Is Reality Really Real? With Donald Hoffman

Summary

StarTalk Radio – "Is Reality Really Real?" with Donald Hoffman

Date: June 26, 2026
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guests: Donald Hoffman, Professor Emeritus, UC Irvine (cognitive neuroscientist, author “The Case Against Reality”),
Co-hosts: Chuck Nice (comedian/actor), Gary O’Reilly (commentator)

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Episode Overview

This special edition of StarTalk delves deeply into one of humanity’s most profound questions: Is reality actually real? Neil deGrasse Tyson, joined by co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O'Reilly, welcomes Professor Donald Hoffman, whose controversial research claims that our brains evolved not to perceive an objective reality, but rather to experience a “user interface” tuned for evolutionary fitness. Through a lively, often humorous, and accessible discussion, they tackle the intertwining roles of evolution, neuroscience, perception, consciousness, and the emerging mathematics that just might overturn our very notion of 'what is real'.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The Evolutionary Argument: Perception ≠ Reality

• [03:53] Hoffman’s Thesis: Evolution by natural selection shaped us not to perceive objective reality, but to maximize reproductive fitness.

  • Hoffman: “The probability is zero that any organism has ever been shaped at any time to see any aspect of objective reality as it is. It’s just precisely zero.” ([07:01])
  • Even advanced computation of evolutionary game theory supports this.

• [07:13] What is Reality?

  • Neil requests Hoffman to clarify what he means by “reality” if evolved perception is a “VR headset.”

Humor Moment

• Chuck: “Mathematically, reality would have to have a value if it equals zero…” ([07:19])
• Neil: “The teeth on that lion are pretty reality-looking. The cliff ledge feels pretty real to me.” ([07:27])

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2. The “VR Headset” Metaphor

• [11:07] Evolution Built Us for Survival, Not Truth

  • Hoffman: “We were shaped not to have a window on the world, but to have a VR headset that lets us play the game of life. …You have a VR headset that lets you play the game of life where the winning strategy is offspring, how many you have.” ([11:07])

• [12:17] Different Species, Different Interfaces

  • E.g., mantis shrimp and bats, each with unique sensory capabilities—so what they “see” is as divergent as their evolutionary needs.

• [12:45] Beer Bottle Beetles:

  • Hilarious and instructive anecdote of Australian "jewel beetles" who try to mate with discarded beer bottles because the cues their evolution selected—"dimpled, glossy, brown”—misfire catastrophically in the modern world.
    • Hoffman: “All they had was a simple hack: A female is anything dimpled, glossy and brown. The bigger the better.” ([14:03])

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3. Psychedelics, Perception & the Nature of Mind

• [18:47] What Do Psychedelics Reveal?

  • Gary asks about altered states and whether they bring us “closer to reality” or just scramble our headset.
  • Hoffman: “Most of the time, I’d say the best hypothesis is they’re just screwing things up... But there are cases where I think it’s worth scientific research to figure out if something deeper is going on.” ([19:41])

• [20:28] Do Neurons Exist Only When Perceived?

  • Hoffman: “Neurons do not exist when they're not perceived... If it’s a VR headset kind of thing, what you see is what you render on the fly.” ([20:28])

• [21:13] Grand Theft Auto and Reality Rendering

  • Only the visual field you’re focused on is rendered—so with our evolved “headset,” the world appears only as we interact with it.

• Notable Exchange

  • Chuck: “You described the game of adult peekaboo.” ([21:19])

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4. Simulation Theory vs. Hoffman’s Proposal

• [22:36] How Is This Like Simulation Theory?
  • Hoffman: Similar in framing but, crucially, does not posit a “real” substratum at the bottom (i.e., space-time is not fundamental).
  • Discusses that we have no scientific theory for how consciousness could emerge from computation—“We are batting exactly zero right now.” ([24:49])

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5. The Mystery of Consciousness

• [26:31] Emergence and the Limits of AI

  • Neil: “So a chatbot’s conscious?... Will you deny them consciousness? Because I don’t think Turing would.” ([27:23])
  • Hoffman: “I think the whole question is framed the wrong way. …consciousness looks at itself through infinitely many different headsets, and space-time is just one of them.” ([27:43])

• [29:01] Where Does Space-Time “Stop”?

  • According to high-energy physicists, at 10⁻³³ cm and 10⁻⁴³ seconds—the Planck scale.

• [32:01] The Measurement Problem

  • Hoffman: “Science does not have a theory of observation. And that’s one of the biggest open problems today.” ([32:01])
  • Neil: “We don’t have a full theory of measurement.” ([33:51])

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6. Aliens, Higher-Dimensional Perception, and “Headsets”

• [35:33] What if Aliens Perceive on More Levels?

  • Neil references Voltaire’s 26-mile-tall alien with 7,000 senses.
  • Hoffman: “I could imagine other headsets... with four, five, 20 dimensions and senses we can’t even imagine.” ([38:10])
  • Collaboration mentioned with DMT researcher Andrew Gallimore—to mathematically model different “headsets” for alien perception.

• [41:21] Testing DMT “Alien Contact” Scientifically

  • Proposals to run controlled experiments: Could a DMT user “bring back” new information from the DMT domain shared with another user?

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7. Mathematics, Markov Chains, and the Foundations of Reality

• [47:57] Think Anew: Logic of Observation

  • Hoffman: “What does it mean to observe? …We need to understand that mathematically. …I think Leibniz was right: We need to start with observation. He called them monads.” ([47:57])

• [50:22] A Hierarchy of Theories

  • Neil: “I don’t have any hesitation thinking that my 3D candy-ass headset is legit in its world, but it’s a subset of a much larger truth.” ([50:04])
  • Hoffman: “I want to show that I can start with a theory of observation, precise, mathematical, and get quantum gravity as a special case.” ([50:22])

• [52:22] to [55:05]:

  • Hoffman’s new approach: Treat each observer as a Markov chain—a matrix of possible perceptual outcomes and transitions.
  • The “trace” logic: If you can only see a subset of possible states, your “submatrix” is given by a standard mathematical trace.
  • Could even lead to time dilation: Less information means slower “ticks” of your subjective clock ([54:42]).

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8. “The Matrix” and Hacking the Headset

• [56:06] Is The Matrix Just a Metaphor?
  • Hoffman: “Neurons are a headset representation of how our headset is created. So neuroscience is much harder than we thought... we have to reverse engineer it and ask, What is the software outside of space-time?” ([56:06]; [56:39])
  • Once we understand this “software,” technologies could become “mind-blowing. Everything we have right now will be trivial compared to what’s possible.” ([58:26])

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9. Algorithms, Manipulation, and Societal Consequences

• [60:13] Algorithms Hijacking Evolutionary Wiring
  • Hoffman: “We know how to manipulate your attention to make you want things that you don’t even know that we’re doing. Once you know the rules of the headset, you can play the game and no one knows you’re doing it.” ([60:56])
  • Example: The way jeans’ distress patterns trigger “3D stories” in our visual systems, amplifying or minimizing certain body features.

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10. Infinite Regress: God, Science, and the Limits of Knowledge

• [69:01]
  • Hoffman: “There will never be a theory of everything in principle because we’ll never have a theory that explains its own assumptions. So there is no theory of everything.”
  • Neil: “That’s Gödel’s incompleteness theorem right there.” ([69:15])

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11. Scientific Ambitions and Predictions

• [70:56] Trace Research Institute—A new center commencing June 2026 to formalize and extend Hoffman’s mathematical conjectures.

  • The aim: “Show exactly how we get special relativity, general relativity, quantum field theory, non-locality, and so forth, from this trace logic on observers...” ([70:56])

• [73:11] What Will Test the Theory?

  • Hoffman: “Suppose I can show … that in your headset the speed of light is the maximum speed. …All of a sudden, something Einstein had to assume, we show follows from the theory of observers.” ([74:05])
  • Explains that in Markov chains, a “maximum commute time” naturally yields an analog to a speed limit in physics.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Hoffman, on perception's limits:
  “We don’t see reality because what we’ve got are tricks and hacks.” ([12:45])

• Tyson, on empirical rigor:
  “I cannot embrace the idea that we are perceiving anything, because we worked really hard to get our five senses out of the experiment.” ([34:07])

• Hoffman, on scientific humility:
  “Every scientific theory starts with assumptions, period. …There’s always some deeper layer to go to. …There will never be a theory of everything in principle.” ([68:14]; [69:01])

• On the power of science and technology:
  “When we start to understand the software outside of our spacetime headset, the technologies will be mind-blowing. Everything that we have right now will be trivial compared to the technologies we will have.” ([58:26])

• Chuck Nice, comic relief:
  “I met higher dimensional aliens while I was doing ayahuasca… I’m not even lying, man.” ([39:31])

• Hoffman, on our “cheap” dimension:
  “We got the cheap headset… 3D is sort of the candied-ass version.” ([44:42])

• Neil deGrasse Tyson, on aliens of the gaps:
  “God of the gaps has been replaced by aliens. …In my book, I coined the phrase ‘aliens of our ignorance.’” ([70:23]; [70:36])

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Key Segment | |-----------|-------------| | 03:53 | Hoffman describes evolutionary theory & zero probability of accurate perception | | 07:07 | VR Headset metaphor introduced | | 12:45 | Jewel beetle beer bottle story | | 19:41 | Psychedelics and perception | | 20:28 | Do neurons exist only when perceived? | | 21:13 | Grand Theft Auto/peekaboo analogy | | 22:36 | Simulation theory vs. Hoffman’s model | | 27:43 | Consciousness not as computation, but as foundational “observer” | | 29:41 | Quantum limits to space-time | | 32:01 | Measurement and science’s central problem—the observer | | 35:33 | Alien “headsets” and perception across dimensions | | 41:21 | Experimental approach to DMT “contact” | | 47:57 | Need for a new mathematical foundation for observation | | 50:22 | Embedding lower-level physics as special cases in higher realities | | 52:22-55:05 | Markov chains and observer logic, time dilation | | 56:06 | The Matrix—VR as an analogy for our perceptions | | 60:56 | Algorithms hack biology (jeans and butt-shaping example) | | 69:01 | No theory of everything—Gödel’s theorem | | 74:05 | Prediction: explaining relativity’s speed-limit from observer theory | | 76:23 | “Dumbed down” headset—do ants see anything of us? Do we see anything of them? | | 70:56 | Announcement of the Trace Research Institute |

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Final Takeaways

StarTalk’s “Is Reality Really Real?” is a whirlwind tour through the latest thoughts in science and philosophy on the fundamental nature of reality. Donald Hoffman challenges assumptions about what is real, proposing that we are immersed in a kind of “user interface”—a VR-like world—optimized by evolution for fitness, not truth. Perception, consciousness, aliens, psychedelics, quantum physics, and even algorithms hacking our attention—no topic is off-limits. The need for new mathematics (Markov chains, trace logic) and new humility pervades the discussion, as does the sense that reality, if it is “really real,” is far stranger than our minds can yet grasp.

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For Further Reading / Following

• Donald Hoffman on Google Scholar
• Book: "The Case Against Reality"
• Trace Research Institute (launching Summer 2026)

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“Whatever you are, it’s not something inside space and time. Space and time is inside you. That’s your creation on the fly.” – Donald Hoffman ([72:54])

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StarTalk Episode: The Nature of Reality. In the end—it’s just a Matrix.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Coming up on StarTalk Special Edition, is reality real?

[C]

Do you want it to be?

[A]

I'm gonna say no because then I do not owe anything to Visa.

[B]

Coming up, what neuroscience says about the nature of reality. StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Today we're gonna be exploring the nature of reality.

[C]

Really,

[B]

really reality. We got Gary O'Reilly. Gary, right to my right, former soccer pro, announcer and my co host. And we got actor comedian Chuck Nice.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

How you doing, man? Oh, the lord of Nice.

[A]

The lord of Nice. Wow. I've napped up. Well. Okay.

[B]

Yeah, I like that. Let's deal with it. So it set the picture here. What did you put together?

[C]

In theoretical physics, they often ask questions about the nature of reality. But what about looking at reality from the neuroscience lens? Today we're going to talk about the limits to our perception, the role of consciousness and the nature of reality itself. Yes, Neil, time to bring in our guests. This one's gonna go deep, so I'm

[B]

looking forward to it all Right, let's see where it takes us. We've got Professor Donald Hoffman. Donald, welcome to StarTalk.

[D]

Thank you very much, Neil. Good to be with all of you.

[B]

Yeah. Your professor emeritus, you're not that old, in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine, Right there in Irvine, California. You're obviously a cognitive neuroscientist and an author. I have most recently here. And if you have another book, let me know. The Case Against Reality.

[A]

No Shots Fired. Let me tell you, I'm an expert in that.

[B]

Shots Fired. How Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes.

[A]

Love it. Ooh, I love it.

[B]

All right, so what are you saying? We don't really see the full picture. I mean, I agree with you. Who would disagree with that? But you're bringing in evolution to blame for this. So can you catch us up on what you mean by that?

[D]

That's right. So the standard view is that evolution shapes organisms to be fit. And surely to be fit, we should see the world pretty accurately. Right. You want to see a cliff, if there's a cliff, and not fall off. You want to see what is a mate and so forth.

[B]

So just to be clear, when you say fit, you don't mean it like in a fitness center. No.

[A]

Right. It's not a crunch gym thing.

[B]

It's not crunch.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Please remind us what evolutionarily, what the word fit means.

[D]

That's right. So in Darwin's theory, fitness really means the chance that you're going to have offspring successfully. So fitness is really one thing. What's the probability that you will survive long enough to raise your offspring successfully? That's what.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Clearly Darwin had no children. Cause he would know they will kill you. And I don't mean like murder. I mean, just having them will kill you.

[B]

Okay. So we're trained to not run off the cliff, to run the opposite direction of lions.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What else. What else are we really good at?

[D]

Well, avoiding poisons and things like that and finding. Right. Mates. So we're not. We don't try to mate with trees or rocks or things like that. So we.

[A]

Speak for yourself there, Don. I'm sorry, guys. I had to do that.

[C]

And so many people have conjured up an image.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Of a drunken Saturday night.

[A]

Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Don, continue.

[D]

Right, so. So the standard view, not only among people who are, you know, sort of just partially acquainted with evolutionary theory, but for people who are deeply acquainted with the theory, is to assume that Darwin's theory entails that most of the time we see reality as it Is of course not all of the time, there are illusions and so forth. But the idea would be if you're going to be fit in Darwin's sense of being reproductively, you know, successful, then you need to see reality as it is. And what I have done with some colleagues, Chetan Prakash, Manish Singh and others is to look at the mathematics of evolution. It turns out Darwin wasn't the mathematician, but a century after he published his theory, mathematicians turned it into mathematics and it's called evolutionary game theory. John Maynard Smith and others worked on this. So we can now ask, ask specific mathematical questions of Darwin's theory and the, the answer when we look at the mathematics is that the probability is zero that any organism has ever been shaped at any time to see any aspect of objective reality as it is. It's just precisely zero. I didn't expect that when I went into it. I expected to have the answer be that we saw reality some of the time, but maybe not as often as we thought we would. Steven Pinker has published a paper on that idea. He has some good arguments for why, you know, there are pressures from evolution not to see reality as it is. So Pinker's already been there and I know he's talked with you before. And so what I was surprised though that when we looked at the mathematics the answer was the probability is zero.

[B]

Yeah. So now we have to back up a bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What do you mean by reality? If you're gonna assign a zero to it, I wanna know what it is you just zeroed out.

[A]

Wow. So yeah. Cause I mean mathematically reality would have to have a value if it equals

[B]

zero, if at some point you're gonna give it a zero.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it seems to me the teeth on that line is pretty reality looking. The cliff ledge feels pretty real to me.

[D]

The interesting thing about the mathematics is you don't have to specify what reality is for the mathematics to still give you the theorem. So whatever. So I don't have to assume what reality is. I can just look at the structure of evolutionary theory and say suppose there is some reality out there and there are these so called fitness payoff functions. So Darwin talks about payoffs and the payoffs really are effectively if I have an organism like a lion in a particular state, like it's hungry and has some actions to take and one of them might be eating, you know, a leopard or eating an antelope, something like that, or eating you, or eating you, then that for that lion, that's a, that's a very, you know, That's a very good payoff. Right, that's. But if it's. If it's looking to be, you know, to eat and it cries for a rock, it's going to have a very poor payoff. And so you can have these abstract payoff functions, and so we don't have to know what reality is. We can just look at the property of these payoff functions and we can ask for whatever reality is. What's the probability that a payoff function would tell you about that reality?

[B]

Okay, I still don't know what you're talking about. So I don't mind representing these forces that operate on your evolution, on your fitness, on your survival. I have no problems abstracting those to mathematical elements. But I need you to tell me that the lion that is chasing me isn't real. And you're not saying that.

[D]

Oh, I'm gonna get there.

[B]

This is the lion.

[A]

That's the lion.

[B]

Get to me before the lion dies.

[A]

Well, then let me just dovetail that real quick. Is it possible then, that the probabilities don't mean anything if the fact that they come out to zero, but yet the lion can still eat you? And I mean, that's pretty real to you. I mean, is it very possible that although the pro. Probability, you know, equates to zero, that maybe that's a particular probability that has no value to us?

[D]

It's in the nature of scientific theories just to see what they say. Okay, all I'm doing is saying this is what Darwin's theory says when we mathematize it. And Darwin's theory says there are these things called payoffs, Right? If you, you know, you pick an organism like the lion, its state hungry or wanting to mate, and an action like feeding, fighting, fleeing, or mating, and then I'll give you a number for how good that was, how you know that's what the payoff functions are and whether or not you like Darwin's theory. I'm just saying this is what the mathematics of Darwin's theory says. And when you look at that mathematics, then it's. Then it says the payoff functions do not have information about reality. Almost surely. When I say almost surely, that means 100% of the time, basically.

[B]

So maybe I'm gonna reword what I think you're actually saying and you tell me if I'm completely off the point. What you're saying is it doesn't matter whether it's real in any objective sense. All that matters is whether the organism responds in a way that is in the interest of its own survival.

[D]

That's exactly right, Neil.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. So that's okay.

[A]

I mean, I think that's pretty, you know, reasonable and feasible to accept.

[B]

Right. So it doesn't matter to me that it's real. Right. Is a different statement from saying it isn't real.

[D]

Well, so what I would say is that what Darwin's theory tells us is that we were shaped not to have a window on the world, but to have a VR headset that lets us play the game of life. That's the simple bottom line. So most of us think we were shaped with senses that give us a mostly true depiction, a true window on reality. And what Darwin says is basically, no, you have a VR headset that lets you play the game of life where the winning strategy is offspring, how many offspring you have. And so that's that. So the idea then, is, in some sense, this is what we're perceiving is. Is more a VR thing than a true picture of reality.

[A]

I can believe that because I don't know exactly when it was. But we did an episode, we were talking about measurements, and basically we got into this area of. In science, without these tools, our measurements would suck because we would have to rely on our senses, our senses. And our senses are never sufficient to measure things properly.

[C]

All right, so pick up from there, Don. There are species here on planet Earth. The reality is a. Maybe a mantis shrimp that can see so many different colors, a bat that exists with sonar, birds that can register light on a UV spectrum. Their reality is different to ours, surely, but these are all sensory capabilities. We're just not able to process the data. Is that what we're trying to say here?

[D]

Partly. There's so much data that we can't process, but it's even deeper than that. We don't see reality because what we've got are tricks and hacks. And I'll give you a concrete, funny example, all right? There's a jewel beetle in the outback of Australia. So these beetles are dimpled, glossy and brown. The males fly, the females are flightless, and males fly around looking for eligible females. And if a male finds one, he alights and mates. And so they've done that for who knows how long, tens of thousands of years. It's been a very successful life for the jewel beetles. But it turns out that there are some beer bottles that guys like to drink from in Australia. They're dimpled, glossy, and just the right shade of brown to tickle the fancy of these. These male jewel beetles. So these guys will throw them out into the desert and jewel beetles flock all over these bottles. They get on them, they crawl all over them trying to mate. And the females aren't getting anything.

[B]

This just all bottle because the guys are idiots. What else is new?

[A]

I'm going to say that that's more an admonition against beer. Those are the truest beer goggles ever.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so that evolutionary element got hijacked by the beer bottle.

[D]

That's right. So the beetles, the males have full body contact with the bottle, they're crawling all over it, and yet they cannot tell that this is not a female. So it's truly stunning. What did they learn? You would think that the males actually had been shaped by evolution to know what a female is. No, all they had was a simple hack. A female is anything dimpled, glossy and brown. The bigger the better. And that was what they were looking for.

[B]

And they didn't need to know more than that. Need to know basics.

[A]

Right. I'm gonna go with Neil's assertion that they're idiots because I'm gonna tell you something. We have in our species something called real dolls. And although they call them real, we know they're not real.

[B]

Do you really know?

[A]

Okay,

[B]

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[C]

If we're only able to process a minuscule part of reality, what happens to our minds when we introduce psychedelics? And maybe you could pick up on that.

[A]

Oh man, I'll. I'll let the good doctor go first.

[B]

But because my, my. I. I've never done psychedelics, nor do I have any intent to do so. I know on the grounds that the human mind barely works at all as a data taking device in our environment. And I highly value objective reality. So if I'm gonna stir in chemicals into my brain, I don't know what the objective is. But if it takes me farther away from reality, I can't. It's not calling to me.

[A]

In the words of Ray Manzarek, it's about mind expansion, man.

[B]

Yeah. I don't want to expand in a place that is farther away from objective reality. Okay, all you now, Don.

[D]

Right. So I myself have not taken any psychedelics, but I'm collaborating with people who have and who are doing research into this. And most of the time, I would say the best hypothesis is they're just screwing things up. Right. The psychedelics are just sort of addling your brain. But there are cases where I think it's worth scientific research to just try to figure out if something deeper is going on. Perhaps in the case of dmt, for example. But I should say that what I just said about evolution gives me a different view on neuroscience than you would normally hear from a neuroscientist. So I'm a neuroscientist. I love to study the brain, and I think that neurons do not exist when they're not perceived.

[C]

Oh, that's more quantum, isn't it?

[A]

Oh, look at that. Yeah, you went total string theory on us.

[B]

No, he went total quantum neural quantum ledge on that.

[A]

That's right.

[D]

So the idea is that if it's a VR headset kind of thing, what you see is what you render on the fly. So if you're in, like, a game, like Grand Theft Auto, and you see a red Corvette off to your right. Well, there is no red Corvette in reality because the supercomputer has no red Corvette in it. So the red Corvette that I'm seeing is there when I look and render it, and when I look the other direction, it's gone. So the Corvette only exists as I perceive it. Now, if I'm multiplayer game and someone else is looking at a red Corvette when I'm not, they're seeing their red Corvette. They're not seeing the one that I saw.

[A]

They're not seeing yours. You described the game of adult peekaboo.

[B]

That's funny. Explain to me, because I've never played Grand Theft Auto. Does it render only the direction you're looking in to save cpu?

[D]

That's right. That's typical of games.

[B]

So it knows which way you're looking.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because it doesn't make sense if you're not looking at it for it to be rendering because you can't see it Anymore.

[B]

This has been the major argument in simulation theory where why would the programmer waste computer power simulating things that no one is conscious of.

[D]

That's right.

[B]

Just make it exist when you get there. So, for example, if you dig into the earth, it only has to make the layers of the earth when you get there.

[A]

That's the digging. Right.

[B]

Too way cheaper, way more accessible to the programmer than creating everything there all at once.

[A]

That's my theory. On the speed of light, if there's a simulation. The reason why you can't go faster than the speed of light is because that is the speed at which they need to create the simulation so that it can be there when you see it.

[B]

Okay, so Einstein had a theory. That's your hypothesis. I just want to.

[A]

Oh, sorry, you're absolutely right. Yeah, that's my idea. That's a thought. That's my thought.

[C]

Right, so you both tapped in into simulation theory. Don, is that what's in practice here? I mean, are the realities layered and one within another?

[D]

Simulation theory, as is typically put out, like Nick Bostrom and others who are. Elon Musk, who are interested in it. So I'll say at top level, yes, it's very, very similar. But I'll make two important distinctions between Bostrom's point of view and what I'm saying. One point is that Bostrom, he says we're probably a simulation and there's some geek with a computer at a different level that's programming us and making us up. But that geek is actually simulated by someone at an even lower level. And you can go down many, many levels until you get to the bottom level. And the bottom level, he assumes, is a physical space time level, a real thing. And that's where I get off the train, because I say there's no reason on evolutionary grounds to believe that spacetime is fundamental. In fact, we have good reason to believe on high energy theoretical physics grounds that space time is doomed. As many high energy theoretical physicists say spacetime is doomed and they're looking for new structures beyond space time. So I don't want to say that, I don't want to buy that the bottom level is a space time level. And the second part of the standard stimulation theory that I don't buy is that the idea is that you can simulate consciousness, conscious experiences through algorithms on computers. And I'm good friends and colleagues with most of the players who are trying to do this. And it's a remarkable thing. I mean, these are brilliant, brilliant scientists. But the hard fact is that to Date, there's not a single specific conscious experience that any scientific theory has ever been able to show. We could program up. For example, there's no theory about how we get the taste of chocolate, the smell of garlic, nothing. So we are batting exactly zero right now in terms of in theory, that will explain a specific conscious experience. So I think it's principled. A principled failure. These people are brilliant. Many of them are geniuses. They're good friends of mine. If we could do it, I think we would have done it, and we haven't been able to do it so well.

[A]

I mean, it's very possible that we don't have the computing power to do it because.

[B]

Go ahead.

[C]

Wait.

[B]

Okay, so all you just said.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

If I may summarize, is that we don't understand consciousness yet as we think it exists. So I don't believe you're saying anything deeper than that. It's just a frontier, a neuroscience physics frontier. So what point are you making other than saying we don't understand it yet? I can say we don't know what happened before the Big Bang. That's a frontier. Right? I'm not trying to say anything deeper than that. If we don't understand it, we don't understand it. We have top people working on it. So where are you trying to take us there?

[D]

So where I'm taking us is that for the last 30 or 40 years, there's been concerted effort by many brilliant neuroscientists and computer scientists and a number of theories proposed. For example, integrated information theory, Penrose and Hameroff's quantum collapse of microtubules. Theories. Various. There's lots of specific, mathematically precise theories. And when you ask them, okay, you have a theory of observation, conscious experiences. What specific conscious experience can you explain? And the answer is zero. And this has been after zero.

[B]

It's still a frontier. And what I tell people is, by the way, of course, there's a book published on consciousness three times a year. Okay. Pick a number. It'll be pretty close. And that is evidence we don't yet understand consciousness, because if we did, all the publications would stop and we'd be onto some other subject. So the more that's published on something, it's evidence of how little we understand. That's the point I'm trying to make.

[A]

Makes sense.

[B]

So, Don, as you know, in biological circles, there's a lot of talk lately about emergence, like the flocking of birds. You know, if you can analyze every cell of a bird and every molecule within it, it doesn't say I. Flocking indicates flocking. Flocking. Yet together, they all sort of know what they're doing. So mite consciousness, Consciousness be something emergent within our evolutionary tree. Or is it. That is, you need these other base ingredients, and then consciousness manifests atop them all. Or do you think it's built into our code?

[D]

So most of my colleagues who are scientists who are studying consciousness from a physiological or computational point of view, would think that consciousness somehow emerges from either properties of algorithms or properties of neural activity or so forth.

[B]

So a chat bot's conscious. Has consciousness emerged? Given they have access to every word we have ever posted on the Internet, that's a big slice of anyone's brain, of the summation of many brains. Will you deny them consciousness? Because I don't think Turing would.

[D]

Turing wouldn't. Most of my colleagues would say that they're conscious. And I would say that the whole question is framed the wrong way. We're starting with something inside of our headset, and we're asking if the headset can generate consciousness. And I think it's the other way around that consciousness looks at itself through infinitely many different headsets, and space time is just one of them. And the proof of this will be whether or not one can actually use neural activity or some kind of algorithms to actually give theories, not just claims, but a theory of specific conscious experiences. I like the taste of mint. Give me an algorithm and a theory that says, this must be the taste of mint. A scientific theory that says, this must be the taste of mint, and here is why. Or, for example, in the case of integrated information theory, a theory of neural activity, or, and more general than neural activity, a theory about how the right kind of causal structures could be conscious experiences. I would again ask them, give me a specific integrated information causal structure. That must be the taste of mint. Right now, there is zero on the table. There are no successes.

[B]

Well, for humans as well as chatbots. So you can't blame chatbots for that.

[D]

Absolutely. So I think my view is consciousness does not emerge from algorithms. It does not emerge from neurons. It does not emerge from anything inside space and time whatsoever.

[A]

Right.

[D]

In fact, it's the other way around. Space and time and everything inside them emerges as a trivial headset from consciousness.

[C]

Okay, so are we looking at mathematics as the key to a solution? Are we looking here at consciousness being a quantum. I want to say thing, but that sounds really clumsy and heavy, but I

[A]

mean, why couldn't it be a quantum manifestation, though?

[C]

So in which case, when does space, time Cease to exist. And at what scale, what level are you saying that that stops to happen?

[D]

Well, on the very last question, I can say that it's not me saying it, but actually the high energy theoretical physicists tell us precisely where it stops. It stops at 10 to the minus 33 centimeters and 10 to the minus 43 seconds.

[B]

Yeah, it's a Planck. That's plank. Okay, yeah. So just to be clear here, space time, as we think of it as a continuum, as described by Einstein, is very successful in accounting for what we see in the universe. What we find is that on these, I can't even call it granular scale because it's way smaller than that. There's a breakdown. And the general relativity does not play nice in the sandbox with the quantum. But most people are betting on the quantum because of how successful it has been. If I were you, I'd bet.

[A]

I'd bet on the quantum.

[B]

Stick with the quantum. But before you even go further on that, Gary. Sure, Don. I want to just assess layers of reality, not in a programmer sense, but there's still the lion, the matter of the lion that has teeth. And I see teeth, and those teeth will eat me. And so I cannot embrace your statement that that is some kind of virtual reality that does not correspond with an objective reality, because I can as a scientist. This is what we've been doing since Galileo and especially since the 19th century. We can create a machine that can make a measurement that does not use your neurons.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And I can say I'm looking at a furry thing with a mane and big teeth, and it weighs 800 pounds, and then it walks on a scale. The scale registers 800 pounds, a picture gets taken of it. It's got a mane, it's got big teeth, and 10 minutes later I am mauled. So I have a hard time embracing your statement that evolution prevents me from seeing the objective reality of what just happened.

[D]

Well, so I'll just say that the evolution says the probability is zero, that any measurement gives you a true picture of reality. But the issue that you raised about observation is really a critical one. I think it's, in fact, the central issue before science today. What's remarkable is that science does not have a theory of observation. And that's one of the biggest open problems in science that's widely recognized. John Wheeler, in his famous 1989 paper from BIT, was basically saying we have to reboot our physics with some what he called observer participants. And Frank Wilczek has said the same thing. We need to have a Theory of the observer. And what's remarkable is now in the quantum measurement problem. So where we're trying to figure out how when we make measurements in quantum theory, we have the unitary one evolution. That's called the unitary evolution when you're not looking. And then there's this collapse when you're supposed to be observing. And there is no theory yet about that collapse. So where science is right now is we don't have a theory of observation. And what's stunning about that is if you think about what science is, it's a bunch of people that are looking and talking to each other and saying, this is what I saw. What did you see? Let's compare notes. Let's try to understand how to understand what are different perspectives and views and observations.

[B]

I have to correct that is they're not saying, this is what I saw. What did you see? They're saying, this is what I measured. What did you measure? And so let me add to your comment that we don't have a theory of observation. That's definitely true. But as a corollary to that, we don't have a full theory of measurement.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they're related.

[A]

They're related because the wave function collapse is consistent through all those who measure.

[B]

Correct. But it. Right. Except if you're not measuring it, it's not collapsing. Right. So they're related.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Right. So I don't want it. So I'm still trying to take human perception out of this equation because I can build a machine to make the measurement. Now, you're a neuroscientist, so perception is everything but coming to you. As a physicist, I cannot embrace the idea that we are perceiving anything because we worked really hard to get our five senses out of the experiment.

[D]

When you make a measurement with a physical device, it doesn't get into a scientific theory until some person actually perceives the measurement outcome.

[B]

Correct. But we can all then look at that measurement and agree what it says without having to trust someone's testimony for what they observed.

[A]

Or are you saying that the agreement itself is a shared perception?

[D]

Well, we know from Einstein that if we both are looking at. We're both measuring the velocity of an object or the speed or the shape of an object. We're going to get different answers depending on our frame of reference. Right. But we actually know how to translate between Neil's frame of reference and Chuck's frame of reference to say even though they got different answers, we can understand that they somehow agree

[B]

there is no transition into Chuck's Frame of reference.

[A]

Right.

[B]

He has his own.

[A]

Absolutely. Let me tell you something right now. It's a mess up in here.

[C]

Okay? So we've talked. We've talked about how we as humans can perceive and our frameworks, et cetera. What if we now find alien beings who have the sensorial capacity to be able to absorb way more data than we possibly could of the reality? Are we then. And I can get carried away now looking at a fourth, fifth, sixth dimension in which these problems that we've fumbled with are solved.

[B]

Wait, before you get there, that's an important question that I address in my recently published book. Uh, oh, take me to your Leader. There's a whole chapter on alien powers that they could have. Okay. And there's even a. I'm currently reading

[C]

that, so I haven't got to.

[B]

That you haven't gotten that to. There's a story by Voltaire of Voltage, all People, written in the mid 18th century, where he imagines. This is one of the earliest total alien fictional stories imagined where there's an alien 26 miles tall and. Stay with me. And he has.

[A]

In the NBA, and I feel very good, the Knicks. He's joining the Knicks next year. They're gonna win another championship.

[B]

I don't know where he got the number. He's just 26 miles away, and he has 7,000 senses. And he comes upon other life forms and can't fathom how they can be so tiny and have so few senses and still understand or perceive the world.

[C]

Because we would look at a nurse worm.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. So people have gone there before. But I just want to say that these machines are not only measuring things to replace our senses, they're measuring things that our senses have no access to, like the ultraviolet and the infrared and gravitational perturbations and ionizing radiation. It has nothing to do with our senses, but we have machines that can measure them. And so I'm quite proud of the scientific community for building what are now dozens of senses of the world. So that when someone comes to your dinner party and says, I have a sixth sense, you could, say, give it to him.

[A]

And then what you have is a delusion.

[B]

No, no, let them have their sixth sense. But say I have another dozen. So, yeah, why don't you be impressed with mine? So, anyhow, I don't think of things that our senses can't detect as some magical other reality. They're just things that our machines ultimately were able to bring to our awareness.

[A]

I don't want to speak for Don, but I think he's saying that somehow our perceptions and those machines are t tied together.

[D]

Yes, in the following sense that we have. I'm claiming that our perceptions of the world are just a particular headset. We have a three dimensional space, one dimensional time headset with certain properties. I could imagine other headsets that have four dimensions, five dimensions, 20 dimensions have senses built into them that we can't. You know, for example, you know, electric sensing in water, things like that. I think sharks can do that kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Right. So your headset metaphor. Thank you was the word I was looking for.

[A]

He sensed that.

[B]

So that headset metaphor is quite potent with regard to your aliens who are coming to visit.

[D]

It is. And in fact, I'm collaborating with Andrew Gallimore who is a world expert on DMT and the studies of that. And one thing that I have, a mathematical model of how this headset, our headset is built and a theory of observation. And we're using that to try to begin to model how we might understand alien intelligences as having different headsets that are different from ours in ways that we can actually write down. Mathematics, for example. Our headset may be a subset of theirs. They may have higher dimensions than we have.

[B]

Love me. High dimensional aliens. That'd be the funnest thing ever.

[A]

Well, believe it or not, I met higher dimensional aliens while I was doing ayahuasca. I'm not, I'm not even lying, man.

[B]

By the way, did you know, did you know this? I only knew it researching for my book. Go ahead. There's a subset of DMT users that all agree that they're interacting with aliens and they have formed a subgroup within DMT user. The user group.

[A]

I did not know that it's an

[B]

alien sub and they want to get together, see if they're actually somehow cross dimensional communicating with aliens and they can compare notes.

[A]

I would say that makes perfect sense because in my experience, quite frankly, I had, and maybe I did, because here's the thing, I felt like the entire time, first of all, you're not high when you do ayahuasca. That's a misnomer. You are not a misconception. You're not like, you know, oh my God, I'm tripping my balls off. It's no, it's like your brain has been subsectioned and you're kind of in touch with all of the different sections of your brain. But the whole time I was telling myself, this is my perception, this is all coming from my brain. And the ayahuasca was like, and what difference does that make? Because it doesn't make any of this any less real. And the more I accepted that, the more expansive the experience became. And I met beings that told me that quite frankly the way it works is we're in a really short dimension.

[B]

So Don, in your new metaphor, if you can actually mathematically model that, then it becomes more than a metaphor, it becomes a tool to calculate. What confidence do you have that Chuck actually had access beyond his current dimension?

[D]

As a scientist I'm hard nosed and I'm completely agnostic, but I want to do experiments. And so I'm actually designing experiments with Andrew Gallimar where we would. For example, Andrew has this technology where you can put people under DMT for extended periods of time. So for more than just three or five minutes, you can put them in there for an hour or something like that and, or 20 minutes so you can actually have extended. So what we would like to do is say are these aliens real in the sense that they're sort of. We can what we could have one neonaut, one person who's taking DMT, go and give an alien creature in, you know, the DMT world some piece of information and then have that transmitted to somebody else, a different person.

[B]

Good way to test.

[D]

Wow. So we're coming up with experiments like that where I'm completely hard nosed. If that can be done. I don't know if I will believe it. Even then I would want to do a bunch of experiments.

[A]

Yeah, you need it.

[B]

I feel the same way about out of body experiences where you, if you're in the bed, get someone to write something that's facing upwards. If you have an out of body experience looking down on your body, you should be able to read that statement and then come back and say, well what does it say? Roses are red or some simple phrase that would be easy to remember and to read. So yeah, you're doing exactly the right science minded testing.

[D]

And so I'm actually hard nosed about it and disbelieving until I have hard evidence for it. But at least this headset theory says it's possible. So since it's possible we should really check it out. But the higher probability is just that it's, you know, your brain got screwed up somehow your headset got screwed up. But if it's actually, if DMT is actually changing a parameter in the headset that says you were stuck with the three dimensions of space, but DMT is now taking you to four or five and it's just a Parameter change. And we can, you know, we can actually see more dimensions than we had seen before. I certainly want to know that and find that out.

[B]

So what in evolution would have allowed that to even be accessible to us?

[D]

Well, what's interesting is when you look at, there are high energy theoretical physicists who are studying structures outside of space time. Now, as you, as you probably well know that they're called positive geometries and the European Research council has a 10 million euro initiative and there are many, many high energy theoretical physicists and mathematicians finding structures outside of space time. And when you look at these structures, some of the structures, something called the amplitude Hedron has a parameter N which when it's four corresponds to our space time. One dimension of time, three dimensions of space. But these geometries then say, but we're not stuck with four. You can have ten, a billion, a trillion. So your space time is just n equals 4. But our geometries outside of spacetime aren't stuck at 4. We can go anywhere you want. So already we're seeing in high energy theoretical physics a point or two. This may not be the only reality. N equals 4. The mathematics allows us to go to N equals whatever you wish. And four, we're sort of. We got the cheap headset, we got the cheap.

[A]

That's what I was told, and I'm telling you right now. What you just described is something that the tribes who actually do the rituals where I was in Costa Rica, and they're called sacred geometries. That's what they're called, sacred geometries. And in these sacred geometries there are representations of dimensions that seemingly are infinite, but like I've described before, are like a deck of cards. They're like a deck of cards that go in all directions. But they're dimensions, some of them larger, some of them smaller, some of them where the communication happens downward. But we're in a crappy dimension where we can't go upwards or outwards and so we have to be communicated with from above or besides.

[B]

Don, why are we in a crappy dimension? It's all your fault, you know.

[A]

And listen, I was just like this. I thought the whole time I kept saying to myself, you're high. That's all I kept saying. But the more I talk to people like you, Don and Brian Green and Jan11, this stuff that I really didn't have any knowledge of is kind of the basis of the experience. I'm just saying, okay, so these positive

[C]

geometrics, are they going to be the solution to What David Chalmers phrased as the hard problem of consciousness.

[D]

I don't think so. Okay. And I think that the high energy theoretical physicists aren't trying to do that. They are trying to understand observation. So that's a big, big problem. Open problem in, in quantum gravity right now is especially the attempts to get quantum gravity that are forced mathematicians and physicists to say, you know what, we've never understood the observer. And it looks like that is the obstacle. We need to go back and really understand what an observer is. And that may be the key.

[B]

Yeah, but if you, if you're going to take something we don't understand in the quantum realm, and then you're going to take consciousness, which you don't really understand in the neuroscience realm, staple them together and turn that into an explanation of something that you're going to trust. Feels like very unstable ground to be standing on completely.

[D]

I agree. So I think that we can talk about observers without worrying about consciousness first. We can just ask, can we get a mathematical model of observation? And I think we can. I've got my own model right now that I'm working on. And it's a simple model of observation that doesn't assume consciousness or non consciousness to be fundamental. It just is a mathematical model of observation. I personally think that consciousness is important and fundamental. But this mathematical model doesn't require that.

[C]

We've said so many times when we've come together, the three of us, that the problems that we're not able to solve right now, and now I'm a scientist. Right, Exactly. Thank you. Requires different thinking. Do you consider yourself now in that realm? And if you are, what different thinking are you looking at? We now need to take the measures that you need to bring forward that are different, that we haven't yet thought of.

[D]

Yes. So I think that we have to just think very, very clearly about what does it mean to observe. We need to get it to its bare essence, no extra bells and whistles. What is the absolute minimum essential for observation? We need to understand that mathematically. Then we ask, we have to ask, can we start with that and that alone to build up all of modern physics? So it's a new foundation. We don't start with space time because we now know that space time is doomed. That cannot be fundamental. It stops at the Planck scale. So what are the new foundations going to be? I think that Leibniz was right. Leibniz said we need to start with observation. He called them monads. And he said there had to be these monads that were somehow interacting and had some kind of mathematical pre established harmony.

[B]

Leibniz was a mathematical philosopher all credited with co inventing calculus. And there was some dispute between him and of course my boy Isaac Newton. But their discoveries are completely independent in the sense that they represent the calculus very differently with their symbology. In physics we use a lot of Newtonian representation, but in math it's all Leibniz's notations. So the integral sign comes from him.

[C]

You mentioned the OGs of physics. There. Are we likely through your research to find that there are slightly different laws of physics in play that we weren't aware of?

[D]

Oh, I think not just slightly. I think that we will find that our headset is one of the more trivial headsets and that other headsets have much more interesting physics.

[B]

But I want to set it straight here. The history of physics is not where. The history of physics since Galileo is not where, oh, we all believe this and then later on that's all wrong and we believe something else. That's not how it happens. We only believe something is true if it's been experimentally verified. Then we find out there's a deeper truth. Get right in your bailiwick here. There's a deeper truth in which that's embedded and that's just a special case.

[A]

Yeah, you don't throw the baby out with the bathroom. Not at all.

[B]

And then there's an even deeper truth. So I don't have any hesitation thinking that my lame ass 3D candy ass headset is legit in its world, but it's a subset of a much larger truth.

[D]

Exactly. What you're saying is exactly where I'm headed. I want to show that I can start with a theory of observation, precise, mathematical, and get quantum gravity as a special case without hand waves. So theorem and proof. Theorem and proof. So I decided to take Leibniz very, very seriously and let's, let's get a mathematical model of observation that's as simple as possible and see where this pre established harmony might arise. And the simplest idea that I can think of is forget consciousness, I'm just talking observation, not consciousness. Okay, so observation, you have outcomes, so you have a list of possible outcomes and changes. I've seen this outcome and now I'm seeing that outcome. That's it. I just want to say observation involves outcomes and possible changes of outcomes. And what's the minimum mathematics that we can use to represent that kind of observer? It's a matrix that says here's a list of all your outcomes and here's A list of probabilities. If you see outcome one, what's the probability that you'll see outcome two next or outcome three, outcome four and so forth. You just write down a matrix of all the outcomes and how they might change. And that's called a Markov chain, a Markov matrix. And what I've discovered is a new logic that unites all Markov chains. So I'm saying my notion of observer is a Markov matrix which shows the observation outcomes and how they might change. The set of all possible Markov matrices is the set of all possible observers. That's it. It's an infinite class. And I discovered a logic two years ago that has never been seen before. It's based on something that is well known, that if I have one matrix and I can only see a subset of its states, so I got a big 10 by 10 matrix, for example, but I can only see three states. The big matrix will induce an apparent matrix on the three by three. So it's called the trace. So for example, if you're at a light and you see red, green and yellow and you're seeing them change and someone else can only see red and green. Well the red and green transitions are determined by the red, green and yellow transitions, but you can't see the yellow. So you're going to get a different matrix for the red and green. And that's called the trace. It's a unique thing. If I give you a big matrix and say you can only see this little window, then there's a unique matrix called the trace. And that's been known for a long time. It's a zero surprise matrix. And what I discovered is the property of being a trace gives you a logic on the set of all Markov chains. It's a non boolean logic that gives you the pre established harmony that Leibniz was looking for. What we're doing now, I've got a team that's working on the mathematics of this. We want to show that with this trace logic and it's a recursive. Now this gets technical. It's recursive trace logic, build agency out of it. But then we can show that. The, the idea is we can then show how to build exactly space time to, to get quantum theory, space time and, and so forth from this.

[B]

Well that's quite ambitious man there.

[A]

I got to tell you, that's, that's. First of all I need some weed right now. That's number one.

[B]

You took truck to the ledge there,

[A]

now you need some weed. Yeah, you took me to the place where I'm just like, damn. But the only thing that really. And you know, I'm not going to pretend like I really followed everything you said, except that this larger representation is not necessarily made up, but is affected by the smaller representations that you are able to see. The same way when you're looking at a light change on the one side, you see the light change from green to yellow to red, but it's the exact same transaction that's happening to somebody who only sees the light change from red to green, but they are inexorably tied together. Am I following this?

[B]

They're in the same matrix.

[A]

They're in the same matrix, exactly right.

[D]

And I'll just pick up on that because that will give you just a little clue about how this can get. Get us towards Einstein's theory of relativity. What we do is standard Namarkov chain theory to have a counter. Every time your experience, your. Your observation changes, you increment a counter. Right?

[A]

So.

[D]

So I see red. Okay, that's one, green. Okay, two, yellow. Oh, three. So you just keep counting like that. Now just think about the counter for the guy that can see red, green and yellow versus the counter of the guy that only sees red and green. The red, green guy. His counter isn't going to go as fast because it doesn't see the exactly. That we claim will lead directly to time dilation in Einstein's relativity.

[A]

I'm gonna tell you something else. You might need some.

[B]

No.

[C]

So, Don, where else can you point this trace? Logic. Is it just.

[B]

Wait, wait. He just spent 10 minutes talking about the Matrix. We gotta go to the movie. Yeah, man.

[A]

Cause honestly, that. Go ahead.

[B]

Okay, let's just.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

We can't just sidestep. That's right, the Matrix movie.

[A]

Especially since he's literally describing it.

[B]

Especially since it's my favorite movie.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Well, that's another reason you got one

[C]

of those sweaters that's full of holes.

[B]

Okay, so when that movie came out in 1999, there was no. It was new to many people, but no one questioned the capability of an intelligent enough system for making you think you're experiencing anything it wants to without regard to what is happening external to your physicality. And that's a headset of a sort. That's. What's the metaphor again?

[A]

A VR.

[B]

VR VR headset of a sort. Except we're going directly to the neurons. We're not even using your senses. And so could you just comment on the foundational theme of humans Being alive and living out their lives in their own minds and not in their bodies.

[A]

And also how dreamy Keanu Reeves is.

[D]

So, you know, the Matrix was my favorite movie at the time as well. And I wrote a book.

[B]

It's still my favorite movie.

[D]

It is, yeah, it probably still is. Actually, I wrote a book in 1998, just the year before the Matrix came out, called Visual How We Create what We See. Exactly this stuff. So that's why I was so taken with the Matrix, because it was exactly what I was talking about in visual intelligence. And it gets very, very weird. Neurons. So I'm a neuroscientist and I study neuroscience and I'm all for neuroscience. We have 86 billion neurons, trillions of synapses, and yet I say that neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. So what are neurons? They are a headset representation of how our headset is engineered. So neurons are a headset representation of how our headset is being created. So neuroscience is much harder than we thought. We don't just have to understand the wiring and the physiology. That's just the baby beginning now. We have to reverse engineer it and ask, what is the software outside of space time, which, when you project it into space time, looks like neurons and synapses and physiology. So we have a really hard task ahead of us. As long as we're thinking we're stuck inside spacetime, this is the reality. We're actually missing the real science that's ahead of us. The real science is space. Time is a trivial headset. Let's get on with the job of reverse engineering it and understanding the first layer of software that's outside of it. I think the positive geometries that the high energy theoretical physicists are finding are a first step, and I'm hoping to show that their positive geometries are actually so called subgeometries of the. Of the Markov polytope that I'm working with.

[B]

All I was asking was, do you think as portrayed in the Matrix, you could meddle in someone's head and make them think they're living out their entire lives?

[D]

Absolutely. Once you understand the software, you can play and you can do miracles. If you think about it. If you wrote, suppose you're the wizard in Grand Theft Auto, so you can drive the car as fast as anybody. You can play all the games, play all the rules inside the game. But suppose you're a geek who can't really drive, but you wrote the software. You wrote the software of the game. Well, you can Turn the expert, the wizard's car into a donkey. You can do whatever you want. So once you know the software, you can do magic. And my guess is not just a guess. If this approach is correct, when we start to understand the software outside of our spacetime headset, the technologies will be mind blowing. Everything that we have right now will be trivial compared to the technologies we will have.

[B]

That'll be the next season of Black Mirror, where you get inside the brain. And that's a whole set of plot lines right there.

[A]

You know what I mean? Can we. Can. Can we for a second? Because there's a lot of people. We live in a very polarized, divisive time.

[D]

Sure.

[B]

And so unlike the Second World War or the First World War or the

[A]

Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or

[B]

the Civil War or the Vietnam War. Yeah. We're uniquely divided.

[A]

I mean, however, I. I will say that, you know, the difference is in all those times, we didn't have this constant influence of manipulation called visuals in phones and social media and algorithms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I'm interested to hear what you think about the power that these things possess, not only individually, but societal.

[B]

I'm going to re. Ask that with fewer words.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

In what way has the algorithm hijacked our evolutionary proclivities?

[A]

Oh, damn. I gotta leave now. I'm so ashamed of my question.

[B]

Did I capture what you were saying?

[A]

Captured it all in one phrase.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

I hope they still play the whole question that I asked just so that people can see how. That you captured it all in one phrase.

[D]

Yes, well, great question. And actually quite pertinent.

[B]

In other words, are we humping. Humping the beer bottle?

[A]

Hey, man, stop doing my job.

[B]

I'm allowed two jokes per episode. Okay.

[A]

All right, go ahead.

[D]

The background that I have in neuroscience and evolutionary biology and evolutionary game theory has made me of interest to various companies because they asked me to help them with their marketing and advertising and product design because I know the rules of the game. And so I'll give you a concrete. There's lots of examples. I'll just say a top level. We know how to manipulate your attention to make you want things that you don't even know that we're doing. So once. So the answer is yes. Once you know the rules of the game, you can play them. And companies pay me to do that. It's out there. I'll just give you a fun one, though. But there are many. Jeans. Denim jeans. Your visual system has rules for how you create 3D objects. How do you create 3D shapes. So this is all part of the headset software, and shading gradients and lines and so forth are used by the visual system to create 3D shapes. When you have, when you put on jeans and they have distress, they're, you know, they're trying to make them look distressed and so forth, and they have stitching, and you are telling a 3D story about the body of the person who's wearing those jeans. The only question is, do you, as the clothing manufacturer, understand what story you're telling and is it the story that you want to tell? Are you giving the person pancake butt when you didn't want to do that, or are you making them look good? So I went to these jeans companies. Well, they came to me, actually, and so I showed them. I look, I said, look, here, you're creating pancake butt here. But here's how you can change the distress so that all of a sudden you can make any shape rear end that you want. And I remember the CEO of one company, when I was giving the presentation, I won't mention the company, he jumped out of his chair, ran up to the slide screen that I was showing how I did this, and he said, our jeans make my butt look terrible. And he. So they, they bought it. They. I and I showed them how to do it, and they then went and made the. The stitching on their jeans different and the distress different. And you can make any shape that you want once you know how to do it. So this stuff is being used. Once you know the rules of the headset, you can play the game and no one knows that you're doing it.

[A]

It's funny because the same thing happens similarly in nature. The reason why zebras have stripes is because they herd. And when they are being hunted and they run, all the stripes visually confuse the lion.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Most of the time.

[A]

Most of the time.

[C]

Most of the time. Humans.

[B]

I see a whole lot of zebra legs up.

[A]

Yeah, I know, I know. It's terrible.

[C]

Humans.

[A]

I should have had more stripes.

[B]

I knew I needed more shoes.

[C]

You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and underdiagnosed heart condition that's often missed. A ttr, cardiac amyloidosis or. Or attrcm. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life, with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath, and carpal tunnel. If left untreated, ATTRCM may become serious, leading to a shorter lifespan. A truby helps adults with ATTRCM live longer and have fewer hospitalisations due to heart issues so you can focus more on living for what you love. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding, and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain. If you have a TTRCM, talk to your cardiologist about a Truby and visit attruby.com podcast that's attruby.com podcast to learn more. It's time to get busy living. Brought to you by Bridge Bio these days we're used to getting things delivered on demand. Groceries, a new gadget, or the latest book expanding your view of the universe. And now you can add t mobile 5G home Internet to that list. Just order from T Mobile and enjoy same day delivery with doordash and you can set it up yourself in about 15 minutes. No advanced engineering degree required. That means more time doing the things you actually enjoy, like streaming a space documentary or going down a rabbit hole about exoplanets, asteroids or whatever's pulling your curiosity. And those online explorations are a lot easier with the fastest 5G home Internet. So if you're moving into a new place or just ready to upgrade your connection to something a little more Advanced, visit t mobile.com homeinternet to check availability and get your home Internet delivered today. Same day delivery for most Internet eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to OOKLA Speed test intelligence data second half 2025 or rights reserved

[A]

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[D]

Foreign I'm Alikan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[C]

Humans think they're really smart. Some of them do anyway. And we can manipulate each other as we've just discussed. Yes, okay, and we can, like in Grand Theft Auto. But ultimately, who is writing and in charge of this holistic, this consciousness, this place you're trying to get to through your trace logic?

[D]

There is no top to the trace logic, which is really quite interesting. These Markov matrices go off to infinity in any direction that you want and there's no top to it. So there is a Pre established harmony like Leibniz envisioned. They're all tied together with this trace logic. But there is no top, which is quite stunning.

[B]

In what ways have theologians approached you as someone who's opening up a box where they can put their God?

[D]

Representatives from almost every kind of religion have approached me because I'm saying that in some sense observation is fundamental. And it's very, very close in spirit to those who want to say consciousness is fundamental. I myself think consciousness is fundamental. But I don't have to say that for this mathematics. The mathematics can just be observation.

[B]

You've made that point, it's an important point. Otherwise you're intertwined with something else that needs an explanation. Why complicate your account?

[D]

Exactly. As far as science is concerned, I'll just call it observation, period. And any scientist would say, absolutely, we need a theory of observation. Bring it on. Whereas consciousness is more controversial. My own view though, about the spiritual aspects is it comes down to a very fundamental thing about science itself. And that is this very, very simple point. Every scientific theory starts with assumptions, period. It says, if you grant me these assumptions, then I can explain all this other wonderful stuff. But no theory explains its own assumptions. Now you can say, well, I'll give you a deeper theory that explains the assumptions of that previous theory. Yes, you can. And your deeper theory will have its own assumptions.

[B]

Turtles all the way down. Right?

[D]

It's turtles all the way down. And so there will never be a theory of everything in principle because we'll never have a theory that explains its own assumptions. So there is no theory of everything.

[B]

That's, that's a G's incompleteness theorem right there.

[D]

It really is, yeah, it's a G's incompleteness theorem. So it's a scientific incompleteness theorem as well. So when we, we sometimes talk about the God of the gaps. Well, I'm a scientist. I love science. I love the rigor of science. We do not assume that our assumptions are true. In science, we assume that our assumptions are consistent. We know that they're never the final truth. We're always going to have some deeper layer to go to. What we have to assume is not that we have the truth, but that we have a consistent set of starting assumptions. If they were not consistent, then we could prove anything.

[A]

And that's why scientists don't murder one another for their findings.

[B]

Generally, that's correct. Generally, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are no marauding scientists on the front line. E equals McQ.

[D]

And so we're infinitely far from a theory of everything. So there's not, I'm not worried about a God of the gaps. Science is infinitely far from the theory of everything. And so I don't have a theory of God and I don't want. I'm not a God of the gaps kind of guy.

[B]

Well, God of the gaps has been replaced by aliens. You don't understand something. That's aliens. And so aliens of the gaps doesn't have the same ring to it.

[C]

No.

[B]

So in my book, I coined the phrase aliens of our ignorance.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Don, what's the timeline on this research? Which is ironic, seeing as space time is doomed. Do you have.

[B]

He's got a new kind of watch. I know.

[C]

That's how many dimensions. So do you have a timeline for the work that you're undertaking now?

[D]

Yes, I have a group, we're starting something called the Trace Research Institute and it's going to be coming out in June, actually being announced in June. And I have some mathematicians and physicists working with me. And we have eight specific mathematical conjectures that I'm hoping to prove in the next three years. So that's sort of the goal, to have these proven in the next three years. And the, the, the idea would be we start with this trace logic on observers and show exactly how we get first special relativity, then general relativity, quantum field theory, non locality, and so forth. And then, so that's the idea is to start to reverse engineer our spacetime headset by starting with observers that, that could build a spacetime headset, but they could build almost anything else. And that's the key point. Observers can build any headset that they want. Space time is one of the more trivial ones. It's only four dimensions.

[B]

Wow, he just dissed humans right there.

[A]

Well, you know, we are very disabled. Have you looked around like we really are disabled?

[D]

Well, actually, I'll turn that around now. I'll say something about you and me. We are not our, our avatars. These bodies in three dimensional space, one dimension of time. You know, there's a Neil avatar, there's a Chuck, and then Don. And all these avatars are just avatars. You, you're not your avatar. This is just an avatar in a headset. So whatever. So this is where it does sound spiritual. Now, whoever you are, whatever you are, it's not something inside space and time. Space and time is inside you. That's your creation on the fly. You're rendering your body. So my hand is something I render on the fly when I look at my hand. And with that, otherwise there is no hand. The hand is just a headset. Avatar representation.

[A]

Is there a way I can render a few choice bigger parts?

[D]

Well, dmt.

[B]

That's right. So I gotta land this plane here. Let me ask you the ultimate skeptical question.

[D]

Sure.

[B]

Let's say you come out with this account of all that your ambitions hold for you. What prediction can you make from that new formulation that will give confidence that the new formulation is real? Well, of course it does, because what you described, it sounds like you are in a position. You've constructed this literal matrix to account for everything. And is that any different from how the leopard got its spots? The Rudyard Kipling just so stories. I'm gonna make an explanation and that's how it got its spots. And here we are, I'm going to make an explanation which is why you don't see this. And you'd make that. And we got a space time here and it collapses there and we got relativity, boom. Give me a prediction.

[D]

So the first thing we'll have to do is to first show that we can get, for example, all of special and general relativity and quantum field theory. We have to do that first. Right. But then we can take the next step, which is to say, you know, Einstein had to assume that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames and that nothing could go faster than the speed of light. That's an assumption. What if we can prove that? What if we can show from this deeper theory that it must be the case in your headset that the speed of light is the maximum speed. Now all of a sudden, something that Einstein had to assume we show follows from the theory of the observers.

[B]

That'd be a good one, by the way.

[D]

That would be one of my first ones that I want to go to. And I can give you a little hint as to where I think it's going to come from. It turns out in a Markov chain there is something called a commute time. How quickly you can go from one observation to another. And there is a maximum commute time, a minimum commute time, and therefore a fastest transition. And it's something called cyclic Markov chains. And so the direction I'm going to be going is that because there is a maximum speed of transition and Markov chains, that's where the speed of light maximum is going to come from. So that will be a completely new

[B]

come out of the construct, new construct for it.

[D]

But then that will just be the beginning because then I want to actually show, once we go into these higher dimensions, I can then start Building technologies. Remember my clock? If I have a bigger space time than you, my clock is ticking a lot more than you. That means I can do miracles, right? Because for two ticks of your clock, I might have a million ticks of my clock. So I can be doing all sorts of stuff. So this may be how I'll explain UAP kind of phenomena that seem to violate the laws of physics. They do violate our laws if you're stuck in our headset. But they may have a headset in which their clock is ticking a million times to one tick of ours. And so what looks like instantaneous acceleration to us is for them a walk

[B]

in the park, or just a fuzzy video artifact of a monochromatic data taking device. But okay, yeah, one or the other. So I got you. So it's the experience of something that would be normal in their reference frame that to us looks extraordinary or even miraculous, right?

[D]

That's right. And there's another aspect of this that's really quite interesting. And if you think about, I look around and I see an ant. And I ask myself, how much does the ant see about me? My feeling is probably nothing, almost nothing. It doesn't know anything about me. But then, and if you ask, okay, so how would it represent me? It might not even represent me at all. But if it does represent me, it's something trivial. Well, now turn it around. I see the ant is fairly trivial. But remember, this is just a headset. The headset dumbs things down. It's quite possible that what I see as an ant, I'm actually the reality that I'm interacting with is so transcendent, so much bigger than me, that if I could actually understand it, I would fall down speechless before it. But my headset turns it down into a tiny little ant. So this gives us a sort of a different way of looking at everything around us. What I'm seeing is my headset dumbed down representation of something that's not inside the headset. So it changes the whole game of how I look at the world. I see an ant, and I have no idea what I'm really dealing with. All I know is my headset is so stupid that it's just showing me an ant. That's what I know.

[C]

So just touching on Darwin's theory, Origins of Species, et cetera, obviously, pre Internet, pre computers, are you kind of telling us that it is the most amazing theory and all it needed was mathematics to show how amazing it was?

[D]

Well, I think that Darwin's theory is brilliant and evolutionary game theory the mathematics really brought out all the wonderful power of Darwin's theory. But now a step back. It's a theory that's sort of tied to our headset. Right. Every scientific theory has its scope and also its limits. So I think inside the headset, Darwin is the best theory that we have for understanding biology inside of our headset. Once we get outside the headset, I will want to find a deeper theory and show how Darwin's theory is a special case of something far deeper. So. But that's going to be the thing.

[B]

Now you're getting greedy.

[A]

No, that's.

[C]

That's.

[B]

Einstein wasn't good enough. You're gonna throw Darwin into the pot.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Science must always get to deeper theories. We always expect that our theories are just stepping stones. Right.

[A]

There you go. I love that. Yeah.

[C]

Good way to put it.

[B]

Well, Professor Hoffman, this has been a delightful conversation. Thanks for giving us a peek into your madness.

[C]

You want to say that again?

[B]

Thanks for giving us a peek into your genius. How about that?

[A]

They are the same thing.

[B]

They're the same thing. Or rather a peek into your headset.

[D]

That's been a great pleasure and a lot of fun. I enjoy laughing with you guys.

[B]

Excellent, excellent. So good luck with that. Do you have a good website for people to track or is it all secret?

[D]

I have. For those who are scientists, do Google Scholar on Donald hoffman. You'll find 100 papers that I've got on Google Scholar.

[B]

Yeah, Google Scholar. People don't know. Gains access to research journals. And provided there aren't other Donald Hoffmans out there, you'll know. Get all of his papers. But it's pretty easy to filter.

[D]

Yes, yes. So we're announcing a trace research institute which is going to be pursuing this research in the summer of 2026.

[B]

And the greatest value there, which we've seen since the early 90s, when I think NASA was early out of the box to recognize the value of multidisciplinary thinking, they didn't ask, how would a physicist do this? They said, let us take on the topic of origins. Well, there's the origins of the planet of life, the solar system. And everybody got together in the coffee room and got to share notes in ways that were previously siloed. So in this new institute, you're going to have mathematicians, presumably biologists.

[D]

Absolutely.

[B]

Neuroscientists.

[D]

Absolutely.

[B]

Any room for astrophysicists?

[D]

Yeah, absolutely. We've already got our own theory of the big bang.

[C]

Do you need a job?

[B]

No, I'm gainfully employed here. I'm just checking.

[D]

Absolutely. One of our conjectures is a new way of modeling the Big Bang from the Markov chain. So we have to do it all or go big or go home, basically.

[B]

All right, there he is.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

I don't think we need to say anything else after that.

[B]

Okay. Sir, thanks for joining us.

[D]

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

[B]

Thank you. StarTalk. All right, this has been StarTalk Special Edition. What do we call this one?

[C]

The Nature of Reality.

[B]

The nature of reality. And in the end, it's just a matrix. Chuck, always good to have you.

[A]

Always a pleasure.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Ray, how's your Neil?

[A]

All in.

[B]

Neil Degrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

[D]

If you walk into a room and can't remember why, it could be nothing or something more. If you confuse a familiar recipe, it could be a slip up or it could be associated with amyloid plaque buildup in the brain. Amyloid is a protein that your body produces naturally. But a buildup in the brain could lead to memory and thinking issues. To see what may be behind your memory and thinking issues, talk to your doctor about getting a full assessment. It's never too early to start the conversation. Visit amyloid.com to learn more. I'm Lindsay and even before my diagnosis, my hands were full as a mom and an investigator. After treating my HR positive HER2 negative early breast cancer, I wanted to do everything I could to try to keep it from coming back. So I Talked to my doctor about a treatment plan that included Cascali. Cascali ribociclib's 200 milligram tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR positive HER2 negative stage 2 or 3 early breast cancer with a high risk of coming back. Cascali may cause serious skin reactions, liver problems and low white blood cell counts that may result in serious infections. Life threatening lung problems and abnormal heartbeats can occur. Your doctor should test your heart and blood before and during treatment. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening cough, chest pain or dizziness before taking Cascali. Tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant or planning to be as it can harm an unborn baby. Common side effects include nausea, headache and tiredness. Lindsey is a real patient, compensated for her time. Learn [e-mail].