Is Reality Real? - New Science On How The Universe & Consciousness Aren't Real | Donald Hoffman PT 2 (Fan Fav)

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Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory 1h 23m 3 speakers 8 chapters transcribed

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Tom Bilyeu 0:03

Welcome back for part two with the mind-bending cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman. If you heard part one, you already know Donald believes we're all living in a simulation, for real, a straight-up video game. He believes he can prove all of this with mathematics. His belief is that consciousness is the fundamental element of nature, and Einstein's idea of spacetime is an illusion that arises from the simulation. He believes that the mind creates the body, not the other way around. Every time I talk to Donald, he blows me away and I'm always wondering if he might actually be right. I guarantee you're going to reevaluate everything you think you know by the end of this episode. And speaking of things you know, did you know that Impact Theory has an ad-free feed on Apple Podcasts?

Tom Bilyeu 0:49

When you subscribe, not only will you get ad-free versions of new episodes, but you'll also get access to curated playlists of the best of Impact Theory in categories like health, relationships, business, and finance. And you'll get access to additional bonus content you won't find anywhere else. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts. All right, everybody, buckle up. It's time for part two of Donald Hoffman. I'm your host, Tom Bilyeu, and welcome to Impact Theory. So I'm just trying to understand. So the thing that I'm sort of debating in my own head is, okay, when I grant you that consciousness is fundamental, then there's all this internal logic to the space-time continuum that I know and love. Yeah. So I'm wondering, okay, if I for a second say you have touched on something that's really important, which is that space-time is the simulation.

How does Donald Hoffman explain the concept of consciousness?

Tom Bilyeu 2:06

But I don't need to draw the conclusion that consciousness is the fundamental thing. That just becomes a debate about whether consciousness can emerge or not. It could be that there, and this feels more right to me when I try to imagine it, but I fully admit what I'm about to say simply pushes God farther down. It kicks the can. Okay. So what feels intuitive to me because it's what I'm doing is that I exist in somebody else's simulation that exists in the real world. And that person, they still need God or something. I have not in any way, shape or form explained that I've kicked the can. But then all the sort of There's a set of rules. They seem like they're a little too perfect. They're a little too finely tuned.

Tom Bilyeu 2:56

You've got the Fermi paradox, which I'll probably ask you about later. Like all these things are like, nah, this is a little sus. The way that this whole space time is trying to hang together just doesn't really quite complete the circle, including the... So much of the energy that makes the universe work is this dark stuff. Don't worry about that. Feels like a 13 year old programmer hand waving it away, telling the teacher like, ah, I just needed something in order to, you know, make all of this work. And when I do that, everything also falls into place. where I'm like, oh, wow, okay. So I get how they're rendering all this in real time using the same principles that I'm now seeing AI use, pulling things out of the possibility space, because as somebody developing a video game, I will just tell you, the hardest thing is creating the art assets.

Tom Bilyeu 3:42

So they need something that can render this stuff on the fly and creating the art assets that look good, but are also optimized for the rendering engine because the rendering engine just gobbles resources. So it's like, When I take that view and instead of going, there's this magical thing called consciousness, I'm like, oh, I'm still dealing with God. There's a God somewhere doing something, whatever. There's a thing I don't understand. But space-time being born of a 13-year-old just trying to, like, you could literally go to the Unreal Engine store and be like, give me Einstein's physics. Right. And you plunk them in and it would work. He wouldn't even have to know how to program it. Right. He just took it, you know, whatever, give me what they understood in 2023 and we'll see what happens.

Tom Bilyeu 4:26

Like that still works.