etc. It's a highly thought out and sophisticated delusion that he speaks about confidently, but it is a delusion. There's zero chance I could have overcome my own schizoaffective disorder if I didn't develop the tools necessary to disintegrate delusion beliefs , and this seems like ample opportunity to put them to use.

    He makes no mention of unconsciousness, despite psychology being a well established field. You do have an unconsciousness (i.e. your dreams, ability to "observe" yourself in action), which all life does, but "human consciousness" is on such a higher level that you're mostly ignorant to all the life around you, most especially your own. One million cells in your body die a second. Your physical body is not only conscious of this but acts with highly evolved reactions to clean, consume, or repair cells as necessary. You weren't aware of this for most of your early life and had to consciously learn from the top-down what your unconscious body already evolved, understands, and lives from the bottom-up .

    Another instance where this guys undeniably incorrect is transcranial magnetic resonance is a treatment for people with disorders of consciousness. If consciousness is fundamental and in the background behind the "universe that appears" than how can a brain magnet reset parts of your consciousness?

    Perhaps where he evades reality the most is his completely dodging of society/sanity. Sanity and our understanding of society is an evolutionarily adapted "interface" who's sole purpose is to shape our perspectives, knowledge, thoughts, and behaviors in alignment with the rest of the species. That isn't fundamental. Babies raised in near isolation do not have social skills, don't know language and have difficulty ever learning it, and they act more like survival driven great apes as adults. Sanity is a learned behavior that's genetically, environmentally, and socially etc. selected for. Sanity is built into every layer of the human condition and it's so well integrated that this man can comfortably ignore his own, despite the fact he is in fact sane. Not everyone has that luxury, which is why insanity is universally feared, misunderstood, and wondered about.

    Insanity is a "direct interface" that they're talking about at 3:40. Mother nature is "more clever" than the physical universe though. First she evolved sanity so that social species can collectively outsource the infinite interpretations of physical reality the interviewer mentions. Then mother nature evolved psychosis in higher hominids which affords the opportunity to "directly interface" with reality but only after they've been properly socialized for a couple decades first. Human brain development takes 25 years and schizophrenia onset is typically late teens to mid twenties. Mastering the "direct interface" is not impossible, as he suggests, but only feels impossible at first. Prehistoric human shaman's were often well-integrated schizophrenics who had overcome their psychosis. With the rise of civilization and the massive increase in society's complexity it's made an already "impossible" task that much more difficult. That's why schizophrenic's in modern society tend to be the most poorly adapted psychopathological humans and sit at the bottom or entirely outside the social hierarchy. But they're still living with an evolutionary adaptation and will learn to integrate better with time, effort, and the proper conceptual tools. Exhibit A, yours truly.

    Consciousness may "sit on top" of the moral, social, logical, emotional, living body layers but that doesn't mean consciousness is completely free from them. Consciousness depends on and is an emergent property of all other layers. You can consciously attach to your breathing, colors in your visual field, traumatic memories, future plans, words on this screen etc. He's made a delusional choice to ignore all strong evidence of the layers in between and to attach his consciousness directly to the physical world (but his unconscious knows better, if I toss a ball "think fast" he'd react unconsciously, obviously).

    Just because I attach my consciousness to a volleyball and call him Wilson doesn't mean it's alive or conscious. That's me psychologically projecting my consciousness onto a physical object, something he'd realize if he integrated human psychology into his view rather than unconsciously ignoring that and then consciously ignoring his own unconscious to maintain plausible deniability. It's a very shrewd strategy, which goes to show just how intelligent people are and how far they'll go just to convince themselves they're right. But hey, I can't really judge the man, I drove myself insane quite literally doing the exact same thing. Consciousness is a projection, and his argument rests on him projecting it on some of the universe while ignoring the rest. His perspective is partially right but ignores the greater unity as a whole. People live with a near infinite level of uncertainty and fear in their unconcious minds, so when a man with his confidence and intelligence tells them about the state of the universe confidently of course they want a bit of that magic. In my last life I was the sun.

    TLDR: Overwhelming conviction requires overwhelming criticism. It's the only path to balance and harmony.

23. If time and space don’t exist, how has evolution economized information through time? Where and when are things happening so that we can use the interphase with increasing effectiveness? The simple word “evolution” requires time.

24. Hoffman says that evolution through fitness drives the search for truth to extinction. Pure baloney. For thousands of years there was a Shamanic class that had access to psychedelics. People developed dances, chants, and rituals that enabled them to tap into higher realities eventually leading to cultures (such as the ancient Egyptians), that spent time and resources addressed to the states beyond physical death (Cf. the Egyptian Book of the Dead). Such endeavors had no immediate DNA contributions to the gene pool, i.e. evolutionary fitness in the short run. But over the course of thousands of years, humanity tended to a state in which the quest for vertical wisdom eclipsed the mere tendency to spread one's genes. Due to the ancient Buddhists and Hindus, we can tap into the Pure Reality behind the interface headsets. Access for example, "Mahamritunjaya mantra – Sacred Sounds Choir". This is the foremost Shiva mantra from the Rig Veda., that if listened to for a few weeks, will enable you to tap into and transcend all of the vertical levels of reality, in the state of Smadhi/Satori. C. is the Ground of Being. (Cf. Samadhi Movie parts 1-3).

25. Symbolic representation isn't "untrue".

26. Is there no contradiction in, first, making the argument that, (1) perception is EMERGENT from "reality" (much like a GUI on a Turing machine), and then, making the claim that (2) "consciousness" cannot be EMERGENT from "reality" (but rather that "reality" must be emergent from consciousness)? It seem to me that the argument that "consciousness cannot be emergent from reality" is really, Dr. Hoffman saying that, "it is not currently understood" how consciousness emerges from reality. That is to say, that the Physicalists have not yet understood the mechanism of emergent consciousness (known as the "hard problem"). There is a difference between stating that the "hard problem (THPC) is not yet solved" and the "hard problem cannot be solved".

27. I cannot agree more.

28. I somewhat share his view on concessions. My claim is that concessions is a 5th dimension mingling with space time. The observer is the 5th dimension. He kinda touched on my theory there only he used a computer as a metaphor.

29. Isn't consciousness linked to memory (and therefore time) – what mechanism is there for recalling those memories (and therefore not repeating past mistakes *within a lifetime*, rather than waiting for evolution) if not consciousness?

30. JWST has shown that the Big Bang is BS tho.

31. This is entirely plausible to me. I had been a materialist to the core when I started college 35 years ago. And then I started experimenting with acid and read Plato and Berkeley and then I just became confused about what was really true and what was illusory. But the idea that consciousness is fundamental resonates in a way that makes sense. Who knows what discoveries about our existence and what we really are await us?

32. Is the computer interface metaphor Plato’s Cave 2.0?

33. I remember reading something years ago from Karl Popper about how he thought consciousness was an evolutionary response to painful stimulus. This ring a bell with anyone else?

34. Seems like Consciousness evolved to sense/perceive changes in time. Beter yet take advantage of ?

35. ✅✅✅✅

36. Consciousness as expressed through physical evolution and space/time is a dynamic and physical means of evolving non physical consciousness. Our conscious experiences are the currency of the cosmos .

37. Perception is not consciousness. Perception is experienced by consciousness.

38. I'm probably missing something here, but how is it that all the billions of conscious agents presently, and presumably throughout history, have on the same "headset;" that we all use the same "icons?" If there is no God that wrote the underlying "code," then how does Hoffman's theory avoid solipsism?

39. Excellent. Brings it all back home. Earth shattering or should I say materialist shattering. Consciousness reigns supreme and precedes matter.

40. ❤❤❤❤❤❤

41. I agree consciousness is fundamental but disagree that it is not part of realism.

    I believe that elementary particles in the earliest state we know of where there was not even hydrogen atoms formed yet were intelligent, conscious, aware, and alive in a very fundamental simple way. Those elementary particles then slowly began learning/gaining the ability to form increasingly complex patterns following what appears to be a virtually unchanging set of Laws of Nature.

    Think about it.

    If we look at elementary particles from the beginning of the Observable Universe, they first learned/gained the ability to make simple elements, then more complex elements and simple molecules, then more complex elements which allowed for more molecules which, among other things began learning/gaining the ability to form amino acids, peptides, RNA, proteins, DNA, and so began the evolutionary process of life as we know it.

    But, we are just those elementary particles following the same virtually unchanging Laws of Nature. Our thoughts, our life, our matter/energy existence is all made up of those same elementary particles that began not knowing or having the ability to form the complex patters we are now. It is a contiguous evolutionary curve of complexity of informational patterns of energy, because we know matter is just a form of energy, a relatively smooth curve from only elementary particles to evolve into what we are now.

    Everything we are is a system of those elementary particles which have learned/gained the ability to form a complex pattern with themselves in a swarm, a group. We see this swarm/group nature in how all intelligence of life from viruses to us works, thus all life as science currently accepts as life is a type of swarm intelligence. But, at it base it is a swarm in elementary particles that is just forming a more complex swarm.

    So, from elementary particles upwards is where not just all matter and energy as we know it comes from, so to does informational patters which learn how to become more complex, which is intelligent conscious life.

42. The desktop example is obviously flawed. Our perception of space, time, forms has close connection with our physical equations. Color, wetness,.taste, are abstract, but they are still a intuitive. An intuitive desktop interface may be a working analogy to perception. But consciousness is not the same as perception.

43. Very interesting talk. I think that this approach is highly rational and may be more fruitful for many scientific disciplines. No need to deny or reduce consciousness as a byproduct of a random physical events. First of all there is no good scientific evidence to do it and secondly conscious experience is the main reason, I believe, why there is some value and logic to life. Remove subjective experiencer and all the events loose meaning. Why would there be some "movie" going on, unless there is some subject to perceive it. On the other hand, everything makes sense when you take consciousness as a basic reality and all the "icons" as a symbolic representation of his "play". And finally consciousness is the closest reality to us. Even if you deny everything, you can not deny your sense of subjective experiencer, who is denying.

44. I can finally understand this guy's idea with this metaphor. I think his paradigm is one that would bring the most comfort to people.

45. If consciousness is fundamental then why is it accessible to only humans and not the other animals even though they have the same organs like us the eyes , brains etc. so why is it only accessible to humans and not everyone else ! …. 🙂 ….

46. Evolution hid reality from us and that explain the collapse of the wave function in the quantum physics double slit experiment because reality is waves and energy ,

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