“Infinity Is An Illogical Thing!” Piers Morgan vs Prof Donald Hoffman on Theory Of Reality

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0:30Piers Morgan:People will be watching this thinking they're watching a new real-life version of the Matrix here. Who created this avatar world you're talking about?

0:38Donald Hoffman:The way I'm trying to approach this mathematically is to have a mathematical notion of consciousness, which can vary in its size to infinity, and a logic on the space of all Markov chains that allows me to say, we can all be projections, interesting what traces, is the technical term, traces of this higher consciousness. And that logic actually gives you time dilations and length contractions in a very interesting fashion. What we're seeing is not just a headset projection of reality, we're seeing a headset projection of one kind of an infinite reality. There's an infinite number of these infinite realities.

1:12Donald Hoffman:So there's a lot to explore. And space time then is not the final frontier.

1:16Piers Morgan:You see, old Musk then, when he talks about We have to colonise Mars and we have to have space travel. Is he wasting his time?

1:23Donald Hoffman:No, I think it's... Why not enjoy the game? Why not explore?

1:30Piers Morgan:Professor Donald Hoffman does a lot of thinking about the nature of reality. He says our current scientific understanding of that fundamental question is all wrong. In his new essay on the subject, entitled Consciousness and its Space-Time Headset, Hoffman says the probability is zero that what I see resembles anything in objective reality, whatever that reality might be. So what might that reality be? Well, Donald Hoffman, Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, joins me now. Welcome to you, Professor. How are you? Good. How about yourself, Pierce? Well, I'm curious.

2:05Donald Hoffman:Am I here? Well, absolutely you are in my interface. So it's very much like if you're in a virtual reality game and you see the avatar of other players, then the avatars are real avatars, but they are just avatars, and the reality beyond that game is far more interesting, perhaps, than the game itself. It's far more complex. So the basic premise of your argument

2:35Piers Morgan:is that we shouldn't assume that what we consider to be reality is actually reality. Yes.

2:44Donald Hoffman:Yes, I'm saying that space-time is not fundamental. It's not the fundamental nature of reality. And I'm a cognitive scientist, so it makes little sense that a cognitive scientist would be saying this. It's physicists who should be saying that kind of thing, right? High-energy theoretical physicists. But they are. The way they put it in many cases is to say space-time is doomed because they know that it falls apart at the Planck scale, 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, 10 to the minus 43 seconds. it no longer has any operational meaning. And so they're not just throwing up their hands and saying, oy vey, they're actually going beyond space-time and they're finding positive geometries.

3:24Donald Hoffman:And it's well-funded by the European Research Council. They have a 10 million euro initiative to find these geometries and study these geometries beyond space-time. So it's not just a cognitive scientist saying this, it's physicists who are going beyond space-time right now and finding very interesting structures. So viewers who are watching this,

3:43Piers Morgan:who have no knowledge of your work or a great sort of deep understanding of the kind of language you're using. Take space-time, for example. What is the kind of layman's explanation for what you mean by space-time?

3:57Donald Hoffman:Right, so we typically think of the world in terms of space, so my location in space and then my coordinates in time. You know, I'm in California at 11.17 in the morning in California time, so I have a spatial location and a temporal location. And that was the case the way physicists thought about it until Einstein and 1905, his special relativity paper, basically sealed the case that we can't take space and time as separate. We have to view them as perhaps trading off. You can trade off time and space. They interchange. And so now we talk about space-time in physics. And it's space-time, not just space and time separately, that has been considered the fundamental reality, but now our physics is telling us that we have to go to a deeper reality beyond space-time, and we're finding stuff.

4:51Piers Morgan:A mainstream physicist consider the theory of space-time to be fundamental to our understanding of reality, but your position is that we've got it, I think, the wrong way round, is your position, that space-time doesn't create consciousness. Consciousness comes first, and space-time's a creation of that. Is that an accurate representation of your view?

5:12Donald Hoffman:That's an accurate representation of my view. But I would say, by the way, that for high-energy theoretical physicists, it's the mainstream view now. I mean, most physicists are not high-energy theoretical physicists. They're not dealing with the limits of space-time. But when you're at high energies, then all of a sudden you're forced to face the fact that it falls apart at the Planck scale. So I'm... Most physicists would say, oh, it's fine to work with space-time. And for their jobs, it is. But for those who are pushing the high energy boundaries, it's no longer adequate. So I agree with them, and I think that it has something to do with the nature of our relationship to space-time being reversed.

5:51Donald Hoffman:I think consciousness is more fundamental than space-time, and that I don't put on the physicists. That, OK, none of them would perhaps agree with me on that. Right. So why do you think you're right and they're all wrong? Well, I'm not sure that I'm right, but it's an interesting position to take. And what I want to do is to see how far I can push that idea. And what I have to do is to start with a theory of consciousness outside of space-time and show that I can actually get space-time. Like, for example, Einstein's spatial contractions and temporal dilations. As you move faster compared to someone else, their clocks seem to go slower, and their rulers seem to shrink as they're moving compared to you.

6:40Donald Hoffman:So how do you, no one who started off with a theory of consciousness has ever explained where space-time might come from, right? There's no theories that start with consciousness and explain space-time. So that's what I'm trying to do right now, is to take the consciousness story that has been around, I mean, it's not new with me, all sorts of religious traditions and other metaphysical idealism in philosophy of mind has taken consciousness as fundamental for a long, long time, far before me. But what we haven't gotten from them is a mathematically rigorous account of how, if you start with consciousness, you can get space-time physics, no hand wave, exactly.

7:19Donald Hoffman:I mean, that's what we have to do to be taken seriously, is to get that kind of physics exactly. Get quantum field theory, general relativity, and the whole bit.

7:27Piers Morgan:OK, how do you think we all got here originally? Or do you not subscribe to any of the conventional theories about that?

7:35Donald Hoffman:Well, so I think a lot of the conventional theories on both sides, whether the spiritual view or a physicalist view, haven't really thought about us as being avatars in a virtual reality game. So that's sort of... Maybe some spiritual traditions can be viewed that way. And even Plato with his allegory of the cave and we just see the shadows in the cave, could be interpreted that way. He might have liked the VR. Right, right, but just to stop you there,

8:04Piers Morgan:okay, let's assume what you're saying is correct, but that still means somebody must have created the avatars, the world, the virtual reality we're living in. So at some stage, that has to have been created. So who has done that? I mean, people will be watching this thinking they're watching a new real-life version of The Matrix here. You know, who created this avatar world you're talking about? Right.

8:27Donald Hoffman:so the the way i'm trying to approach this mathematically is to have a mathematical notion of consciousness which can vary in its size to infinity um and so i start off with an infinite consciousness but it's mathematically defined using markov chains and so forth and then it turns out that there's a mathematics that that i discovered um a logic on the space of all mark of chains that allows me to say there's this big infinite one in fact there's many infinite ones but we can all be projections. Interesting, what traces is the technical term, traces of this higher consciousness. And when you look at the trace operation, there's a whole logic of traces, and that logic actually gives you time dilations and length contractions in a very interesting fashion.

9:11Donald Hoffman:So the idea is we'll start off with not just a hand wave about consciousness, a precise mathematical model using Markov matrices, and then a new logic that I discovered and working on with mathematician Chaitan Prakash. He proved, I discovered, he proved it was a real logic. And then we were together looking at the fact that this thing gives you the time dilations, length contractions of special relativity. So the idea is that we might, for the first time, have a hint about how you could start with a mathematical model of consciousness prior to space-time and show how space-time itself comes out as just one of an infinite number of interesting projections that you could have of that one matrix.

9:51Donald Hoffman:and in the model there are an infinite number of these matrices. So what we're seeing is not just a headset projection of reality, we're seeing a headset projection of one kind of an infinite reality. There's an infinite number of these infinite realities. So there's a lot to explore, and space-time then is not the final frontier. You see, I always have a problem with the word infinity and infinite,

10:12Piers Morgan:because no human brain can ever explain to me what that really is, because it's all very well to say, well, it's what it says on the tin. It's infinite. It's never-ending, never-starting, just whatever it is. How do you explain... When I ever have this conversation, for example, with atheists, I'm a Christian, I'm a Catholic, and I say, well, the reason I believe in God is because I think there must have been and must be a superior entity that can answer the one question no atheist can ever answer, which is, well, what was there before the Big Bang? What was there before nothing? What is nothing?

10:49Piers Morgan:What is infinity? Infinity is an illogical thing for a human brain to comprehend, right, because we always have to have a beginning and an end of something. And if there's no beginning and end of something, what is it? Because a human brain can't tell me that, and never has been able to, I assume there must be a higher power.

11:10Donald Hoffman:Well, so there's an interesting point here. I agree that infinity is a very difficult concept to wrap your head around, and in mathematics, there's not just one infinity, there's the whole hierarchy of an infinite number of infinities called Cantor's hierarchy. So just the counting numbers as the smallest infinity, but then you can go from there to even higher and higher infinities. But I take your point quite well that scientific theories themselves have fundamental limitations, that there's something that will transcend. So I take that point quite well, and I would say it this way. I would say that every scientific theory starts off with assumptions and those assumptions are things that the theory does not explain it assumes so for that theory you could think of them as these are the miracles that the theory is asking you to accept for example einstein said let me um if you grant me that the speed of light is the same for all inertial observers and that there is no special inertial frame the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames then i can give you space time and it works but why should the speed of light be the same in all inertial frames?

12:14Donald Hoffman:Why should all inertial frames be the same? You know, the laws of physics be the same. Einstein assumed that he didn't prove that. And so those are the miracles of his theory. And science will always have theories that start with assumptions. So there's no theory of everything in science. There's infinite job security in science. You can never run to the final theory. And that's really good for job security. But it means that we have to be very humble. Our theories are just as deep as we've been able to penetrate so far.

12:43Piers Morgan:But do you not find the concept of infinity ludicrous? Because I do. Like whenever I hear scientists, really smart people, you're obviously one, when I hear them talk about infinity as a real thing, I say, well, what is it? I mean, just from a simple, call me the village idiot, if you like, but from a simple village idiot perspective, how can something be infinite?

13:07Donald Hoffman:Well, of course, the standard idea about that in terms of just counting numbers is that if you take any number as big as you want, you can always find a number bigger than that. So that means there's no such thing as the biggest number.

13:18Piers Morgan:Yeah, but if you go to the smallest number, which is, say you start at, you know, the smallest number, say let's take one as an operative thing. What is naught? What is nothing?

13:29Donald Hoffman:Actually, the way we think about it is we can choose any number and take that to be the zero. So that's, there's sort of a...

13:36Piers Morgan:Yeah, but that's very convenient, but that's a mathematical way of looking at it, whereas the logical human way of looking at it is, how can you have something which is never beginning, never ending? It makes no logical sense to a simple human brain, does it?

13:50Donald Hoffman:Well, of course, I guess there's two ways to take your question. One is to say, can I write down mathematics that shows me that that's the case, and I can. But if I say, can I wrap my head around it in some way that cognitively makes sense? No, I agree, it's very, very difficult, and the whole Cantor hierarchy completely blows my mind. And so all the infinities, the infinity of infinities completely...

14:09Piers Morgan:Well, the idea of having sort of superior infinities is even more preposterous, I think. Now, here's the other issue I have with your theory, which is fascinating. And I'm fully aware you put a lot of work and effort into this with a very expert brain. But say, for example, as we're talking now, the ceiling falls on your head, breaks your nose, you know, breaks your arm, breaks your leg, and incapacitates you, and you get taken to hospital. Is your position that that hasn't really happened? because in a virtual reality game, you can kill things and blitz things, but nobody actually gets hurt. You know, if you were genuinely suffering bone fractures, are you saying that isn't really happening?

14:51Donald Hoffman:I think the... Well, so it really does hurt, and I avoid pain as much as anybody else does. I think a good metaphor to understand this, though, is if you have an icon on the desktop of your laptop and it's some important file that you're working on, some paper you're writing or a message you're about to send, if you carelessly drag that icon to the trash can, you will lose your work. Now, your icon might be blue and rectangular in the middle of the screen, but your file is not blue and rectangular and in the middle of the screen. The icon is a useful interface device to let you interact with the file, to copy it or delete it and so forth.

15:33Donald Hoffman:But you know that even though the file isn't literally blue and rectangular, you better take that icon very, very seriously. If you just carelessly do stuff to it, you could lose all of your work. So I think that's the way to think about the human body. Whatever, and I, you know, I think many spiritual traditions would actually agree with this, right? When they talk about you having a soul and that's not hurt when your body dies, that's sort of a pointer in that direction. But I'm giving a more new kind of metaphor.

15:59Piers Morgan:Aren't you really creating a new form of scientific religion? I mean, because really? I mean, isn't this quite similar in terms of the way you talk about it to an actual religion?

16:11Donald Hoffman:Well, it certainly doesn't take space-time as fundamental. It takes space-time as derived. So in that sense, it agrees with spiritual traditions and the philosophy of idealism that's been around for a long, long time. Where it differs is I'm saying that we can take the spiritual ideas and make them mathematically precise, and we should. And we should actually show with mathematical precision that space-time can arise, no hand wave. We can get all quantum field theory and general relativity and the whole bit from a theory that takes consciousness as fundamental. And that hasn't been done before.

16:46Donald Hoffman:I think in the process, what we're going to find is that many of the spiritual ideas will survive and will be interesting, and many of them, as we turn this thing into mathematics and start to do experimental tests, we'll have to drop stuff. So I think... So I can't just say it's a wholesale embracement of spiritual traditions. I'm saying it's embracing the possibility that they're on to something interesting and we need to make it precise, and once we've made it precise, then we need to go back and ask, so what were the good ideas and what was the nonsense? And there's always going to be good ideas and nonsense.