The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - David Chalmers and Al Lubel

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at NYU.  He is president-elect of the American Philosophical Association.  He is known for his formulation of the "hard problem" of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard's play, The Hard Problem, and the idea of the "extended mind", which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds. Al Lubel is stand up comic and a regular at The Comedy Cellar. His special, Mentally Al, is available on YouTube.

🎵 This is Live from the Table! Coming to you from the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network. My intro is a little off today. I'm a little out of practice. I haven't done in a couple of weeks. Anyway, this is Dan Natterman, back from Aruba, tan and ready to go, here with Noam Dorman, back from the Bahamas, not quite as tan and maybe not quite as ready to go. Perrie Lashenbrand is with us. She is our producer and she has become

an on-air personality as well. I remind her, by the way, she is not authorized to change the topic, but she is authorized to chime in on topics already underway. We also have with us Al Lubell. Al Lubell was with us a few weeks ago, but he made a special request to come today

because we're having David Chalmers on. He's a very well-known philosopher and Al's a fan, and so he wanted to come on, so we invited him, and we're happy to have you here, Al Lubell. Thank you for having me. And Al's appearance on our show a couple weeks ago was one of the great comedians.

I really enjoyed having you on. Really? Yeah, really. What did you like about it? Because you're intelligent and you're in the moment. It was just a good conversation. It was like you were like, I don't know, some people are not necessarily on the same wavelength as everything

being discussed, but you totally were. Oh, you mean on the podcast? Yeah, yeah. I thought you meant as singing. Oh, when you sang? No, when you sang was great too, but I felt bad about that because I didn't learn the song like I was supposed to. What song did you sing? I know you like old jazz, right? I do, but I did a Broadway show tune

to Dream the Impossible Dream. That's a good one. By the way, a reminder, Al Lubell has a documentary out about his life called Mentally Al available on YouTube. Noam, I have a quick, just a quick thing I wanted to say. I'm going back to Vegas next month,

and the airfares to Vegas are, I don't know, I forgot what you're giving the comedians as an airfare kind of, you know, reimbursement. Stipend, gaslight. But it is, the airfares to Vegas are absolutely bananas. I couldn't find anything, unless I took a red eye and I just. Take a red eye. I ain't doing no fucking red eye.

It was like $700. I did the unthinkable. I fucking bought a Spirit Airlines ticket. Oh, that's not a good idea. What's horrible about Spirit Airlines? Well, it's Spirit Airlines. It's not a great. Like a bus.

The one advantage is they leave out of the Marine Air. I have to do a layover in Texas, but they leave out of the LaGuardia Airport Marine Air Terminal, which is amazing because it's like its own little... Is there something about the date which is in high demand? I don't know. The last couple times I went to Vegas,

last time I went it was expensive. I paid with miles, but I paid a lot of miles. But yeah, Vegas, for some reason, is really expensive. I don't know if it's a crapshoot. I think you always lose. You might win at craps. Anyway, so just to let you know, and what you choose to do with that information, of course, is your business. What is so much worse about Spirit Airlines?

The seat is pretty much the same seat you're going to sit on. Well, the last time I took Spirit, the seat was even less legroom than normal on an airline. I was much taller than you. You were just feeling bad for the possibility I'd have to. Also, their reliability has been spotty, but I hear they're better now. So we'll see. But it's very much what you're used to because this height thing has always intrigued me because you get used to a certain amount of

leg room at your height, and then you fly in a plane that has less leg room, and you find it quite uncomfortable, but what you're experiencing actually is what somebody Al's height always experiences and has become normal, status quo. Well, Al, I assume you do exit row

or more space. I try to do that, but the more space costs 100 extra bucks. And sometimes I'll do it if it's like an eight-hour flight. It's worth it. Noam, you and Perrielle were going at it. Well, I don't want to start. So first of all, gaslighting, just so you know, Perrielle, gaslighting is when you—

Well, Perrielle asked Noam not to gaslight her on this episode. No, not on the episode. So Perrielle and I—this is such a stupid story, but she's really so crazy, it's almost like you should be able to use this craziness to become famous. You're going about your career all the wrong way. This is really your special talent.

You're fucking psychotic. So, I mean, she behaves in real life the way a genius Emmy award winning writer would write a character. Like who came up with Georgette on Mary Tyler Moore? Like some,

some really off the wall character. That's exactly who she actually is. We're driving down and it's like 10 fire. And no, see, that's what I'm talking about. That is absolutely categorically, not even remotely close to the truth.

11. Tell the truth. 11? Tell the truth. There were like 50 fire engines. No, not 50 fire engines. You can't fit 50 fire engines. There were like 10 fire engines. Literally like 10 fire engines. Can you guys come to an agreement on it?

Because there's no way there's 50. I'm telling you. 50? There were like 50 all down the line. There's a difference between 50 and like 50. When you say like 50, how many do you mean? 30. Hold on.

I think, I believe that there's a- There were, I mean, it was like an obscene number. It was abnormal. It was jarring. Obscene? You mean something sexual about it? Pornographic? The Supreme Court would rule against that number of fire trucks?

It was jarring. Jarring? Sexually jarring? Maybe if the firemen were hot. Wow, that's not unlikely because fire is hot. That's true. And firemen are hot. So anyway, I think I can find a picture of it here.

But I'm going to go with 10. No, there were more than 10. Well, anyway, can we move the story along? Is that possible? Here's a picture. This is my son. We don't have good internet here. It looks like exactly 10 fire engines.

It's going to take a while to come in because of good internet. Anyway, I said, where's the fire? fire engines. It's going to take a while to come in because of good internet. But anyway, so and I said, well, where's the fire? I see a lot of fire engines. What would you think? Fire, right? So we hear glass falling and we hear glass falling from...

You see glass. It's like crescendoing down out of the sky. Crescendoing. And it's so loud and it It's like crescendoing down out of the sky. Crescendoing? And it's so loud. And it's just like it keeps falling. So there's glass falling from? Like a lot. Okay.

Can we agree on that? It was like three instances of glass smashing. And I couldn't see it because I couldn't see it. But she was able to see it. But I don't think seeing it adds any more makes it any more believable hearing I heard it but when you see it did it give off gaslight

so so it was really scary she's like what do you think it is what do you think is going on I said I think it's a fire she said well are those gunshots I'm like no I looked up I think it's a fire. She said, well, are those gunshots? I'm like, no.

I looked up. I said, I think it's a fire. There's a lot of fire engines. And what's the glass? I'm like, well, firemen often break glass when they come in to let the smoke out. I think it's probably from the smoke gun. She says, are you sure you think it's okay? I said, probably.

I just think it's a fire. She goes, oh, no, Ari. Her son is Ari. I'm like, what? She goes, he's alone in. Her son is Ari. I'm like, what? She goes, he's alone in the apartment with the babysitter. Now she lives above 100th Street. What street was this?

This was 8th Street. And I'm like, what are you worried about Ari for? She goes, it could be a terrorist attack. And I'm like, a terrorist attack? It's a fire. Like, there's nothing about this whatsoever, which is anything other than every other fire you've ever seen. Like, if there were a fire, nothing could be different.

Do you think it was gunshots? Did you hear any gunshots? No. Okay, so first of all, it was really loud. Totally, and we get down to the altar. I download the Citizens app, and sure enough, it says, 14th floor apartment fire has been extinguished. And there's literally nothing about this. I'm like, how do you go through life with that kind of stress?

I have anxiety. Here's a fire engine. One, two. I mean, there's... It was really... You're making it really sound not like what happened because

I thought there was like a bomb I mean we are at war with Ukraine yes that's the first place my mind goes or like 9-11 or something it was scary so I'm going to tell the story

in the podcast. She goes, don't gaslight me. Yeah, because it's 10 fire engines. Because she doesn't know what gaslight means either. No, no, I know exactly what gaslight means. Gaslight would mean there were no fire engines. No, gaslight would mean there were only 10 fire engines. Gaslight

is a word, as I said before the podcast, that really should just be stricken from the lexicon. It is a word that became fashionable. I've only started hearing it for a few years, and it's never used the same way twice. It was taken from the movie Gaslight. I think it's supposed to mean when you try to convince somebody that they're crazy.

Well, isn't that exactly what he just said? I'm psychotic. I'm crazy. I'm like something that like. By trying to convince him that what they see and remember didn't actually happen. That's exactly what he's doing. No, what he's doing is arguing with your version of the facts. That's different.

Actually, you're gaslighting me. In other words, you saying X happened and him saying Y happened isn't gaslighting. There's about 10 fire. Gaslighting is when he knows that you're right but tries to manipulate you into thinking that what you saw and what you feel is not reality. It's something, by the way, people almost never do and yet that word is used constantly. So when the lights were going up and down before,

if we all pretended the lights weren't going up and down, that would be like we're gaslighting you. But you know what's funny? That's actually one of the things that happens in the movie Gaslighting. I think the flame goes up and down, right? Was it called Gaslighting, the movie? The movie's called Gaslight. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's where the phrase came from. And the reason I know this is because my stepmother's therapist told my stepmother that my father was gaslighting her. And my father said, what my father was gaslighting her. And my father said, what the fuck is gaslighting? My father was furious at this phrase. But here's another funny story about my father's therapist.

You'll like this. My stepmother's therapist called my father in for a session. I guess that's the way therapy works. And the therapist told my father, whatever you say in here stays between I guess that's the way therapy works like that. And the therapist told my father, whatever you say in here stays between us.

That's what therapy works, right? And the therapist asked my father, have you been unfaithful to your wife? And my father said, yes.

And then the therapist went and told my stepmother. After promising, he wouldn't. Incredible. Was it couples therapy? No, it was, no, my father would never go to couples therapy.

It was my stepmother's therapy, but sometimes they, I guess. That's actually not ethical at all. No, it's not. No, to see the person who you're treating to bring their partner in and not. Why is it not ethical? For exactly what you just, for the exact example that you just gave. What's the ethics that are violated? partner in and not... Why is it not ethical? For the exact example that you just gave. What's the ethics that are violated?

He violated your father's... Yeah, she violated my father's confidentiality. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I told the story. Are you gaslighting me? I thought for a second they were in the same room together. The therapist. I mean, your father and wife. No, they weren't in the same room together, the therapist. No, no. I mean, your father and wife.

No, they weren't in the same room together. Oh, I see. So what happened? He got in trouble, you know. But she didn't leave him. Eventually, but I don't think because of that. I don't know the whole story, but, you know, I don't trust therapists in general. You've had a lot of experience with therapists.

You can tell just from looking at me? No, I just presume. I thought that you— I have. What's your take on the profession? I mean, you hold it in high regard? That's a good question. I don't know if I can answer that immediately.

I think I need to come back in a day. Give a thoughtful answer, right? I mean, I'm afraid to just like suddenly off the top of my head answer a question like that. Don't you and I have research and I like call friends. What do you think? And like, then decide what I think, read some books about it. You want an instant answer to the deep question with that? You've never thought about this?

Do I like that? Do I respect the profession? Do you feel that it's helped you? Do you feel that they have a science? I think it's helped me delay my answering to your question. Yeah, I think it has helped me, actually. It helped me, like, at first I used it, I think I used it 99% of the time just to vent.

I did not want to change because I was afraid of change. I was afraid to grow up and afraid to get rid of all my craziness. And so, but I needed to vent because I was going crazy myself because I had all the craziness. So I would just be mean and try to bother the person and just try to have as much fun as I could

in a dark way. So, well, no, what you're saying doesn't contradict my take on it because I think that it's very healthy to be able to talk to somebody and I think it's very healthy to vent and I think a wise, insightful person can give you good insight into things.

What I don't think is that therapy is a science. In the sense that you go to five different therapists. They have five different opinions. Nobody can verify it one way or another. The way I've described it is that if you came in. We've heard this before. Yeah, but it's a good one. If you came into the Olive Tree and said you were a bartender, but you never were a bartender,

I would know in 10 seconds you didn't know how to make drinks. Virtually any profession. I'm a plumber. Okay, fix it. Immediately, you don't know how to- I could be your therapist for five, 10 years. You would never know that I knew nothing about therapy. Never in a million-

I'd just put on a suit, and I would say a few things I heard on a movie, and you would know that I knew nothing about therapy. I just put on a suit, and I would say a few things I heard on a movie, and you would swear that I helped you. I know you're the guy from the comedy series. That is true, Noam. That does not mean that it's bullshit. Look, I don't know that the guy that gave me a colonoscopy knows what he's doing either.

Of course you do. No, I don't. I was unconscious. I woke up, and I don't know if he did anything. Or not. No, that's not a good analogy. Yeah, maybe you're right. It's not a good analogy. But just because you cannot perceive what's going on

doesn't mean that what's going on does not have value. Okay, but the key point of my analogy is that after seeing me for one session, you would not only not know that I'd never taken a day of medical or therapy school, whatever it is, you would think I helped you. That's the key. I couldn't fool you that I fixed your leak.

I couldn't fool you that I made you drink. But I could fool you that I was a therapist. No, because you don't know that I would immediately think you helped me. I would think you helped me if you helped me. If I felt better, I would think you helped me. Yes, some therapists aren't good at all.

Well, we haven't introduced you. You have a take on therapy? Therapy. My partner is a therapist, so this is sensitive. Oh, I better not say anything. I think all it takes is a good... Will you just come close to the mic? All it takes is a good listener

with common sense about human beings. That's what I just said. They got good theories. My partner is a Freudian. She took in all this Freudian theory. Come close to my... Exactly what I just said. She's really good with people,

and I think, you know, that's what... But there is a skill to it, though, you would say. Introduce him. No one doesn't believe this. You got to put your headphones on, otherwise you won't know you're not...

Okay, anyway, by the way, if you want us to hear more about you. I love you already because you said exactly what I just said. Can I just say this? My therapist actually did say to me, all it takes is someone you can relate to. It doesn't matter about the degree or anything. Someone you could have a conversation with.

And it doesn't actually have to be a therapist. It could just be a person. That's right. That's exactly it. That's what I mean. Maybe so. It's not a science. Anyway, well, maybe, maybe.

I'm not prepared to say you're right and I'm not prepared to say you're wrong. Now, cognitive behavioral therapy, from what I've heard, is different, and actually, people say it does work, and that has a method, at least, a very clear method. I am prepared to say, however, that David Chalmers is a university professor

of philosophy and neuroscience and co-director of the Center for Mind-Brain Consciousness at NYU, and he is most famous for his formulation of what is known as The Hard Problem of Consciousness, which inspired Tom Starburd's play The Hard Problem and his latest book Reality Plus Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. Welcome, David Chalmers, to our humble podcast.

Hey, great to be here. I had to come a long way. Where'd you come from? Free blocks. Okay. NYU housing. David Chalmers, by the way, it was my idea to to have you on I think you were just on our dear friend Coleman Hughes' podcast is that correct

he's a friend of ours Coleman and I played a band together oh fantastic did you know he was a musical prodigy I didn't know that yeah

what's the band we play we have like a little we don't have a name for the band yet we play every Monday night in the Owl Tree we've been playing for

and he plays trombone I play guitar we have some other musicians we should pick a name for the band yeah why don't you have a name for the band I don't know because it's just like no you should have a name for the band. Yeah, why don't you have a name for the band?

No, you should have a name. I thought it was the Shackles. No, that's different. But anyway, he was a jazz prodigy, actually, before he became the guy that he is now, and he went to Juilliard. Anyway. And it's also interesting that you're a neuroscientist because what could be more

unlike neuroscience than Freudian psychology, right? It's all connected. It's all coming at consciousness a million different ways. You study the brain. You study behavior. You try and improve it all through therapy. Or you think about it.

Actually, I'm a philosopher, so what I do, number one, is think about it. Think about consciousness. Try to integrate. Now, consciousness, here we are in a universe of inanimate matter, atoms, molecules, gluons, bosons, whatever it is. They combine in a certain way to create the human brain,

and we have consciousness. Not just that we... Well, let me ask you, what is the hard problem of consciousness that you are most famous for formulating? You just got it right there how is it that all these physical processes in the brain when you put them together the right way give you consciousness that is they give you subjective experience the lights are on inside someone's home i'm seeing you i'm hearing you and it's like there's this movie playing inside our

mind and not just a lump of dead matter. The world comes alive. How does that happen? So we have matter, we have energy, and we have consciousness, which is really, doesn't seem like it's either of those things. Exactly. It feels like a new ingredient in the world. But, you know, the trend of science is towards materialism.

Explain everything in terms of matter. You know, physics explains chemistry, explains biology and so on. But how do you use that to explain the first-person point of view, what it's like to be alive? That's the hard problem. And have you resolved the hard problem? Not yet, not even close. No consensus solution to the hard problem.

I gave it this name maybe 30 years ago now, but the problem itself has been around centuries, millennia, and even though there's a great science of consciousness right now, nobody understands why consciousness should exist. It's the greatest mystery in the universe, I think. That's why I got into this field. More than anything else

there is. Are there theories? Yeah, there's a million different theories. Some people say it's all tied to patterns of information integration in the brain, how the brain brings together information structures into like a bigger one. Some people say it's all tied to quantum mechanics, something special in quantum processes in your microtubules inside your neurons is what gives you consciousness.

Some say consciousness is an illusion. It's not even real. Oh, and most extreme of all, some say there's some consciousness everywhere. This is panps you consciousness. Some say consciousness is an illusion. It's not even real. Oh, and most extreme of all, some say there's some consciousness everywhere. This is panpsychism. Even this microphone has a little bit of consciousness. I hope I'm treating it well. So you're not, I thought that you were one of those

that believe that consciousness simply exists. Independent of matter and energy, there is consciousness. That's about right. I think some things in the world we take as primitive, fundamental aspects of reality, even in physics, like space and time, mass, charge, those are fundamental. I think ultimately consciousness is one of the fundamentals too. It's just a basic element of reality.

We have to figure out how it relates to everything else. So you believe that the microphone has consciousness? Tiny bit of it. There are some processes inside this microphone with a little bit of consciousness. I'm not saying the microphone is sitting there thinking, damn, I wish this guy could learn how to talk into me properly. But just some basic element of conscious experience

when I tap it like that. Who's to say what's going on on the inside? Do you feel bad at all for tapping it? Like maybe you're hurting it? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's like it's part of a microphone's life to get tapped every now and then. Feels good about it.

I got no idea. What do you think, Dan? This is taking me by surprise. You think that in some way the microphone has... is sentient? It perceives this? This is one theory. I don't want to say I think this, but I take this view seriously.

There's a bit of consciousness everywhere, and then inside this microphone will be a whole lot of different processes with a little bit of consciousness of their own. Yeah, maybe it's a little bit more like a glimmer of light versus not, or a gl bit of consciousness of their own. Yeah, maybe it's a little bit more like a glimmer of light versus not, or a glimmer of pain versus not, if it's more like suffering. I wouldn't say it's thinking,

but some element of primitive consciousness in everything in reality. Actually, many different cultures have had this view that there's a continuum of consciousness from humans, non-human animals, plants, processes in nature. Okay okay they didn't talk about microphones but once you've got is it kind of like energy like the inanimate objects can have some infused with some kind of energy or is that it could totally be related to energy yeah think of it as a kind of conscious conscious energy like think about like crystals, like healing crystals. Well, because I had always assumed,

what I think most people assume, that consciousness, even though we don't understand it, is related in some way to neurons and the various biological processes in the brain that we can measure and, you know, the brain waves and all this stuff and somehow all that. But what you're saying is that maybe that's correlation, but not causation.

Maybe that has nothing to do with something which is consciousness, which exists in a totally outside of that. Exactly. I mean, the centerpiece of the science of consciousness right now is the search for what they call neural correlates of consciousness. Systems in the brain with neurons that get active like whenever

i see you i experience your face consciously there are some face areas in my brain that light up that get active when i'm doing that so we can find all these beautiful correlations from systems in the brain to consciousness but that doesn't solve the heart problem why is there consciousness in the first place so some people speculate that underlying all that maybe is like fundamental laws that connect any information processing to consciousness. So when I see you, I get complicated information processing. I get a complex conscious experience of you, but even very simple. So, but then the natural question then is when you die, are you still conscious? Yeah, it's a great question. I think when we die,

our brains dissolve and our consciousness probably disappears. But our microphone type consciousness might continue. It could be that, you know, individual neurons in our brain have their own tiny little bit of consciousness. It could be that atoms in any system, including this one, have a little bit of consciousness. The atoms continue when I die. So maybe that will preserve a little bit of consciousness. I don't think it'll be me, though. That'll be something else. I don't know.

What do you think about this? You've been exposed to these ideas before, right? That's why you can't... A little. So please, go ahead. Well, do you feel that as we learn more... I'm looking up my notes. That's why I'm on this.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Do you feel that... So you were the first... This promise existed forever, but you're the first person that labeled it. I give looking up my notes. That's why I'm on this. Go ahead, go ahead. Do you feel that, so you were the first, this problem has existed forever, but you're the first person that labeled it. I give it this name,

the hard problem. It's like people knew it was a hard problem already, but it turns out it's a catchy label. They're caught on. So what do you think, as in the easy problem,

which is not really that easy, but as they're coming up with all these correlates for the easy problem and trying to figure out how the brain works better, don't you think we gradually will figure out the hard problem? Just like in life, people, what did they call that? Anime or something. They felt like the human body couldn't live without this soul,

this anime thing, the vital, whatever they call that thing that we needed, that life force. But then they figured, well, we don't need the life force. The human body can live without the life force. So if they keep finding out more answers to the easy problem, won't that solve the hard problem? We won't need a thing called the hard problem. We'll understand consciousness. Yeah. I mean, it's totally possible that along the way we'll do the science. We'll have some amazing insight that leads us to solve this problem. But I do think the problem is different from the problem in the case of life. In the case of life, all we really ultimately had to do was explain all these ways that living organisms behave, like they reproduce, and they metabolize, and they adapt to their environments, and so on. Explain all those bits of objective behavior,

and you've pretty much explained life, and that's what happened as the science got better. So the analogy to that is, with consciousness, we got the easy problems explaining all the ways I behave. I react to something. I'll point. I'll talk to you about it. Maybe I'll have control over my behavior when I wake up, and then I'll go back to sleep. But all that objective stuff, I could explain all that,

and it's still going to leave open the question, why does it feel like something from the inside? Why is there something it's like? Well, I think it's because, isn't it, that information theory sounds best to me. When you have tons of neurons and information going, it seems like a natural offshoot to have consciousness from that. I actually think that's one of the most promising kinds of theories of consciousness is, yeah, complex information processing gives you some kind of complex consciousness. Maybe simple information processing gives you simple consciousness. But there's still the question, why is that? You know, why couldn't all that information processing have gone on without any consciousness?

Well, in other words, why aren't we zombies? Why don't we act the way we act, but without any... We're just instinctive robots that, you know, do everything we do, except we don't feel the subjective perception of reality. Exactly. When I, if you, it's hard to explain. But, you know, if you see, like, the color red, you can, we can design something that can determine that it's red by analyzing the wavelengths, but we actually see a color and perceive that color. Yeah, so this is the philosopher's zombie. The philosopher's zombie is a creature that's just like us,

but it doesn't experience anything from the inside. In fact, you mentioned you were in a band. Every now and then I get up and perform with a band, but I only do one number, and that's the zombie blues. You sing? I shout. It goes like this. I act like you act.

I do what you do, but I don't know what it's like to be you. What consciousness is, I ain't got a clue. I got the zombie blues. You got to come down and do it with me and Coleman. It is true. Now, what about evolution as the reason we have consciousness, simply that without consciousness, that the zombie actually wouldn't be

possible. You couldn't design something to behave as we behave without consciousness. Consciousness allows us to better process information and better react to our environment. And therefore we're conscious simply because it allows us to survive more easily. That sounds plausible, but then it turns out all of those functions you're talking about,

processing information, we can get unconscious systems to do that. It looks just as well as conscious systems. We can program computers increasingly to generate that kind of behavior, and it's just totally unclear why you'd actually ever need consciousness, why you'd need the lights to be home to do this when a zombie could do it. But we don't really know that a zombie could do exactly what we do. We've designed computers to do certain things and do them very, very well.

And like the self-driving car would be an example of some pretty impressive technology that's not perfected yet, but we're on our way. But it's still not a human being. It's true. Yeah, and no one actually says we do have zombies among us. You know, it's like, but I can still raise the question

when I've talked to you. It's like, for all I know, you could be a zombie. I don't think you are. You know, you're here talking about consciousness, so you're probably conscious. But why couldn't there have been zombies that did all this stuff just as well?

By the way, what's going to happen when the self-driving car has to actually experience one of those classic philosophical hypotheticals where they have to choose between which to kill the baby or the old man? Yeah, the trolley problem. It's like, do you save the driver or do you save the five people? Do you kill the driver or do you kill the five people out there on the road? Or do you kill your passenger? Maybe that'll be an option.

You can choose which mode you want to drive in. Yes, the ludicrous mode or the plaid mode. Are people really going to buy the self-driving car that says I'm going to kill the driver first? Hell no. No one, right?

So I have a couple questions. I am not sure that these are good questions, but they come to mind and you can tell me. Is there any relationship between the things that you think about

and life after death? Definitely there are potential relationships here and there are people who... How does it lead you to think about life after death or is there are potential relationships here, and there are people who... How does it lead you to think about life after death, or is it just the same as anybody? I am not religious myself, so I tend to be skeptical about life after death. There is this idea that consciousness could attach to a soul, and the soul for a while attaches itself to our bodies and our brains, and then when we die, our soul skedaddles out of here to somewhere else. But you don't believe that.

That's not the kind of thing I believe in, yeah. I think it's all tied very closely to physical processes in the brain. On the other hand, lately, I've been thinking about another big topic, the whole idea the world could turn out to be a simulation, that we could all be bits of code in some simulated universe.

And then, hey, it's possible that if that's true, then when we die, the bits of code that make us up and make us conscious, whoever's simulating us could take those bits of code and put them somewhere else. Artificial heaven. Hey, did you ever see this episode of Black Mirror? San Junipero?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that one. Yeah, that was one of my favorite ones. Which one was that? That's one where they, well, all of them, basically, not all, but at least half of them involved basically uh you know the notion of consciousness being kind of uploaded onto a computer or that kind of idea and so um like they would take old people and they would upload their consciousness and then these old people would be like they would go to like this place called san junipero where they would live in a virtual world

as young people, young active people. But they'd all be kind of like... There's a Star Trek that's kind of like that, too. Is there? I don't remember that Star Trek. But anyway, so what about San Junipero? That's a kind of life after death, but it's no longer a mysterious soul.

What's going on here? What actually happened is they took their brains and they uploaded them onto a computer and then, hey, their brains and their body died. But they had this uploaded process that went on, continued to exist in a virtual world. At least as it's depicted in Black Mirror, there's this aging couple. They're dying. Now they get to continue their relationship in digital heaven.

Do you really take seriously the notion that we are in a simulation, that some other beings programmed us? I take it seriously. Yeah, it seems kind of far out. But simulation technology is actually getting better and better. You know, you can get virtual reality headsets now that connect you to pretty sophisticated virtual worlds. Yeah, they're still, now they're kind of cartoonish.

But give it a few decades, give it 100 years, we'll probably have virtual realities indistinguishable from physical realities. And once we got those, you know, people inside those virtual realities, it'll feel to them as if they're in a physical reality like this. And once you got that, that just raises the question, how do I know that's not happening to me right now? Maybe there's actually going to be a whole bunch of simulated universes out there, only one unsimulated universe. You start to say, statistically, what are the odds? I'm one of the ones in the unsimulated universe. Okay?

Maybe all this is the matrix. I can't. Okay, remember before. I'm having trouble imagining how I would feel conscious. I understand it's my shortcoming. I'm having trouble understanding how i would feel consciousness in a simulation like how how does the something in in my son's computer games how could that character feel the consciousness that i feel but but i understand because that character is not as developed as you are it's not as complicated a system. But I mean, you are a complicated system, and if it is a simulation,

you could argue that's just as real as being just atoms from God, you know, the Big Bang. What's the real difference? Is that right? If it's a complicated system, it's a complicated system. I'm not sold on the Big Bang either. Everything in the universe existed ahead of a pin? Why not?

How could that? Come on. Well, my question is, where did the pin come from? Who created the pin? No, but Why not? How could that? Come on. Well, my question is, who are you kidding? Where did the pin come from? Who created the pin? No, but, no, why not? I mean, why not? And it developed into that.

But think about all the universes that failed. Trillions of universes are empty and failures, and we're the one that made it. And that's why I don't get it why people say, oh, there's got to be a God. Look at all this complexity and intelligence. Well, think about the three trillion moron universes that exist. Well, that's why I don't get it why people say, there's got to be a God. Look at all this complexity and intelligence. Well, think about the three trillion moron universes that exist.

Well, that's assuming that you believe that there is more than one universe. I don't know, Dave Chalmers. I guess that's called the multiverse theory? Yeah, and once you have simulated universes on the stage, then it's all the easier for there to be multiverses. We can create a thousand different simulated universes ourselves right now. Actually, well, they kind of call that the metaverse, which is a version of the multiverse where there are simulated universes. But then you take into account the idea that this universe

could be a simulation. Maybe there's a thousand different other simulated universes alongside us. Maybe the simulating universe is itself a simulation. Then you really get this multiverse of thousands of millions of different simulated worlds, maybe one base reality. That may be like, we may be down at level 42 for all we know. Okay, I had two other things that I was going to ask. One is that does your line of thought put you anywhere on like being a vegan or vegetarian or respect for animals in some way or is that unrelated? I used to think that I shouldn't need anything which is conscious because I think consciousness is this really special thing and any being which is conscious like they have a life which is

valuable and you have to respect that. But then if you start going in the direction that everything is conscious, there's some element that. But then if you start going in the direction that everything is conscious, there's some element of consciousness everywhere, then you don't... You can't even eat the microphone. Exactly. You can't eat plants. You can't eat artificial foods.

You can't eat nothing. But can't you eat the stuff that has the least consciousness? Just have least... You could be least conscious either. You have to draw a line. That's what it comes down to, yeah. And some people draw the line at fish, and they're pescatarians.

They say, well, anything with fish and lower on the consciousness scale, I'll eat. And some people draw the line, you know, at chicken, I guess, you know, or whatever. So, Periel, now if your husband came home and you found him cheating and he told you his penis had a mind of his own, which, sorry. I came on when you found him cheating and he told you his penis had a mind of his own.

Sorry. I remember before when I said I was on the verge of having an anxiety attack. At least now you have to say, I'm sorry. Maybe you're right. Who am I to say? And this thing about a simulation, it's dangerous in a way, right? Because if you were to really believe that, it would be another excuse to really not worry about morality, not worry about killing, not worry about any of these things, right? I wouldn't say that. I'd say just because this is a simulation doesn't mean our life isn't real, doesn't mean our lives are meaningless.

How is that? Explain that. Just say God created the universe as on a traditional worldview. Does that mean that our lives are meaningless? No, God just set it up and got it up and running. But I think we should still treat each other well. We're still conscious humans that ought to respect other people. And I think if a simulator created the universe, what's the difference with God creating the universe?

Okay, they set the universe up and running. But now I think our lives have the meaning that we give to them. Well, but how if on the opposite side then, what if the people who set the simulation up programmed you to kill somebody? Would they be doing anything wrong by programming that? Yeah, that wouldn't be good. That wouldn't be good. So if we are actually got these little modules set up inside us, you know, it could be like the non-player characters in video games whose actions are all determined in advance. But that could also happen outside of simulation if God did that.

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't believe in free will and I don't know that you do either, regardless of who created us, whether it be a simulated universe, which seems a little bit, you know, with all due respect, hard to believe. But assuming it's true, whether it's the simulated, whether it's the computer programmers or whatever that created us or that God created us, or that the universe, you know, some other thing, that doesn't change the whether or not we have free will it doesn't change that that question I'm expressing yeah poorly but a lot of people think the brain is a deterministic machine and some people say because of that yeah we don't have

free will I would prefer to say that even if the brain is a deterministic machine we still have got some kind of free will we can still make choices we can still invest the world around us with meaning. We can still plan our lives. And I think you can do that if you have a biological brain. I think you can do that even if you're in a simulation. Can I ask this? But you believe in the Big Bang, right? So if the Big Bang is true, the atoms that have been set in motion, they've already been set in motion. We're just an expression of math. So how can we have free will if there's math controlling us

from the Big Bang? Isn't it all already planned out? It's a great question. I mean, I guess in quantum mechanics, it's possible there's a bit of dice rolling, some probabilities in there, so it's not totally determined. I hear that.

How does quantum mechanics add dice to the whole thing? Ah, just every now and then, like the world evolves deterministically, but every now and then the wave function collapses in a probabilistic way. You open the box and the cat's alive or the cat's dead. And it's a probabilistic outcome. To many people, it suggests that the world isn't totally determined in advance. And some people want to rely on that aspect of quantum mechanics

to justify, to vindicate a certain kind of free will. Other people say, if it's random, how does that help? You know, it was determined in advance and now we just add in some randomness. Why is that anything more like free will? I kind of prefer the approach that says, okay, we don't have free will in the sense of the ability to do absolutely anything that we could want. But maybe we've got some more limited kinds of free will, like the ability to plan our futures, the ability to do what we want.

Now, it may be true that in some sense that what we want is somehow determined in advance by our genes or whatever. But if you think of free will as the ability to do what we want, maybe that's at least a limited kind of- So that's like what they talk about, emergent free will, like the feeling of emergence, like we feel it. It's good enough just to feel it,

even if it's not really true. Some people say, we have to believe in free will. We have no choice. I don't believe in free will, but I choose just to not think about it and just try to, you know, just enjoy the illusion of free will.

But it does affect the way I think. When I was a kid, I didn't think this way. But as an adult, if I pass a prison, I'm driving past a prison, I feel roughly the same way I feel as when I drive past a hospital. These poor, unfortunate people that are in the prison because they were born with the brains

and the environment to become criminals, and the poor people in the prison because they were born with the brains and the environment to become criminals, and the poor people in the hospital that were born with the bad luck to have illness. I don't see that as fundamentally different. I see both the people in the hospital and the people in the prison wound up there through no fault of their own. And I just feel lucky that of all the people I could have been born, hey, it's not the greatest, Dan Natterman, you know. I could have been... Brad the people I could have been born, hey, it's not the greatest. Dan Aderman, you know, I could have been, I could have been. Brad Pitt.

I could have been Brad Pitt. I could have been, I mean, Elon Musk. I don't know if he's happy, but, you know, there's certainly a lot of people that at least seem to have better lives than me. But of the billions of people that have ever lived, I was lucky enough to be born relatively, you know, in a decent situation. So then how do you explain the people that were born horribly but are not in prison? They've made it a success of themselves. Because they were born, despite the fact they were born in bad circumstances, they were born with the brains to do the right thing.

What if they weren't? What if they had bad brains, but somehow they rose above even the bad brains? Well, then their brains weren't that bad then. Well, they also interacted with other people who didn't have free will through a very complicated They just got lucky. I just believe everybody got lucky. I believe that Hitler was, to take the most extreme example Poor Hitler, is that what you're trying to say?

I'm trying to say that if you were born There's nobody to feel more sorry for than Hitler. I'm trying to say that if you were born when Hitler was born, in the town Hitler was born in, to the parents Hitler was born in In the era that Hitler was born in you'd have been Hitler was born in, in the era that Hitler was born in, you'd have been Hitler. On the other hand, most people, it's not determined in advance

that they're going to be bad people. It's also a product of their environment. But they can't control that either. Maybe not, but we can. And so we can control people's environments. So faced with these people with bad brains, let's treat them better. We have to put them in jail. We have no choice.

But don't they make choices? Or educate them. I mean, let's say all of the things that you're saying are true, but can't you make choices in those situations? But I believe the choices that people make are the choices they have to make because of who they are and what they've experienced. You can educate people so that they will end up making the good choice rather than the bad choice.

Well, we should do that. But if these people don't get properly educated, that's not their fault. In other words, you're a product of your environment and you're a product of your genetics, and you don't control either of those. You can still rehabilitate them. Education is a lifelong process, so put someone in a better situation.

We should do that, but the, is how morally culpable is somebody that that that commits a crime if they're not if they don't control either their heredity or their environment? Neither of them are. I keep thinking about something else. I mean, the same thing. But going back to something we said before about morality and simulation, you said it's still immoral to do certain things, even in the simulation. He said it's still immoral to do certain things even in the simulation. But isn't that because of the moral code which is part of our simulation? Couldn't the simulation have been a totally almost opposite moral code? In which case we'd feel... In other words, why would we feel that

it's immoral for the creators of the simulators to do something because their moral code may be completely different than the ones they've simulated in us, right? It's never-ending. Yeah, it's such a deep question. Is morality just a matter of the... Yeah, is it just a matter of the moral code we happen to have?

Okay, God sent down these Ten Commandments and it said, thou shalt not kill, so therefore we think killing is bad. And if God had said, thou shalt kill, then we would say, yeah, killing is great. I don't know, I think, you know, I'd like the idea there's something objective in morality, and there's something objective in the value structure of the universe,

like that consciousness is good, say suffering is bad. Consciousness is good, but suffering is bad. To me, that feels like kind of an objective take on the universe, and that maximizing, minimizing suffering is good. Well, don't you think it's Darwinian in a way? It's better for the survival of our species to minimize suffering. It helps. I think it's all about survival. Maybe we've chosen. I actually know the answer to this. The answer is that there is no objective morality. Morality is a combination of game theory.

If I do this and then you say, well, it makes it smarter not to do this. And I believe a biochemical programming that we have to feel empathy, to feel guilt. I mean, just the idea that we have a conscience is evolutionary, right? Like sociopaths are characterized by not having a conscience.

They don't feel guilt in these things. And you could never have a society with sociopaths are characterized by not having a conscience. They don't feel guilt in these things. And, and you could never have a society with sociopaths. So it seems like morality is evolutionary, evolutionary, and, and we need it in order to function. And the other parts of the living, you know, the animal kingdom don't have that morality. So it's not objective for the lion not to eat the tiger or whatever, right? It's only objective that the human shouldn't kill the, it doesn't make any sense when you think about it. So I think that we've constructed morality

and it makes us feel good to be moral. And that feeling that it feels good is within us. It's, as I said, I'm repeating myself, it's genetic i agree because i can't fight it that's what i think it is because i think it's isn't it because it's the survival of the clan the clan developed these moral codes to keep the clan alive yeah they had to be empathetic to their fellow clan member because they needed the whole group to survive when we see somebody suffering it hurts hurts us. And then you can extrapolate from that where our morality would be on that subject. But if it didn't hurt us to see somebody suffering, it's very unlikely that would become our moral code. We would never get this objective morality, oh, it's wrong to do that, if it didn't bother us.

I agree. And the bothering is not something we've learned. But we can also change our moral code. We can expand our circle. Maybe originally it's just us and our tribe that we care about and we have that moral attitudes. But over time, it's expanded. Hey, other people, other groups, other races, other species.

You can expand it if you are fortunate enough to have the neurological structure to respond to that. But if you're a sociopath or something like that, you can bang your head against the wall. You never teach them that new code, right? But collectively, we can still reflect and come up with better morality. So I don't think we're just stuck with the moral code

that evolution gave us at birth. We get a downloading of it, right? Morality 2.0. Yeah, yeah. David Chalmers. Is it Dr. Chalmers, by the morality 2.0 David Chalmers is it Dr. Chalmers by the way? Professor Chalmers Sir Chalmers now you've done interviews

I assume with PhDs and with philosophers and we're just a bunch of we're comedians and club owners how would you rate us in terms of our insight and our questions? Ah, you guys are great. Yeah, 9.5. There's always room for improvement, but this is great. I mean, when you think about it, we're just a bunch of

slobs here. You went to law school, he went to law school, I went to law school. I mean, that's true. You're a fraud. These questions are universal. These questions are universal. Everyone's conscious. Everyone's got some morality.

Anyone can reflect on this. What is the.05 we're missing? You said 9.5. So what are we missing? Why aren't we 10? Not the.05. The.5. We've got to work on the math.

Well, you said 9.5. Oh, you're right. The.5. You're right. Well, right there I'm missing something. Who was your best interview? You have a 10 interview. Who was a 10?

Who was a 10? Who was a 10? Was Coleman a 10? Coleman was good. Coleman was good, yeah. Coleman was 9.4. I don't know. Who's better than us? No one yet.

I've got to wait until the end of this. I did some good work. You're leaving room. You never had a 10, but you're leaving room for that podcast. Yeah, exactly. It's like the perfect wave. You never actually surf the perfect wave. You just get closer and closer to perfection.

But you've got to have an ideal out there. So you keep surfing. Wait, is that an English accent or Australian? Australian. Okay, because I was thinking, in England, English people don't surf. So it must be Australian. Nice, Dan. Very good, Dan.

But it doesn't sound pure Australian either. Yeah, but it doesn't. That's what I'm saying. That's why I was confused. I've been messed up. I did live a while in England. I've now lived maybe 30 years in the US, but I grew up in Australia. And yeah, now the Australians think I sound American.

The Americans think I sound English. The English, they think I sound Irish. I don't know what they think. You know who we had on the show not that long ago was Peter Singer. Oh, yeah, yeah. A good friend of mine. Oh, really? Fellow Australian philosopher. He just got that million dollar was Peter Singer. Oh, yeah, yeah. A good friend of mine. Oh, really? Fellow Australian philosopher.

He just got that million dollar prize. Yeah, that was very exciting. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, it was great. Now, what philosopher that's working on consciousness would you categorize as utter bollocks? I respect different people in different ways, but I'd say maybe my archenemy on some of this stuff

is a guy, Daniel Dennett, who's very deeply materialist, reductionist about consciousness. Actually, he really thinks consciousness is a kind of illusion. He thinks there isn't really such thing as consciousness that we experience. We just kind of make all that up because our brains have been programmed to think we have this special property of consciousness. Well, I'll go this far. I will say that that's bollocks, that it's an illusion. Clearly, we're conscious. But as far as—I do think it's ultimately tied to biology.

I don't think that there were—I don't know that we'll ever solve the problem, but if we do solve the problem, I think we'll find that biology creates consciousness. Even though I can't explain how that could possibly be, because consciousness doesn't seem to be at all physical. It doesn't seem to be in any way, shape, or form a physical process. Well, but it's dependent on the brain, and the brain is physical. The brain is physical, but consciousness, it doesn't seem to be anything physical about it. It's in your head. You have physical head when you it's physical when you experience pain that that subjective experience

is not a it's not help me out here david yeah it's totally tied to the brain and i think yeah any theory of consciousness has got nothing to do with the brain that's got to be crazy because we know that you know the part of the physical world which is most relevant to consciousness is the brain. You affect your brain. You stimulate your brain with, like, photons. It affects your consciousness. You affect the brain with drugs. That affects your consciousness.

So at the very least, there's got to be a really strong correlation or connection between the brain and consciousness. At the same time, it's hard to see how you can just reduce consciousness to something in the brain. So my view is you've got to actually understand the fundamental connection between the brain and consciousness. And what the science of consciousness has actually been doing is trying to come up with connecting principles that say, when you've got this kind of brain process, then you get this kind of consciousness. That doesn't reduce consciousness to something in the brain, but it ties it there. Do you think that we will be able to create

artificial consciousness at some point, and if so, when? Yeah, you know, it's, boy, artificial intelligence is speeding up. But artificial consciousness? Yeah. I would say it's possible in principle, and if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, yeah, possible in principle, but still some distance off, at least until we get to human level consciousness. I mean, if you think everything is conscious, if you think the microphone is conscious, maybe we've already, then I would say we will eventually have AI, which is as intelligent as human beings

that we can carry on a conversation with and they'll be at least as insightful as a human being. I think at that point... Really? Yeah. Do you have any positions on LSD and psychedelic drugs and consciousness-expanding drugs? There are amazing ways to investigate consciousness.

You know, one difficulty with consciousness, we actually have a rather limited set of data to work with. We only have like these five senses and ordinary patterns of thinking and feeling. And that's all the consciousness we have and everything else. Oh, we can kind of look at other people and hypothesize what they're having too. But you might say we should really be expanding the range

of conscious experiences that we have. And a lot of people think altered states of all kinds are super important here. The states you get through meditation. Do you meditate? I was just going to ask you that. I just don't have the patience for it, actually. Is that a real answer?

Yeah, really it is. That's amazing. I've always thought like I should meditate and then I do it. And I said, no, I just... People swear by it. You ever seen a movie with Altered States, William Hurt? Yeah, that's a while ago now.

Sensory tank. Wallace Shawn. Wallace Shawn. Wallace Shawn. Oh, yeah, I think. No, is that his name? Yeah, Wallace Shawn. Yeah, yeah.

Are you talking about like micro dosing? Micro dosing, macro dosing. I mean, people report all kinds of amazing stuff with psychedelics. And lately, people have been trying to study the brain. Yeah. Psychedelic, the brain correlates of psychedelic experiences. And that's basically just an extension of,

you know, what we can already do with seeing and hearing, but now for much more wild and wonderful. Have you done? I have one more question. I'm done. At what point, when you start altering the brain,

if ever, do we become different people? You take LSD. You have an altered state of consciousness. It's still David Chalmers. It's just David Chalmers tripping balls. But David Chalmers nonetheless. We dream at night and we have these totally new experiences.

I'd say that's still me. And when you dream, that's still you. I think you're changing your conscious experiences, but it's still you there. But at some point, if we change our consciousness, at some point, do we become somebody else? You'd have to change it a lot. I mean, I think you could probably even gradually upload your brain from being a bunch of neurons to being a bunch of silicon chips, like as happened, remember, in San Junipero, that Black Mirror episode. If you replaced, say, 10% of my brain by silicon chips, I think I'd still be here.

If you replaced another 10% by silicon chips, I'd still be here. And yeah, repeat that long enough, 100% of my brain might turn into silicon chips. And I'd argue if they're functioning as well, enough like the neurons were functioning, I would still be here. So that might actually end up being a way that...

You know, call me crazy, but I'm almost hearing a little Scottish in there even. Damn, I got to get control of this accent. It's like I'm trying to pretend to be a normal human being and actually I'm a simulation. The only thing Australian about this guy was his surfing reference. My last question... Cricket, too.

...is given the types of things that you spend most of your professional career thinking about, when something happens in the world like what's happening in Ukraine right now, do you see it any differently? Do you have any insights into it that wouldn't occur to the average person? Yeah, that's a good question. Probably not, I'd say, but, you know, it's like, you know, what can you say? It's like, you know, I mean, this kind of, you know, tragic suffering is tragic suffering because of the effects it has on people's consciousness. People are killed, people's lives go much worse, you know, we just got to... I mean, at the very least,

we have to expand that moral circle so it includes all human beings. And, you know, part of morality is, you know, saying, hey, a Ukrainian consciousness matters just as much as a Russian consciousness. But that's just common sense. No one needs a philosopher to teach them that. Has anybody here experienced with regard to,

slightly off topic, Al, I'll ask you. As a comedian, I look at what's going on in Ukraine, and at least for a little bit, it gives me some sense of perspective. Because I oftentimes will lament my career not going the way I want it to go, or my life not going the way I want it to go, as is sometimes expected. And when you say oftentimes, you mean incessantly all day, every day.

But, you know, the Ukraine thing, at least for a time, and I'm sure this will go away, but it does give you some perspective saying, you know what? I was born in the United States. I wasn't born in Ukraine. I have a lot of things that I should be grateful for. Yeah, it's definitely given me some. I find myself watching it on YouTube, you know, and just being amazed and feeling gratitude that I'm not in a situation like that. It makes you feel, you know, it's just horrific. But I luckily, in some ways, I got into the spirituality thing via YouTube a few years ago and the whole concept of gratitude and being present in the moment. And I do a little of that, and just a little of that saves me. I didn't even know about the present moment when I was a kid.

I had no idea the present moment existed. What does that mean, the present moment? Well, spirituality is being present, like not even thinking I'm present, not thinking the thought I'm present, because that's a thought. You don't want a thought. But you can be aware without thinking I'm aware.

You can just be aware of your breath. You can just be here like this and just be aware of your breath without thinking I'm aware. You can just be aware of your breath. You can just be here like this and just be aware of your breath without thinking I'm breathing. And just that awareness is presence. And spirituality calls ego when you're using your thoughts

and thinking, oh, this has happened to me. That comedian got that. I didn't get that. That's all thought. That's all ego. And you could also have ego, which means I'm horrible. Ego, which means I'm better than the other person.

But it's not used so much in that way it's just thinking it's used thing but presence spirituality the stuff associated with buddhism and that stuff is related to meditation too right meditation yeah without thinking now some people have a mantra so they're thinking the word the mantra is a word and you're thinking that word over and over but but that word is designed to stop you from having thoughts in general. The whole idea is to turn off your thoughts. And to breathe, right? So you're concentrating.

Yeah, you don't have, that's one way of meditating, following your breath. I use that. I also don't have the patience. Yeah, neither do I. That's why I force myself to do it. Isn't that the whole point?

It works for you? Because you have discipline. Well, I mean. Look at her. You can answer. Doesn't answer the question. I also have, as we started talking about, I also have anxiety and I find that that's really one of the main ways I've found that is helpful is to meditate.

I know. Yeah. I know. I know that intellectually, but I can find ways to not do it. Yeah, sure. Of course. But that's a big problem for me i don't you have a consciousness answer to this intellectually i know the right thing to do but i just don't you just got one of those bad brains that he was talking about i got one too i'd be better off if i meditated but yeah it's like i just if i had free will i could just make myself meditate turns out i don't my bad brain exactly i use the big use the Big Bang, too. It's the Big Bang. It's not me. We should all try, like as a podcast

cast, we should try meditating for like two weeks. I'm ready to try it. Sam Harris has a meditation app. It's pretty good. Coleman meditates. Seinfeld meditates. You can do meditation in virtual reality these days. Put on one of these VR headsets and it'll transport you to the most amazing natural

setting. You know what's amazing about virtual reality is there was this virtual reality thing. I forgot what it was called, but it has you walking on a plank. And you won't jump off, or you won't fall. You're walking on a plank like 40 stories above the ground. And you would think, okay, I put this thing on. I know it's a virtual reality. I'm telling you I could not walk out on this plank. You did it. I did it, and it was. I'm telling you, I could not walk out on this plank. You did it.

I did it, and it was so scary. And it wasn't even that real looking. Did you step off the plank? No. That's the scariest part. I couldn't do it. Have you done it?

Yeah, the first time, it's like, oh my God, there's this whole canyon down there. And then you think, okay, yeah, well,

I know the floor is there, so I kind of take my foot and put it off the plank and feel the floor. Okay, I do it, and then I step off again. Actually, there's one version of this app that's really sadistic. The moment you do that with both your feet, it gives you the experience of plummeting down to the ground.

But you don't hit the ground. Again, it wasn't even that real-looking. In VR, you do. In the physical world, you're okay. The VR wasn't even that real looking on the one that I did and was still scary. Isn't this sort of like maybe a flaw in human consciousness? Like, in other words, we're designed to fear falling

even if we know intellectually that there's no danger. I think the brain is adapted to certain environments. So, yeah, it learns to interpret environments in a certain way. Is it a little dangerous? Sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead. Yeah, it's like you just learn to,

you see, when something looks like this, then don't step off. That works in the physical world. Actually, it might not work in the virtual world. And after a while, actually, I've used VR quite a bit now. After a while, you get used to it. And now, I will step off that plank

without a second thought, because I know, okay, what's like, there's like an invisible force field that will hold me up. That's what I was going to say. It could be kind of dangerous in a way that once you overcome that and you get so used to it, that in real life, you might lose the instant instinct to be careful.

I think as long as you know when you're in the physical world and when you're in the virtual world, then you're not going to get confused. And I think in practice, people don't get confused, but as the two get more and more like each other, it's going to be really important to know. Oh, you'll get confused, yeah. Because a lot of these things are instincts.

You don't have the time to think about them. And when that gets dulled by so many, like just by wearing it down in VR, it could certainly fail you in real life. This is already a thing in VR. You see an object in VR, and often your hand can go right through it. Our avatars can walk through each other. And if you try and do that in the physical world, it's like, okay, no.

It doesn't work? Yeah, people. So you've got to know which one you're in. And I think it's going to be super important that as VR develops, that there's going to be a flag. You are right now in virtual reality, or you're right now in physical reality. That's crazy. I feel like I wish I were born later,

like the next hundred years. It's just unbelievable what's going to be going on in the next hundred years. It's already unbelievable what's going on. But if you were born in 1850, you might feel that, oh, if only I could have been born in 1950 or 1960. So you're always going to feel that.

And you'd be right. And you'd be right. So do you feel that, I mean, that what's coming is even more unbelievable than what we've seen in the last 100 years? that some major changes are coming in terms of uncracking the aging code and really conquering illness and things that are... It's probably true that most of us here are born just a little bit too soon to benefit, say, from immortality. But I don't know, maybe some of the younger ones among us have got a shot of getting to that point.

Well, Noam has relatively young children that are 10 or so years old so your kids might live to 120 but what about this freezing of the brain cryogenics are you going to do that? I haven't done it yet maybe it makes sense because right now

we don't have the ability to upload the brain so we can live forever. But maybe just in 100 years or 200 years, we'll have that technology where they can look at the brain and reconstruct it and simulate it. So yeah, maybe I should. I haven't signed up for a crayon. I think it's worth – so let's put it this way. If – presuming that freezing does preserve it,

isn't it then almost a certainty that at some point in the future they'll be able to bring you back? As long as they have the information. If the freezing does seem to destroy some of the information in the brain. But let's say we figure out at least how to freeze it well. Then, yeah, the super intelligent of the AI, super intelligent AI in the future will be able to reconstruct it. Then the question is, will they? It's going to be all these humans, all these egotistical humans who froze themselves. We've got to bring

Natterman back! Who are we going to bring back? Bring back me, please, because I philosophized about the uploading process and I hope they might reconstruct me just to prove me wrong. Alright, sir, it was really a pleasure to have you on. Thanks, I had fun. Good call, Dan. Yes, it was my idea

to have you on. I forgot how I stumbled across you, but the question of consciousness is something that interests me. I guess it interests everybody, but I stumbled across you on the internet and suggested to Perrielle to reach out, as she likes to say. Could I ask one quick final question?

And Al has to come on because he is similarly interested in this area. You said a zombie would have the same exact knowledge and be able to see everything Dan could see and do everything. No, he would behave like you, but he wouldn't have consciousness.

Right, but the question is, he wouldn't be able to be sympathetic. A zombie couldn't feel sympathy, could he? A philosophical zombie. He could be programmed to simulate. A zombie can't feel sympathy, could he? A philosophical zombie. He could be programmed to simulate. A zombie can't feel anything, but they behave just like humans. It would behave as if it's sympathetic. Like a sociopath. So he couldn't do everything, though, because he couldn't feel.

He would feel nothing. So that's true. Have you ever acted sympathetic even though you didn't feel sympathetic? Always. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! The only sympathy I've ever shown. That's what it's like for the zombie all the time. Right, I see what you're saying. So he would never, right, feel.

And one of the final things, Daniel Dennett's thing, isn't his thing a user illusion? The consciousness is the user illusion of itself, and it's like the iPhone analogy. You don't understand how the iPhone works, but you know how to navigate on top of the iPhone. You don't know what's going inside. So doesn't that have any validity to you?

I actually respect Dan Dennett, and I respect this view that consciousness is an illusion. I find it impossible to believe because consciousness is the most real thing in the universe. But someone on that side can come back and say, oh, yeah, well, my theory predicts that you will find my view impossible to believe because your brain has just built in

this automatic belief in consciousness. And yeah, maybe it is kind of like a user interface. It simplifies our model of the world and of other minds to invent this thing, consciousness. It simplifies reality. I respect that view. I just can't believe it. I see.

Okay, so thank you, David Chalmers and his new book, Reality Plus oh yeah it's it's a at a bookstore near you reality plus virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy my publisher would kill me it was also you i think you um did you did you um work at all with the producer of the matrix were you like a um yeah not quite a consultant on the movies but uh after the movies came out they uh they commissioned a bunch of philosophers to write philosophical analyses of the movies for the Matrix website, thematrix.com, back in the day, I think 2003, just when the sequels were coming out. I wrote an article called The Matrix as Metaphysics, all about how we could be in the Matrix, and that if we were, actually that's not so bad, because all this could still be real. And that's like the main theme of this new book.

Well, assuming the Matrix people don't decide to just pull the plug on the whole thing tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Which I guess they could. They could, or they could take our code and upload us, so we could live forever. So it could be really bad, reality's about to end, or it could be really great, reality goes on forever.

You see, when you said great, there was a bit of Scottish in there. Okay, well. And of course our sense of time could be, like, it could literally be seconds in the real world, and it could seem like 100 years for us, right? Depending on the speed, processing speed. Maybe this simulation is being run in a snap on, like, the supercomputers of the Matrix, or maybe it's being run really slow. This is actually the lowest priority simulation. They've actually got us running on the slowest computer possible. But what's in it for them to even do the simulation?

I mean, are they watching it like it's a reality television? Maybe there's like ethics regulations. It's like, okay, well, once you ever run a simulation, they run some simulations for scientific purposes maybe. They want to see what if we change these parameters in the universe? What will happen? We need to make some decisions. And then the ethics says they've actually got to keep us around. They can never kill us.

But if they kill us all at once and we don't even see it coming, that wouldn't seem to be unethical. I don't know. It depends on the objective moral code of the simulators. Did you ever read the short story, The Mysterious Stranger, the Mark Twain short story? What happens in that one again? It's essentially where the point of the story is that God just creates us for his own entertainment and then has us kill each other.

And it's all just his, apparently something, I wish I remembered the details, but since high school, but apparently Mark Twain had a whole series of tragedies hit him all at once. Something like his wife died and his daughter died. And he just became very, very bitter. And he wrote this story called The Mysterious Stranger about this character, very subtle Satan, that comes to town and is interacting with these kids and just creates people from clay

and then has them barbarically kill each other. And he makes people think this is fun. I'm probably remembering the story wrong. What's the name of the story? The Mysterious Stranger. It's like 30, 40 pages. It's not something I've ever heard of. I mean, you know, it's not exactly up there with Huck Finn in terms of his more popular works. I'm going to read

it again now. I bet it was towards the end of his life because I heard he was dark towards the end of his life. It was exactly right. It's one of his last stories and I had a really good teacher in high school who asked us to read it. I really like to read that. Yeah, it's pretty short. This raises the question,

did God get ethics approval when he created the universe? It's like, yeah, created all this suffering. That Old Testament God is raining down fires and floods and so on. I think if we're going to create simulated universes with a million people, there's going to be ethics boards we're going to have to go through. They're going to say, you can't just, you can't just play God, create people and kill them. How lucky are you in this simulation to be able to make a nice living just thinking about this

shit and talking about it? Like this is... I can't believe they pay me for it, to be honest. It makes me wonder, is this just part, do those simulators just get off of creating people who really think about simulations a lot? Maybe they just invented you guys for the night to talk about simulations with memories of all this podcast. Because, yeah, the simulators just get off on seeing their simulated creatures. You're the luckiest of all the Sims. I mean, they tell jokes for a living. That's not bad. But you got them beat.

Well, he makes most of his money in real estate. Okay, let's end it there, Dan. Thank you, David Chalmers, for joining us. And, of course, you're always welcome to stop by the Comedy Cellar for half off on Falafel and Cheever. Falafel and philosophy, we call it. Podcast at ComedyCellar.com for all your questions, comments, and suggestions. We will see you next time. Thank you, Al Lubell.

Mentally Al available on YouTube. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time at Live from the Table.