Joscha Bach
speaker
510 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Aug 2023
last heard 23 Jan
Joscha Bach’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Actually, everything is observing and they are part of this big observer, and the big observer is focused as one local point in their body and their personality and so on. But we can basically have this oceanic state in which we have no boundaries and are one with everything. And a lot of meditators call this the non-dual state, because you no longer have the separation between self and world.
And as I said, you can explain the state relatively simply without panpsychism or anything else, but just by breaking down the constructed boundary between self and world and our own mind.
But if you combine this with the notion that systems are physically interacting to the point where their representations are merging and interacting with each other, you would literally implement something like this. It would still be a representational state. You would not be one with physics itself. It would still be coarse-grained. It would still be much slower than physics itself.
But it would be a representation in which you become aware that you're part of some kind of global information processing system, like a thought and a global mind. And a conscious thought that's coexisting with many other self-reflexive thoughts.
Maybe you will after we build AGI and it takes over.
But it's already what we do, right? We can have thoughts that are integrative and we can have thoughts that are highly dissociated from everything else and experience themselves as separate. Right.
I think that it's not normative. It's more descriptive. I want to understand the space of states that we can be in and that people are reporting and make sense of them. It's not that I believe that it's your job in life to get to a particular kind of state and then you get a high score.
Yeah, you're probably very competitive and I'm not.
That's the game thing. It's the game economy. And I found when I was playing games and was getting addicted to these systems, then I would get into the game and hack it. So I get control over the scoring system and would no longer be subject to it.
I don't want to be addicted to anything. I want to be in charge. I want to have agency over what I do.
Yes. Addiction means that you're doing something compulsively. And the opposite of free will is not determinism, it's compulsion.
No, I find this gets old. I don't want to have the best possible emotions. I want to have the most appropriate emotions. I don't want to have the best possible experience. I want to have an adequate experience that is serving my goals, the stuff that I find meaningful in this world.
No, don't follow my Twitter. I already have too many followers. At some point it's going to be unpleasant. I noticed that a lot of people feel that it's totally okay to punch up. And it's a very weird notion that you feel that you haven't changed, but your account has grown and suddenly you have a lot of people who casually abuse you. And I don't like that, that I have to block more than before.
And I don't like this overall vibe shift anymore. And right now it's still somewhat okay, so pretty much okay. So I can go to a place where people work on stuff that I'm interested in, and there's a good chance that a few people in the room know me, so there's no awkwardness.
But when I get to a point where random strangers feel that they have to have an opinion about me one way or the other, I don't think I would like that.
Yes, so basically whenever you are in any way prominent or some kind of celebrity, random strangers will have to have an opinion about you.
I mean, you notice this thing yourself that the more popular you get, the higher the pressure becomes, the more winds are blowing in your direction from all sides. And it's stressful, right? And it does have a little bit of upside, but it also has a lot of downside.
I have a couple handful very close friends, and I don't have enough time for them, attention for them, as it is. And I find this very, very regrettable. And then there are so many awesome, interesting people that I keep meeting, and I would like to integrate them in my life, but I just don't know how, because there's only so much time and attention.
And the older I get, the harder it is to bond with new people in a deep way.
And what I like is intellectual stimulation. And I'm very grateful that I'm getting it.
Showing 221–240 of 510 · page 12 of 26
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