Unlocking Reality: Donald Hoffman on Consciousness, Simulations, and the Limits of Space-Time | Impact Theory

Most people think that space-time and the physical universe are the ultimate reality—something solid and unchangeable, governed by the laws of physics. But what if that's just the tip of the iceberg? What if our everyday experience is nothing more than a kind of VR headset, a useful interface that hides the deeper layers of reality from us? I find this idea not only fascinating, but increasingly convincing, especially as breakthroughs in both physics and computational theory keep bending the boundaries of what's possible. To challenge our assumptions and help us explore what's really behind the headset, I bring you today's guest—a cognitive scientist who argues that space-time is not fundamental, and that consciousness might be the true base reality. He believes that if we figure out the code underlying the simulation, we could unlock possibilities that make nuclear weapons look like firecrackers—and that the future of science is about to blow our collective minds. With that in mind, I bring you Donald Hoffman. Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodMonetary Metals: Future-proof your wealth at https://monetarymetals.com/impactTruemed: Check your eligibility and start saving at https://truemed.com/impactAT&T Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com http://business.att.comIncogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impactShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactNetsuite: Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI, at https://NetSuite.com/Theory https://netsuite.com/TheoryQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:07Speaker 01

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• 1:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. Do you think that Don and the headset, the Tom and the headset have free will?

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I would say that the consciousness, the one consciousness is infinitely free. And the avatars then are, are, these are avatars. And they're free in the sense that the one consciousness is free to act through the avatars as it wishes.

• 2:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so because we are the one consciousness, we do have free will.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Again, the notion of free will is a little complicated. But, but if you wanted to say, Don, do you think in free will or no free will? I would have to go with the free will side of things in this, this context.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  As a neuroscientist, of course, I know about the neuroscience of, you know, Activity in the brain that predicts seconds ahead what you're going to do and so forth, that's all very well known. And I think that that's just no problem because, again, the neurons don't even exist when they're not perceived. So neurons, so I'll be very, very clear. I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I love neuroscience. I've studied it heavily. Neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. We should study neuroscience. I'm all for studying neuroscience. It's very, very important. But neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. They cause none of our behaviors. But we should absolutely spend even more money on neuroscience

• 3:10Speaker 02

  because neurons and our brain are just a headset representation of how the headset is engineered. That's, that's, I need to say, it's a simple sentence, but it's a complicated idea. Your nervous system, the brain, the 86 billion neurons and trillions of synapses, is just a headset representation of how this headset and this body are being rendered.

• 3:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Right, but they're really just Markov chains, right?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Outside of spacetime.

• 3:42Tom Bilyeu?

  It is basically a sequence of transitions from one thing to another, which is a Markov chain, as a reminder.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 3:48Tom Bilyeu?

  And in the right sequence, that's Donald Hoffman, in a different sequence, it's Tom Bilyeu, and in another sequence, it's a mosquito. So what I'm trying to pin down is whether you think when we're studying neuroscience, like, what exactly are we studying? Are we studying Markov chain relationships? And that there, that pattern is actually so detailed that it replicates the firing of neurons and all that. And then I would say, okay, fine, but where is free will in that? Like, that Markov chain is the way that it is. And so I don't see how you exit out of that Markov chain with free will somehow to now change that

• 4:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Markov chain. It, yeah, I'll stop there.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Right. As I mentioned, we should spend more money on neuroscience because what we have to do is not only understand the neural connections.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  In space and time, we have to reverse engineer them. We have to figure out what you're saying, the Markov chains, the first layer, I'll just say the first layer of software outside of spacetime that's being used to render what we call brains and neural activity. So neuroscience is much, much harder than we ever thought. The 86 billion neurons, trillions of synapses is hard enough, but that's just the data that has to be reverse engineered for us to understand the software. So neuroscience is going to need lots more money because we have to actually figure out the software that's doing this.

• 5:16Tom Bilyeu?

  And you think as we do that, we will discover somewhere in there is hiding free will?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yes, to be simple, I'll say yes. In the Markov chains, there are probabilities. So every transition is typically a probabilistic, it's not just one or zero probability, it could be point three, or point seven, or point eight. So as soon as you get probabilities in there, you have to ask, what does the probability mean? Does it mean a free choice? Does it mean some physical event that just happens with some absolute probability, some objective probability? And so I view it-

• 5:48Tom Bilyeu?

  But even if?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So probabilities to me does not equal free will. Even the fact that the choices that you have are finite would say that you already don't have free will.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  If you want the best description I can give of this infinite, there is a way to do it, and it's by something called ostensive definition. And it'd take a minute to just talk about it, but it might be worth doing this. So most of the things you know, almost everything you know, is because someone pointed and said a word.

• 6:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep, this is a rabbit.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  This is a rabbit, that's the color green. And it's not like they gave you, you know, a lesson and materials-

• 6:30Tom Bilyeu?

  They have long ears and they're fuzzy.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  That's right, they just, your mom or dad pointed and said rabbit, and at the right-

• 6:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And I've already done all the categorizing myself.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  And that's right, you already, so all you, so the, all the colors, someone just pointed and named, and you, and by the way, I don't know that Tom's colors are the same as mine, I just don't know that, right?

• 6:48Tom Bilyeu?

  They're not, mine are way cooler.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  I might have to grant you that, so, so, but if you think about it, almost everything that's important, the taste of chocolate, the feeling of heat, the smell of garlic, the feeling of love- No one teaches you those things. You have them. Someone just gives you a word to name what you've already got. So they'll give you some way of pointing, like, you know, I'll point and say "cup", and that's all I can do, because I can't, if you can't get "cup", if I do that to a bacterium, say "cup", I don't think the bacterium's gonna get it, right?

• 7:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  So, all I can do now is use ostensive definition to point as best I can to what I mean by "the one". And the way I would point it is to say, "We'll just be quiet for a minute, and I want you to ask yourself the question, I wonder what my next thought will be."

• 7:46Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 7:48Tom Bilyeu?

  I have a go-to thought, so I immedi-, as soon as you said that, I immediately went there, but of course, that's all from my perspective, it's hardwired, pre-programmed, it is the result of my MPC-ness.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  So maybe if I ask you again, dropping that thought, what's the next thought that you will have that's not that thought?

• 8:06Tom Bilyeu?

  No idea. It will just appear out of nowhere.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  So let's try that, so.

• 8:10Tom Bilyeu?

  I have one, but...

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Was there a little gap, though, before you had it?

• 8:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, probably.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  And that's my pointer. That gap, when you were completely silent, between thoughts, that's the best pointer I can give to what I mean by "the one".

• 8:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so the space in which thoughts appear?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  That's right. The awareness, the silent awareness.

• 8:35Tom Bilyeu?

  But do you think that fully and accurately captures the presence of the one consciousness? So whatever that feels like, whatever that qualia is, if I were to take off the headset, that's what it would always feel like?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  No, I think that that's the best pointer I can give you right now. I think it probably transcends that you, as the one consciousness, transcend even that pointer, but at least that pointer is a step in the right direction.

• 9:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  It'd be the way I think about it.

• 9:03Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting. "To a hammer, every problem is a nail". To me, because of the dominant metaphor that I use of computation being inside of a simulation, to me, that's basically the, you're in a rendering queue and you're waiting, and that's what it would feel like to be in the rendering queue, but it doesn't give me agency...

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:22Tom Bilyeu?

  It feels like the lack of something versus a thing in and of itself, which can be deeply pleasurable, especially if somebody has high anxiety or depression or whatever.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:33Tom Bilyeu?

  To finally go to true neutral, I'm sure would be tremendous relief. So I get why people chase that feeling.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I get why people chase that.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  But eventually, I think it even transcends even feelings. It's a matter of just.

• 9:50Tom Bilyeu?

  I agree. To me, it's the absence. It is a render cue. You are waiting for something.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  That's right. Very interesting. Yeah. So I see your take on it. And I'm suggesting that that is... So we just differ on this, right? So where we agree is I think computation is critical for this particular rendering of the avatars in space and time. So computation, I'm all good with that. I'm a computationalist.

• 10:14Tom Bilyeu?

  I really do think that we're quite far apart. And when... So here's why I think we're far apart. I am desperate to acknowledge that I just can't imagine what the world is outside of my simulation. I make the base assumption that they're simulating something like what they know. And so even if that thing is simply the principles of evolution, so not humans, maybe the humans were a super surprising life form. They were like, whoa, I thought we were going to get dinosaurs like us, but the dinosaurs got hit by a meteorite. That's so crazy. So it's very possible that in sort of form and function, we would not recognize it. But I don't think they would simulate something that wasn't interesting to them. But you're always going to terminate it unmove mover.

• 10:59Tom Bilyeu?

  But for me, that metaphor of this is a computational universe that's simulated for a purpose and the why it were being simulated becomes incredibly interesting for me. But for Do you have an answer? Uh, it's all guesswork. That's what I'm saying. Like, people need to understand, I fully recognize that A, this may only be a metaphor, and even if it's not a metaphor, on the outside, I have no visibility. I have just pushed the miracle one step away. And that's why I say, this is all, the final question is, why something instead of nothing? And since I can skip all the way to that and just tell you, I have no answer whatsoever. So I am a total blank. I cannot be of assistance. There, I just, no idea. That one is befuddling. Sure.

• 11:44Tom Bilyeu?

  But to try to draw a stark difference, at least how I feel when I think about, this is how, this is the metaphor I'm operating on, or the reality that I've acknowledged, and then the metaphor that you're operating on, or the reality that you have acknowledged, there is, this is bizarre, but I have like a ghost meets worm sense of what the one consciousness looks like. And so, that is, and the Markov chains, for whatever reason, are on a big board in front of me with like, all these infinite, but like, tesseract-y, like, so many different permutations. And that's not what I imagine on the other side, on my metaphor. So, when I think about sort of the, the ground reality of, um, there's a show called White Lotus,

• 12:28Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know if you've seen it, but when I saw it, I thought of you. And so, there's a moment in the end, spoiler-ish alert, but a guy is having a conversation with himself. He's in immense emotional pain, and he is talking to a Buddhist, I believe, and the person is describing that we're all just drops of water, and it's the ocean splashing. And for a brief second, you're a drop of water, and you're separated, and you're having your own experience. But then eventually, you fall back and you just become one with the ocean. And that's how I sort of imagine your, when I get poetic about it, your vision of like, the one consciousness is this big ocean, but for whatever reason, it can pop up all

• 13:11Tom Bilyeu?

  these different mosquitoes, cockroach, you, me, everything in between, all through human history, evolution, dinosaurs, whatever.

• 13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Why it's doing it, I don't know. But that is a very different thought. When I try to hold on to what I hear you saying.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  So I think one way, some people hearing this might say, look, they're now talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pen. There's not much, how can you tell these different views apart? Is there anything real here? And I would say that there is something real that will be testable scientifically. And that is if the view of the one is correct, and spacetime is just a headset, and there is a layer of software outside, then the proof will be that when science actually writes down that layer of software and shows how the headset is built, it will give us new tools that will do magic inside the headset, and will open up new dimensions of perception that we hadn't imagined before.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  So I'm claiming that this is not just how many angels can dance on the head of a pen. This is a scientific claim that we will, and I think within just a few years, write down the software outside of this headset. And we will show that this headset, three dimensions of space, one dimension of time, is actually one of the more trivial headsets as possible. And we got stuck with one of the cheaper models. And we will figure out how to reverse engineer it. And we will build much more interesting headsets. And we already get little hints of that. For example, like in DMT research and so forth. You put in just this molecule in your brain that's endogenous. DMT is in your brain all the time. You just up the quantity just a little bit.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, people who have mathematical degrees, mathematical training, will say, I'm in a higher dimensional world. The three dimensional limits of this headset were transcended. And I'm now seeing in more dimensions than I've ever seen before. I'm seeing more colors. I'm seeing entities that I've never seen before. And the resolution is in fact higher than the resolution of this. Actually looks now like a low resolution, cheap headset. When I go to this DMT world. The resolution is higher, it feels far more real, and I'm seeing more dimensions. So, so, but that, of course, that is not the, the proof. I'm just saying that's the kind of thing that would be consistent with the, the proof will be when we write down the mathematical equations and we show exactly how to build the headset.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And we show exactly how, for example, the DMT molecule, if we can reverse engineer this, we may actually show that in the software, there is a dimension parameter. And DMT changes that dimension parameter in our software. And that's why we're, we're, and maybe even the resolution parameter. Instead of having, you know, you know, 120 million photoreceptors. Now we're up to, you know, 500 trillion or something like that equivalent. So that we get the higher, higher resolution. So, so, so it's not how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The, the claim is if you pursue my approach, there is software that we're going to get, probably within a few years. We'll be able to prove theorems. Spacetime arises this way, quantum mechanics arises this way, exactly. Here's the parameters, here's how we play with it.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  And here's how we beef up a headset beyond three dimensions to 10 or 50 or a billion. So it's, it's not just hand wave. This is, so in that sense, it's very different from the religious approaches that, that just require faith. I ask for no faith whatsoever. I'm saying if we pursue this line of research, you will win, you will build the software, and we will transform this headset, period.

• 16:50Tom Bilyeu?

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• 17:34Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. What is the mechanism by which you edit the code? And so this was my initial question was, have we edited the code already? And that was me fishing for, do you consider like the atomic age to be that first way that we have gotten a hook into the code? We've been able to create something that is able to just unleash a tremendous amount of energy or even GPS, which we probably don't think of in a super sophisticated way, but we had to understand the advanced mathematics of the distortions that occur given relativity in order to actually

• 19:48Tom Bilyeu?

  do that accurately. Is, is that the kind of thing that you mean when you talk about that? Or are you saying, no, folding spacetime, for instance, traveling faster than the speed of light, that's a fundamentally different thing. That's going to require us to, for instance, Somehow, some way access the database, you said DMT maybe is somehow tweaking a database variable. Yeah, what's your vision for how the code will be altered?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I think that what science has not done yet is what they, what science needs to do. We have not yet modeled the observer that's collecting the data in science. So, under Newtonian physics, you ignore the observer, you don't even have to talk about them because we assume it doesn't affect what you're getting. In Einstein, you talk about the observer because, but the observer is reduced to clocks and measurement pointers. In quantum theory, now the observer becomes front and center because there are two different regimes in quantum theory. There's a unitary evolution when no one's looking, when you don't observe, and then there's what they call the collapse of the wave function when you observe.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  And so, all of a sudden, in quantum mechanics, the observer comes front and center, but quantum theory has no universally accepted model of the observer. And we haven't had it for now a century. We've had quantum theory for a century. That's one of the biggest open problems in science, which is what is going on when we make an observation? And this is not a trivial issue. All of the data that gives us evidence for or against our scientific theories comes from observation, and we have no theory about what's going on in observation that's universally accepted. We're still, so the reason our science is still horse and buggy, I think, compared

• 21:39Speaker 02

  to where it's going to be, is because we haven't done what Leibniz said in 1700 we need to do. We need to have a model of the observation process and how all the observations are tied together, he called it. Monads and

• 21:58Speaker 02

  And pre-established harmony was his term in English, pre-established harmony. So what we have, so I think what science, science has done-

• 22:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Can you go deeper on that? So Monads, an observer, pre-established harmonies, simple geometric shapes. I have no idea what he means by that.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Well, and neither did Leibniz. So, so, because Leibniz, the monodology is a very, very small book. He, and basically, he doesn't know what else to say. And, and, and by the way, he was a genius, right? He invented the calculus as independent of Newton, maybe even prior, who knows? He did all sorts of math. So this, this guy was a genius.

• 22:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Complete genius. But he, and he realized that we needed to build science on the foundation of observation, because that's the fundamental thing that's going on in science. It's you and me and other scientists looking.

• 22:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Was he trying to grapple with consciousness or something else?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  I, well, I think he had a spiritual point of view. So consciousness probably, absolutely.

• 22:55Tom Bilyeu?

  But is that it? That's what he's trying to get to?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Well, I wouldn't want to say just that, because he was also a hard no scientist himself. So, so he had spiritual views and, and-

• 23:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Did he articulate why he thought this was so important?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Well, yes, he actually, um, he's very famous for his Parable of the Mill, um, which is, he was basically saying, our conscious experiences could not be built from physical systems. He understood that. So what we call today the hard problem of consciousness, Leibniz knew it, and he knew it so well that he figured it, it only needed one paragraph of his attention. It was so obvious to him that no physical system could build consciousness, that he figured any smart guy can get it in one paragraph and we should move on. So he really, so what we're doing right now is what Leibniz dismissed so quickly that he only thought it was worth one paragraph. And he, he just says that if you go into a mill and, and make yourself small so that

• 23:48Speaker 02

  you see all the cogs and wheels of the mill, you won't see anything in there that would give you any clue about how consciousness is made. And he says the same thing if you go basically inside the brain, look, how is that going to give you, it's just another physical system, how is it going to give you consciousness? So he, he, he clearly understood what we call the hard problem of consciousness back in 1700 roughly. And so he, but he didn't- He invented so much math, but we needed several more centuries of mathematics before Markov chains didn't come around until 1905. So we've only had them for 121 years. So he didn't have them. He gave us the mathematics, a lot of the mathematics that let us eventually get Markov chains, but you can't do it all, even if you're a genius like him.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  So Leibniz clearly understood and he couldn't say how to do it mathematically. So he just said, "Look, there are things, I'll call them monads, but there are these perceiving entities and they have to be tied together mathematically somehow. So there's got to be a pre-established harmony." And all he can do, when you don't have anything else to say, you know, "God did it." But clearly, he wanted to do more because, but we didn't have the math. Now, I think that he's right, but we have to restart science.

• 24:59Tom Bilyeu?

  What?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Right about what?

• 25:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Just that understanding the observer is important.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  We have to start with observers and understand how observers are tied together.

• 25:07Tom Bilyeu?

  What does it mean to start with observers?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  So, when I see that we're going to have these Markov chains and each one is an observer, so like the three, so the observer that can see red, green, and yellow. So that, the Markov matrix, which says if I see red now, here's the probability I'll see green next or yellow next and so forth, that matrix, I'm going to call that an observer or an observer window. So that's a monad, call that a monad, in Leibniz's terms. And there's an infinite number of these monads, they can be as big as you want, you can have three, you can have a billion, a trillion, go as big a Markov matrix as you want, go off to infinity, literally a countable infinity of states. And then look at this whole set, these are all the quote-unquote monads, so there's

• 25:54Speaker 02

  an infinite number of them. And he wanted a pre-established harmony and...

• 26:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Which is what?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  So I can, this will take a couple of minutes, but I can give it what I think the pre-established harmony is. So if I have a, I mean, it's a very simple idea, actually. So if I have a, if I'm looking at the red, green, and yellow lights, and I could write down the probability, say it's a bad traffic light, so sometimes red turns to yellow instead of green and so forth, so it's a bad traffic light. So you write down the matrix of whatever this traffic light is doing, you know, how it changes from red, green, and yellow. Now suppose I put on a pair of glasses where I can't see yellow. All I can see is the red and green transitions, but I'm still looking at the same traffic light. Then I will write down a different matrix. It only have two elements, red and green, right? That's all I can see is red and green.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  And so I'll have a probability if I'm seeing red now, I'll see red next or green next. And if I see green now, green next or red next. So I'll get a two by two matrix. But since it's, I'm looking at the three, but the red, green and yellow light, but I'm only seeing the red, green. The red, green and yellow transitions are of course controlling what I see in the red and green, when I can only see red and green, right? It's clear. The, all the transitions that I'm seeing there are because I'm seeing this bigger one, but I'm missing the yellow. It's, it's hidden from me. That's the key idea. So, so in mathematics, we say, if you give me the matrix for the red, green and yellow, then I will tell you exactly what the matrix has to be for the red and green. Um, there's going to be only one, right? And it's called the trace.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And that's the key. This was discovered decades ago, um, between 1905 and now. It was discovered that if I have a big matrix and I say, I'm only going to look at a subset of the states, then there will be a unique, in general, a unique matrix. There are technical terms, you have to be ergodic and so forth, but that's beyond what we need to do here. So, but I'll just say in general, but for those who know the math, if it's ergodic, but, but anyway. So, so I have a big matrix and I look at a subset of states, then I will get a, a trace matrix, which is exactly the zero surprise matrix.

• 28:06Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you mean zero surprise?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Zero surprise means that the probability transitions that I predict are exactly the probability transitions that I will have. So this, it's probabilistically exactly what I will see. So the trace logic, so, so I'm sorry, the trace operation gives you a zero surprise. It gives you exactly what you will see.

• 28:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Because you have limited the options so profoundly that there's just a very finite number?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Well, because it's just a mathematical theorem, basically, that.

• 28:36Tom Bilyeu?

  But wasn't it a mathematical theorem with red, green and blue or?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  So, so, so I should be careful. So, so with the red, green and blue, you, you can pick any matrix you want. Pick any, any three, then there's a, there's a number.

• 28:47Tom Bilyeu?

  When I reduce by one color, all of a sudden I get to a no surprise one.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  That's right. So pick, pick, pick one of those three by three matrices. And if you, if you fix that matrix, then if you only, then if you restrict to red and green, I will give you a two by two matrix that is matched to that particular three by three. If you give me a different three by three, it'll be a different two by two.

• 29:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Okay. So whatever three by three you give me, when I take the trace, I will get exactly the right two by two, which gives you exactly the transitions on the red and green that you will see if you can't see the yellow. So that's called, that's called the trace, and it's just a mathematical theorem that.

• 29:22Tom Bilyeu?

  What's it telling us?

• 29:24Speaker 02

  It's, it's telling us exactly when you have a bigger system and you can't see all of its states, it will tell you exactly what you can see.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  What exactly you will see probabilistically, exactly.

• 29:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Why does that matter in the headset analogy?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  It turns out, well, so this has been known for, for many, many decades. This, and what I, what I discovered about two years ago was that this gives us a logic on the set of all Markov chains, on the set of all observers. It ties them together. It gives a pre-established harmony that unites all of these observers. So a logic, I'll talk first about a Boolean logic, a simple logic, a Boolean logic that we have in, like in, in, you know, computer science. You can take things and take their ands and their ors and the nots and so forth.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  So that's a, that's a kind of, of logic.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  And the logic of the, so the trace logic is not Boolean. It's, it's more general than Boolean. It's a non-Boolean logic. It's, but it's locally Boolean. So if I take any particular, if you fix a matrix, say it has a thousand states in it, and you look at all of its possible traces, and there's, you know, lots and lots of traces. If you look at just those.

• 30:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Meaning traces are just subsets?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Subsets plus the matrix, right? The, the subset and the matrix on that subset, which is telling you the transitions that you're going to see on that subset of states. For like when I went from the three by three, red, green and yellow to the red, green, I was telling you what's the probability of transitioning from red to green or green to red and so forth. So it was telling you exactly what those probabilities are. So that's what I'm saying. You, you fix any big matrix and then look at all of its traces. And then the, all of those traces form a Boolean logic.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  In a Boolean sublogic of the trace logic. But the whole logic itself is not Boolean. So that is the key. This is, we now have a theory of an observer. Very, very simple. It's the Markov matrix. We have the pre-established harmony, which is this trace logic. And then we can start to use these matrices to build spacetime. So I'll give you just a concrete clue, just a concrete clue about how this is going to go. It's standard in Markov chain theory to have, in addition to the matrix, a little counter.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Every time you change an experience, like from red to green, you just increment the counter. It's really as simple as I'm making it. So maybe start the counter off at zero. Now I'm seeing red. Oh, that's one. Now, oh, now it's green. Now two. Now it's yellow. Okay, three, and so forth. You just keep adding the counter. Notice what happens to the counters now. If I have the red, green, and yellow matrix, and then I can only see red and green. Notice the red, green has its own counter, right? That matrix has its own counter, but it doesn't count the yellows. It doesn't see yellow. So the counter that's bigger, on the bigger matrix, so the red, green, and yellow,

• 32:38Speaker 02

  is going to count faster than the counter on the red and green. That is going to give us time dilation in relativity theory. That's the precise way that we will be able to go from Markov chains to the time dilation that we see in Einstein's special and general relativity.

• 32:58Tom Bilyeu?

  We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. What's missing that causes the counters to be different?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  You just aren't seeing everything. The idea is going to be the-

• 33:13Tom Bilyeu?

  But why is it mapped so specifically to the speed of light?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  So it's a good question. So if I'm going to make this kind of claim, where does the speed of light come out? In all of this, right?

• 33:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, maybe more the computation of energy equals mass is probably what I'm asking.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  The speed of light is going to come out as the fastest way that you can transition among states

• 33:37Speaker 02

  in the matrix. And there's something that are called cyclic matrices. So a cyclic matrix for red, green, and yellow would say, for example, if I'm red now, the probability is one that I'll see green next, and the probability is one then that I'll see yellow next, and then the probability is one that I'll go back to red. So you cycle in, and that's going to be the fastest way that you loop among all of, and that will effectively be, that will correspond to a matrix that corresponds to the speed of light.

• 34:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  But if, for example, if I'm, a different matrix that says I'm stopped at red right now, I might go to green with the probability 0.5, but I might stay at red with probability 0.5. Now I'm going to be moving much more slowly around the states. So there is a maximum speed at which you can, you know, in this case, you call the commute time. There's a fastest commute time, the smallest commute time, and therefore fastest speed. So you can use that for, for starting to build up notions like, like time dilation. And then, now it gets a little technical, so I'll I'll just hand wave a little bit because we don't want to go into the math. But there are then, on the, on these matrices, there are mathematical structures called Dirichlet forms.

• 34:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Dirichlet forms?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, D I R I C H L E T, Dirichlet, French, French name, Dirichlet forms. That will allow us to use effectively how states diffuse in a Markov chain. If two states diffuse in a very similar pattern, we're going to put them close together in our spacetime headset. So we can build distance. From Dirichlet forms on these matrices as well. So the counters dilate, the Dirichlet forms change because when you take a trace, the distances that you're going to get on these Dirichlet forms contracts. So we're going to get time dilation, length contraction from from this. Now, this is just top level.

• 35:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Why would the changes be so predictable? So there is a precision with which things change that can be mapped out very eloquently when you're talking about the speed of light as we approach it and how time and distance react very differently, which allowed Einstein, and I'm perfectly willing to accept he was incorrect, but his approximation by calling it a curvature of spacetime allows you to very precisely measure this stuff. But if, if I'm understanding you, Jesus, this is a big if, but if I'm looking at this gigantic matrices of all the different Markov chain combinations that there could be, and I'm saying I'm looking at now subsets of that, but there's still the sort of connective

• 36:21Tom Bilyeu?

  tissue of the whole of this matrices. If I'm looking at two different traces subsets, then the distance will appear to be collapsed, the time will appear to slow down, but different ones are going to behave differently.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I don't see, and this is just my ignorance, fully accept, but I don't see how that, no matter where they are, no matter whether we're going from 12 things down to two, or 12 things to 10, or whatever, that it would collapse the distance in the same predictable fashion that would trick Einstein into thinking he was seeing the curvature of spacetime.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  And that's what we have to prove. So that's, that's what.

• 36:59Tom Bilyeu?

  But that's what you are saying?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  I'm absolutely saying, so we're not saying that Einstein is wrong. We're saying you know, Einstein is.

• 37:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, spacetime is fake. So you are saying that.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Well, I'm saying, well. I won't say that spacetime is fake. I will say that spacetime is a wonderful data structure. It's just not the full, spacetime is not the final reality. It's just a headset. But it's a good headset. And, you know, and what I have to do as a scientist, if I'm claiming that I'm using these Markov chains outside of spacetime to get the next layer of software outside of spacetime, I have to show you exactly how I get Einstein's special and general relativity. I have to show you exactly how I get quantum field theory out of it.

• 37:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think that the Markov chain is being consciously manipulated to create the effect of the bending of spacetime?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Well, so I don't, I don't need to say that at all. But I can allow it later on. I should say that I can get the curvature of spacetime, I believe, from certain kinds of Markov chains. So in fact, what the way I think about it right now is there's a wide variety of Markov chains. And I think that there is this very special subset, probably what we call a measure zero, probability zero subset of Markov chains that can be used to build the kind of headset that we have. We have such a sort of a low grade, trivial kind of headset that most Markov chains just won't do it. They're off doing

• 38:36Speaker 02

  other interesting things. So but there is a subset of Markov chains that you can use to build flat spacetime or curved spacetime. And then there are others that will, that will basically, that kind of smooth spacetime just won't work for them. They just won't. So Markov chains give you the chance to build everything that Einstein has, but then infinitely more.

• 38:57Tom Bilyeu?

  It's very interesting. And I'm probably, I'm very at risk of oversimplifying what you're saying, because I'm hearing it for the first time, and I may just not understand it. And I've heard so many of these interviews where you can tell that the interviewer is like, not quite tracking what's being said. So I run that risk right now. But I will say, as you were describing all of this, again, to a hammer, every problem is a nail. But when I look at this, the metaphor or reality that this is code and it's simulated would make sense, because you really want to build procedurally. But to build procedurally, you have to know what the

• 39:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Probability spaces is not quite right. What are all the permutations? So you get into this idea of is it decorated permutations?

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Sure, that's yeah, right.

• 39:43Tom Bilyeu?

  So when I looked up what that was and was like, oh yeah, you guys are just trying to account for more variables. So if you're doing a procedurally generated world, not only do you have to come up with a terrain, but you've got to like place trees and stuff like that. So then you go, okay, what orientation is the tree? How tall is the tree? Roll, pitch, yaw, like you have to determine all of those different things.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:06Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it feels like what you're describing with the Markov chains with the trace

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Elements, you didn't call it trace elements, trace something.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Trace logic.

• 40:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Trace logic. Thank you. All of that stuff is still fitting within my layman's understanding of this simulated reality.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  It's we, when we're, if we succeed at this, we will have theorems that tell you exactly how to write the computer code and you could write computer code.

• 40:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, bro, literally, as you were talking, I was like, man, if this is going to be a breakthrough that I can use in my game, I'm going to be very excited.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  That's, that's, put it this way, if I cannot give you a breakthrough that you can put in a game, then I'm wrong. This, this is fair enough. So that's what, that's what we have this trace institute that we're building. That's the goal is within the next five years to basically nail down these theorems with proofs. The proofs will then give us effectively the ways to, to build these algorithms. And we're off to the races. So that's, that's the goal. And the idea will be that once we figure out how to build this headset, then we can start to play with it. We can start to reverse engineer it and using the trace logic. Now we have the ability to do some kinds of magic.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  But I should just put this in a framework right now.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  There's a lot of work that's being done on, that's very, very good work by Carl Forston and others on the free energy principle and trying to minimize surprise and maintain markup blankets for self versus outside and so forth. And this is very much similarly related to that kind of thing. The trace logic is related to the minimum surprise in the following sense. The trace logic is the logic of zero surprise. So it, this, so what I'm claiming is that the pre-established harmony that Leibniz was looking for is this logic of zero surprise, the trace logic.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  And then it leads to a very different approach to maintaining self versus outside than the markup blanket kind of thing. We get something that's broader than the markup blanket. So, but one of the, we can go into the, there's more, more details if you want to, I can show you how we build agency by recursion of the trace logic.

• 42:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, before we, we go there, because I do worry that we're at risk of losing some non-technical people. One thing I want to talk about is AI. So when I think about the way that you describe, like the neurons aren't real, this is all fake, I go, well then, why can't a, an AI agent become conscious? Why isn't an AI agent already conscious? Like if consciousness is fundamental, what is it that stops AI from being conscious?

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Okay. So it depends on how you want to frame the question of, of the emergence of consciousness. If, if you're framing it in this, in the case where you're saying, I'm going to start with a physical system that's not conscious. And my question is, what can I do with that physical system to make consciousness emerge? Then I say, you can't do that. It will never happen.

• 43:26Tom Bilyeu?

  But your take is that everything is already conscious?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  That's, that's right. So, so I'm giving a, so you can see why we have to be very careful about our assumptions. Most of my colleagues are, are starting with space and time as fundamental and they're saying that they're, of course, they're not conscious. And so we're trying to figure out what neural structures or neural activities or properties are going to be required, what functional properties.

• 43:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Is my blender conscious?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Well, that's the kind of question they would have.

• 43:51Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  So, so, so I'll firstly, I reject that entire framework. That consciousness does not emerge from physical systems. It doesn't emerge from neurons or anything like that.

• 44:01Tom Bilyeu?

  But does the one consciousness, the one consciousness does pop into Don. It does pop into Tom.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Why doesn't it pop into the blender?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  So, so I would say that no matter what I see, this cup, this table, an ant, in every case, I'm fundamentally interacting with a conscious reality. And my headset gives me more or less insight into that conscious reality. With Tom, my headset has given me quite a bit of insight into what Tom is thinking, what he's reacting.

• 44:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Am I conscious though, from your perspective? Or are you materializing me?

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I would say that, that what I'm experiencing is an avatar that's giving me insight into consciousness. I'm calling that avatar Tom. Tom is calling this avatar Don. And I am getting some, but not complete insight into the conscious experiences that Tom is having. By no means do I expect to be, you know, knowing everything that's going on in your mind and your feelings and so forth.

• 45:05Tom Bilyeu?

  But if the consciousness is stepping inside of us, broadcasting, whatever that is, is biology the thing that makes it viable? Is a nervous system the thing that makes it viable as a place the consciousness would want to go?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  So, so I would say that that way of putting it is the wrong way to put it. It's, that's assuming, again, that we're in the game of starting with non-conscious physical ingredients and trying to figure out where consciousness can emerge.

• 45:33Tom Bilyeu?

  But you said that that space where I'm observing the emotions or whatever is the indication of where the one true consciousness is?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Right, because my, my experience in my headset, the avatar in my headset of Tom is, is detailed enough to give me some insights into the experiences you might have. With my cat, I have less insight, but some insight into what that cat might be wanting. I know when it's hungry and it's rubbing against my leg and so forth. I can guess. With an ant... I'm getting less information. If I really studied, I might be able to understand what it might be like to be an ant. But if I turn it around and ask, "How much do I think the ant knows about my world? My consciousness?"

• 46:28Speaker 02

  My guess would be, I mean, I can go up there to an ant, and I can go like that and be ready to kill it, and it wouldn't even know that I'm doing that. So how much of my world? Almost nothing. I would imagine that, as complicated as I feel I am, the ant, its model of me is probably trivial, if it has any model of me at all. It's pretty trivial. So take that insight and turn it around. Things that look trivial to me, maybe it's because I'm an ant to them. Right? The "I'm trivial to the ant" not because I'm trivial, but because the ant can't see me. So the things that I think are trivial, that's not because they're trivial, it's because

• 47:07Speaker 02

  my headset is just not smart enough for me to see the true complexity of that consciousness. So what I'm saying is quite radical here. When I see something that looks as dumb as a rock, that's because I'm dumb. It's not that the rock is dumb. The best I can do is come up with a rock. What I'm actually interacting with, if I could actually understand what it was, I might fall down in amazement before it and worship it. But all I can see is a rock, just like all the ant can see of me is almost nothing of my complexity. So we have to not mistake, and I'm going to say this slowly because this is the key point, do not mistake the limitations of the headset for an insight into the nature

• 47:52Speaker 02

  of reality. It's just a limitation of my headset, period. It's a dumb move on my part to think that because it looks dumb to me, therefore it is dumb. No, that's just, you're not smart enough to realize that that was just a headset, and your headset's got limitations. What's really dumb is to think, "I'm seeing the truth."

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I'm seeing through a filter of a headset, what I need to do is be very, very humble, very modest, and ask, what are the limitations of my headset? How can I understand the limitations of my headset? I think I'm seeing a world of space and time. Oh, space and time is fundamental. Really? Why should I believe that? I should be very, very modest and say, space and time is what I'm first given in my impressions. That's just the first give. Let's reverse engineer, what's really behind that? So, and again, I think if you always think about what can the ant see of me? Almost nothing. Just turn it around. When I see something that looks like almost nothing, then I am probably the ant to that thing. That's the way to look at it.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  So I'm an ant to this table. So whatever I'm interacting with is transcendent. I'm just getting a table. It's not because the reality is stupid, it's because I have my limits in my headset. So that's the key difference here. So the whole game of saying, how do I start with stupid components and then build up consciousness is just the wrong game. The stupid components are just the headset giving up. They're not the fundamental nature of reality. That's the headset saying, I give up.

• 49:29Tom Bilyeu?

  We could do a whole episode just about that. Donald, this was incredible. Where can people keep up with you?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  I have, well, pretty soon we're gonna have an institute called the Trace Institute coming out in June. So I'll be announcing on X in a few weeks, the website for Trace. So that will be out. And I do have papers, if you know, I've got a book called Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See, and also The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes. So there's two books, The Case Against Reality and Visual Intelligence, in my X account. And then there, if you just Google, you know, on Google Scholar, if you're a scientist, then of course you'll know that you can just Google my name and there's dozens and dozens of. Papers that are published.

• 50:23Tom Bilyeu?

  It's awesome. I love it. Thank you again for taking the time.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Thank you, Tom.

• 50:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Really appreciate it. Boys and girls, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense

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