The infinite illusions of mathematics

Donald Hoffman is an American neuroscientist with controversial ideas about the nature of consciousness. I linked to the interview above already a month ago, but in this post, I´m also going to summarize its contents. Or at least try, since Hoffman´s ideas are a wild ride! Indeed, they seem far stranger than Rupert Sheldrake´s speculations (which I kind of like). This summary is based on my notes taken when listening to the interview, which explains why it, too, sounds a bit wild…

Hoffman´s theory is that a network of “interacting conscious agents” *is* reality. Consciousness is fundamental. Evolution “hides” the truth from us. The theory can be expressed mathematically and hence scientifically proven. Apart from the individual conscious agents, it allows for a supreme consciousness that entails the others, and also allows for survival after death. (Here, my notes say “weird shit”).

The reality we think we see is really a “user interface” and the only thing we experience are “fitness payoffs”. Brains don´t exist when we don´t see them. The brain is just a symbol for whatever it is we see when we look into a skull. (Presumably, the skull is also a symbol, and so on). Reality is something other than space-time. There is a correlation between neural activity and specific conscious experiences, but we have no causal explanation for why neural state X should be the color Green 55 rather than the taste of chocolate. Objective reality does exist, but it´s not space-time but a “social network” of spirit-beings (“conscious agents” in Hoffman´s terms). When this network is projected into the space-time interface, it *looks like* quantum physics or evolution. Space-time is a visualization tool used by the “conscious agents”. Already here, it´s patently obvious that Hoffman´s perspective is a spiritual one, despite the scientific pretensions. The user interface is what Hindus and Buddhists call “maya”, and I have already noted that the “agents” are spirits. So is Hoffman an idealist? He denies it, instead calling his theory Conscious Realism. After all, the network of spirits is objectively real. Our world is an illusion, but it is an illusion created by real spirits or souls, rather than by a solipsistic one-man consciousness or a nebulous god, as in the idealist systems.

Hoffman isn´t sure whether God exists. He hasn´t made the necessary mathematical computations yet, but is excited about the prospects. Maybe God is simply the spirits working together? Hoffman says that an infinite mind doesn´t have to be omnipotent, omniescent, etc. There may even be an infinite amount of infinite minds. Perhaps mathematical structure and consciousness is the same thing. Gödel´s theorem says that the number of mathematical structures is infinite, therefore (per Hoffman) the amount of possible consciousnesses is also infinite. In principle, not even God can know everything. (My notes remark: “Gödel´s theorem – I say *it* is God, or it simply says that *we* can´t know fucking shit”)

Hoffman believes that conscious AI is possible. Ooops! AI simply means that a spirit possesses a machine. The ghost really is in the machine, it seems. Our AI is a window that opens a new portal towards the ever-existing consciousness. The theory seems logical at this point. If our organic bodies are really “symbols”, presumably a mechanical body or robotical body is just another “symbol”. As for death, there really isn´t any. Death simply means that we step out of our interface. To people still connected to the interface, we have disappeared, but actually we have simply left the simulation.

Hoffman has a strong belief that his theory can be both described and tested mathematically. As already noted, he believes that consciousness *is* mathematics. In virtual reality, everything we see has really been “created” by mathematical computer programming. Overall, Hoffman is fascinated by analogies to virtual reality and other IT-related stuff. The whole scenario strikes me as a machine-mechanical theory. Hoffman criticizes the panpsychists for “not explaining consciousness mathematically”. Hoffman´s theory seems to have one crucial weakness. What if it simply expresses how *we* see the world? We may see it mathematically, through our mathematized consciousness. “We” as in…well, mathematicians, perhaps?

But how do we know that this isn´t just another layer of the illusion?