Donald Hoffman's Theory on Consciousness - The Greatest Mystery in The Universe

Have you ever thought that our senses might be deceiving us about the real nature of the

universe

that reflects who and what we are and the decisions we make, the worlds we build and also confronts us with questions: what if the reality we perceive was not More than an elaborate illusion created by our minds, this science-fiction-like concept is at the heart of cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman's groundbreaking work. We used to think the Earth is flat because that's what it looks like. Pythagoras discovered that we were wrong, so we thought the Earth was flat. it is again the still center of the

universe

because that is what it looks like Kernus and Galileo discovered again that we were wrong Galileo then wondered if we might be misinterpreting our experiences in other ways he wrote I think that tastes, smells, color ERS, etc.

They reside in Consciousness, therefore, if the living creature were eliminated, all these qualities would be annihilated. Could Galileo be right? Could we really be misinterpreting our experiences? Neuroscientists tell us that about a third of the cerebral cortex is involved in Vision when you simply open the door. eyes and we look around this room, billions of neurons and trillions of synapses are activated now, this is a little surprising because to the extent that we think of Vision, we think of it as a camera that simply takes a photograph of the objective reality as it progresses. Now there is a part of vision that is like a camera: the eye has a lens that focuses an image on the back of the eye where there are 130 million photoreceptors, so the eye is like a 130 megapixel camera, but that does not explain the billions of neurons and trillions of synapses that participate in vision, what are these neurons doing?

Well, neuroscientists tell us that they are creating in real time all the shapes, objects, colors and movements that we see, it feels like we are taking a snapshot. of this room as it is, but in fact we are building everything we see, we do not build the whole world at once, we build what we need at the moment, imagine for a moment that what you perceive as reality is more like a sophisticated computer interface cleverly designed by your brain to simplify the complex workings of the world. This is the essence of Hoffman's

theory

which challenges the idea that our senses give us a direct line to the outside world.

His work sparks debates in cognitive science, philosophy and physics. It makes us question the very nature of reality as we understand it. According to Hoffman, the complexity of reality means that it remains hidden from our understanding. He suggests that our perception of the world is not a direct representation of the objective reality we have assumed. a fairly close relationship between our perceptions and reality if I look up and see the moon then there is something that exists in space in time that matches what I perceive and if you take evolution by natural selection seriously then that is excluded our perceptions are there they are there to guide adaptive behavior period they are not there to show you the truth in fact the way I think about it is they are there to hide the truth because the truth is too complicated it's like you You're trying to use your laptop to write an email.

What you're doing is alternating voltages on the computer, but good luck trying to do it that way. The reason we have a user interface is because we don't want to know that. quote unquote truth, diodes and resistors and all that terrible hardware, if you had to know all that truth, yeah, your friends wouldn't know about you, so what evolution gave us were insights that guide adaptive behavior and it turns out that Part of that process means hiding the truth and giving you visual appeal. Hoffman's approach requires a radical reformulation of our notion of the nature of objective reality and our notion of time in light of the evolutionary outcomes he proposes: Consciousness, More than Space, Time and physical objects, it is the fundamental latitude.

The best science tells us that spacetime is not fundamental, so why is it important here? Well, for centuries, deep thinkers thought that earth, air, fire, and water were the fundamental elements. It was a reductionist idea, nothing was more basic and everything could be built. From there, when we got the periodic table of elements, we realized that of course we want to study the Earth, air, fire and water, there are combustion sciences for fire, you know, there are sciences for all this other stuff, water, etc., so let's go. do science for these things, but fundamental, no, no, if you're looking for something fundamental, those are the wrong building blocks.

The Earth has many different types of elements that are projected into the one thing we call Earth, if you don't understand that there is silicon that there is iron that there are all these different types of things that are projected into what we call Earth you are hopelessly lost you are not fundamental no you're going to get there and then after the periodic table, we came up with peculiarities leptons and gluons, the particles of the standard model of physics, so now we know that if you really want to get fundamental information, the periodic table, right? ? It's good for chemistry, it's just wonderful for chemistry, but if you're trying to dig deeper. fundamental, what is the fundamental science?

It is not like this? You will have to resort to quarks, leptons and gluons, etc. Well, now we've discovered that space-time itself is doomed. Quarks, leptons and gluons are just irreducible representations of the symmetries of space-time, so the entire framework on which Consciousness research is based at this moment is doomed to failure and for me, these are my friends and Colleagues who are doing this, they are brilliant, what I feel is that it makes me very sad that they are stuck in this old framework, because if they were not stagnant like with earth, air, Fire and Water, you could actually progress, so no matter what No matter how smart you are, if you start with earth, air, Fire and Water, you will get nowhere.

I'm looking for a

theory

Beyond space-time is a dynamical theory. I would love to find a theory of

consciousness

in which the dynamics of

consciousness

itself give rise to the geometry that physicists are finding. Beyond space-time, if we can do that, then we would have a completely different way. to observe how Consciousness relates to what we call the brain or the physical world in general at this moment all my brilliant colleagues are assuming that space-time is fundamental, they are assuming that particles are fundamental peculiarities, gluons, leptons, etc. ., elements, atoms. and so on are fundamental and that, therefore, neurons and brains are part of objective reality and that, somehow, when you obtain matter that is sufficiently complicated, it will somehow generate conscious experiences due to its functional properties, but they all do it within space-time, all the work. that is being done in Consciousness and this relationship with the brain is supposed to be something that our best theories tell us is doomed.

Space-Time there is no Space-Time fundamentally in Theos of physics there is no threshold that makes us larger than some of our parts no turning point at which we become fully alive we cannot define consciousness because consciousness does not exist Tackling the difficult problem of consciousness Hoffman proposes a bold idea Consciousness is not just a byproduct of our brain's functioning but a fundamental aspect of the universe that changes the conversation from trying to find Consciousness in the brain, like looking for a little pilot in from within, to seeing Consciousness as an omnipresent and fundamental Force, consider, for example, the way in which Hoffman approaches the complex relationship between Quantum Theory and Consciousness.

He suggests that the strange Observer-dependent nature of quantum phenomena could reflect the way Consciousness shapes our reality. Think of a tree falling in a forest with no one around. In quantum mechanics, it is as if the tree falls and does not fall until someone observes it. Hoffman proposes that our Consciousness could play a similar role. role in creating the reality we experience perhaps reality is a vast interactive network of simple and complex conscious agents that cause each other's conscious experiences actually this is not as crazy an idea as it sounds and I am currently exploring it but Here's the thing: Once we let go of our massively intuitive but massively false assumption about the nature of reality, it opens up new ways of thinking about life's

greatest

mystery

.

I bet that reality will end up being more fascinating and unexpected than we had ever imagined. Hoffman's ideas. They have sparked considerable interest and debate, but it is worth mentioning that they are an active area of ​​research. The scientific community is actively investigating the validity and consequences of their theories. Critics, although intrigued by Hoffman's ideas, highlight their speculative nature and the challenges of empirically testing these theories. Provoke discussions about the implications of it for our understanding of Consciousness and the connection between mind and reality.