Donald Hoffman

Oh, I'm not confident at all.

Is it your leading theory?

It's just my leading theory.

Why is it your leading theory?

First, I would agree with you that we could just say that there are some kind of dynamical entities outside of space-time and be agnostic about the nature of those entities, just write down their dynamics and then show how it projects into space-time, and we could be good.

Absolutely.

The reason I'm going after consciousness...

is two things.

Very personal first.

I mean, we all have headaches and we have conscious experiences.

And so we want to understand what consciousness is, right?

And the standard view right now among my colleagues in the neurosciences is that consciousness is something that's created by brain activity or embodied brains.

Or perhaps, if we're lucky, AIs and so forth.

But physics is fundamental, physical stuff is fundamental, and consciousness is a latecomer.

If space-time is doomed, if space-time is not fundamental, that whole story of consciousness is out the window.

That's right.

To put it very simply, I don't have neurons right now.

If you looked inside my skull, you would see neurons.

You would render them.

Right, so neurons do not exist when they're not perceived.