Technology, Connected - Federico Faggin Says The Universe Is Quantum Consciousness

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Is quantum based panpsychism a valid explanation of our experience? Is the universe made of conscious units know as seities? Does the universe want to know itself? Federico Faggin thinks so. It's a book club, captain, but not as we know it. Please enjoy the show. And share with a curious friend. Why classical physics broke under its own weightWhat quantum mechanics tells us about the nature of realityWhy observation, not code, might be the missing pieceWhat separates comprehension from computationAnd why AGI might be chasing the wrong target--Timestamps(00:00) Exploring Consciousness and Reality(02:14) Federico's Background(03:15) The Evolution of Scientific Thought(05:59) The Nature of Quantum Reality(08:01) Understanding Axioms and Mathematics(10:41) The Interconnectedness of Existence(12:20) The Role of Measurement in Reality(17:44) The Nature of Particles and Consciousness(21:01 Non-Locality and Quantum Entanglement(24:39 Consciousness: The Knowing-Existing Loop(28:46) Machines vs. Conscious Beings(32:46) The Intersection of Consciousness and Reality--Learn more and join the book club: ⁠www.thinkingonpaper.xyz⁠--Catch up on the next episodes of the Irreducible Book Club on YouTube: https://youtu.be/A0Ok3ObtwSk?si=n_pSgA_JIOS-BRKG

Disruptors and Curious Minds. You're tuned into the Thinking on Paper Book Club. I'm Mark. This is Jeremy. And we are on book number seven. It's a new book. We're reading Irreducible by Federico Fajner, Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature. And we're going deep. What is consciousness? And once we've wrestled with that, can machines be conscious? Is the AGI superintelligence rhetoric actually meaningless? We're going to find out it's a heck of a book. Only in the last 100. years with the advent of quantum physics have been made great strides in understanding the nature of reality. We have in fact discovered that matter, which seems solid and compact, is instead made of vibratory energy. During the last 20 years, we have then understood that everything is made up of quantum information. However, there's still no theory capable of giving us a vision of the world that is consistent with both general relativity and quantum physics. In this book, I put forward the hypothesis that the universe has been conscious and had free will forever. The whole time.

The whole time. So over to you. Your first impressions of Chapter 1 of Irreducible. First of all, I'm very pleased that this does not have a book jacket and it's a paperback. So I'm excited about that. Number two, disclaimer, you listeners are fully experiencing two guys jumping in full vulnerability in the beginner mind, a beginner's mind. I think the beginner's mind is an important place for all of us to be.

I want to start with some things I pulled out of the preface and the intro. This idea that a pure state of quantum could actually represent consciousness. It's really interesting because consciousness is pretty funky, right? No one's figured it out yet. Quantum is pretty funky. Quantum is pretty funky. No one's figured it out yet. But here he says the pure state of quantum could represent consciousness because it's

is a definite and private state, okay? And what is known as qualia are these private sensations that give meeting. And the idea of knowing is existing, existing is knowing this little, this little loops. I mean, there's no answer there, but there's an interesting signpost as we walk down the path of this book and kind of go, okay, that's, that's pretty interesting. There you have it. Let's talk about the guy. Let's talk about the author. Pretty interesting, dude. Hopefully we can have him on the show. But he invented the original Silicon Gate technology, the M-OS Silicon Gate technology. He also, by the way, invented the world's first microprocessor. This is not lightlifting. This is beyond even the Wright brothers. This is beyond, this might be

harnessing the power of electricity. We're in, we're in the realm, but super interesting guy. Did I miss anything about the author that we need to set the stage with? He's to blame and to thank. We will both thank and blame him for where we are. And like what he said about at the beginning of mind, I'm going to go back to that. I think you covered everything on Frederico. We'll ask him himself when he comes on the show. Can I touch on one quick thing as a transition, a little bit about the author into what inspired him to jump into this book? So a couple quick things, he wasn't fully fulfilled, getting in the deepest depths of computer science and information theory.

We studied neuroscience and started asking himself really interesting questions. like, A, could a computer actually be conscious? And when he figured out he couldn't convert computer signals into qualia, he was like, okay, well, I need to maybe take a different path. There was a midnight trip to the fridge. He went to get a glass of water. He went back to bed. And all of a sudden had this fascination or fascinating realization that he is a little piece of the bigger picture. I'm not sure if there were extracurriculars involved or maybe just some very deep perspective. But that led to your comment before the universe is alive and was always conscious. That's the hypothesis. Chapter 1, Fire away. I had the same realization the first time I did LSD. There you go. We are but one.

There is one universe. We are just quantum quality in the whole existence of time and consciousness. This book is more difficult than some of the books we've read in Book Club. I'm keeping a glossary of words which come in and out of this. There's a lot of words which I understand on a surface level, but I couldn't stand up on stage and explain. So I'm keeping a glossary of those. The chapter one begins with a quick history of homo sapiens. We've been here before it explains the nomadic beginnings, the evolution into agriculture, the importance of writing that developed into rational thinking. We get to the scientific method. Anyone who's familiar with the thinking on paper book club will recognize a lot of the names. It's the same old gang, isn't it? We've got

Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Pierre, Simone Laplace. We've got Plank, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, that it's the usual crowd. And I think chapter one begins with the scientific method and the 19th century thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, energy fields eventually. And this idea at the end of the 19th century that science, physics, had been completed. Game over. Game completed. Quote, Lord Kelvin, there is nothing new left to describe. in physics, the hubris, the arrogance. Why don't we jump in there?

Love it. I love it. And I think while we've seen this familiar journey, this familiar stop, it's kind of like coming home. Again, you see all your buddies, you see Heisenberg, you see Einstein, you see Boar, you see Max Planck, and we go through these bits that we've heard before. Every time we learn a bit more, every time it goes a little bit deeper into our long-term memory banks. I think that's absolutely correct. And it also sets the stage really nicely. I did pulling a fun quote out of here. Those listeners who've been with us for a while, no, I have a program called Right to Know You

that uses writing to understand yourself in the world. And I got to give a shout out to this quote here. Writing, and this is in reference to the scientific method, the process of discovery, quote, writing was a necessary step in the development and perfecting of cooperative thinking, logic, and rationality. So we have to write.

We have to write. AI can't write for us. We're going to lose the ability to critically think to discover things on our own. So there's a quick shout. So we moved through this evolution of classical physics. Oh, hey, everything's done. We figured it all out. Lord Kelvin's like, we're done.

Mike drop. We're out. But then all of a sudden, some interesting things start happening with black body radiation and trying to figure out deeper, smaller things, right? Yeah, there was three anomalies, even though they're all on state going, we've done it. We've completed physics. was the black body radiation problem, the photoelectric effect, and the Lorentz transformations, which they couldn't answer. And as they're all on saying, we've discovered it all. In fact,

physics is crumbling and melting and dispersing and disintegrating around them. The fields and particles are standing backstage just going, excellent, right? Yeah, exactly. So page 29, special relativity reference, I thought was really interesting that the why why this path was traveled down was a motive was motivated according to the author was motivated by the desired to explain why ether doesn't exist so we back in the day we thought there was this stuff that we just walked through all the time called ether and they were trying to debunk it yeah and they max plank Einstein Schrodinger heisenberg think between them answer the black body, photoelectric and Lorenz problems.

And the result of that is, as Federico calls it, the end of certainty, everything becomes blurred, everything becomes quantum. And then Godel is whispering in the distance, P.S., this whole thing's incomplete, whispering from a cafe in Vienna somewhere as he sipped coffee and talks with an actor or a playwright. He's like, yo, this whole number thing is a little bit incomplete. But let's talk about axioms. All right. So we get to that.

Can I just do something I've always wanted to do? Please. And that's to explain the difference between special relativity and general relativity. And the theory I would talk about special relativity first, according to it, no material object with mass M greater than zero could accelerate and reach a speed equal to C because its mass would increase without limits as its relative speed approach to C light speed. Okay. Okay, so you read that now explain it to me.

So that's just the theory. You can't go, nothing can go to the speed of light except light because as you increase speed, your mass increases. And as you approach the speed of light, your mass will become infinite. And you can't, there comes a point where you just can't go any faster. Wait, so if you actually run so fast beyond the speed of light, you will get fatter. Approaching the speed of light. Interesting. So Flash, so in effect, if Flash to Flash Gordon episodes were right, he ran.

kind of past the speed of light, I think, right? Why wasn't he, why didn't he balloon up to like 8 million pounds? They probably didn't have the right advisor on set. Yeah, that's got to be it. Well, we're happy to help, guys, if you're ever writing science fiction, pull in thinking on paper and we'll help get it right. All right, so GR. Yeah, GR.

So the gravitational force could not be explained as a geometric effect on space time due to the mass of objects. Consequently, when a planet orbits a star, it actually moves in a straight line. But since the surrounding space is curved by the enormous mass of the star, the planet ends up moving in an elliptical orbit around it. Space time tells matter how to move. Matter tells space time how to bend.

Mike drop. John Wheeler, thank you for simplifying that. There's always great Wheeler quotes in physics where he's like, yo, here's what it really means. He's kind of Feynmanish, right? I think it's really cool. Great explanation there. Can we dive into axioms now?

Yes, please. Tell us what an axiom is. Man. So how mind-boggling is this? So we view mathematics as pretty tried and true to rely on to explain the world. Equations can explain waves, can explain how fast something moves relative to something else. But all of these things are based on axioms, which are these self-evident statements that don't need to be verified. self-evident statements that don't need to be verified.

So objective math, this is what I wrote down, objective math is based on the subjective acceptance of self-evident axioms. So the root of math and these equations or these theories, these proofs are based on these axioms, which are rules of the thing that we're trying to figure out. But we make up the rules. And he goes to this in chapter two that we can dive into, but the world makes the rules.

Like nature makes the rules, and we're using these axioms to try and figure out nature that we make up. So there's an inherent disconnect in that. You kind of look at it and go, well, I thought math was pretty solid. But it is solid, but it's a little mind-blowing. Yeah, math, anything about maths in these kind of books, I just, I read it and I accept it. I don't have the mathematical brain to work out. What is the result of that? what's the result on the nature of physical reality and the nature of quantum reality?

Well, how, how trustworthy can the outputs be of what we're trying to figure out? If the axioms are self-evident, meaning that they haven't been proven, it's just like, oh, Mark, just trust me. Trust me on these. And by the way, mathematicians, like, if we're wicked off base, please come on the show and help us. But that's, it's like a little sprinkling of doubt before we get into these next chap. we haven't figured all this stuff at.

And all the math that we even know might even be a little bit up for interpretation. So we're macro. We're big macro. Let's shrink ourselves down and get to the quantum level. And again, it's all about vibes. We're not hippies in the corner of the beach, you know, viving out. But like literally everything around us is the result of a field vibrating. Are you ready to go to quantum?

Chapter 2, the nature of quantum reality. The nature of quantum reality. All right. I just like the last line of chapter one, the real world outclasses any attempt to completely describe it. It's a great quote. I wrote it down too. And it's like trying to translate when you hear like you're sitting,

you're sitting and listen to like a great song that you just love. And you're trying to tell a buddy about it, about why you love it. And I always tend to fumble around with things with that. You know, sometimes I'll try to explain the musicality of the song and why these things happen, but it's really, it's really something that you can't explain

because it resonates with me different than it resonates with you. And I don't know, again, musical reference, ding, ding, ding, let me pop out of the record. Where we all victims have our own consciousness, our own university. Can I ask you just an aside here? Okay, so for people who are just listening to this,

I'm holding up my copy of irreducible. And as you can see, that's a lot of highlights. There's a lot of highlights in it. Now, how do you approach the highlights I highlight things I find interesting. I highlight things which I don't understand, and I highlight things which I think are important to say during the show.

I can almost highlight every sentence in chapter 2. How do you organize and work with your highlighting when you're thinking on paper at Book Club, Jeremy? I'm more of a pencil underline right in the margin kind of guy, and I try to at the end of every chapter just write some notes to myself. I'm actually pretty conscious if I catch myself, like, and I'm underlining, I'm underlying. I'm right.

I'm underlining way too much stuff. Like the underlines need to pop for me. But I don't want to miss anything. So it's tough. It's a tough. Listeners, let us know how you study books, how you highlight, how you take notes, how you write, how you synthesize everything at the end. Because I think I need some help. Because the nature of quantum reality, finally in 1975, the standard model of quantum physics emerged according to which there are six quarks for the strong interactions, six leptons.

Each quark and each leptone have an antiparticle. therefore all that exists are space time described by general relativity and 17 quantum fields described by quantum field theory we're back we're back jeremy we're back quarks glue on soup i wonder if mity okaku would come on the show and talk to us about this book instead of his or carlo raveli that would be interesting to get those guys thinking about this stuff um all right mark i got got some news your basis of reality is incorrect you think it's this beautiful continuity of things happening all over the place and this very analog experience, but actually it's very granular and indeterminate. These little ons and offs happening all around us as opposed to these nice big waves of experience. You know that experience of oneness that he described with his epiphany in his bedroom when he was in the fridge and the more chemical one states that many people experience?

And all the electrons in our body and in the rest of the universe are waves or quantum states of the same quantum theory. of electrons. Each quantum wave describes the superposition of the possible states of an electron with the probability is specified by the square of the amplitude of this of math. So there is one field and we are all part of it. It's really interesting to think about when you feel so diametrically opposed to someone else's opinion, this is the stuff that excites me, man, because you can always say, oh man, we're all made of the same stuff, but we literally are these discrete orchestrations of electrons in the universe that are caused to perform at a certain time in a certain time. this specific arrangement.

We are all but superposition on the one quantum field. Exactly right. And as he says, and does, if the tree falls down in the forest, does it make a noise? No, it doesn't. I think we can categorically answer that. No, it doesn't because particles do not exist as we imagine them for they can only be described as probability ways that allow us to predict the probability of all possible states in which they could be detected.

And yet the specific state that will manifest is not predicted by the sea when the collapse of the wave function occurs. In other words, our measurement, our interaction with something is the only way that something comes into our conscious mind and vis-à-vis existence. So let's let's let me go musical analogy again and please for the love of all things, all electrons in the in the universe that is conscious. Someone please correct me if this is wrong. Come on the show and have a chat. We are open to to development and critique. But I think about it Like, let's go back to musical reference again. Oh, you have a guitar sitting on the wall.

You have an e-string, right? So it's a string of certain thickness that has a certain tension on it that's supposed to resonate at a certain frequency when you hit it. So if you walk past a guitar on a wall and you have all six strings, different resonance frequencies, right? But you just go by, you go and you hit them, what occurs is an interaction, right? So if you think about the guitar and the strings is a field,

and me interacting with the field and the result of that interaction is this collection of frequencies that come out. I'm thinking that is a similar analogy. What do you think? To existence, to the stuff that actually manifests seeming hard and physical. So the string on the guitar vibrates and the sound that you hear are the particles. Because particles don't exist,

according to chapter two right particles don't exist they are they only appear when fields are excited so consider the guitar and the strings of field consider me running my finger across the strings exciting the field and the result of that you know the e note resonant frequency that comes out and the sound waves that come out because of that is like a particle okay and if you're playing the guitar and after the show you play your guitar and your east wing makes this sound i'm not listening to it. For me, are you really playing the guitar? Is that particle really, does it really exist? The fact that I'm not measuring it or I'm not interacting with it, but you are, is that the kind of, the consciousness is basically in this book, I think he's saying that consciousness is not a byproduct of the brain.

It's created and integral to reality, the reality of the universe. And so everyone's experience of it is unique. Local qualia, right? Going back to qualia, like if I run my hand through the strings, what I perceive as the observer of that, I create a discrete qualia, I think, in my mind, in my perception of knowing and existing. And I capture that in that qualia. I don't even know how to get my brain around, like, all the qualia is happening at once, but like I'm just trying to get my head around the local version of that. So let's roll back into something more tangible. really interesting. When observed, this is talking about particles, right? And particles are not things. They're instances of interactions, which is really interesting. I've read a lot of quantum stuff,

and I've never thought about that in that way. But quote, when observed, the particle behaves like a little ball, but this does not mean it's a little ball. So we think we look at these science books and we see like electrons and they're like circular and they're like there's the electron, but the electron is actually a blur in this instance. And then only only, only, coaxed out into appearance by the collapse of a wave. And another interesting quote, a quantum particle behaves like an extremely complex system. Quote, that was really, that's really an interesting thing to think about because our mind wants to go, oh, it's a quantum particle. It's like this thing. It's a, it's a ball, right? It's a ball. But it really has so much complexity in itself

that, you know, a universe of complexity within itself that, I don't know, quotes like that kind of help me get my head around a lot of this stuff better. Yeah, I agree. So continue with your quote, the bit that helped me a little bit to think differently about a lot of the things we've been speaking about of late. When it is finally observed, the particle always behaves like a little ball, but this does not mean it is a ball. What is it then?

No one knows. When a quantum particle is not observed, it cannot be located in space like a classical particle. Otherwise, it could not pass through both slits at the same time. What crosses both slits is a probability wave, which is. a representation of the particle, not the particle as a wave. In other words, we know next to nothing about what a particle is when it is not measured. The probability wave does not describe the particle, but what we can know about the particle when we measure it. There you have it. The very foundation of, we don't understand the very foundations of nature. So non-locality gets brought up again, right?

Non-locality and superposition. This points back to Michi Okaku's book where we talk about communication between two entangled quantum particles can be faster than the speed of light. And he talks about this as quote unquote knowledge between the two particles as near instantaneous or instantaneous. In Michoudou, Kako, he described it as nonsense, didn't he? It's nonsense that's transmitted and so therefore it's not. Well, this is the interesting piece is this. So our host and author talks about this as being knowledge between two parts. So maybe someone outside the entangled relationship between the particles, it sounds like gibberish, but between the particles, it's near instantaneous or instantaneous knowledge.

That was really interesting in the difference between it being gibberish and it being actual knowledge. Entanglement is telling us that space time may not be what we generally imagine it to be. Cool themes in this too that chapter two he keeps setting the stage for is like what he's doing with his research is dealing with The interiority, interiority of reality. The interiority of reality. I thought that was really interesting. Just before you say that again, I just want to speak to you about the entanglement problem again.

As you said, superposition. They're entangled across space, time. It could be millions of kilometers, hundreds of light years, and one changes. The other one changes. And then the only way to explain this phenomenon is that the state of the two systems cannot exist prior to the measurement. it must be created during the measurement process, which for me removes any questions about the speed of light

and how the information and how these two particles in superposition know that the other one, one is minus five, the other one is plus five, because they don't exist. It doesn't exist until it's measured. So it's not a question of it's moving faster than the speed of light or not. It's about it doesn't exist. So it doesn't have to move until it's measured.

The measurement thing is funky too when you think about it. Like when we talk about measurement, there's not like a dude with a clipboard, like standing around waiting for particles to potentially come into exist and then categorize. We say, yep, got another one here. Yep, got another one here. There's measurement is like a, it's not an actual measurement. It's like, it was Carlo Revelli in the order of time?

How did he describe it? He had the same point, didn't he? He said, measurement's not the right word. It's interaction or. Maybe that's where I'm getting it from. Yeah. We've had this conversation before. Yes.

encangled through time. Yes, that's right. That's right. All right. So we talked about particles only appear. They're not things. Only when fields are excited or interacted with. Particles are states of fields, not things.

This is an interesting sentence. There's no privileged position for particles. That was really weird. And in human nature, there's so much to do with hierarchy of things. And, you know, to have the power position over someone else. And we're climbing ladders and trying to get above people and trying to control as much as we can control at the root of all things, there's no privileged position for particles. Like, wow.

Yeah, they don't even exist. They don't even exist. I totally exist. None of it exists. Wrangling entangled superposition particles. Let's try and get this back to consciousness, life, computers and human nature. Okay, so this listeners, Jeremy in my way of trying to understand just what. what Federico Fasgin is trying to say.

Towards the end of chapter two, he starts to drop the questions, which I think are incredibly important. What is it that makes us know? Does a robot know? And then he talks about Descartes. I think, therefore I am. How do we know anything?

What does it all mean for consciousness? What is consciousness? Jeremy. Well, it's the knowing existing loop, right? To know is to exist. To exist is to be able to know. To be able to know is to know. Yeah, my head was spinning a little bit related to that. But as we get to some of his questions, I think they're super cool. Like there's there's one where we talk about the difference between kind of a conscious entity or something natural versus something machine like and created. So this was his reference between humans and machines. And he asked the question, have you ever seen a computer give birth to another computer with software and hardware? And in that discussion, he was comparing computer.

to living cells because living cells that's exactly what they do. They give birth to another version of the machine that is the cell. But yeah, he puts like this big thing. You see how 2000, you know, up on a hospital table, get ready to give birth to how 2001. And it's like, yeah, that's a very good point, very good

question. Well, he uses the analogy of driving a car and I'm going to read extensively from here because I think, I don't think, I know. He explains it in a level of clarity that I can never do. So rather than me fumbling through what I think, I'm just going to read what he says. I prefer your fumblings, Mark. Descartes got you to ergo some. That is, I think, for it, therefore I am, isn't it? That's Descartes? I think so, yeah. Yeah. I am so.

A machine, on the other hand, knows without knowing that it knows and without even knowing what it means to know. Its knowing is unconscious and mechanical and cannot be called knowledge. It is simply information made up of meaningless symbols, which can be mechanically linked to some other deterministic information or action. The robot's actions do not involve free and conscious choices made by the robot as an independent entity. And then he says, I should point out that we too have the same type of automatic behaviour as robots in many situations. For example, when we drive a car, consciousness performs the function of supervisor of the mechanical processes of our body. That's, you know, you're driving, you don't know, you're driving, suddenly you wake up and you're home.

We don't wake up, but suddenly you're home, I don't remember driving. Consciousness, yeah, it does not contribute to driving, however, unless it is necessary to intervene, in which case it takes over the conditional autonomy it granted to the body. It is the consciousness that understands the situation and therefore knows when to intervene, and this makes all the difference between a robot and a human being. In a robot, there is no conscious self-reflection that it's independent of the algorithmic program and can thus change the decisions hardwired in the program. In a robot, there is no self-witness. In a machine, there is no pause for reflection between symbols and action, because only within our consciousness can we find the meaning of symbols,

a possible doubt and the free will to choose differently than the dictates of the mechanism. I think that what that means is, screw you, you, Val. Oh my gosh. Well, all right, I'm going to call question to one part of that. In machines, there is no pause between symbols and action. So I get that. Like, there's a lot of algorithms or if this, then that. you pre-program this mechanical thing to happen, just like you would have a simple lever that if

you push this thing one way, the wheels of the car are going to turn this way. If I do this, this result will happen. It's more symbolic than semantic. But we talk about now this whole idea of AI reasoning that we actually have to tell the computer to pause. There's all these new models that are out now that are working on this AI reasoning component. And you actually entered the prompts and say, take a moment to think about this. So is that statement accurate moving forward? Well, let's ask our guest next week who builds language models and will be able to tell us. Wonderful. Even if in this reasoning and you're asking it, it's not leaving the, it's not leaving the dictate. It's not leaving what it's told to do. It's not leaving the algorithm. Yeah, maybe so.

Well, back to the car analogy, driving down the road and there's a mechanical nature to the repeatable process of me putting my hands on the wheel, be putting my right foot on the gas pedal, me looking at the lines, keeping me in the road. But there's also this idea, if I'm driving through a wooded area, I'm conscious of thinking about deer that could potentially come on the road. Just because of my previous experience, seeing deer creep up on roads. And so maybe that's a way to think about the mechanical versus the conscious example in that regard. Working together. So the hole is more than the some of its parts, Mark, according to quantum reality, which is really interesting. So, you know, the reductionist view of you look at the whole big thing and you carve it up into little parts and

all of these parts do that thing. And that's what we do as humans. We want to, want to chop things up, figure out the little pieces, understand how the pieces work together and then put it back together and call it knowledge of the hole. What if the hole is more than just the little pieces? And I think that's what he starts to tease up here. Always has been. I like the end or I don't. don't like the end. I'm not sure whether I like the end of chapter two. In real time, this is Mark changing his mind in real time. Wow. He starts to sound like me when I was 17 on that LSD trip. He starts to sound like a poet. He starts to sound like... Carlo Rovelli. Yeah. And he, um, it's beautiful. And I love what's behind it. But let me just

find it. He quotes Matt McGandy. I don't need to go far to look for the sacred cave. I carry it inside me. Why do we want to give credit to those who want to convince us otherwise? We need to wake up from this sort of trance and trust instead our inner voice, which whispers the words of Richard back in a bridge to eternity. Intuition does not lie when it whispers to us. You are not dust. You are magic. Maybe. Here it is. So, why, why, if they are. Man, I'm not mad at the intermixing of that kind of thinking and very tangible science. Let's call back, hey, Julio, where are you at, man? You know, this is the nexus, right?

The tech in science and art and philosophy and, you know, I don't know, just all of these things. You have to talk about it together because it's too complex to reduce into the science bucket because even math is built on potentially subjective rules that we create. And mind you, the physical world is not our work. So the world could be very different from what we think is self-evident. I think therefore I am. I think I know nothing. I know nothing.

There is nothing. Looking ahead, can I ask you, do you think he's trying to answer a question that can't be answered? So I take that question as, I don't know, we don't know everything. You're acting like Lord Kelvin now, that everything's been figured out. So you know that it can't be figured out. So why bother figuring it out? Is that a no then? I think so.

I think you got to like, no one's figured it all out. So any path to try to figure it all out, especially from a guy who studied neuroscience, made the first microprocessor Silicon Gate technology. He's in both of these worlds, which I think is going to be really interesting to see how he connects all the diet. It's a big endeavor, man. And it's the mission, the research, the idea, it's a big endeavor. What happens if we do work out and we can scientifically prove what consciousness is? What happens then?

Then we might have to go to Neil Bostrom's. Is it Neil Bostrom? That's super intelligent. No, he's got a new book. He's a new book called Utopia, something about AI Utopia or something, meaning here's what happens when we've solved all the big problems. So maybe we'll have to answer that question after. we read his new book in the next book club.

Consciousness, life, computers, and human nature. Sorry, listeners, we've gone on for a long time here, which I knew we would because it's consciousness. It's a good thing we can edit these now. It is a good thing we can edit these now. All right, land in the plane, Mark, from my perspective, nice little tiptoe into the journey. A couple of great questions to think about,

a couple of great quotes that spark new understanding of quantum mechanics and theories that we've already kind of had loose understanding. I feel a little bit more solid with that stuff. The math and axiom thing is kind of a mindblower. So any mathematicians talk to me about the use of subjective rules to define objective reality. I'd love to understand and unpack that a little bit. Yeah, me too.

There you have it. Join us next week for Chapter 3, The Nature of Machines. And listener, if I could leave one little piece of thinking on paper insight for you at the end of the show. And that is, if you're listening to us, You are conscious. So go outside and enjoy it. Go find somebody. Go find something.

Go do something and wield your consciousness with all the gusto of someone who's very fortunate to be conscious. Wow. That's a mic drop, dude. That should be a short clip right there. There you go. Love it. Thinking on paper. XYZ.

Be curious. Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.