Donald Hoffman

smaller infinities that we can deal with and show that it works there.

We can't get to Aleph infinity, but we can go maybe in smaller infinities and see if it works there and get some hint.

Ultimately, I mean, the reason why I said I'm in deep waters is because I know that ultimately I can't answer you.

Ultimately, I can't get to a final description of the one agent.

I mean, it literally, our mathematics says it transcends any description.

So I have to halt and say, I can't tell you

I can only tell you about projections of that one.

And from the projections, the mathematics points to the one, but our analytical tools fail us.

Well, again, that's a good question because, I mean, I'm not saying that the data we have uniquely determine this theory, right?

Absolutely not.

So I would say they point me as a scientific theorist toward this hypothesis.

Here I am with conscious experiences, interacting with others that I think have conscious experiences.

My physicalist framework can't explain them at all.

And so I'm proposing that there are these conscious experiences that give rise to space-time as an interface.

And when I write down the most simple mathematical model that I can do for that, all of a sudden that mathematics, I wasn't intending it, but the mathematics points to a single major consciousness that I can never describe.

So that's the sense in which I say it was sort of pointed to that.

And I would guess that

Other conscious agents with either interfaces that are not even like our space-time interface but have mathematical skills and are coming up against the limits of their own interface and starting to realize, oh, I thought this was real but this is just the interface, might, under the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental, might run into the same thing and then get pointed by their own mathematics to a universal consciousness.

But again, these are deep waters, and I'm not secure here at all.

But I would say that the free will—I mean, I have good discussions like with Annika Harris and so forth about free will.