Donald Hoffman

Outside of space time, which is a deeper level of the simulation, right?

I hope we're using language the same way.

So there are going to be rules.

Maybe physical, I mean made out of matter inside space and time.

That's what I mean by physical.

Something that's made out of particles in space and time.

By hypothesis, the conscious agents are not inside space and time at all.

So they're not physical in that sense.

They are rule governed and I can say that they exist even if I don't perceive them.

I could say that they exist.

Whereas stuff in the headset is only there when I render it.

So maybe we're not disagreeing.

And I'm not saying it's necessary that when you use your headset to look at the agents that create the headset that you will necessarily see neurons.

I'm saying that we could easily set up a situation or with some effort, we could set up a situation in which that was the case.

In other cases, you might see only a single neuron, for example, if you're a very simple thing or some other structure.

It depends on the nature of your interface.

But for an interface like ours, so another way to put it is here's what I think neurons are.

Neurons are our interface looking at the conscious agents that are constructing our interface.

That's what neurons are.

They're the interface symbols, headset symbols that our headset gets when it looks at the conscious agents that are constructing the headset.