alt Hacker Newsthe content from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyJwr4O03Hc is what made me think of this:
"Dr. Donald Hoffman challenges the traditional scientific view that physical matter and spacetime are fundamental. Instead, he argues that consciousness is the foundational reality, while spacetime acts merely as a virtual reality headset that renders objects only when we perceive them. Hoffman introduces recursive trace logic, a mathematical framework suggesting that our physical existence is a low-probability, training wheels version of a much broader, disembodied conscious network."
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220hertz • today at 1:28 PM
I thoroughly enjoyed that. I plan to read it again later while stoned.
> Instead, he argues that consciousness is the foundational reality, while spacetime acts merely as a virtual reality headset that renders objects only when we perceive them
This is called Idealism. It's a very very old idea, and a totally unsatisfying one.
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
It is, I think, wholly unconvincing. It is at root solipsistic, and far beyond any notion of proof or validation. Saying that "consciousness is the fundamental thing" (and ignoring that there are perfectly mundane explanations for consciousness) reduces all of physics to black-box metaphysics.