What is consciousness? | Donald Hoffman and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine and author of The Case Against Reality.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[slimbrady]

“So you’re saying size doesn’t matter. This is very important for me to write down.”

That really resonated with me. Amazing content

[JoeyCap.]

If you dig deep enough you end up at nothing, which is everything

[susanrichards]

I think Donald Hoffman is a genius. He is trying to show scientifically what existence really is. The great spiritual masters have expanded their consciousness and experienced it first hand. They are not limited by time and space. We live in an illusion in the third and fourth dimension and Mr Hoffman appears to know this even if he hasn't experienced it like they have.

[jefftezos]

You know it's a complex topic when even the clips are 34 minutes long.

[MrsYT]

20:57 this is what i feel while im dreaming and im aware of it that im dreaming (lucid dreaming) AND the dream doesnt collaps AND im forming what comes next in my dream by myself - when i look close enuff, i see that there *is* *something* (even if its bubbleing and mooving and makes no sense in retrospective when im awake after it). Ive never experienced "nothingness" in such a "lookingprocess" while im dreaming..

[kabir]

ngl, I sometimes prefer lexclips over the full podcast. Cuz these little nuggets can fit into my schedule and make it easier for me to digest all the knowledge shared! ❤ thank you Lex ❤

[ankitmittal]

Advaita philosophy has got all this figured as deeply as human brain can! The subject-object, five sheaths, different levels of reality! Everything and its mind boggling that its not talked about enough! Many philosophers and intellectuals have picked up a part of it and spent entire life writing and talking about it

[joereilly]

That “size doesn’t matter” line flew right over this guys head 😂

[methods]

The last withering comment of Friedman at the end is the most relevant: a century from now our views will just be silliness, but not the ways we have used our ingenuity to progress forward in our intellectual understanding. I do think Hoffman’s views are interesting but he is floundering a good deal in trying to put them together and justify them - but his passion is showing through.

[anotheratreyu]

What a wonderful interview, it was like one big long synchronicity from start to finish for me in perfect relation to everything I have been speaking and thinking about lately, thank you so much Lex.

I found it so interesting to hear him talk about these Women who have a 4th type of color receptor.

(Please skip to the bottom for a TLDR)

I am a colorblind man (deuteranomaly with mild protanomaly) and when I was in high school looking through a spectroscope (didn't know I was colorblind at that time, our task set about by our science teacher was to look through the spectroscope at a source of white light and write down what colors appeared on what number) I could clearly see a kind of violet-y color on a high number that was apparently something I wasn't supposed to see.
When I asked the teacher "what's this one, why isn't it on the chart??" he came over to see what I was talking about, and then upon explanation I watched his curiosity change to mild annoyance (telling me to stop messing around, because seeing a color there was impossible) and upon my insistence, to visible aggravation.
I received a reprimand for 'goofing off' and he refused to talk to me about it again, which only served to heighten my curiosity.
Since I was young I could always see 'auras' around people and objects, though they didn't look like how they were explained in metaphysical books - more like colored lines around things that could be wispy or defined seemingly depending on the condition/mood of the individual or importance of the object - which, as I had very open minded friends, was often confirmed simply by asking them if they felt a specific way at that moment.

As I got older, I was trying to play a videogame with a girlfriend of mine where you take little color blobs with faces and try to match them up in lines of 3 or more, and I told her it wasn't fair because she was getting points for certain matches while I wasn't - it was at this point I began to realize something was different about my vision (at that time I thought colorblind meant you couldn't see color, so I didn't think I fit the bill), which was confirmed some years later when I picked out a purple shirt that I thought was not purple (I can't remember what color I thought it was, but I will assume red as I tend to confuse certain reds and purples - also certain blues and purples lol) and she said "No honey, that's purple. Let me help you pick something out".
She thought it was sweet and endearing, I thought it was slightly alarming - I eventually took an Ishihara test online and realized that not only did I *not* see some of what I was supposed to see, but I sometimes seen patterns and numbers where there were supposed to be none - though they were generally vague, which I assume is because they weren't supposed to be there.

Anyhow, my entire life I've been interested in the topic of consciousness and spirituality, metaphysics and physics, and how it all relates, and this video was like a perfect icing on the cake regarding everything I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks (and the last few decades).

TLDR
I am a man with mild colorblindness that sees a color in a spectroscope that isn't supposed to be possible to see.
My wish is that I could get someone to take attention, as I would love to be taken seriously and be tested so that a scientist could see firsthand that I see something that not everyone else sees, but I'm not sure how to go about that - so if anyone knows how, or would like to check it out themselves, by all means hit me up. :)

[theodoredacunha]

8:40 i like how they were talking about conciousness and lex's conclusion was "size doesn't matter"

[SatisfyingWhirlpools]

“Consciousness isn’t something that brains do, brains are something that consciousness makes up”

I’ve suspected this for some time

[sandeepsharma]

the more I listen to this, the more I recall the ideas I have heard to be proposed by the ancient Indian sages, makes me want to start reading the texts.

[scotthawkins]

YOU two really had some "hard-ball" questions, and then, heartfelt answers.
Thank You both, so much.!
aloha

[daveblade]

this feels like science catching up to Buddhism especially when Donald mentions the lack of a self in his model of consciousness

[kayers]

all of this gives me more confidence that God created it all and IS consciousness from which all things derive from

[blarney]

I believe energy, like vibration, harmonics or resonance, is a place to base this study on while working on better understanding these concepts as well -Christian Anderson

[minpepper]

Such a joy to see conciousness playing with you two :). Good luck! Love, conciousness 😬

[KingZion]

Consciousness is the awareness of the awareness

[treich]

23:46 Could this explain the conscious entities people encounter with psychedelics?