Donald Hoffman Λ Joscha Bach: Consciousness, Gödel, Reality

Donald Hoffman and Joscha Bach have delve into the nature of consciousness and reality.

LINKS MENTIONED:

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:34 Is a Theory of Everything possible? / Definition of Consciousness
00:08:32 Spacetime's fundamental nature (or not)
00:14:27 Joscha Bach on mysterianism, telepathy, and consciousness
00:34:40 Joscha has a way of interpreting the Bible literally
00:42:01 Physical world vs Computational world
00:57:57 On Gödel and changing the definition of truth to provable / computable
01:12:33 What parts of the mind makes statements beyond computation?
01:13:57 Real numbers don't exist?
01:15:23 [Prof. Edward Lee] Reality is not necessarily algorithmic
01:34:02 Donald Hoffman on Free Will
01:44:03 Joscha Bach on Free Will and whether a TOE exists
01:57:10 What would change in Bach's model if classical logic was correct?
02:07:42 Penrose and Lucas argument regarding Gödel and the mind
02:13:55 Closing thoughts from Bach and Hoffman on each other's work

[asagrien]

Joscha Bach: "I'm just a computer scientist" also Joscha Bach: *straight off the top of his head, 15 minute fully coherent and based tangent about consciousness, physics, light transport, spacetime, culture, epistemology, identity, physiology and everything we use to describe our world.*

[junaidesse]

This is "wealth", you're producing for the intellectually curious. Great idea about bringing guests together, especially ones with opposing views.
Even if not very financially rewarding, your work Curt, is invaluable to human kind. I do realise this is a big thing to say but I believe it's true.

[ayeoh]

I am in disbelief that this is a real conversation that was recorded

[dbehboudi]

Kurt, you are a legend. You’ve built something pretty amazing with these talks. And you do it in such a humble way. Thank you thank you thank you.

[Self-Duality]

It’s already a treat to see each of these guests on the channel, but it’s a special treat to see them together 👏☺️💭

[WPIE]

Joscha's ideas are sometimes not easy to follow, but I am again blown away by the consistency. He never seems to get lost in rabbitholes, always keeping an "eye from the sky" that looks at the big picture. Truly fascinating conversation.

[ac]

Some time ago, I had a thought similar to Joscha's, about Genesis: "Man, no wonder this creation story is so intuitive - it's in order of intelligibility!" But I never considered the idea that it's autobiographical, that it describes the creation of intelligibility itself. Beautiful. I will consume the rest of this discussion with stars in my eyes.

[SeanJepson]

I don’t think I’ve ever heard such complex ideas expressed in such quick succession at such speed as Bach did in the first fifteen minutes. I’m still recovering from it at about halfway through the podcast.

[huguesviens]

Josha is a giant towering over giants. When you think you have grasped everything he has to offer, he wanders even deeper and never stops to amaze.

[bitspieces]

Joscha Bach is intellectually gifted beyond anything I’ve ever heard. Truly a beautiful penetrating mind that is sensitized to subtleties of observation that go beyond the genius level. I love to hear him share his observations. Thank you for having him on your channel.

[dunebuggy]

Joscha's consistent framework of reasoning gives him significant latitude to tackle problems at different angles, congruently. His way of thinking is without serious discontinuities, which is pretty admirable. He sacrifices little. He has strong comprehension for problem domains and comprising sub-domains, in more ways than many in disputation. Because he concerns himself with the interrelations of subdomains coming to a consensus on reifying a domain - and such sub-domains are pretty communicable across domains - he has a way of validating his position while maintaining what he calls elegance. I don't see the same adherence from others - the alternatives seem too porous to defend in a debate/discussion.

[jmholthuysen]

I appreciate how Curt allows the conversation to flow. The speakers are able to explore ideas beyond personal constraints imposed by the host. This allows listeners to discover their own assumptions and gain a new understanding of the topics being discussed.

[sbmlefq]

MY favourite part starts at 1:46:59 - in 8 minutes give or take, Joscha explains everything we need to know about how the concept of self/I evolves in the organism, about why we feel that we have agency and why it seems to us that we have a free will. It is blowing my mind. A touch of genius.

[BenReierson]

I find it difficult to say anything concise about something so profound.
I'm deeply thankful for the ideas expressed on this channel and for the opportunity to experience them interacting like in this video.
The effort it takes to share this level of detail with a wide audience is underappreciated. I am very pleased to see it happening.

[TheMikesylv]

These guys are some seriously deep thinkers, it’s completely fascinating how some humans can have such complex insights into the nature of reality. They both are complete gentleman, finest examples of humanities best and brightest

[seancharles]

During the course of watching that, an unkown agent peeled back my scalp, lifted my skull, glass papered away the top layer of my brain and poured rubbing alchohol on the exposed surface. Wow. In recent years I've followed Wolfram, Barbour, Hoffman and only recently started to learn about Joscha. This has been truly one of THE BEST shows ever Curt, thanks for putting in the time and round 2 I can't wait for that! These videos literally keep me awakre at night, especially Leo Guras' session, that actually gave me nightmares!

[mechannel]

Donald Hoffman blows my mind every time he speaks.

[FRandAI]

Joscha Bach is my favorite modern thinker by many miles. He’s one of the few people to have fully understood Wittgenstein’s admonition against speaking nonsense from when you only *feel* it has sense. Just because you use words that make evocations doesn’t mean it is sensible or can be implemented.

“Gooblees are in Artham Hank in the zoobos.”

This is an intentionally nonsensical group of words that evokes possible meaning. The trouble is it means nothing, and if it does get assigned a meaning, it’s because you’ve given the words a use post hoc.

And that’s Joscha’s point about constructive mathematics: they are languages that can be implemented, and only through implementation can you call something realizable.

Try to create or imagine a square-circle. You can’t imagine a contradictory shape. But the illusion is that it’s not a failure of imagination, but that the word ‘square-circle’ makes no sense. It only *feels* like it does.

“%^€#%€>#}gsh#^€|<“ is obvious nonsense. What Joscha is asking us to consider is if there’s *unobvious* nonsense.

[mechannel]

Please have Bernardo Kastrup and Joscha Bach engage in a debate 🙏🙏🙏! That will be epic!

[julianatrapkova]

Josha is a genius ahead of this time and I am absolutely fascinated by his approach and this confirms what I intuitively