Donald Hoffman

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.

So neurons couldn't create consciousness because they're not even there to do it.

And nor could particles.

By the way, I have all the same knee-jerk emotional reactions that everybody else has to this stuff, even stronger.

So maybe that's why it's good for someone like me to be doing this because my emotions don't believe any of this.

They don't believe it at all.

It's literally only the mathematics pushing me, kicking and screaming at each step.

So you have to go with the mathematics and what the theories are saying.

But I don't find it that intuitive.

Maybe I will at some point, but I don't find it that intuitive.

So, yeah, you could say, you know, we don't need to talk about consciousness.

There's just some dynamical entities outside of space-time.

Why can't consciousness be a part of the simulation?

For all I know, it may be.

So maybe this thing that I called awareness, where this prior to any particular conscious experiences, now there I'm completely in over my head.

I have no idea what to say about that thing.