Is Reality Made of Conscious Agents: Don Hoffman / Idealism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
- This episode explores the conscious agents theory of Professor Donald Hoffman and colleagues. Don explains why he's positing consciousness as the foundation of reality and looks at the mathematics of the incredible infinite variety that emerges and its predictive power to explain the reality we see in space-time. I ask about the overlaps between Platonism and his theory. [apologies for brief adverts I forgot to edit out at one point--just scroll past].
Source: thanks to Carlos at • Fusions of Consciousne...
and Closer to Truth Chats
On the tackling of consciousness, I always loved how Alan Watts said: “The problem of knowing who you are, is the problem of smelling your own nose.“
Love it!
Hoffman's theory sounds very much like Canadian philosopher John Leslie's concept of an infinite number of infinite minds "thinking of everything worth knowing" as superbly described in his (2000) book, Infinite Minds.
Thanks---yes there;s a Closer to Truth video on this with him in--have you seen it?
Sounds like Leslie and Romer need to throw a party and get together 😂👍🏻❤️
@@transcendentpsych124
Thanks! I will look it up…
@@transcendentpsych124 Yes indeed! He (John Leslie) actually also co-edited a great book with Robert Lawrence Kuhn in 2013 called 'The Mystery of Existence: Why is there anything at all?' which examines various viewpoints on the question. Leslie is an 'axiarchist' (value rules!) who believes the cosmos exists because it was ethically necessary that there be something rather than nothing - as long as the 'something' balances out in favour of good over the opposite! There's a good interview with him in Jim Holt's 2012 'Why Does the World Exist?' which explains his ideas clearly.
Im sure that you could get him on for an interview and convo, hes very open with that!
Yes---I may try:)
I appreciated this. I haven't read The Case Against Reality but have heard Hoffman on a number of podcasts. I'm not in a position at all to evaluate his mathematics, but it's great to hear him say that reality is composed not of space-time but of conscious agents. His God--the One--sounds impersonal to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds more like Bernardo Kastrup's mind at large. I would love to see one of these thinkers be more open to something closer to a more classical kind of theism.
Make sure to check out more of Bernardo and Don discussing theology. They don't always do but both show respect for it. (Sorry on my phone so no way to link right now.)
proves my Buddhist studies are on track with this focus
Read advait vedanta
Imagination - Process of Pure Creation
The process of creation starts with thought
- an idea, conception, visualization. Everything you see was once someone's idea. Nothing exists in your world that did not first exist as pure thought.
This is true of the universe as well.
Thought is the first level of creation.
Next comes the word. Everything you say is a thought expressed. It is creative and sends forth creative energy into the universe. Words are more dynamic (thus, some might say more creative) than thought, because words are a different level of vibration from thought. They disrupt (change, alter, affect) the universe with greater impact.
Words are the second level of creation.
Next comes action.
Actions are words moving. Words are thoughts expressed. Thoughts are ideas formed. Ideas are energies come together. Energies are forces released. Forces are elements existent. Elements are particles of God, portions of ALL, the stuff of everything.
The beginning is God. The end is action. Action is God creating - or God experienced.
Hang on. There's one thing more I have to tell you. You are always seeing what by your terms you would define as the "past," even when you are looking at what is right in front of you.
I am?
It is impossible to see The Present. The Present "happens," then turns into a burst of light, formed by energy dispersing, and that light reaches your receptors, your eyes, and it takes time for it to do that.
All the while the light is reaching you, life is going on, moving forward. The next event is happening while the light from the last event is reaching you.
The energy burst reaches your eyes, your receptors send that signal to your brain, which interprets the data and tells you what you are seeing. Yet that is not what is now in front of you at all. It is what you think you are seeing. That is, you are thinking about what you have seen, telling yourself what it is, and deciding what you are going to call it, while what is happening "now" is preceding your process, and awaiting it.
To put this simply, I am always one step ahead of you.
My God, this is unbelievable.
Now listen. The more distance you place between your Self and the physical location of any event, the further into the "past" that event recedes. Place yourself a few light-years back, and what you are looking at happened very, very long ago, indeed.
Yet it did not happen "long ago." It is merely physical distance which has created the illusion of "time," and allowed you to experience your Self as being both "here, now" all the while you are being "there, then"!
One day you will see that what you call time and space are the same thing.
Then you will see that everything is happening right here, right now.
This is....this is....wild. I mean, I don't know what to make of all this.
When you understand what I have told you, you will understand that nothing you see is real. You are seeing the image of what was once an event, yet even that image, that energy burst, is something you are interpreting. Your personal interpretation of that image is called your image-ination.
And you can use your imagination to create anything. Because - and here is the greatest secret of all - your image-ination works both ways.
Please?
You not only interpret energy, you create it. Imagination is a function of your mind, which is one-third of your three-part being. In your mind you image something, and it begins to take physical form. The longer you image it (and the more OF you who image it), the more physical that form becomes, until the increasing energy you have given it literally bursts into light, flashing an image of itself into what you call your reality.
You then "see" the image, and once again decide what it is. Thus, the cycle continues. This is what I have called The Process.
This is what YOU ARE. You ARE this Process.
This is what I have meant when I have said, you are both the Creator and the Created.
I have now brought it all together for you. We are concluding this dialogue, and I have explained to you the mechanics of the universe, the secret of all life.
Okay.
Now as energy coalesced, it becomes, as I said, very concentrated. But the further one moves from the point of this concentration, the more dissipated the energy becomes. The "air becomes thinner." The aura fades. The energy never completely disappears, because it cannot. It is the stuff of which everything is made. It's All There Is. Yet it can become very, very thin, very subtle - almost "not there."
Then, in another place (read that, another part of Itself) it can again coalesce, once more "clumping together" to form what you call matter, and what "looks like" a discreet unit. Now the two units appear separate from each other, and in truth there is no separation at all.
This is, in very, very simple and elementary terms, the explanation behind the whole physical universe.
Wow. But can it be true? How do I know I haven't just made this all up?
Your scientists are already discovering that the building blocks of all of life are the same.
They brought back rocks from the moon and found the same stuff they find in trees. They take apart a tree and find the same stuff they find in you.
I tell you this: We are all the same stuff. (I and the Father are One Energy)
We are the same energy, coalesced, compressed in different ways to create different forms and different matter.
Nothing "matters" in and of itself. That is, nothing can become matter all by itself. Jesus said, "Without the Father, I am nothing." The Father of all is pure thought. This is the energy of life. This is what you have chosen to call Absolute Love.
This is the God and the Goddess, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. It is the All-in-All, the Unmoved Mover, the Prime Source. It is that which you have sought to understand from the beginning of time. The Great Mystery, the Endless Enigma, the Eternal Truth.
There is only One of Us, and so, it is THAT WHICH YOU ARE.
I keep trying to tell people-you are describing EXACTLY the theory Romer put forth back in papers at a conference in 2001, 2002, and like a 700 page book in 2003. I have never read anything that brings it all together like that book. The really cool thing is he was saying all that and had an actual experimental methodology to show it. Like real evidence! So yeah, Romer left graduate school in behavioral neuroscience and evolutionary psychology after 4 years to write a book instead of a dissertation because he said “everyone is wrong” 😂. So it’s legit stuff. I think sometime soon people will be in a place to begin to see what he was saying. There’s a chapter in his book “The Textbook of the Universe: the Genetic Ascent to God” about “going beyond our evolutionarily-limited world view” no joke. Says much of the same things Hoffman says. So yeah… 😮 More and more I think he got it. Like the whole shebang. 😂 it’s a hard to read book, but after 20 years on Amazon I found it free on the “Academiadotcom” website just FYI. I think the guy is actually an Einstein because he even predicted the intellectual landscape of today. Which sorta reminds me of Asimov’s “Psychohistory” from the Foundation books. Anyway, I can’t believe people didn’t pay more attention to him. Apparently he knew or knows a lot of famous people around the world too. A researcher at the university where he presented his papers independently replicated his studies too: it’s legit people. Why he has not been interviewed I will never know. Apparently he’s still out there trying. 🤷♀️ Anyway AWESOME VIDEO❤❤❤❤👍🏻👍🏻 But please someone find the guy and be “the one” to interview him. Who is he? J.D. frickin Salinger for cripes sakes! 😂
Great job preparing and presenting this.
Ah.Thanks Michael. Takes a while--it's the editing and I still forgot the 2 ads!!!!:)
Yes! His comments were particularly awesome ❤
Summary:
Don Hoffman's consciousness theory suggests that consciousness is the foundation of reality and our perception of it is just an interface, leading to mind-blowing scientific, spiritual, and philosophical consequences.
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Consciousness is the foundation of everything, and our perception of reality is just an interface, according to Don Hoffman's theory.
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Can consciousness be the fundamental thing in reality? The speaker explores new theories and mathematical modeling to predict the world we see at our level.
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A conscious experience-based structure can compute anything that is computable and accurately predict all layers of reality.
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Don Hoffman's consciousness theory suggests reality is infinitely mind-blowing with scientific, spiritual, and philosophical consequences.
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Decorated permutations are used to construct the amplitohedron, a geometric object that models scattering amplitudes in particle physics.
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Agents can make decisions based on their perception of colors using the Markov Dynamics model, which simulates their experiences and probabilities.
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Reality may be made up of conscious bits forming a larger consciousness, leading towards an Omega Point beyond space-time.
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Our experiences of space and time are part of the Ultimate Reality, which is complex beyond our understanding, and the speaker explores the overlap between spirituality and mathematics using scientific methodology.
Useful:)
You could probably get an interview with Hoffman if you ask. He's done them on channels not much bigger than this.
I think you could possibly have a very interesting conversation with David Bentley Hart. Have you read his The Experience of God? He claims to speak for classical theism, in vigorous contrast to materialism and to what's sometimes called theistic personalism. If you don't know his work, I imagine you'd find it quite thought provoking.
Hi Robert--Yes, I've read it and enjoyed it--I do plan on drawing on his material. I'm friends with his brother on Fbook but think I'd be a bit scared discussing with DBH directly--he's quite formidable.
@@transcendentpsych124 Glad to hear you're already familiar. And yes, he's quite formidable, but I like his demeanor in videos.
Did you know that there is no inherent illumination or luminosity in photons? “Light,” as such, cannot be found there. Photons are, perhaps, ‘packets’ of energy which have the properties of both spread-out waves and localized particles. Photons only take on the appearance of being luminous as they arise within consciousness, in our mind’s eye. It may be that photons are spread-out energy potentials that fill the immensity of space, and only take on the appearance of being a localized discrete particle of “light” when we become aware of them in consciousness, in this actualized awareness we call mind. Thus, you are the light of the kosmos. This “light” is only arising in us. The world outside of a mind is perfectly ‘dark,’ or empty, unactualized in any way. Of course, what else could it be? What would perceive it as illuminated, or as any “thing”?
All of our thoughts are the activity of consciousness, modulations of that consciousness, incarnations within that pure consciousness, rays shining from inside that consciousness. We are agents of that consciousness, emerging from within that consciousness. All there is to experience is the knowing of it, and that knowing is God’s own Self in us, living in us, the source of our life, the energy of consciousness itself.
We could say that God lives in us, since consciousness seems to have become localized in this particular body-mind. Or we could say that we live in God, since all that we perceive arises in that consciousness, including our body-mind. Thus, Jesus was right to say, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10-11, 20). Both are true, and they are true of us as well. We are arising within God, and God is arising within us as well. Sometimes this is called “mutual indwelling,” the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, also called perichoresis or co-inherence in Christian terminology.
God is the field of consciousness in which all knowing occurs, in which all thoughts and perceptions and feelings and sensations arise, like waves in the ocean. Our body-mind and its thoughts are like localizations within that consciousness, temporary manifestations of that Ultimate Reality, expressions of that consciousness, that being, that One.
God becomes veiled and hidden from our awareness when the thoughts that arise in and from consciousness believe they are something separate and discrete from the consciousness in which they are arising. The thoughts form a separate entity, a dualistic subjective ego, a separate self identity, an independent being, an “Adam/Eve,” which thinks it is apart from infinite nondual divine consciousness and Ultimate Reality. This seems to be the “Fall,” the beginning of duality and separateness and alienation from God’s Presence.
But how could thoughts be separate from the consciousness in which they have arisen? They can’t, but that is exactly what our thoughts and our self-identification with them think they are. It is a kind of psychological illusion. The thoughts take on their own separate identity apart from pure nondual consciousness, forming a self, a person, an entity, seemingly cut off from its own source and essence.
Once we look at it like this, it seems impossible, and that is because it is. Our ‘self’ is never actually separate from the source in which it arises, thoughts are never separate from the consciousness in which they emerge, the wave is not separate from the ocean. The thoughts that make up our ‘self’ are just finite actualizations or relative localizations of the infinite potential of absolute consciousness, or Divine Being, or Ultimate Reality. In Christian symbolism we call this the incarnation of God. In Buddhism it is the Dharmakaya that incarnates as the Nirmanakaya Buddha. In Hinduism it is Brahman that manifests itself as each Atman. God becomes incarnate in reality, in the flesh, embodied, in us and all things.
There is no time, no space, nowhere we can go, nowhere we can be, that will be outside of this Presence of God, outside of this consciousness, beyond the borders of God, or the Ultimate Reality. God is always present, and is Presence itself, awareness itself, consciousness itself, the “spirit of life” within us, from which we derive all being, all knowing, all our substance, every thought, every sensation. It all arises in God. This is perhaps why, in order to pierce the veil and know God directly, contemplative practices such as meditation help train us to transcend thought, to go back to the source of thought itself, beyond all thoughts of self, to recognize that from which it all arises, this pure open vastness of nondual unitive at-one consciousness.
Do you see why we cannot “think” God? Nothing that arises in consciousness as a thought will be that consciousness in which it is arising. No relative finite manifestation in consciousness can be the absolute pure infinite consciousness, even though every manifestation or relativization or actualization of that consciousness is made up of nothing other than that consciousness. God is Present even while we are trying to comprehend God, even in the midst of that very comprehension. God is what makes that attempt at comprehension even possible. God is the very field in which we are trying to know God. When we let go of the trying, the conceptualization, surrendering the thoughts that are trying to know themselves, and rest in the pure still silent open awareness of being, that is when the realization of God may dawn on us, as us.
Read advait vedanta, tatva Bodh and atma bodh
Is Reality made of Conscious Agents? The whole question is nonsensical in the light of Shankara's (788-820) Advaita Vedanta. The whole universe is Pure Consciousness, (Brahman, or Sat-Chit-Ananda, Truth-Consciousness-Bliss). In this Monistic philosophy, a dirt clod is the same Pure Consciousness as a Buddha, but the latter is a Conscious Agent, not the dirt clod. Per Advaita Vedanta, both are the same Substance (Spinoza's term), Consciousness. Markovian kernals are simply action dynamics superimposed on the Ultimate Reality of Pure Consciousness.
So, I don't know if you watched the video, but Hoffman would agree. However, he, like me, might be closer to Ramanuja who upheld non-duality without denying it's multiplicity-in-unity. See my video on the 'One and the Many' where I explore that more overtly.
The Eternal Soul - The Spirit of God
I mean, no soul has regrets that the current physical form is changing; is about to "die"?
The body never "dies," but merely changes form with the soul. Yet I understand your meaning, so for now I use the vocabulary you have established.
If you have a clear understanding of what you wish to create with regard to what you have chosen to call the afterlife, or if you have a clear set of beliefs that support an after-death experience of reuniting with God, then, no, the soul never, ever has regrets over what you call death.
Death in that instance is a glorious moment; a wonderful experience. Now the soul can return to it's natural form; it's normal state. There is an incredible lightness; a sense of total freedom; a limitlessness. And an awareness of Oneness that is at once blissful and sublime.
It is not possible for the soul to regret such a shift.
You're saying, then, that death is a happy experience?
For the soul that wishes it to be, yes, always.
Well, if the soul wants out of the body so bad, why doesn't it just leave it? Why is it hanging around?
I did not say the soul "wants out of the body," I said the soul is joyful when it is out. Those are two different things.
You can be happy doing one thing, and happy then doing another. The fact that you are joyful doing the second does not mean you were unhappy doing the first.
The soul is not unhappy being in the body. Quite to the contrary, the soul is pleased to be you in your present form. That does not preclude the possibility that the soul might be equally pleased to be disconnected from it.
Why is there such a delay between thought and creation before we die, and no delay at all after we die?
Because you are working within the illusion of time. There is no delay between thought and creation away from the body, because you are also away from the parameter of time.
In other words, as You have said so often, time does not exist.
Not as you understand it. The phenomenon of "time" is really a function of perspective.
Why does it exist while we are in the body?
You have caused it to be moving into, by assuming, your present perspective. You use this perspective as a tool with which you can explore and examine your experiences much more fully, by separating them into individual pieces, rather than a single occurrence.
Life is a single occurrence, an event in the cosmos that is happening right now. All of it is happening. Everywhere.
There is no "time" but now. There is no "place" but here.
Here and now is All There Is.
Yet you choose to experience the magnificence of here and now in its every detail, and to experience your Divine Self as the here and now Creator of that reality.
There were only two ways - two fields of experience - in which you could do that. Time and space.
So magnificent was this thought that you literally exploded with delight!
In that explosion of delight was created space between the parts of you, and the time it took to move from one part of yourself to another.
In this way you literally tore your Self apart to look at the pieces of you. You might say that you were so happy you "fell to pieces."
You been picking up the pieces ever since.
That's all my life is! I'm just putting together the pieces, trying to see if they make any sense.
And it is through the device called time that you have managed to separate the pieces, to divide the indivisible, thus to see it and experience it more fully, as you are creating it.
Even as you look at a solid object through a microscope, seeing that it is not solid at all, but actually a conglomeration of a million different effects - different things all happening at once and thus creating the larger effect - so, too, do you use time as the microscope of your soul.
Consider the Parable of the Rock.
Once there was a Rock, filled with countless atoms, protons, neutrons and subatomic particles of matter. These particles were racing around continually, in a pattern, each particle going from "here" to "there," and taking "time" to do so, yet going so fast that the Rock itself seemed to move not at all. It just was. There it lay, drinking in the sun, soaking up the rain, and moving not at all.
"What is this, inside of me, that is moving?" the Rock asked.
"It is You," said a Voice from Afar.
"Me?" replied the Rock. "Why, that is impossible. I am not moving at all. Anyone can see that."
"Yes, from a distance," the Voice agreed. "From way over here you look as if you are solid, still, not moving. But when I come closer - when I look very closely at what is actually happening - I see that everything that comprises What You Are is moving. It is moving at incredible speed through time and space in a particular pattern which creates You as the thing called 'Rock.' "And so, you are like magic! You are moving and not moving at the same time."
"But," asked the Rock, "which, then, is the illusion? The Oneness, the stillness, of the Rock, or the separateness and the movement of its parts?"
To which the Voice replied, "Which, then, is the illusion? The Oneness, the stillness, of God? Or the separateness and movement of its parts?"
And I tell you this: Upon this Rock, I will build My church. For this is the Rock of Ages.
This is the eternal truth that leaves no stone unturned. I have explained it all for you here, in this little story. This is The Cosmology.
Life is a series of minute, incredibly rapid movements. These movements do not affect at all the immobility and the Beingness of Everything That Is. Yet, just as with the atoms of the rock, it is the movement which is creating the stillness, right before your eyes.
From a distance, there is no separateness. There cannot be, for All That Is is All There Is, and there is nothing else. I am the Unmovrd Mover.
From the limited perspective with which you view All That Is, you see yourself as separate and apart, not one immovable being, but many, many beings, constantly in motion.
Both observations are accurate. Both realities are "real."
And when I "die," I don't die at all, but simply shift into awareness of the macrocosm - where there is no "time" or "space," now and then, before and after.
Precisely. You've got it.
Not a miracle necessary, when universe always existed. For that, non-repetitive patterns are the most fundamental. You don't need a generator (miracle) to get infinitely many non-repetitive patterns.
When he says 'miracle' he means that whatever the theory you propose you'll have to start with an unexplained factor---a 'just is'.
@@transcendentpsych124 that is not true. For infinitely many non-repetitive patterns you don't need any factor at all. The only fundamental thing can only be change. And change comes with infinite potential, which doesn't require an explaination. Your reply in my opinion is a language depended game. Language is not fundamental.
@@Braun09tv so what are you starting with? An infinite potential, not absolute nothing. Whatever you start with is your ground of reality. There's no theory without one. It's not about language, it's about logic.
@@transcendentpsych124 what you just said is a language as a tool for confusion. There is no starting point. Infinite potential has to come together with nothingness, because there are no limitations in nothingness. No borders = infinite potential. The starting point would be nothing, and for nothing you don't need an explaination. Nothing is the opposite of something.
@@Braun09tv so there is 'something' called 'nothing' which then changes? I agree--that would be confusing and logically and linguistically incoherent. Basically you want a 'nothing' that is really a 'something'? I will continue to discuss if you can define 'nothingness'.
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