[Music] How do you think of death, given all that we're talking about, and sort of the first-order, second-order, third-order implications of all that? How do you think about death? So physicalism has a very clear implication for death. If space-time is fundamental

and elementary particles like electrons and quarks and protons and so forth are the fundamental nature of reality, and what you are, what your body is, is just an assemblage, a complex assemblage of particles, and your consciousness is somehow an emergent property of

certain activities of those particles, say brain activity, then it's very, very clear that that in death, when the brain dissolves, your consciousness dissolves, and that's the end of the story. That's that's the end. That's it. That's a very, very clear implication of

physicalism. We can talk about panpsychism, but but physicalism, strict physicalism, that's that's the end of the story. If consciousness is fundamental and space-time is just an interface, and our bodies are merely icons that we use to represent certain assembly interactions of

conscious agents, and we can go into how I think about that, then on that approach, there is the possibility that some aspect of my consciousness survives death. Now, there I have to look at, you know, the mathematics of the model and and go into it, but

it may be, for example, that the bare awareness that's associated with me, just awareness without content, that that survives, but all the details of Donald Hoffman and his life story within this interface, maybe that all dissolves. Maybe we can, and that that's a story about what is

consciousness up to we can talk about what is, you know, if consciousness is fundamental, what is it doing and why? What, what, what is the dynamics of consciousness about? And we really to answer the question about death, we might have to answer that question too.

It's a big one, please continue. [Laughter] So I'll try a stab at that question because I think it relates to the death question. So what is consciousness doing and why? You know, the, the right answer is I don't know, and I've only seen one idea

that seems deep enough to at least be worth thinking about. I'm not saying it's the right idea, but the only one idea that seems deep enough to at least be a candidate, and it again comes from Godel and his completeness theorem. Godel says that

essentially, no matter how much you explore within a particular conceptual system, there's you can't get all the truth. There's, there's always going to be more to explore mathematically. So if consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness is

all there is, then mathematical structure is only about the possibilities of consciousness. That's all that there is to be about. And so what if what consciousness is doing, since the exploration of mathematical structure is in principle unending, then perhaps the exploration of the possibilities of consciousness itself is

in principle unending, and therefore consciousness, what is up to is exploring all of its potentialities. And the reason it's continuing to do that, from our perspective, is continuing to do that is because there's no end to it in principle. So consciousness itself is in some sense

always learning about itself and so perhaps then what we are, what you, what people are, and what cats are, and what dogs are, and what amoebas are, and so forth, is consciousness trying on different headsets, different realities, and exploring, and and losing itself. I mean, so this very

interesting idea that consciousness chooses to really explore so deeply that it loses itself in the exploration. It doesn't even know what it is. It becomes a physicalist. It actually thinks that consciousness isn't fundamental. It goes through the whole bit and then slowly has to wake up

and and so doing it really explores what it's not and what it is. In some sense, to know what you are, you have to know what you're not. And so, so on that point of view, the Hoffman icon is simply consciousness ex taking a perspective on itself.

Looking at itself through a particular space-time headset. Taking a little projection and from that headset, there's a finite, there was a birth, there was growing strong until your 20s and 30s, and then after your 40s, you start

declining and you know in your 80s and 90s, you die. And that whole process is just consciousness exploring itself from a particular perspective. In which case, maybe the Hoffman icon and and maybe a lot of stuff can be left behind, but in some sense

consciousness itself has has learned something through that experience and the 8 billion other people and the quadrillions of amoebas and the who knows how many viruses and and so forth. Consciousness is just trying on innumerable headsets, and when it's done

with that headset it takes it off and awareness is is perfectly fine the the raw awareness is fine but the the the detailed icons that happen to appear space-time icons objects in space and time brains neurons all those things those were you know those are just

those were just icons and you know you studied them and then you realized pretty cool really you know Mount Everest what a beautiful icon Death Valley what a beautiful icon these are really but I'm not that I'm something even more transcendent than space and time I'm more transcendent

than Death Valley and so so consciousness is just waking up I mean again I'm trying to tell a story I'm not saying that it's it's correct but it's just it's the only story I've seen so far that at least is deep enough that is

worth taking seriously who is the origin of this this story and can you ever know that it's accurate do you think through testing or experimentation the story that I'm saying right now has an interesting way that you might be able to test it so this

dynamics of conscious agents as I mentioned is a Markovian dynamics right you can make it so-called stationary dynamics in which the entropy of the dynamics doesn't change but you can show that even if you have this Markovian dynamics of consciousness

in which the entropy never changes any projection by by conditional probability any projection looking at that dynamics will see it as increasing an entropy in other words the arrow of entropy the arrow of time is an artifact of the projection so consciousness itself has no arrow of

time, but you can prove from this mathematics that you get an arrow of time by projection. The proof is trivial, like two or three lines. So here's a project that I think would be really fun: Can we show that when you look at all the different ways that you could project

consciousness in this mathematics, the conditions under which all these different arrows of time, the entropy that you get, satisfy the Lorentz transformations? In other words, can we get special relativity out of this? We would have to model also the space aspects of it, what's happening to

space as you know, projection of the dynamics of these conscious agents, but we see the time aspect. So could we actually show how special relativity arises as just different perspectives that consciousness can take, can take on a fundamental dynamics of consciousness that's that's that has no arrow of time?

That's the kind of thing where we could start to make brand new predictions that could be testable. You

Does Consciousness Survive Death? | Prof. Donald Hoffman | The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and one of Fortune’s “40 under 40.” He is an early-stage technology investor/advisor (Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ others) and the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, including The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. The Observer and other media have called Tim “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has now exceeded 900 million downloads. 

Listen to The Tim Ferriss Show podcast: https://tim.blog/podcast
Sign up for Tim's "5-Bullet Friday" free email newsletter with 1.5M+ subscribers: https://tim.blog/friday 


Tim Ferriss

Physicalism and the Implications for Death

Physicalism suggests consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity, dissolving with the brain at death.

The body is viewed as a complex assemblage of particles.

Death, under physicalism, is the end of consciousness.

Panpsychism offers an alternative perspective, where consciousness might survive death.

Consciousness as Fundamental and the Survival of Awareness

If consciousness is fundamental, some aspect might survive death, possibly bare awareness.

The nature of consciousness needs exploration to understand its fate after death.

Understanding the dynamics of consciousness is crucial to understanding death.

The Purpose and Dynamics of Consciousness

The speaker admits uncertainty but proposes a theory based on Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Consciousness explores unending mathematical structures, potentially mirroring the exploration of its own potentialities.

Consciousness explores its potentialities endlessly, with no inherent end.

Life forms are viewed as consciousness exploring different realities, potentially losing itself in the process.

Consciousness, Exploration, and the Illusion of Physicalism

Consciousness explores itself so deeply it might even lose itself, adopting a physicalist perspective.

The physical body is an icon, a perspective consciousness takes on itself.

Birth, growth, and death are part of consciousness' self-exploration.

While the physical might be left behind, consciousness learns through the experience.

Consciousness tries on innumerable 'headsets' (experiences) and discards them.

Raw awareness persists, while specific space-time icons are temporary.

The theory's testability is discussed, focusing on Markovian dynamics of consciousness.

Entropy increase (arrow of time) is an artifact of projection, not inherent to consciousness.

A proposed test: Can special relativity be derived from different projections of consciousness?

The study would model space aspects alongside time to see if special relativity emerges.

Does Consciousness Survive Death? | Prof. Donald Hoffman | The Tim Ferriss Show

Does Consciousness Survive Death? | Prof. Donald Hoffman | The Tim Ferriss Show

Scripts