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Nothing You See is Real

Donald Hoffman | 8:03

Transcript

Space Time, the sun and the moon, physical objects, everything that we see inside of space and time is just our visualization tool. The reality we're interacting with is nothing like the visualization tool is nothing like space and time.


We've made the rookie mistake of assuming that our headset VR, or visualization tool is the final reality. It's just a rookie mistake is so it looks like someone who's played Grand Theft Auto so long, they have no idea there's a reality besides Grand Theft Auto. We're like that right now.


If you just look at your face in the mirror, do you look what you see directly is just skin, hair and eyes. That's all, that's all you see. And if you looked inside, there's someone opened your skull up looking to just see neurons and so forth. But what you know firsthand that you cannot see is your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, your love of music, your your mood, it's all VR experience, no physical objects, including my body is conscious. 


Strictly speaking, my brain is unconscious because my brain, in fact doesn't even exist unless I render it. Right. So if you're playing Grand Theft Auto, I'm playing a VR version of I got the steering wheel in front of me, I'm holding the steering wheel. If I look to the side, I no longer render the steering wheel, and there is no steering wheel. Because when I look here, I render it.


And now there is a steering wheel. The same thing is true, strictly speaking of neurons and brains, they're there when you render them, they're not there when you don't, it's a VR system that you render objects in space and time as you need them. Because they're part of your visualization tool, and then you garbage collect them, you delete them when you don't need them. Your life and my life right now is we're in a simulator, a spacetime simulator. And we've been given like an AI system, we've been given certain intrinsic desires. So my wife is an artist. So there's billions of humans. 


And there are billions of different ways that we explore in music and art and literature in science, various kinds of science, meditation, sober sports, there are all sorts of ways that consciousness is exploring through us. And there is not like one is the best, I don't know what we're doing outside of space. And time, that's part of what I want to understand is what are we actually doing? We don't see I don't know what I'm actually doing. I know what I'm doing under a description. Like I'm moving my hand right now, if I grab a steering wheel in my car, I know what I'm doing under a spacetime description. 


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