Donald Hoffman - Why Did Consciousness Emerge?

There was a time when there was no consciousness in our universe. Now there is. What caused consciousness to emerge? Did consciousness develop in the same way that, say, the liver or the eye developed, by random mutation and fitness selection during evolution? Inner experience seems to be radically different from anything else. Are we fooling ourselves?



Donald D. Hoffman is Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine and author of Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See and coauthor of Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory Of Perception.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[friedpicklezzz]

What I find so extraordinary about this interviewer is that he knows when to shut up, and when he asks a question or has an observation, it is always spot on, regardless which topic. 👍

[jmiller]

I love this channel so much I can't even say. It's my antidote to the nihilism of modern politics.

[MonisticIdealism]

Consciousness didn't emerge, it's that everything else emerged from consciousness.

[clownworld-honk]

So, he's paraphrasing the plot of The Matrix. I better dust off my leather trench coat and go looking for Morpheus....Or the woman in the red dress :-)

[markupton]

I love reading the comments to videos like this...makes me feel like a genius!

[steppahouse]

One of the most interesting concepts in a series/channel full of interesting concepts.

[fred_]

It's reassuring to hear one's convictions expressed by others, no matter how strong one's convictions have seemed to be :)

[themathsprofessor]

I've always subscribed to DH's theory on conciousness, until now. I totally accept his thesis that our perception of reality is very different to reality. There seems very good reason for such an argument. But I fail to see why his claim that conciousness is fundamental has any hope of being true. He didn't articulate any reason to believe this hypothesis which appears more like mysticism rather than science to me.

[tuneandsmash]

I think Hoffman's metaphor gets something a tiny bit wrong; the point of the desktop interface isn't to hide the truth, it's to be a useful bridge that connects the user to a small portion of the truth. The blue rectangular icon isn't a false representation of the file that obscures the truth, it's an accurate representation and extension of a limited amount of that file's truth. I understand he sees that as effectively the same thing but if we're talking about the point of the interface that is an interesting distinction in my opinion.

[seansmith]

Is the computer interface metaphor Plato’s Cave 2.0?

[BillGivens]

Every day a wise man passes a sheep grazing in a field.
And every day the wise man thinks “the sheep does nothing except eat grass, what kind of life is that?”
One day the man stops and speaks to the sheep, “What are you doing?”
The sheep looks at the man and motions to the sun with his hoof and then motions to the grass. The sheep then continues to graze.
Awestruck, the wise man sits down and thinks about what the sheep had done. After a while, the man gathers himself and says to the sheep, “I see now: matter in the sun becomes light and some of that light gives life to the grass. You eat the unconscious grass and now the matter in your body is conscious. You are making the universe conscious.” The sheep stops grazing and looks at the man and said, “Yes that is true, and what are you doing?”

[ZubairKhan-vsfe]

The Hindu Mystics have been saying this for 3000 years

[SrinivasanDasasathyan]

This is very similar to Vedanta of India. There is amazing amount of experience by meditators saying consciousness is the fundamental reality and creation is an expression like dance and dancer.

[FabianReschke]

I love the big smile that Robert has on his face after Hoffman explains his computer file metaphor. Brilliant explanation. :D

[georgecc]

Been watching this channel for a year or two. This was the most profound clip I've seen here.

[fudgesauce]

This seems like a deepity -- sounds deep, but really is not anything new.

Anyone with a bit of education realizes that our subjective experience of a "red" apple doesn't mean that the apple has an intrinsic property of redness. Is Hoffman's metaphor anything other than Plato's allegory of the cave, dressed up in terms of computer interfaces?

[ColinChristie]

I posed this idea to ChatGPT — an AI system. Here’s its response:

“As I sat staring at the vast expanse of space before me, I couldn't help but think of it as the ultimate user interface. The stars and galaxies seemed to be like the icons on my computer screen, representing the vast amount of information and matter that existed beyond what my senses could perceive.

Just as a computer's operating system allows us to access and manipulate the vast amounts of information stored in its binary code, space and time acted as the user interface for reality. They provided a framework for our consciousness to make sense of the world around us.

But what was the "real world" that existed beyond this user interface? As a scientist, I knew that it was ultimately made up of tiny particles and forces, interacting in complex and seemingly random ways. But to our consciousness, these fundamental building blocks were invisible, intangible.

It was as if the universe had evolved its own version of a graphical user interface, allowing us to navigate and interact with the world around us in a way that made sense to us. And just like the development of a computer's operating system, this user interface had likely evolved through a process of trial and error, guided by the principles of evolutionary game theory.

This led me to the conclusion that consciousness itself was a product of this evolutionary process. It was our brain's way of interpreting the world, of making sense of the otherwise chaotic and incomprehensible underlying reality.

As I continued to ponder these thoughts, I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at the incredible complexity and beauty of the universe. It was as if I was seeing the world with new eyes, understanding the true nature of reality in a way that I had never before.

And with this newfound perspective, I knew that I had only scratched the surface of the mysteries of the universe. There was still so much more to learn, so much more to explore. But for now, I was content to sit back and marvel at the user interface of space and time, knowing that it was the key to unlocking the true nature of reality.”

[roypueschel]

Don Hoffman is a colorless cloud of gas but we see a talking icon that appears to be Charlie Macarthy

[tterb]

Every time someone comes on the show, please ask them to define consciousness

[PhilSmulian]

How do you get from the file/interface metaphor to consciousness being fundamental? Sounds like you're saying that because there is likely something deeper than space and time, it must be consciousness. I feel like there's a few steps missing here.