Donald Hoffman & Anil Seth - New Frontiers in the Science of Consciousness

Beautiful conversation. Learned about new a perspective in modern cognitive neroscience that I previously saw in the Upanishads (Hoffman's view). It's also great to see how Anil illustrates the importance of existing fundamental structures as they have been working well so far, and how analysis on different fundamental levels is important. Absolutely brilliant on both sides, lucky to be hearing a conversation of this level for free and with such ease.

Hoffman is 100% sure of the approach to his results but totally humble & open to others finding valid holes in his theory, which they haven't been able to do yet

I love these two guys. Anil is so constrained while being very open to new idea’s about perception and construction, and Don is way out there with radical, and fascinating ideas. Both guys are humble, respectful, kind and wise. Gives me faith

It’s astonishing how scientists like Seth seem content to wait for the hard problem to dissolve at some unknown future point- rather than abandon the materialist paradigm for a more rational ontology

Hard to let go of the materialist paradigm if you’ve built your career and identity within it.

Think my money is on Hoffman's approach. Seth's responses on the big questions (hard problem of consciousness, trying to justify reductionism etc) did not, to me, seem convincing (but I'm no expert). Hoffman's ideas of consciousness being fundamental seems to ring so true. Be great to see how the research continues by these brilliant scientists.

Donald sir has it. I feel he is able to point to fundamental reality. Seth though agnostic still is immersed in materialism.

Hoffman has a rare virtue that most do not and it's humility. Being able to have ego death, realise it and move forward with even wider eyes is nice to see.

I loved Anil's comments around psyche traits, how we "see" things, and echo chamber awareness.

Donald's ideas are so radical that I dont think Anil or the host "get it".

10 Minutes into this I realized that I HAVE to subscribe to TWU yearly subscription. Such interesting and engaging content! Great work!

Hoffman is interested in the question " what is Reality"? Seth is interested in the question " what ordinary things can we explain ? To me its a no brainer : reductionism is just interested in less and nonlocalism is interested in where the less interfaces with the beyond to integrate our understanding of reality. In a Venn diagram Seth is inside the Hoffman circle. How can Seth's approach be SUFFICIENT? This is not worth discussing.

Love these conversations. Thank you.

I loved the humility and respect for your opposing and agreeing meaning - decently like the wisdom of the golden ratio between the greater and lesser mediated by the “mean “ balance -monad or as manly hall says - the coordinator - awesome

The 10 second clip at the beginning immediately reveals that Anil misunderstands the idealistic argument.

Great to see these two together but if it had been a much longer conversation and if the questions hadn't so quickly jumped from one topic to another, I think Don might have converted Anil to Idealism... well, not really. But, eventually, I believe all open-minded materialists will be converted.

Wonderful. Thank you both sincerely.

I have to thank you for this conversation. I didn't know how thoughtful Anil was until I heard his approach on the meanings of "reductionism" and "emergentism". I love this new wave of scientists taking the study of consciousness so seriously, with honesty and very straightforward approaches. I'm still unable to reason about "emergent properties" without them being about consciousness (because emergence is all about knowledge and abstraction). I can't make sense about top-down causality without there being some form abstract (and thus subjective) kind of agency and knowledge about the lower level aspects in play (like in the way we do engineering by using our knowledge about physics to get to an abstract higher level design), and I feel unable to make sense of agency and knowledge without it being conscious (but if I'm honest I also feel unable to make sense of any form of existence without it having some conscious ism). It may be a bias, because "true reality" could also be something completely different to phisicalism and/or consciousness and we'll never know. So I'm fine with the knowing that I'll probably never be able to know for sure, but if I take into account just what I know from firsthand experience and what I'm able to infer, then consciousness needs to be fundamental, there's no other way. Anesthesia and the apparent "unconsciousness" can very easily be explained to me as some sort of "temporal dissociation", a state in which the different aspects of human consciousness get broken apart and nothing relatable happens during that time (just a bunch of noise) that connects to the waking state that comes after. Maybe instead of trying to understand "consciousness" vs "unconsciousness" we should try to study how associative and dissociative processes unfold and how they affect our knowledge, the integrity of our experiences, and our state of being.

Donald Hoffmann to me sounds like the most advanced and most promising pbilosopher/scientist, apart from Chalmers and Dennet. Dennet is great but proberly really wrong.

I don't know if Donald Hoffman has done any video's with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, but I think they're on the same page. Both describe this subject perfectly. Donald Hoffman's uses a computer icon screen as an interface and Bernardo Kastrup uses an airplane instrument panel. Great video.