Technology, Connected - Quantum Consciousness Might Just Be The Meaning Of Life

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Irreducible, a book that refuses to end where science usually stops. Federico Faggin proposes that consciousness is not a by product of matter but its foundation. The universe, he suggests, is a network of seities (quantum entities made of consciousness, agency, and identity) each trying to know itself through experience. What looks like evolution or emergence may instead be intention unfolding in physical form.Their conversation turns to the fault lines between mathematics and meaning. If information only counts bits and signals, what carries understanding? They trace the limits of Shannon’s information theory, question whether AI can ever move beyond pattern recognition, and define what Faggin calls “non-algorithmic comprehension.” Machines calculate. Humans comprehend. That difference might be the last frontier.As they close the book, Mark and Jeremy confront Faggin’s final provocation: that the distortion in human life comes from the need to feel superior—to nature, to others, to the One. Progress, he writes, must serve consciousness or it becomes perversion. The message is disarming in its simplicity. The universe is not a mechanism. It is a mind trying to remember itself.And yes, ultimately, it's a love story. Please enjoy the show. --Timestamps(00:00) Exploring Irreducible: A Journey Through Federico Fagin's Ideas(04:30) The Nature of Consciousness and the Role of Seities(09:32) Meaning, and the Human Experience(13:53) The Vibe Sphere: Music, Symbols, and Communication(18:48) Distortions in Self-Knowing(23:42) The Heart, Mind, and Gut: Centers of Knowing(27:29) What is the meaning of life? --Other ways to connect with us:⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [e-mail]

Disruptors and Curious Minds, book lovers. We've made it to the end of Irreducible by Federico Fagin. I say we've made it to the end. I don't think you ever really make it to the end of this book and what this book means. It will stay with us long after we have finished. We'll keep thinking on it, keep expanding on it, keep talking about it. You'll probably get sick and tired of us talking about it. It is absurd to think that simple organic molecules,

which represent an infinitesimal fraction of the complexity, of the simplest known bacterium could naturally self-assemble to form an organism capable of reproduction without any guidance and any idea of the intended result. How can we expect the first living and self-reproducing cell to have emerged by chance without the prior existence of a conscious and intentional idea? What is the purpose of life? What is evil? Why do we behave like machines and how do we stop behaving like machines? What is wrong with information? What is wrong with maths? What is wrong with rationality?

Chapter 13, irreducible. There is a lot here, Jeremy. Ideas as symbols, ideas before symbols, the illusion of infinity. Music, Beethoven. Where do you start? Yes, sir. Yeah, we're finally landing the plane.

And like you said, this stuff's never going to go away. I don't think I will ever move through the world and not think of the word Sadie anymore. You can't unthink that. You can't like go boop. You can't just remove that, you know, when someone drops a bomb like that on you. All right. So let's start here. This is where I kind of eased into this thing. You know, that that first quote, he's got in here, beauty is life when life reveals itself. So that's just an awesome reminder.

A beautiful life is this is this emergence, this becoming, this allowing of things to unfold and coalesce without forced effort, without expectation. There's the Wu Wei is another way to think about. about this just without there's no how meaning there's no how you just do it right so I think that was really cool to kind of start it you know a reminder that quantum is the science of interiority you know I've kind of landed on on that thing the one the one interesting part of this not the one interesting part but the one thing I want to tackle first is this idea of sadie and we talked about saidi as being this next level up that directs the flesh the flesh bucket that we are right but we are drones and

the saity is driving. But, but, you know, page two of this chapter, he says, we as sayities, we as sayities. And there's another section here. He talks about the idea of humans actually being the drivers of these inventions and these great things. Is it the human or is it the saidi? He says, we are the saidi. So are we? Or are we the, I'm confused now. I'm just, I'm just slightly confused at this point. We are the vehicle in which the Sayate experiences meaning and seeks to know itself to pass on that knowledge to the one. So it can know itself. Okay, so murky is mud still. Well, it's all about that.

The field, isn't it? The Sayate is are part of the field. We are vehicle. He's mentioned the drone analogy quite a few times. Hold up. In the glossary, like in the glossary where is Sayatee. There we go. Seity is a quantum entity with three irreducible and indivisible.

fundamental properties, consciousness, agency, and identity. The elementary Seides, which I have called consciousness units or CUs emanate directly from the one. The combination of communicating CUs, each with its own consciousness identity and free will, gives rise to the hierarchy of the Cades. By communicating with each other, the Cades create layers of symbolic and semantic organizations that increase their self-knowing. All the world, all the world is a stage, and we are the Vibesphere, directed by the Seities. It kind of falls on where you sign up to his theory of whether you are the saity or the seity is driving us.

I think for the sake of this, we can just see them as both the same thing we are seities. It's just one of those things that you have to have to just think about it as all of us being little pieces of a larger one. The larger one wants to understand and know itself. In order to do so, it deploys this physical world experiment that we live in, that increases the flywheel of self-knowing. There you have it, boom. Yeah.

And to quote Paul McCartney, all you need is love. That's where we'll get. That's what we'll get. All right. So going through my hit list here, it goes back to comprehension as the differentiating factor and these algorithmic descriptions of reality are mere approximations.

And that we have to think beyond math. to think beyond this construct that we created in order to explain the thing that created us. So like we rely on math to quantify and explain everything, but there's more to it. So that's like a theme that I kind of saw through the chapter. I like this quote, the mathematics of physics cannot erase the mystery of a universe that evolves based on free will. And then we mentioned last week about controlled and we are human desire for control. and it is likely that our need for power and control may subtly drive us to believe that we can know the future that even one does not know. So then he gets on to this idea of the meaning of life.

It turns into what is the purpose of the universe, what is the purpose of the society, what is our role, what are we here for? What is the meaning of life? And he says to comprehend our true nature, the computation and mechanistic, models that have rapidly gaining up a hand in the sciences are not sufficient. Not even the logic alone is sufficient. We need the other aspects of our nature, emotions, imagination, creativity, courage, empathy, free will, curiosity and the incredible capacity to comprehend through our lived experiences. And he goes back into it. The lived experiences is how we progress and how the one uses the say it is to progress, to grow. Yeah, I had that whole chunk of text

highlighted really big because it's it's it's it's all of these things that we that we as a society tell ourselves that aren't important and more things are important and we're going to get to the way at the very end of the chapter he talks about how you know the drivers of society need to have more of this stuff like like palmore all we need is love there's some there's some truth to that before we dig in there um he he recalls back to shannon's theory of information, which I think is really, really cool. And remember, Shannon's theory of information was more math-focused, statistical properties of information, measuring info into bits, how to transmit those bits reliably, especially over noisy signals, and then learning how to

compress those bits. But Federico Fasian basically says the purpose of information is to carry meaning, which is not at all explained in the mathematical nature. So here we go, math, and then meaning, math and meaning. Although math can have meaning, I would, I know there's some mathematicians that would, that would say that. But I thought that was an interesting back and forth there between Shannon again and what he talks about, the importance of information to be. Yeah, you should write a, you should do a show on Shannon's informational information theory. You like it. You're good on it. Yeah, meaning, everything is meaning, meaning, it's meaning all the way down. At the beginning of the book, we thought it was knowing all the way down, but it's meaning all the way.

down. A question for you, Jeremy. So I am convinced that if we disconnect from these fundamental aspects that distinguish us from our machines, we run the great risk of becoming machines ourselves, not by nature, but by choice. So for our listeners, Jerry, how do we avoid becoming machines through the prism, through the lens of imagination, creativity, courage, empathy, free will, curiosity and our incredible capacity to comprehend through our lived experiences? Yeah, I think, I think It's interesting. We turn into more mechanical beings when we tend to rely on the ego and we kind of autopilot ourselves based on shortcuts. We get into those shortcuts really quickly and we get autopileted and redirected by those shortcuts and you got to kind of pull back and slow down and

get back to the non-alorithmic comprehension that makes us different from machines. We're going to talk about non-arachrhythmic comprehension. Do you think we've been sold a lie? So, how so? Hark back to an earlier episode we did on Packing McCormack's memorandum about augmenting curiosity and creativity with AI.

Everyone says that your curiosity, your creativity, your imagination is augmented by AI. And it's too, is that dishonest? I mean, if we look, if we listen. So he lists these things. Let's say, okay, we're using AI. Somebody's listening to this. They're using AI on a daily basis. Which of these does using AI dilute?

Imagination, creativity, courage, empathy, free will, curiosity and comprehension. Okay, imagination, yes, dilutes that. Creativity, yes, it dilutes that. Courage, empathy, probably not. Empathy, could go either way, curiosity. I think it does. If you're just using AI upfront, you are diluting your imagination, your creativity and your curiosity, and I will die on that hill

for anyone who wants to come on here and argue again to me. So I've answered my own question. I might actually be in a position to argue with you on that, Mark. Go for it. Please. I've been messing around with Claude lately. Mainly the reason why I've been using Claude is because I've really aligned with

at least what Dario Amade pushes out there as what he thinks the right way to do things is. And I've just listened to a few of the Claude developers in the various episodes and shows, not ours, but we'd love to have you on ours as well. But that's why I've been messing with it. But as I was kind of unpacking the chapter, you know, I started using it as an adjunct to my thinking. You know, I still have to power it with my own questions, my own curiosity.

So I started when he was referencing in the book, calculating the, what is it, calculating the limit to infinity of a series, right, and how that's the basis of a lot of technologies. And I just needed a quick reference. I'm like, what are some good examples of that? And then, you know, navigation, GPS, digital communication, medical imaging. So that was kind of helpful. And then I asked, you know, when the Shannon thing came up, did Shannon's theory of information, wait, let's see, did Shannon's theory of information, is it that it should carry meaning?

And then it started poking around Shannon's information and meaning and all of that stuff. And it was an interesting conversation to have because who can I talk to besides you? So it's talking to it with you, talking to about it with you is super helpful. This is an interesting adjunct. Yeah, you're going to get a lot more interesting answers or at least deeper research answers from Claude than you are from me. Well, remember, no, I disagree. I disagree. Oh, about the technical stuff, maybe.

But like the insight human to human, I don't think you can replace that because we're talking about non-alorithmic comprehension, which we can do better than Claude does. And we'll get into that a little bit later in this episode. but I really have kind of embraced the idea of leaning on them to find the little interconnected patterns that I may not see initially. I don't know, I'm becoming more open to it. You know, before I was like, dude, I'm going into a cave, I'm bringing my record player,

my notebook, and all my books, and everyone else can, you know, screw off, right? But like, I've been tiptoeing into this and I don't know, it's pretty interesting, man. But you've got AI in the back of your truck. You're not driving a snow plow with AI in the front power. And you're not front loading. You're not powering head second in AI in command.

It's in the back. It's an accurate. If we're going to go that way. Before we ask the question, what is evil? And I bought my Beyond Good and Evil, companion book as well, to get into the dark side of the universe. Another question, what is the music of the spheres? What is the music of the. Vibesphere. Yeah. My gosh, dude. Such a, yeah, what a great little Pythagorean tie in there. We always use

musical references on here, right? You know, the notes and the vibrations of the music, like the frequencies, that's symbolic. And then the experience of music being very, right, whether it has words, whether it doesn't have words, it generates qualia. And that qualia requires non-alorithmic comprehension, which we have and computers don't. But what does the vibesphere sound like, man? Music together with speech provides us with a striking example of the close link that exists between the inner and the outer world, where words fail, music speaks. And I like this one. Music is perhaps the only example of what could have been, if it had not been for the invention of language, the formation of words, and the analysis of ideas, the communication of souls, Marcel Proust. Surely the music of the vibe sphere is rock and roll.

Oh, man, I don't know. I have different. I have different. My vibes sphere has different vibes depending on what's going on in it. So as we talk through that piece, Mark, he continues to hit on the misguided nature of our reliance on the symbolic to predict the laws of reality. So this goes back to like syntax predicting meaning in writing. It goes goes back to like notes predicting meaning in music and math predicting the deterministic world. So there's very, very, very consistent themes in this one. Let's dive into the Vivesphere again. Page 271, I just put the note, whoa, next to this. It just said, whoa. A fundamental class of actors that are saites. Wait, hold on.

A fundamental class of actors are the sayities that communicate with each other using live symbols. As their knowing increases, live symbols get ever more complex until they reach the level of a living cell. With the invention of living cells, the Seides could then create virtual worlds made of classical symbols in which they could have novel experiences that gradually become ever more engrossing that led to the creation of multicellular life. So, yeah. Whoa. Dude, right? Like, that's, well, yeah. The idea became before the invention, that's, so the idea, that's the meaning of the universe.

It's all, it's a thought process. Every step is a thought. Every step is knowing the say it is wanting to know themselves. And he expands on that idea, doesn't he, with the example in England. So he used an example of flooded coal mines in England. They couldn't work out how to get the coal out of the flooded mines. And then this guy, Thomas Savory, invented, eventually built and sold the first commercial steam-powered pump in 1698. And this was the spark that ignited the Industrial Revolution.

But he speaks about the idea being in there complete and full. fully formed before it's invented. So this idea, this idea that the idea comes first and that the setes, I think what he's saying is that the saetis had this idea of what consciousness and what we would become and essentially via free will set out on the, let's call it the billion year process to it. It's just a lab. It's a lab of experiments in iteration. Is this, is this Vive sphere that, that his,

his theory presents as physical reality. We're just kind of mucking about. The Sadies are kind of mucking about trying to figure themselves out in this series of interactions of us and fields. Or we are the result of interactions of fields. And man, this is like. We like talking about empathy, empathy, entropy. And so we speak, we've had a few guests, being about chaotic systems and the chaos theory

and this complex, mind-bending, chaotic nature of the universe. There's a quote in here where he kind of buries that. He says, how can we expect the first living and self-reproducing cell to have emerged by chance without the prior existence of a conscious and intentional idea? How can a hierarchy of precise subsystems self-assemble and form a living organism of incredible complexity through natural and random events that have a natural tendency to disorder? And it's that last centre that have a natural tendency to disorder. How can clarity come from chaos?

It can't, he says, that it can only come from a preconceived idea. Meaning, so entropy. The universe wants to know. Entropy, the tendency towards chaos. That's that, right? So consciousness can't, we can't come from that. Like, you can't have this clarity of order from something so chaotic. It's too, doesn't pan out.

Yeah. So going back to the idea that you mentioned, right? Creation is an idea motivated by desire, is kind of, what he starts going about with this, the idea comes first and desire is the means to execute upon that idea. So it's almost like you're a scientist in a laboratory or you're a Sadie in the vibesphere, one of the two, and you have an idea and you test it by making some things happen and seeing what, seeing how to increase your knowing. Yeah. Let's talk about non-alorithmic comprehension. I've said that a bunch of different times.

I'll leave that one for you, Jamie. Shoot. You go. Well, it's, that's, that's what he calls this interaction of the Seides. And the ability of us to do that versus a bunch of pieces and parts in a metal box, that can do things, but that can have algorithmic comprehension. He would, he would argue that I'm, that you don't use comprehension in that context. Algorithmic pattern recognition versus non-alorithmic comprehension. Comprehension is what makes us unique because we can experience qualia, we can digest qualia. And my qualia is different than your quality. And, Arseides meet in the Vivesphere, and we bang around our qualia together, and something new comes out. Computers can't do that yet.

That's where it was cool to just understand that there is a phrase now that says, well, why are we better than computers? Well, it's non-al algorithmic comprehension. Boom. Someone needs to grab that. The inner qualia experience of meaning. Shall we tiptoe into the shadow areas? Well, do me. I've got a bit of an echo there.

Just turn out. The meaning of life. the question which has perhaps inspired more late nights than any other question. I think the purpose of life is to get to know ourselves through the knowing of each other, and this also involves knowing our shadow areas. Here I speak of hatred, racism, violence, and above all, the need to be superior to others. Am I evil? The machine head, diamond head asked, am I evil?

And here, Federico Fagin explains that, if I understood this correctly, that evil or being evil, hatred, violence, racism is miscommunicating sayeties. Distortions and gaps. So this, I tell you what, man, like this, the last chapter of this book, and you know about right to know you, we've talked a little bit about all about, but everything in the last five or six pages of this book have been like very right to know you ask. And this idea of the process of knowing yourself and understanding yourself is, is by going through the steps in doing that.

And he defines it really well. So these shadow areas are gaps in distortions in the process of self-knowing. I was like, that's pretty interesting. And then he says something like the main purpose in life is to understand the origin and shape of the distortions. That's a really just interesting phrase, like the shape of the distortions, which are these gaps in the difference between something like, difference between the shadow area and the love and empathy and all the things that we need. A lot of callbacks to, you know, I've, I've referenced like Miguel Ruiz Jr., Toltec traditions, the four agreements, this idea of the dream, which is, he references here as everyone's in this kind of self-induced trance that obscures love. And I'm like, man, that's really interesting. And their themes, other people explain that in very similar ways.

And guess where it all comes from, Mark? Guess where it all comes from? Where does it all come from, Jeremy? Loose quote here, the need to feel superior to nature is a person. primary source of distortion and the root of most of our suffering. The need to feel superior to someone else, to nature, to humanity, to all of that stuff is a really interesting way to explain that. So what do you think about with the need to feel superior and what we see in society? Because it happens all around us. Yeah, well, it's that we are all the center of our own universe. We are that everybody

listening to this has that feeling of superiority. They are familiar with it. And it's very Buddhist feeling of detaching yourself from your ego. And obviously he's mentioned this before about borrowing ideas from different Eastern philosophies from different Western thought. So he's yet again perhaps borrowing ideas here. And he does mention that it's that superiority where the negative traits pop up. And what does he say? The, once the problem that has been identified, the satiety may become aware of deeper intentions and desires to determine the ego's choices since the ego shares the essence of the sayity. This strategy allows the saity to trace back and remove the underlying causes of her of her own misunderstandings.

Yeah. So back to your dashboard, the Mark Fielding's Sadie dashboard looking at Mark Fielding going, oh, he's a little, he's jumping into some discord. He's getting a little egocentric. Let's pull him back, right? Yeah. My sayities need to be more vocal. And I don't know. about this? So does this, I mean, the world is, he taught, he, he, he doesn't really say the world is full of people killing. Genocide is still happening. Children are dying every day. And I think, does this not give, not a, I think it's too, too easy to say the evil is this. The evil is these, get these gaps in distortions and self-knowing. So, okay, so tribal warfare, is that, what that's what that is. So what's happening now and can that be so easily explained as gaps in our ego

on an individual basis? Yeah, I've actually written about this quite a bit. The last, the last thing I put out there was the idea that the law of the jungle needs to be rewritten, right? The law of the jungle, this, this, this, this need to feel superior, right? So the biggest challenges are need to feel superior to other things. The law of the jungle is, you know, strongest survive, brute force is the way to do. do things. You've got to climb up the corporate ladder by stepping on people's faces and kill or be killed, right? But if you think about it, the jungle is one of the most collaborative, interconnected subsystems of nature that that's around, right? If you think about like, we talk about my silly

network and trees being connected and being able to communicate through each other and that sort of thing, the law of the jungle needs to be rewritten to focus on that, the connection, the collaboration of what we can all do kind of together. But do we have faith that humanity is open and willing to get over our need to feel superior over other things? Because that gets written and co-opted in this idea of if we don't do that, someone else is going to kick our ass. Like if we, if I don't, if I don't, if I don't make myself superior to Mark, Mark's going to kick my ass and take my resources and I'm going to die. Like that's at the most fundamental nature of these disconnects between people, between, between, groups of people between societies and countries and nations and all of that, that's where I

land on all this. And when he said that the biggest obstacle, the biggest gap, the biggest distortion that we have is this need to feel superior. That is really the root of all the shit. Okay. Okay. So he lands the plane on the three fundamental centers, the head, the heart, the gut. It sounds like a podcast by Joe Rogan now. We're going to talk about gut health. Complexity of the gut. Complexity of the guts. And the head center, our intuitive and creative powers, our highest mental abilities, the heart, the center of our feelings, desires, intentions of empathy, love, joy, passion,

curiosity, honesty, ethics, and self-fulfillment. And the gut is the focus of our physical actions, at least understood of our centers. And head, heart, and gut may also refer to three different types of knowing, because we can learn mentally, emotionally and interactively. Emotional knowing is mainly knowing from within. Mental knowing is knowing from without and from within. And the heart is the deepest source of our human non-alguidymic capacity. There you have it.

Whoever goes to the end of his heart knows the nature of man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the best books, not only, like we said, stab you in the eye with ice picks, they also are the most brilliant of thought starters. They're not solutions. They're not maps. They're a compass.

Shout back to Julio Latino again. They're a compass. And this book is definitely a waypoint on the journey to figure out ourselves. And I thought it was really, really interesting. But at the very end, it's kind of like he, as he's walking out of the room, this, you know, when he talks, he's presenting this book, as he walks out of the room. Mark, by the way, two things will fix everything. Emphatic science and rational spirituality. I got to go.

I got a meeting. I'll be back soon. I'll leave it to you to unpack that. But that's almost like something to carry on. I think what do you think about when you think about emphatic science? I can't say. I think about emphatic science very often. I think that all you need is love.

And it's so twee. It's such a twee way to end the book that that is essentially the message. And that consciousness, as we say the end of every book club for this book, regardless of whether your consciousness is fundamental to the universe or an emergent property of the neurons buying in your brain, the heart is a symbolic center of intention and all you need is love. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not the, you're not going to get the answers of everything through here.

You're going to get thought starters. You're going to get ideas to continue to mash around in the Vibsphere, which I'm grateful for. There are a lot of things that I never would have considered or thought about that our host and author, Federico Fajun, has presented us. Here's a, here's a last little tie-in. We looked at Dario Amadez Machines of Love and Grace. We've been kind of talking about this humanity AI discussion in what's going to happen and how is it going to be used and how is it going to affect us.

This quote by Tesla that he has here at the very end is really cool to kind of land the plane on. Progress must seek to improve the human race. If it's not, it's a perversion. I like that one. I'll leave you with Cicero. If you remove consciousness, everything else is nothing. There you have it. That's a wrap.

Federico Fajin, irreducible. I recommend the read. If you don't want to read it, listen to all of our chapter breakdowns. Comment. Let us know what you're thinking. And let's continue the conversation because there's some important stuff in here that needs to be continued to unpacking the Vivesphere. We need to make a shirt called the Vivesphere.

We do. Thank you to Federico's the life's work. I think it's an important book. We only read important books, don't we, on thinking on papers. If you've ever questioned the lunacy of super, intelligence, if you've ever wondered whether AI can truly be conscious and aware and what the ramifications might be for humanity, if it ever does become. If you've ever wondered about your own consciousness, about when you wake up in the morning and you remember who you are, where does

that come from? You should read this book. There's a lot of questions in it, a lot to think about. Read it. There you have it. Stay tuned for the next book. Be curious. Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.