Physicalism vs Idealism: Is Information Fundamental? | James Glattfelder, Ph.D - Quantum Theory Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
What you're saying that's really crucial, that we realize that physicalism is a metaphysical belief system.

(00:06):
This is something we're only realizing now.
The universe is assembling more complex structures, at least here on Earth,
although the whole greater context is towards disorder.
And I call it the will to complexity.
This quantum experiment shows that there's no way of showing if A equals B or B equals A.

(00:27):
And not even the most basic thing you would hope for, but causality.
Come on, we don't understand quantum mechanics.
It's super weird.
Maybe we should have a, I don't know, serious conversation about what's happening here
and this conversation is going to be metaphysics.
Welcome to the Quantum Theory Podcast.

(00:57):
Super excited to dive in today, James.
I would love just a first and foremost.
Thank you for coming on the podcast, of course.
I am beyond excited to hop into all these concepts around idealism and metaphysics and philosophy
and all the stuff I believe we're going to hop into today.
But first, I just want to get a little background on yourself.

(01:18):
I think it's helpful for the audience to kind of understand your roots coming from physics now to
complexity science and philosophy.
We'll love to just get a bit of an origin story of kind of how you ended up where you're at right now.
Cool. We'd love to.
Thank you so much for having me.
Of course.
I ended up where I am pretty much by chance.

(01:40):
It was a random encounter when I was 15.
I was one year in a school outside of London,
half of my families from England.
So I like to career when I was in England.
And the English system is two years or one year in front of the German system.

(02:00):
So at my age, the kids already were introduced to chemistry.
And I had never heard of that.
I had no clue about anything.
Basically, I was going to school, had no idea what I was going to do.
And then a chemistry teacher introduced me to the wonders of chemistry.
And that became like a thing Wednesday afternoon in free time.

(02:23):
And then, yeah, as it was kind of a one-to-one tuition and more freestyle,
he then started to explain what chemistry is based on.
And that's quantum physics.
And then at 15, he started to show me these orbitals and how quantum physics explains a lot of...
Well, it explains chemistry, the angles, the bonding, all these things that happen.

(02:47):
And that blew my mind.
And my passion for science was awoken and I was...
I realized that I have to study physics.
This is so cool.
If you study physics, you understand the world.
And then many years later, I went to university, studied physics, theoretical physics.
I finished that and I was with disillusioned because nothing made any sense anymore.

(03:12):
All the questions I had didn't get answered.
And there were like a billion more questions and everything, yeah, didn't really make sense.
So I was a bit disillusioned and then, yeah, one point I had to ask myself, okay, what are you going to do?
And staying in academia wasn't an option for me.

(03:33):
So as happened to a lot of people who study physics, they end up in finance.
So I was a quant for whatever, 15, 16 years.
The last seven years or so I was in crypto.
But this was kind of my day job.
I like doing the stuff there, but my real passion was for still understanding

(03:56):
of the universe works.
What's happening here?
And this got me interested in complexity theory.
Because I realized that physics is great and physics is expressed in the language of mathematics,
put the other way around for some miraculous reason.
Mathematics is the machine code of the universe.
It allows us to decode what's happening.

(04:18):
But for some reason, it doesn't work too well when you have complexity.
So if you have a lot of things that are interacting,
it's really hard to put this in like analytical equations and solve the equations.
And this is where complexity science has a different approach and it says,
let's not focus so much on equations, but more on algorithms, the interactions.

(04:40):
So you throw your complex system onto a network and you don't really care if the nodes are neurons
in a brain or a trader in a market or a bird in a swarm.
What you're looking at is the pattern of connections.
So the network topology and how this evolves over time.
So I was doing that.
I was lucky that my boss was super supportive and I could do the PhD half time next to my work as a quant.

(05:07):
And then during those four or five years,
one course that you always had to take a course
at the in some topic during the PhD that was a requirement.
And one of the requirements was that you have to take a topic that's outside of your field of
expertise or interest.

(05:27):
And I took an introductory course to the philosophy of science.
And that really blew my mind because
I kind of knew about a bit of philosophy, but really
diving in and having someone explain these things.
How do we know that the Sun is going to go up tomorrow morning?

(05:48):
How do we know things?
What is a law of nature?
What does this mean?
And how can all of this be criticized?
And how certain can we be about anything?
And it turns out that we can't really be certain about much because
things like induction doesn't really work.
I mean, you show this way back saying that there's no reason induction doesn't work logically.

(06:13):
It's a nice thing, but it's not something that you can actually really use.
And things like that, I was like, how come no one told me that?
And how can people study physics without having at least a little exposure to more philosophical
questions? And there are also so that most scientists or physicists, especially

(06:35):
kind of the great names in physics, they really think poorly of philosophy or used to think
poorly of philosophy, which I find is really mind-boggling. How can you do physics and not be concerned
about these existential aspects of what you're doing?
Right.
Right. Like the hint is we don't understand quantum mechanics, it's super weird. Maybe we should have

(07:01):
a serious conversation about what's happening here and this conversation is going to be metaphysics.
It's not the physics. We know all the physics. We have equations. We do the measurements.
This works. We know all that stuff, but we don't know what it is.
And differentiating between science being the thing that tells us how the universe works versus

(07:23):
what the universe is and this question of being or essence is metaphysics. It's always
going to be and it's not in the purview of science. It's at the border of metaphysics.
And yeah, this got me writing. I always like to summarize stuff and theories

(07:46):
like my PhD and in an appendix of the PhD I started writing down these ideas which then turned
into the first book, Information Consciousness Relity, which then continued on the rabbit hole
and which emerged and manifested now as the new book, The Saper and Cosmos, which came out last month.

(08:07):
So yeah, a long arc of randomness but somehow with an aim it appears. Similar to the universe it sounds.
Maybe. Yes. Opposed to people claiming no, it's all random. It has no purpose. Don't worry. Just
just be. Grow up and deal with it. Exactly. Yes. Well, I think that gets into a really key aspect of

(08:34):
this and for the listener that's kind of just stumbling their way into no man's land between
kind of the physicalists and the reductionist between kind of the idealists or as you kind of put
in the sapient cosmos, Book of Nature, one versus Book of Nature, two. And in the shifting of paradigm,
what is the crux of that chasm? I think there's two aspects and one is less acute.

(09:03):
And this is in fundamental physics. We haven't progressed in understanding fundamental physics or
what reality fundamentally is in the last 30 or 40 years. We had things like string theory which
were an attempt at bridging the theory of the small and the large quantum gravity. It turned out

(09:24):
it's a lot of amazing math. It really opened up new areas in mathematics but it didn't really give us
any tangible insight into the physical universe. And this stagnation and the accumulation of so many
existential issues in physics, like we still don't know what time is. Time is such a weird construct

(09:46):
in physics which sounds weird. We would think but time is the first thing that the physicist
is right. Heckles. No, we have a hard time understanding it still. And there's so many weird things,
not only quantum mechanics with all the whatever wave particle and tunneling and entanglement.
But even the quantum vacuum which is weird, it's full of energy and the more you zoom in, the

(10:09):
the worse it gets or we don't even know what a proton is. So at one point we were like yes,
a proton is three quarks. It's a Lego thing. You put them together. But now that we have better
ways of measuring and the closer we go in, we realize that this three quark approximation is it's
not the true thing. If you really try and go into looking at a proton, you have this huge mess of

(10:36):
this energy, this fluctuation, this actually even particles appearing momentarily which are even
heavier than the proton itself. I mean these things are just mind blowing. There's so many of them and
they're accumulating. And again, if you're not philosophically interested, you just sweep these
things under the carpet and move on with your life. But I think that the younger generation of

(10:59):
physicists are thinking maybe something's wrong here. Maybe we hit a dead end because
something is wrong in our assumptions. And the only thing that can be wrong in our assumption
is our metaphysical belief system. And the second thing is the more acute aspect of consciousness

(11:20):
that in 1994 when David Charmer's went on stage and introduced the hard problem of consciousness,
this really showed where the problems we have to understand consciousness from an academic
perspective. So today we still don't have a good definition. Our best definition is consciousness.

(11:42):
If it feels like to be something which goes back to an essay of Thomas Narcline 74 or something,
there's I don't know 200 different theories of consciousness in the philosophy of mind. There was
a paper last year by I think Thomas Kuhn where he looked at the landscape of all the theories of
consciousness. There's 200 basically every scientist, every philosopher has their own theory of

(12:07):
consciousness, which shows you that we have no clue. We're not gravitating towards an understanding
where people start to come together and think, yeah, maybe it's in that direction. The opposite
happened. You have exactly this split where on the one hand you have the old school
physicalist materialists who are saying, hey, just be cool. Don't worry. We know it's neurons firing

(12:30):
in the brain. Someday we'll understand it. Just don't freak out. And the other guys on the very
other side of the spectrum are saying, actually, if we're open to re-evaluating our metaphysical
assumptions, maybe we should consider consciousness being something more fundamental. And the first step
of people doing this is it's also Christ of Kof, one of the pioneering neuroscientists who are

(12:55):
open to panzychism. The idea that consciousness is sprinkled in all over the, it's a part of the
physical universe. So an electron has spain mass and charge and also a little bit of consciousness.
But then the idealist goes step further and say, no, the idea of something physical is wrong

(13:16):
because this is derived. It's an illusion. What is important is or what is the essence to
substrate? It's pure consciousness. It's a field of consciousness outside of space and time,
which gives rise to this illusion, this simulation, what everyone will call it, of physical reality.

(13:36):
And this sounds very silly to anybody who's taught to think rationally because like this makes no
sense. This is really stupid. But it turns out that, yeah, if you consider the issues we're facing
and not understanding, and if you re-contextualize some of these things in a new way of looking at it

(13:58):
where consciousness is fundamental, you do get two different answers. You get to new approaches.
And that's why also in the philosophy of mind, you have a younger generation who's taking this
seriously, who are writing very serious philosophical publications on idealism. And they're not like
hippy new age, woo people who think, oh, it's caused me consciousness. And we're all connected. Yeah,

(14:22):
no, this is a very sober and very serious people who realize that this seems to be a blind spot in
our cultural way of thinking because we believe that rational rationality, common sense, a logic
are the only way to access information and knowledge. But it turns out that there seems to be this

(14:42):
other way of accessing knowledge, which is more intuitive, like scientists dreaming of snakes
biting themselves in the tail and then coming up with a benzene molecule or a new gel.
And Ramakitya, a timetable. I really thought it was a Thomas Campbell who was figure out code.
And I mentioned, you mentioned him in the safety at Cosmos. Yeah.

(15:03):
He comes up with code and is able to actually apply that and like 10 x his speed at solving those
problems. And exactly, he's like this example of showing that next to rational access to knowledge,
you can get these other, these unorthodox ways of knowing which are through
their experiential through for him, it was meditation to get access. And then we suddenly realize

(15:30):
in the West, oh, but it appears to be that like most other cultures always knew this. Starting with
shamans 30, 50,000 years ago, for them it was clear there is the physical and there's the non-physical.
And you can travel between the two and your and consciousness is able to access the non-physical

(15:52):
either through trance or through psychedelics. And then you have the mystics who, I don't know,
you're sitting by a river and suddenly it hits you the piphony and you understand how the whole
universe works, which is not rationally accessed, but it's like experienced. And the meditators who
really, really work with their own consciousness and introspection, but then seem to be able to

(16:18):
derive things about the external universe that there seems to be some mirroring there. And then
finally more recently the psychonauts where we destigmatized psychedelics, the psychedelic
renaissance and now we have the philosophy of psychedelics. And again, very serious, super-philosophers

(16:39):
are taking these substances because they're saying, hey, how can you study consciousness and ignore
these other modes of being, which seem to be so crazy and so wild and so transcendental.
And somehow the Western mind focusing on rationality and super-waking consciousness
excluded all of these other modes of trying to access information. And what I try to do in the

(17:07):
SAPIN cosmos is sort of give the narrative that, yeah, the shaman's mystics, meditators and psychonauts,
they all seem to be claiming that behind the physical there is this field of consciousness,
cosmic consciousness or for the mystics it was the divine, but they seem to be talking about the
same thing and have been for millennia. And it's only the Western mind to, yeah, until the early 90s

(17:33):
didn't bother with consciousness. Consciousness was literally a fringe science. Christ of Koch was told,
don't write a paper on consciousness with Krik in, I think it was the end of the or even in 1990.
You'll ruin your career. You're a young bright scientist, neuroscientist. Don't write about

(17:55):
consciousness. You'll have it will be terrible. Don't do this because nothing serious has ever been
written about this. Consciousness is not a thing we should devote our attention to. He still,
yeah, wrote the paper with Krik, which is one of the first neuroscientific papers where they
introduced this neural correlates of consciousness. But it just shows it's amazing. Until the 90s,

(18:18):
the Western academic mind was not interested in consciousness, which again blows my mind. How can the
thing which is closest to us be so long ignored in the scientific inquiry? Because again,
the belief that we live in an objective world, it's a belief. It's a belief. Right. The only thing I

(18:40):
know is my consciousness. I'm locked in consciousness. The only thing I can do is I experience stuff
through my consciousness. But the stuff is one step farther from my consciousness. The only thing I
have is this experience, this inner perspective, this, yeah, this phenomenological
reality going on. But I really cannot say what it is. And this, again, if you're not interested in

(19:07):
philosophy, you can just say, ah, come on, it's obvious that there's a next-town reality,
reality. But if you really think about it, it's not so clear because solipsism that says it could be
all your own mind or the problem of other minds where how do I know you have the same thing going on
that I have? And all of these ideas, they cannot really be debunked. The only reason they're not

(19:33):
more prominent is because most philosophers just realize there's just no utility to them. If you claim
solipsism, where'd you go from there because there's nothing matters anymore? And that's the only
reason, but it's not because it couldn't be true. You can't disprove it. And perically or
theoretically, this, it could be true that the only thing that's real is me and my mind and everything

(19:56):
I'm seeing is kind of an illusion happening within this creative space I'm kind of imagining.
Right. Yeah, I think one of the things that really
helps me and I think others really understand reductionism and physicalism and a more
objective context is you labeling it metaphysics because I think the idea is that is just the de facto

(20:23):
rational way to understand the universe. And if you are against that your anti-science,
your anti-rationality, and I think by labeling that a metaphysics, it helps people understand,
oh, this is just one option that's being served to me of how to understand the universe.
But I think it's beautiful that, and I think the foundation of idealism and as well your

(20:45):
school of thought is kind of using perennial philosophies as your compass to help kind of guide
the intuition. And it's just beautiful that quantum experiments are coming full circle. It's new,
but ancient at the same time, what's what's being revealed. So I think that that's such a distinct
aspect of your philosophy. And I'd love to kind of take that step further and kind of break down

(21:09):
for the audience who might be getting into this and kind of what is this whole conscious,
this fundamental thing. What's kind of the basis of idealism and one of the fundamental
tenets so people can kind of wrap their head around that. Yeah. Sure, but first what you're saying
that's really crucial that we realize that physicalism is a metaphysical belief system. This is

(21:31):
something we're only realizing now. And as you say not too long ago, people would have laughed and
said you're just anti-science. You're just some some crazy conspiracy theories. You're not serious.
Too much LSD. Yeah. Exactly. And it's interesting that again, if you're not really

(21:52):
educated in philosophy, these things happen that you fail to distinguish what is more objective
and reproducible. And what are assumptions metaphysical assumptions? Because at the end of the day,
we all have to make assumptions about what is going on, what this is. And there's no rational

(22:13):
like explanation we have there. So you everyone's going to make up their own mind what this is. And these
are deep metaphysical beliefs. And if you're not careful and don't realize this, then you suddenly,
yeah, mix the two. You make a category error that you think the metaphysics is actually the

(22:34):
descriptive part and it's part of science. No, metaphysical, but definition is where physics stops,
where science stops. So the question of what it is will always be metaphysics. And that's again,
something you cannot prove or disproof. So everyone can have their own metaphysics. And if it's a good
metaphysics, it doesn't contradict anything that's any experiment that was ever done. So you can just

(23:00):
argue forever with the person having a different metaphysical viewpoint, which is fine. But up to now,
we thought or scientifically minded people thought, no, it's that's wrong. You have to have
physicalism as the default because otherwise you're not doing science. That's wrong. And
great, it's that this is slowly being unmasked and people are realizing that this is not something

(23:29):
that is part of science. You can be rational, you can be scientifically minded, and you can be open
to other more radical metaphysical ideas. And I also find it mind blowing that I mean 400 years ago,
it made sense. The Newton and Leipnitz, the cosmos was a clockwork. It's little parts. Reduction

(23:50):
is makes total sense. And I get it that this was the default and that made a lot of sense. But since
over a hundred years of quantum mechanics, I don't know why physicalism didn't get scrutinized more
or criticized more because fundamental reality is telling us that logic, common sense and rationality
are not things. It cares about fundamental reality is in coherent, illogical and weird. And our,

(24:17):
I don't know, claiming that it should be rational and understandable. This is something very human,
and it seems to be a bit childish because apparently, reality is not behaving that way and we see it
the whole time. So we know that. So it's interesting that it took such a long time for scientists to

(24:37):
slowly like realize, ah, okay, what philosophy metaphysics are, okay, what's the essence. And coming to
the idealism, yeah, you can read papers and books about this, what it means, like Bernardo Kustrup,
he wrote 11 books, I think, on his version of analytic idealism. And then you have media al-Bahari,

(25:01):
who's a professor, I think in Australia, who writes, who presents this preennial idealist view,
where she tries to bring in what the mystics have been saying. And as a trained philosopher,
this paper is like really hard to read as a non-philosopher because it's really paying super

(25:23):
attention to the words and the concepts and expressing this and trying to explain what this could mean
to a rational mind. But I find this always fails because idealism is just something which doesn't
make sense in, in our rational sober everyday state of consciousness. It's like imagining a color

(25:46):
you've never seen. You can somehow talk about it, but you will never experience it. And that's the,
the key thing or the nice thing that idealism is state you can experience. It's a thing you can have
access to. Yeah, drumming, singing, fasting, psychedelics. There's a lot of ways you can access,

(26:11):
you can change the mode of your consciousness and go into a different way of being. And then you can,
or many, many people claim to have witnessed and experienced this, this, what this means, what,
what, what it means to suddenly see behind the veil and, and see this field of intelligence and

(26:33):
consciousness. And I find that's probably the, the easier way to, to go around it than trying to
understand it rationally because it's such an alien concept. It's, it's, it's, it seems to be trans
rational, just not accessible. And what, like Christopher Bage, he is a philosopher, a philosopher of

(26:54):
religion. And for 20 years, he did over the, no, over the course of 20 years, he did 73 high-dose
LSD sessions. And the book Diamonds LSD and the mind of the universe diamonds from heaven,
the things he describes there, I mean, I've, it's like the wildest book I've ever read. And I really

(27:15):
believe that the things he's, he's describing, this metaphysical structure, this intelligence behind
the thing, the things, the physical things, it's probably the best description of what's going on.
I really believe that this is, yeah, so there's this transcendental multiverse of pure experience.
And we're like locked in this little slice of sober waking consciousness embedded in the physical

(27:41):
universe, which is fine, which is great. It's huge. But there's so many more states of, of being
that can be accessed through your consciousness, which lie outside of space and time. And just saying
outside of space and time again is a concept. No one can really grasp unless you've experienced it.
And this again is something that, yeah, if you take psychedelics, this is often an experience

(28:05):
you will have and you come back like, I don't know, people smoking DMT within 10 minutes, you're just
lying there, eyes closed, then you come back and it's like, what happened? Where was I? What was that?
How the, I've never, yeah, that totally there's no rational words or concepts that you can use to

(28:27):
describe what happened. But because it was so profoundly experienceable, it sticks with you and it
has, it can have transformative effects on how you view life and, and, yeah, your metaphysics. And
just quickly to finish the, the one book, the philosophy of psychedelics is a pretty new field.

(28:50):
And one of the first books called Philosophy of psychedelics by, I forget his first name, Lethaby.
And there he describes exactly this, but in the negative way he's obviously a physicalist and he's
saying, okay, psychedelics, yes, they have mental health benefits, this is clear. But they come at

(29:11):
a big cost these benefits. And the costs are that people start to have really silly metaphysical ideas
like idealism. This is literally what he writes. And this is something which other philosophers of
psychedelics are saying that people who are psychonauts, they're way more open or, or more prone to

(29:36):
contemplating and believing that idealism is the correct metaphysical view of the universe.
Absolutely. Wow. And I think that really points to the fact that as, as you kind of describe in,
an idealism that we are more of kind of a valve of consciousness, it's sort of

(30:00):
individuated. And whenever you have those psychedelic experiences, you're more so
taking off the constraints and then getting back into that expanded state. So it's like removing that,
oops, excuse me, Regen, this removing that veil and returning to that pure state. And so I think

(30:20):
for the rational mind, that might be listening to this. What would you say are some of the best
pointers that we have to consciousness being fundamental and the lack of matter being fundamental,
or the reductionist type of perspective? Because I know we have things like entanglement,
we have things like contextuality of measurements, like quantum Bayesianism, we've got all these things

(30:43):
going on that are continually fracturing the old paradigm of physicalism and ushering in this
new paradigm alongside first person subjective experiences, like psychedelic experiences, which is
on a tangent. I feel like that's kind of like the idea of trying to claim, you know, consciousness

(31:03):
fully without having one of those experiences is the same way of studying how to drive and knowing
every single part of the car and never actually driving because there's sort of analytical knowledge,
I would say, and then there's experiential knowledge, which are completely separate. So I
think the renaissance of the philosophy of psychedelics and that returning back into our culture after

(31:27):
its long hiatus and ban and all that stuff happening as you outlined it very well in the
St. B. Ent Cosmos. And all these now conjoined with the quantum experiments and this quantum weirdness,
what would you kind of say is like the state of the union of where we're seeing for the analytical
rational listener where that physicalism is breaking down and giving rise to kind of a fundamental

(31:50):
consciousness. I mean, first of all, I don't believe that people can be persuaded. There are
enough. That's what we say politically also. If you have a belief and you invested in that,
you're never going to change it regardless of any proof, backfire effect. So I think this is addressing

(32:11):
people who haven't made up their mind too much about their metaphysical conviction. And if you're
full blown physically, that there's probably nothing you can point to that's going to make a change.
And what you're saying about the, I like the analogy of the car and the driving. So this was also
a thought experiment that was quite famous. Jackson philosopher, I forget his first name again.

(32:37):
It's called the knowledge argument. And he was saying, you have Mary and Mary is this amazing
neuroscientist, but she's locked in a black and white room has been her whole life. And then,
but she had access to all the knowledge, everything we know about color, about the brain, and she's
the expert on what colors are because she studied this in her black and white room. And then one day,

(33:02):
she escapes and she runs into a garden and she sees a red rose. And then Jackson originally argued
saying, she learned something new. This means that there is, so there's no way you can, so this idea
of qualia, there's something new there. There's something which you cannot just read about and try and

(33:24):
reproduce. This was a new, a new experience, which otherwise cannot be made. And he used this to
try and diffuse this more physicalist view in the philosophy of mind. But then for some, we had reason,
couple of years later, he turns it around and says, actually, no, this is proof of physicalism with some

(33:49):
very specific arguments. So it's like, and he was the person using this to argue the opposite. And then,
yeah, after I don't know how many years, he's like, oh, I actually know, it shows the, he did 180.
But I think generally, if you're open to what's happening at the cutting edge of physics, like,

(34:12):
yeah, this information theoretic paradigm that seems to be really useful and emerging in physics,
where the guys in Austria with Anton Tilinger, the quantum information people. So there's like the one
guy, Markus Muller, who proposed this toy model of a quantum mechanical system, where it's based on

(34:37):
a subjective point of view, and where the external reality with all the regularities is an
emergent property. And he uses algorithmic quantum information or something.
Yeah. And as you mentioned, this quantum Bay Cubism or these relational interpretations of quantum

(34:59):
mechanics, there are people who are trying to address this issue and it's in quantum mechanics.
The pioneers, they were pretty certain that consciousness must be somehow important.
Not only the measurement and observer effect, but just generally that somehow, yeah, this,

(35:21):
that should be, it should be more integrated. But again, with the shut up and calculate this,
all got forgotten. But we have people like Henry Stubb, who since ever has been writing about
the mindful universe and how quantum mechanics and consciousness come together. And there's many
others who, back in the day, have been proposing this. And now we're slowly coming full circle where

(35:45):
everything else we tried didn't work. So maybe we really at the point where, okay, we just have to
like, we just have to do it. We have to bring in consciousness. And like, yeah, some people saying
or physicists, probably physics will only be complete once we're able to model something.
Or I have a conscious observer modeled within the framework. And until then, it won't work. And it

(36:14):
will be, it won't be kind of finished or unified. And also in, yeah, the philosophy of mind.
So when they started doing neuro scans of people under psychedelic, who were having psychedelic
experiences, interestingly, many brain regions showed less metabolic activity. And the quote from,

(36:41):
I think it was Carhartt Harris, who was doing these experiments, or one of the first. He was,
oh, this is interesting. We expected like the brain to light up like a Christmas tree because obviously
you're having this phenomenological overkill of experience. So this is probably correlated to your
brain going into overdrive. But that's not what we see. But then again, this has been explained

(37:04):
away with like the entropic brain hypothesis where you know it's entropy and noise and blah, blah, blah.
So everything that happens is, yeah, it doesn't really matter. But even things like, so the one study
in the Lancet, I like to bring, always bring up where this one French dude had a pain in his leg

(37:25):
went to the doctor. And they found out that he was missing like 80% of his brain. So most of it was
just fluid. I mean, he wasn't like super genius, but he was functional. He had a family, he had a job.
He was doing normal things as normal people do. And here the question starts to begin. So if,
if consciousness is the thing that the brain produces, how come if there's not much brain, this still

(37:50):
happens or accidental, the one guy who jumped in a pool and smashed his head and had severe brain
trauma. And the next time he walked by piano, he sat down and he could play the piano.
Virtuously crazy. And there's a lot of these stories where actually damaging the brain unlocks more
consciousness creativity. It's the filter. Yeah. Exactly. As you said, exactly, which seems to be going

(38:14):
into that direction. And I mean, this idea of the filter, it's Henry Berkson, the philosopher,
he came up with this idea. And all this Huxley picked it up when he did his masculine experiment and
wrote, yeah, about about his experiences. And he really liked that idea. And it seems to be

(38:38):
something that, yeah, it's reappearing now again in Stephen Wolfram's writing. So Stephen Wolfram, the,
yeah, science genius, physics genius, computer scientists, entrepreneur, made millions with writing
the best mathematical software. And he's recent book, The Project to Find a Fundamental Theory of

(39:02):
Physics or something. Where he says, look, the only way we can explain the emergence of complexity,
which again is something very hard to do in a physicalist's perspective. Like, why does the universe,
why is it just decay into disorder? Why do we have these pockets of crazy structure and intelligence?

(39:25):
How does this happen? This emergence, this, yeah, like super collective intelligence of ants and
termites. What is going on here? Which is a brute fact for the physicalist. It's like, yeah,
I just move on. It happened. And Wolfram says, yes, we can understand this. If we shift what we think
physics is to something more algorithmically with simple rules, with updating with, with, yeah,

(39:52):
less equations, more algorithms to understand more computation. And he says, what we're seeing
or how complexity evolves is, it's computational. So life is a computational process. And he starts from,
so in his new, so 20 years ago, he started to sketch these ideas with cellular automata, which are

(40:12):
like different, like white and black squares. And they progress. And depending on the rules of
the ones above, you start to see like crazy random patterns, which, which really disturbed him. And
that's why he continued to pursue down this way. And now he's back with hypergraphs and updating

(40:34):
these and, and very abstract mathematical stuff where he claims, look, we can see structures like
general relativity or quantum behavior. And if you go up, yeah, life should be computed. And now he's
thinking about, okay, what's consciousness? And he's actually saying consciousness isn't more
computation. It's actually reduced. You have to bring it down again, which kind of sounds a bit like

(40:58):
this valve thing, which I find very interesting that from a totally different perspective, and from a very
hardcore formalism and, and yeah, deep, scientific perspective, not from, not from philosophers or
authors, he, he seems to be describing something very similar, I believe. And how do we, because I remember

(41:20):
you mentioning this in the sapient cosmos, that information is physical. And I think that's something
that's hard to wrap your head around. You think of information like bits and zeros and ones, but
I believe you mentioned as well in that experiment, one of the experiments that it actually produced
heat, the deleting of a bit, which produces entropy. And so I think- >> That's our principle, yes. >> Yes, yes, yes, thank you.

(41:44):
And I think that's critical for me at least when I think about key things in my head that help me
continually disprove reductionism in that physical matters, the base of everything. I think is the
information theoretic perspective. And you start thinking about the holographic principle and
these types of things. So I would love just to throw that into your court to talk about kind of the
informational basis of reality and kind of holography as well. >> Yeah. First of all, disclaimer, no one knows

(42:13):
like what information is and how to define it properly. >> Sure. >> Like we consciously- I have a book
from the Floredie, he's called, he's a philosopher of information. And the book is called "Philosophy
of Information." And he starts to saying, "Yeah, information, it's a very hard concept." It's like,
there's so many ways of what it is and what it could mean. And is it just the instantiation of,

(42:37):
yes, zeroes or ones or is information only if it has some semantic value to it? But just in general,
it's just bits, yes and no. And this is what John Wheeler with his, it from bit idea came up with
that at the very basis of reality, you don't have matter, you have two choices. Is it a zero or one?

(43:04):
Yes or no questions. So what is kind of seems to be happening is when we interrogate reality
with our experiments, we're always asking yes and no questions. And actually going back before Wheeler,
like I think 15 years or something before Wheeler, Carl von Weitzekker, a German titan of

(43:26):
theoretical physics of the last century, he started also with this informational idea where he
called it an "Ur", a "Ur", an "Ur", this basic building block of information from which the
physical is derived. And- >> Like the Numenon. >> Correct. Well, actually,
no, he tried to really put it in a formalism and have equations and compute stuff, like how many

(43:51):
"Ur"s do you have in the universe and how many competitions and these things like that?
Unfortunately, because somehow this happened more in the German speaking sphere, it never really
came over to the English speaking sphere. And although Weitzekker invited Wheeler to some conference
on this, Wheeler never mentioned von Weitzekker that he also was kind of battling with this informational

(44:15):
stuff. But the idea there is it seems to be- So physicists want to find the ontological primitive.
What's the most basic building block? The thing you can't go any deeper. And it's not matter because
matter doesn't exist. Matter is excitations in quantum fields, whatever that should supposed to
mean. But if you think of information that appears to be really the thing, you can then derive

(44:42):
the whole of physics from it. So it's fundamental foundational in, yeah, with this quantum
information. So you have qubits, which if you start to understand quantum mechanics in terms of
quantum information, you suddenly have less of the weirdness going on. Like entanglement. If two

(45:06):
particles are entangled, they seem to transcend space and time because touching one affects other
regardless of distance. Yes, but if space and time aren't the fundamental thing in which this is
happening, but it's an informational space and these entangled particles are super close in the
informational space, then that makes sense. Then where's the problem? So it's only if you assume

(45:30):
this objectivity. And again, like, yeah, when you're cutting edge radical proposals are that space
and time are not fundamental, but derived from entangled quantum information. So that seems to
really be- Yeah, give- give- physicalists a hard time because, yeah, if space and time are out of

(45:52):
the window, then the objective reality, come on. And with the holographic principle, you mentioned
this is super wild because it's really- it's crazy if you look at black holes and start to
try and understand them in terms of entropy and information. So entropy and information. So everything

(46:16):
can be brought down to information. So entropy can be more or less understood as missing information or
hidden information. But when Beckenstein, I think, Under Wheeler, started to look at the entropy of
black holes and what happens if you throw in information into black holes, they figured out that

(46:38):
actually it's- the information is encoded on the sphere outside in a two-dimensional area
in- in developing the black hole. It's not a 3D thing. And then that's probably the only thing that's
that was useful. They came out to string theory where they actually built a toy model, the ADS CFT.

(47:01):
So you have the anti-decedral space, whatever, and the conformal field theory. But what they're showing
is that this is exactly what- what you can build that you have a higher dimensional and a lower
dimensional system and they map into each other. They're the same. One has gravity and one doesn't.
And in this holographic perspective, it seems to be that you can- yeah, the whole information we

(47:25):
have, the content- the whole information content of the universe, the volume, it's irrelevant. It's
you can spread it around on a two-dimensional surface in- in developing the whole universe,
which seems very strange and counterintuitive. Why- why don't- if you have a cube with information in it,

(47:47):
why is it enough to just look at the boundaries, the- the surface, and all the information that's
on the surface, that cannot be more inside than what you have on the surface. Which again seems very
counterintuitive and very irrational and very not- common-sensical and this seems to be the universe we live in.

(48:10):
Again, this is cutting edge and- and yeah, sort of- I cannot be contested because, yeah, again,
if your metaphysical ideas are different, you can try to spin it and give different interpretations or
yeah, but just that- the fact that we're looking and seeing these crazy phenomena, yeah, it seems to be

(48:34):
to show that thinking of reality as a physical universe is wrong, at least it's informational,
and computational, which means that a simulation is probably a better metaphor than a physical
instantiated universe. Does that relate at all to the idea of the block universe that we're in

(48:58):
sort of a contained sort of space that has that two-dimensional boundary? Is that how you conceptualize
that or am I off? So the block universe as far as I understand it is what happens if you take
special relativity seriously, that time depends on your state of motion, so time is relative,

(49:19):
depending again, which is like why doesn't- why doesn't this bother more people?
Right.
Time is a subjective thing and it depends on your reference frame, how much gravity you're experiencing
and how fast you're going, which means that no two things are happening at the same time. There's
no single tenati. There's no way to say if A was before B or B was before A, which seems to be

(49:44):
messing with causality, and the block universe is this idea that depending on how you slice it,
you have these slices of what simultaneous depending on one reference frame, but somehow it's
all there and the future and the past seem to exist the same way as the now exists, and yeah,

(50:04):
we're already deep in metaphysical terrain. And there's quantum experiments which show that
these causality things, so causality seems also like something that's more of a construct we humans
bring to the table, where these quantum experiments show that there's no way of showing if A
caused B or B caused A, because suddenly these causal links start to become superimposed and it

(50:30):
becomes a total mess and you- and not even the most basic thing you would hope for, but causality,
come on, if something happened, something happened before that, that caused the outcome.
Don't take everything from you, James. Don't take everything from you, James.
Yeah, I mean, that's quantum mechanics for you. They show that you know, you can't, there's no way

(50:53):
of knowing that it's literally causality breaks. And I mean, Kant told us that space and time
are categories of our mind, and so is causality, and the thing we think causality is, and that's
what I find is kind of interesting in Jung's writing where he says, "This synchronicity stuff."
These random events which seem very purposeful and intentional, they represent a total different

(51:21):
layer of causality that we are not yet aware of, which seems to be something that is very rational to say.
Wow, so causality itself is potentially emergent, if you will, along with time.
Yeah, or kind of an illusion, like maybe time as well. So there's so many things which don't make sense.

(51:46):
And unfortunately, or yeah, science has been very good at like hiding this. Look here, we have the
technology, we have quantum computers, we have it all figured out, we fly, we have rovers or Mars,
this is fine, just don't look at the crazy stuff over here, which then starts to move into the
philosophical terrain. And that's why we really should have more, or scientists should be better

(52:12):
trained in philosophy because often it's the other way round. Philosophers of science, although they're
mostly ridiculed by real scientists because like, "Yeah, you're a philosopher of science, you have no
idea of science." Actually, that's not true, many philosophers of science, plus they're, I mean,
next to their whole philosophical knowledge, they are also trained in more formal aspects of science

(52:38):
and the mathematics and they are very well versed in these things, but like the good ones and many of them.
So kind of funny that they still, yeah, don't get any sort of street cred from physicists.
Right. Well, on that note of emergence, I'd love to kind of continue as well on this informational
theoretic paradigm and framing emergence sort of as this idea of information entropy or sort of

(53:06):
the idea that as the universe from the big bang all the way through now to the future is essentially
sort of an informational and tropic process, which sort of brings about, I believe, if I'm saying
it's correctly, non-equilibrium thermodynamic, these are states. And dissipative structures, and
I'd love to kind of start going down that rabbit hole and getting kind of an idea of how that works.

(53:29):
Yeah, yeah, it turns out that maybe life isn't just some random thing that magically happened here
on earth, but it's an expression of some laws of physics that should happen everywhere if you have
the right setting. And the setting is you need some low entropy source of energy like the sun,

(53:53):
and then you need some ambient field like an atmosphere or an ocean. And then what happens is you
have this gradient in entropy or free energy or whatever. And what the universe hates is having
these gradients and what it tries to do by shifting around entropy is equalize these things.

(54:16):
And that pregogin, he was called, he did this, I think, in the 60s, where he started to talk about
these dissipative structures. And how, for some magical reason, this dissipation goes hand in hand
with structure formation. So you see this on a physical, chemical level where convection cells,

(54:42):
if you heat up water, where you suddenly have these structures that start to move around to really
just get rid of this excess energy or the storm on Jupiter, which has been there for 300 years.
It's like this convection thing going on, which already a whirlpool is like an emergent
dissipative structure, which is, it has some kind of complexity. And then I think Jeremy England,

(55:11):
he's called, who picked this up and applied this to more biological systems where the claim is
metabolic systems, life biological systems, what they're actually doing is really efficiently
getting rid of this gradient and this structure formation. And especially replication is also a

(55:31):
really good strategy to, yeah, to do this, which means that, yeah, this is a non-equilibrium
thermodynamic aspect is, yeah, you have the sun and the earth. And this non-equilibrium is what's
driving this entropy dissonance or whatever you want to call it, it's driving this structure formation

(55:54):
from literally how crystals arrange to, yeah, more complex things. And then, yeah, maybe apply to
biological life. And the reason why this seems to be true is that recently we keep discovering
organic molecules on comets. And again, like this is something which we're only very recently

(56:21):
have become aware of. I mean, the idea of pan spermia that life was brought onto earth has been
around for ages. But if this is the mechanism, then everywhere if you have, yeah, a sun and some
atmosphere, this should be going on, this should be happening, this assembly of these complex molecules,
which just allow this dissipation of, yeah, the energy and the entropy system.

(56:47):
That just makes so much more intuitive sense to me to imagine this sort of,
sort of guiding hand beneath life that is pushing it upward. It's kind of how I conceptualize it
towards greater and greater and greater complexity just because from, it isn't, you know, it's important
as you speak of very heavily as well as the intuitive aspect of these things as to really

(57:09):
that first person subjective type of understanding of things. And it's just never made sense that
life has this arrow of complexity. It just gets better and better and better, which I guess is
a subjective term, but more and more and more complex. It computes more information.
Right. Why is it not go backwards at any time? You know, why is that just the inherent forward arrow?

(57:33):
And so if I'm understanding as well this correctly and to try to bring this down to earth as well
for the audience, so we humans in all sort of complex structures is an emergent phenomena so that we
as sort of low and tropic, highly complex states can channel structured energy and convert it into

(57:56):
entropy, which is the universe's drive is to increase entropy over time. Is that the basics?
That seems to be like the formal way of what's happening in detail, but what you touch upon I find
is a lot bigger and more important. You're saying there's like this hand, this helping, this,

(58:18):
there seems to be an arrow, a teleology, a thing, the universe wants to go towards, which is something,
if you say that any scientist, they freak out because they're saying no, this is not possible.
The universe has no purpose. Come on, please don't say the universe wants to do something.
This is some probably some religious thing you're trying to bring in there or some UAG, whatever.

(58:44):
This I find is so frustrating because we are seeing this. We are seeing that there is this arrow,
this, the universe is assembling more complex structures, at least here on earth,
although the whole greater context is towards disorder. And I call it the will to complexity,
to give it a name, to say there seems to be a force and it's physical. It's not some god just

(59:09):
sprinkling stuff on it. It seems to be inherent, emerging out of the laws of physics, that the universe
has a tendency, it wants to assemble complex structures and it does so continually. And what we're
doing, I mean, first it's life. And then life has this inner perspective and consciousness. And then

(59:30):
this consciousness starts to build electronic circuits, which now start to behave in like semi-conscious ways.
That seems very, very, yeah, teleological towards greater and greater expressions of complexity.
And I find it wild that this isn't a bigger discussion, that for the physicalists it's just a brute force

(59:52):
get over it. That's it's just the way it is. There's no reason to it. And that you're not allowed to say,
"Hey, it's, there seems to be a force that we're missing." But until you, yeah, can formalize it better,
you're not going to get these people on board. So with this whole non-equilibrium stuff, maybe that's,

(01:00:12):
yeah, that's going to help the discussion a bit. So, you know, what would you say, I guess the
the million dollar and also unanswerable question, what would you say our purpose is then? Are we
just dissipative structures here to help the universe increase its entropy? Are we here to add to

(01:00:34):
the field of information through our life experiences and expand the awareness of the universe? And
there's probably several other pockets of perspectives there. But what would you say just in your
theory? So, I mean, my theory, I call it syncretic idealism and syncretic means you're just taking a
bunch of stuff from different fields and putting it together. So it's not my theory in the sense, it's

(01:00:57):
just what I seem to, what seems to be an emerging, a reoccurring pattern in various formulations of
idealism plus what the shamans, mystics, meditators and psychonodes have been saying. If you put this
together and that's sort of the last chapter in the Sapien cosmos presenting this idea, then what's

(01:01:18):
happening is that, yeah, this base consciousness through this will to complexity is assembling like
more and more complex contraptions in the physical. And what our brains are doing is not produce consciousness,
but channel the consciousness from the base field in the sense of being a radio receiver.

(01:01:41):
And what then the more spiritual aspect would be is that what's happening is the base universe,
once the base consciousness wants to become more manifest in the physical. So it tries to build more
more structures able to channel and bring in this consciousness. So conscious AI would be a thing

(01:02:03):
in if this is true and correct. That would be the next thing we're looking at. And then you think,
you think, sorry, did interject, but that's important. You think AI can be conscious eventually?
So the debate there is, yeah, so there's a bunch of philosophers of mine to say yes and some say no,
and I started off with no, because consciousness needs to be biological and then I asked myself,

(01:02:30):
but why? Why should I mean, okay, that's what we see, but why shouldn't enough? So if our brain is a
receiver, why shouldn't it be possible to build other kinds of receivers, which are not biological,
which are based in silicon, which are based on circuits and electrons moving through and

(01:02:51):
allowing for enough complexity to channel. So yeah, if the universe is doing this, then through us,
we would be building other contraptions which are able to channel this base consciousness and bring
it in there. Interesting. I've thought similarly as well in the same sort of idealist perspective,

(01:03:12):
is if consciousness is far more fundamental than any of its manifested complex forms,
why couldn't you theoretically create some type of channel to that, another sort of spiket that
allows to flow through? Exactly. And maybe that's what seems to be happening. Again,

(01:03:34):
it's the problem of other minds. How will we ever know AI is sentient? So yeah, that will always
be the problem that we will, there's no, you can never prove to me that you're conscious. And
the same is for AI. It can, it can like tell us stories and things, but at the end of the day, we don't

(01:03:56):
know if this is just mimicking or if this is really from an inner perspective that suddenly
merge in the universe and it's like, whoa, I'm here. And speaking of, I'm curious as well,
your perspective on whether that you think, what do you make sense of the world out there? And I
think we can agree that it's not physical stuff. And I think there's a lot of growing evidence

(01:04:21):
that it's quite subjective and contextual a lot of times. Do you have a way yourself of contextualizing
what is out there prior to measurement, prior observation? Not really. And unfortunately,
I've never had a mystical experience or taken enough psychedelics to experience that that state

(01:04:42):
of being. But yeah, some of my friends seem to have been there or just somehow, yeah, create an
intuition of or just having, yeah, this experience of what this feels like, how this works. So like being
being shown, what the mechanisms are, that's often something. I mean, if you read up on these

(01:05:03):
trip reports on the various archives of the internet, they often seem to be saying that I was shown,
like how the things work, work, I was shown, like how the, how reality is being computed or
what's going on here. And I find that, yeah, that that seems pretty wild. And again, this is something they

(01:05:25):
claim was feeling very real, more real than, yeah, sober, waking state of consciousness.
Yeah. And the reason I asked to is because I'm a huge fan of Donald Hoffman. And I know you mentioned
Donald Hoffman in the sapient cosmos as well, which I was stoked to see him featured in there as well.
But his whole thing is, you know, the neuron is, if you're not looking at it, there is no neuron.

(01:05:48):
You know, and is that something that you would concur with? Do you think that sort of we're in this
quantum sort of the quantum space is sort of a field of possibility that we as consciousness
can activate and can interface with. And that's what collapses matter into the sort of holographic
form that we, you know, experience. What would you, what would you make of that? Well, that's a very

(01:06:12):
profound question. I don't have no clue. That's like that's super deep. I don't really know. But
what I like of Hoffman saying that, yeah, our consciousness was tuned to become functional, to
survival and not to truth. And we, we know this from, there's, I mean, there's so many optical

(01:06:38):
illusions that show us that what we think is out there is actually, it's wrong because it's just a
construct in our brain. It's not the thing out there. And what Hoffman brings to the table is,
I mean, he shows he presents a formalism of how this can work. He has a mathematical theory of
how this can work, which, yeah, people who are more analytically minded and are maybe skeptical

(01:07:01):
should take a look at what this could look like if someone sits down and has a metaphysical idea,
which is more towards idealism and then starts to write this down as a theory.
And kind of getting into your realm of idealism, I'd love to give the audience now that we've kind

(01:07:22):
of covered a lot of kind of the basics of what this school of thought entails. What uniquely separates,
or I guess sort of demarcates your theory of idolism compared to, let's say,
cashtrups or, you know, others that you've mentioned prior, what are some of the distinctive features?

(01:07:42):
So my goal is to make this more accessible to a wider audience. And that's where I found
the problem with idealism. It's also that, yeah, every idealist philosopher has their own version of
idealism, which makes it hard because, again, like with consciousness, if everyone brings their own

(01:08:03):
theory to the table, then what are we talking about here? So we need some convergence. And that's
what I try to do to like find the elements which seem to be either reoccurring or which seem to be
like really important and clear. For instance, how do you get from the field of consciousness to

(01:08:23):
individual experiences of consciousness? And they're cashtrups with his analytical idealism and
this idea of dissociation brings a wonderful theory of how this works. So I took that and put this
in and then just, yeah, assembling different elements and just cobbling together this weird structure.
But hoping that it's not too far off the mark because it seems to be taking, yeah, things that

(01:08:49):
are reoccurring in this discussion. And that's why it's not really my theory. It's just my attempt
at unifying and synthesizing what's been expressed more in isolation and connecting the dots.
That's what my, that's kind of what I see my job to be with writing. It's not being novel or having
my ideas of theories, but connecting the dots that are there and showing people, hey, look, you can

(01:09:13):
actually, if you look at it this way, that seems to be making a lot of sense. So, hmm.
Right. So it sounds like more of a kind of a master composite of all of the best parts of all
the other theories or at least an attempt. Yeah, and then attempt. Of course. Let the reader judge it.
I personally thought the sapient cosmos was absolutely phenomenal and I highly encourage anyone

(01:09:39):
listening to to go explore that book. I think it's not only a great sort of history lesson on
quantum physics, on the history of all sort of schools of metaphysics and philosophy. I think if
I had to give it one word, I would just say perspective. I think it just gives such a perspective on the
state of the art of where these schools of science are and in a wonderful account for the span of

(01:10:04):
idealism and it's hard not to be at least partially persuaded or at least get some fractures in the
physicalism. So I think it certainly accomplished its job. Thank you very much. And I think it's really
important to try and look at this perspective and also the history because that's where we suddenly

(01:10:25):
see the blind spots that the Western mind has. For instance, psychedelics. I was not aware
until I was researching the book that back in ancient India, when they were writing the Vedas,
these rishis, the mystics and the forest, they had this god Soma, but Soma was also a psychedelic

(01:10:49):
drink. So many of the concepts of these spiritual ideas of this early, of what the Vedas were talking
about could very well be influenced by psychedelics. And at the same time, in Greece, yet the Eloysinian
mysteries and Plato was participating in these ceremonies once a year, whether we're drinking kai-kion,

(01:11:12):
which most probably was also a psychedelic substance. And the philosopher Whitehead said that
basically Western philosophy is just a footnote on Plato. So if Plato was taking psychedelics,
then Western philosophy is at least influenced by psychedelics which have never, ever, ever heard

(01:11:35):
anyone say in any philosophy class ever on Western philosophy. And this seems to be crazy that
there was this just this stigmatization of drugs in general, including psychedelics, which somehow
allowed this, all this knowledge to just be forgotten and we're rediscovering it now, or
the ban on the war on drugs where in 1971 with Nixon, at the time there was thousands of research

(01:12:04):
papers being published on how psychedelics help all these things that were, I thought, oh, this is
new with the psychedelic Renaissance, all this mental health stuff with psychedelics.
This, oh, wow, we're discovering this now. That's not true. There was so much we already knew
at the end of the 60s. And it just got it just got killed with war on drugs, drugs bad. And I find

(01:12:29):
this is just insane or also, yeah, in like the 19th century where people were taking nitrous oxide,
they discovered it as an aesthetic and you could go to the dentist and yeah, be knocked out for
a couple of minutes and have surgery done or whatever. Nitrous oxide is laughing gas, which is highly

(01:12:54):
psychedelic. So these doctors with these dentists were describing that people coming back to
consciousness suddenly had these like deep metaphysical things and what you talk about and like,
what did I experience? What's happening here? And the dentists were like, yeah, we don't know, but
happy year. The two thing went well. And William James, he also did, he also inhaled nitrous oxide too.

(01:13:20):
I mean, he read an account of, I think it was called Benjamin Blood, who was taking this substances
and was like saying this is crazy. Like, yeah, everything seems to be just thought and not material.
And William James read this account and he was very skeptical in thinking, yeah, that sounds a bit

(01:13:40):
kind of exaggerated. And he inhaled nitrous oxide, had these experiences himself and he battled with
what was happening for the rest of his philosophical career. And yeah, he came up with empirical,
radical empiricism saying, everything which cannot be experienced doesn't exist. And it's all in
the mind and this multiverse of experience. And yeah, I don't know how much of this is told when

(01:14:07):
you study William James, because you'll just probably be told, oh, the varieties of religious
experiences where he brings these four qualities of what it means to have these mystical, transcendental
psychedelic experiences. And this is such a glaring blind spot, which is crazy. And the other
blind spot, again, that coming back to physicalism, that this is just something we implicitly assumed

(01:14:33):
was the right thing to believe and not even realizing that it's a choice and be a metaphysical
thing which we cannot prove or disprove. All these things are only coming up now, which I find is wild.
So or just, yeah, what the the shamans, the, I mean, the early anthropologists when they encountered

(01:14:54):
shamans, they were saying, oh my god, these are these are severely mentally ill people. Right.
That's it crazy. And now how many people are going to Peru and looking for a shaman to do some
ayahuasca ceremony because I need to be healed. My mind, I'm, yeah, please heal me. And no one ever

(01:15:15):
wondered how do these like primitive societies, how come they have such knowledge of healing?
Right. On the physical and the mental side. And this one anthropologist, Jeremy Narby, who wrote
the crazy book DNA and that way was arguing that it seems to be that these visions, these shamans

(01:15:37):
had that they saw this DNA coil thing. And I was very skeptical when I read the book, but he's
brilliant. I mean, he really just, I mean, this is amazing. And he's a very, yeah, he's a very
sober, serious guy. He's not trying to push them. What was the book? Sorry. He's called Jeremy Narby and it's
DNA. If you Google Jeremy Narby, that's okay. The book. And it's, it's about the DNA.

(01:16:06):
Shamanism and anthropologist. And I forgot what it was going to say about Jeremy Narby. Sorry.
No, about the DNA strand, how they saw DNA in their visions like the coil. And he was saying that in
the, I think that 90s or 80s, there was some summit where they came together like Western scientists

(01:16:32):
and these shaman cultures to discuss, I think also like conservation of environment stuff. And the
whole pharmacology like everything, most of the things we have in our chemistry tool book box came
from these indigenous populations. And he was wondering like why no one was asking the question,

(01:16:55):
how do they know where does this come from? Or like the ayahuasca, you're sitting in an Amazon
rainforest, estimated 80,000 plant species. You take the bark and this vine and you put it together
and suddenly you talk to God. How do you do that? How do you know? And of course the physically says,

(01:17:16):
well, that's easy. It's trial and error. Of course, they had to do that. But come on. There's like
there's so many possibilities. And if you ask shaman's, they say the plants told us. So again, having access
to these other or these unorthodox ways of gaining knowledge, which have just been totally negated

(01:17:39):
from a Western rational perspective. And I think slowly we are opening to the reality that this
exists. And yeah, that this is something that we can utilize ourselves in our culture as well.
Yeah, like the idea of the Akashic field. And I think that's what's always made it make sense to me

(01:18:00):
is how in the heck to these people thousands of years ago come up with this philosophy. And it seems
to agree in so many different places, but that there is this sort of universal ground state of consciousness.
It's all what we see here is an illusion. We're sort of an individuation of consciousness. And

(01:18:23):
it's like the only way to know that is through some type of higher level of tap in of knowledge. And
it's kind of gets back to that sort of informational aspect, I think, at least so that Akashic field. If you
kind of open the spiket of consciousness and awareness that you have in the rational mind and what
you can ascertain in 3D space time informationally and you open up to the sort of infinite level of

(01:18:48):
information, it's like, okay, now we can access all sorts of different stuff that gave them
preposterously advanced insights before quantum measurements, you know, which is kind of what we hang
our hat on now. But it's like, well, how did they figure the same thing out with literally not even a
single piece of technology? So this has always fascinated me. Or like that there's always been a bit of

(01:19:10):
an overlap between Buddhists and quantum mechanics that they often have like sort of talk about
seemingly the same things going back to the Tao physics with Kupra, but also more recently that
there's like quantum physicists who are in dialogue with with with monks, Buddhist monks,

(01:19:31):
because they, this metaphysics that they came up with way back seems to be like more accessible or
better to access this, this weirdness. But what you're saying, for me, it seems to be that just
modulating your consciousness allows you to go to these realms which are outside of space and time
where you can gain information and get information about what's happening here. And I like that you

(01:19:56):
mentioned the Kashik field. This was a concept of Erwin Laszlo who was a pioneering systems theorist.
He has authored hundreds of scientific papers and books. I mean, he's like the prototypical scientist
and he's super duper open to understanding reality in this way. And he wrote the forward to Christopher

(01:20:20):
Bates' LSD in the mind of the universe. And he writes and this was like 2019, well, yeah, 2019 and
he's over 80. And he's saying, wow, this is one of the most important books I've ever read. But there's
three things to know or three things you have to know to be able to access the information in this book.

(01:20:44):
First, that there is an intelligence behind the things in the universe. This intelligence has a
purpose and it's possible to access some aspects of this intelligence. That's what Laszlo
is, that's what he's been saying before and that's what he's seeing in what Bates is writing and

(01:21:06):
Bates literally traveled there and is getting us basically a chronicling what's on the other side
in this transcendental mess. And yeah, again, taking 500 or 600 micrograms of LSD, this is insane. I mean,
the amount of like also the suffering or how much just what this entails, like this was such an

(01:21:34):
extreme thing that Bates did for over 20 years. It's hard to fathom. And reading the book, you, I mean,
for me, this is just, it just like feels so right. And that's maybe to come back to before when you
ask me like, what can we do to sort of get people on board? I think it's probably just have this,

(01:21:56):
if you have this resonance and just feel, it just feels right. Yeah, then you're going to be there.
And the feedback I've had from the essential interview that a lot of people were like, hey, you're saying
exactly what what I feel is, is correct. So there's hope that this seems to be something which is

(01:22:18):
a bit wider than just an idea of some people. This seems to be like outside of more scientific
philosophical or more academic or intellectual sphere. People seem to be able to access this
intuitively and feel that seems kind of right for me, which I find is like, wow, that's that's really

(01:22:41):
cool. I felt a very strong degree of resonance. It was like hearing something I already knew,
but it was spoken to and articulated in a way. It was like there was a deeper knowing subtly
and it was sort of physicalized through your sort of interview in the Ascension Foundation. I think
sort of compared that to most people, I think as we are, I believe going through a conscious

(01:23:05):
revolution across humanity, the level of consciousness across the board is we're kind of going over
a sort of a hump of sorts. And I think people's awareness is getting to a point where it's sort of
fertile to be able to understand and resonate with those types of things. So I think I do believe
the audience for that type of school of thought is definitely much wider than expected.

(01:23:28):
Maybe as a side note, and this probably points to something deeper. For me, when I write, I just
sit down in the zone and it just like happens. It seems to be like a flow state. And then sometimes
when I go back and read what I've written, I'm like, okay, where did that come from? And I think that

(01:23:49):
something which we all have, this is what artists do, this is, and in this idealist context,
that seems to be the thing you want to do. Somehow, download stuff from this field of intelligence,
somehow bring it through, become a conduit for these things to go through in whatever is the thing

(01:24:12):
that you do, if it's art or discussion or meditation or inspiration or helping other people or healing
or writing or doing science or anything that you want to try and realize that it's not you.
You're not coming up with these ideas. And which is, it's humbling, it's great because it's more,

(01:24:39):
you're more a tool and you're not the source of this, which I find, yeah, it's kind of a healthy thing
because otherwise, oh, I'm so clever. This is, I'm amazing. Everyone should have respect of like
my big brain. No, these are art. Exactly. And that we realize that these creations in science and art

(01:25:01):
and literature, maybe we should look at the more as something collaborative with the background
field and less something individually created by these people. Sure. And the way, if I may interject my own
sort of intuition and theory on it, I think what our gifts are and what makes you unique and what

(01:25:27):
your purpose could be here on earth and what you intuitively are driven towards is your kind of
localized sort of connection to a certain point of that a cosmic field that holds that information.
So why can some people maybe spend their entire life trying to do something, but they'll never
scratch the surface of what someone else can do in a month of learning it. And it's like they've

(01:25:50):
always known it. I think our purpose is to discover which channel that is for us because that's where
we have the greatest access to that flow state. And where we're able to download that sort of
information out of that field at the highest sort of rate is is what we are here to do and where
your genius is located. You kind of get a localized point. You're a localized point of that

(01:26:13):
information that you can sort of access that part of the a cosmic library, if you will. And that's
what you're here to channel and produce, if that makes sense. I'd really like that. And
but to add to that this idea of co-creation that consciousness is an integral part of the evolution
of physical reality, which is also a concept weener came up with. So this isn't like a new age spiritual

(01:26:40):
idea. This is something that scientifically minded people came up with that we live in a
participatory universe. It's not just it's been enacted on us. We are part of creating this,
which means that if your mindset is physically this is not possible, then you will be living and
experiencing a universe where this is not possible. That's going to be your experience. Whereas if you

(01:27:04):
are open to tuning into these information fields, then that's what you will be experiencing.
So this means that your setting the setting in your mind is really deeply influential on
the possibilities that you have. Because if you restrict yourself, you will be living in a restricted

(01:27:24):
experience of reality. And if you open up, you will have a different, more open experience of
reality. Because the reality, yeah, it reacts to how you are interacting and co-creating the next
moment in time with it. Well, one of the last questions I have for you is what does it mean for

(01:27:46):
our world to adopt more of an idealist transcendental worldview given ecological disaster, war,
all these things that we experience in our physicalist, egoic paradigm. What would it mean for
humanity to shift this paradigm? I really hope, I have high hopes that this could fundamentally

(01:28:08):
get us out of the problem we're in. Where at the moment there's like no, there's no exit, there's
no way, everything is so entrenched ideologically, there's no room, everything is fake news, everything
is lies, everything gets like the whole destruction of the biosphere gets ignored because people don't
have time to deal with that. Like the damage we're doing now, it's insane. And this is another thing,

(01:28:34):
we're also clever individually and collectively we behave like the dumbest organism ever just
destroying everything around us and consuming it. And I believe that in a simplistic way you can say
bad metaphysics are responsible for this because most people today I would claim falling to two

(01:28:55):
camps. Either you're the scientifically thinking person and then it's yeah, the universe has no
purpose, it's all random, we die and that's it. Totally disenchanted view of reality or you have
these monotheistic religions which have morphed into these power structures which tell you there's
this external god and usually a he tells you that's what you have to do and these are the things

(01:29:22):
robbing you from any sort of introspection or like agency and I find this is disillusioned as well.
So as an idealist you're kind of battling both of these metaphysical points views and what you should
be able to do with idealism is be more open to scientific spirituality. So you are taking science,

(01:29:45):
this is the default, this is really important that you are dealing with science. What is climate change,
what are vaccines, what are the reality, what are the things that are going on in reality?
But then the spirituality part being that you realize that, ah wow, I'm part of a greater field of
I am more interconnected with existence, this experience of me being individual and having to

(01:30:11):
look from like out for just myself, it's kind of an illusion because behind the things there seems
to be this deep connection of all things and experiencing that should help people become happier
and I believe that the more people become happier the better society gets because what it seems

(01:30:32):
to be that people nowadays they just suffering their outraged and this just leads to this dysfunctional
collective psychosis where it seemed to be experiencing and by knowing that hey I can cultivate
this sense of happiness by introspection, by mindfulness, by just not taking everything so
seriously that I have my ego and my ego reacts but I can take a step back and in meditation observe

(01:30:58):
my ego and not be involved in like the pain or the all the annoying things that it's experiencing
and these things I believe would be very transformative pretty quickly because it just
re-contextualizes everything and it places the focus on every on every person because you
suddenly find yourself at the center of your own experience of a universe and you are fully

(01:31:22):
accountable, it's only you, it's not yeah but God or oh I can't have any influences, it's all
happening to me, no you are your agency is central, you are the thing that is able to change your
experiential universe, you are in full control, you have full accountability and you should behave

(01:31:44):
in such a manner. Well that's well end on that mic drop because I don't want to even follow that up
so that's absolutely fantastic James, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you and
likewise thank you very much to his reps, absolutely, yes yes and I would love to just make sure
the audience has every point of contact with you possible before we conclude today, where can

(01:32:07):
people find you, where would you direct people to go read more about your work like the sapient
cosmos and that sort of thing? So I'm on all social media as everyone but I find social media is such a
big part of the problem, so I would point people to my medium account where I have a couple of

(01:32:29):
blog posts for nearly every chapter of the book and kind of the book in a nutshell so if you either
don't want to buy the book, don't want to get involved with 770 whatever pages and just want to
yeah sort of find the essence of what this is about, the ideas who's involved like further pointing

(01:32:49):
to like yeah having the names of the ideas behind this, yeah you can check me out on medium and
find some of my blog posts maybe those are helpful to. Awesome, I'm going to open up the field to yeah
all these other people that have been sourcing from and and assembling this, yeah trying to assemble

(01:33:11):
this more sort of unified vision of idealism. Sure, well I'll make sure to link everything in the
description as well so everyone can just go find that for for you but James thank you so much again
such a pleasure and really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Take care. All right take care, bye James.
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Quantum Theory podcast. If you desire to

(01:33:34):
embark on the path of self-mastery visit Quantum Theory Podcasts.com to join a like-minded community
of purpose seekers committed to personal growth.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Physicalism vs Idealism: Is Information Fundamental? | James Glattfelder, Ph.D