Vsauce: Consciousness | AI Podcast Clip with Michael Stevens
00:00:00.000 | - There's ideas of panpsychism where people believe
00:00:04.800 | that whatever consciousness is,
00:00:07.240 | is a fundamental part of reality.
00:00:09.880 | It's almost like a physics law.
00:00:11.280 | Do you think, what's your views on consciousness?
00:00:13.960 | Do you think it has this deep part of reality
00:00:18.000 | or is it something that's deeply human
00:00:20.240 | and constructed by us humans?
00:00:21.900 | - Start nice and light and easy.
00:00:26.520 | - Easy.
00:00:27.360 | - Nothing I ask you today has actually proven answer.
00:00:30.680 | So we're just hypothesizing.
00:00:32.160 | - So yeah, I mean, I should clarify,
00:00:34.080 | this is all speculation and I'm not an expert
00:00:36.200 | in any of these topics and I'm not God.
00:00:39.000 | But I think that consciousness is probably
00:00:43.560 | something that can be fully explained
00:00:48.120 | within the laws of physics.
00:00:51.480 | I think that our bodies and brains and the universe
00:00:55.120 | and at the quantum level is so rich and complex.
00:00:59.480 | I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room
00:01:01.720 | for consciousness there.
00:01:03.120 | And why should we be conscious?
00:01:07.600 | Why are we aware of ourselves?
00:01:09.360 | That is a very strange and interesting
00:01:13.600 | and important question.
00:01:15.120 | And I think for the next few thousand years,
00:01:18.080 | we're going to have to believe in answers purely on faith.
00:01:22.640 | But my guess is that we will find that
00:01:27.520 | within the configuration space
00:01:29.520 | of possible arrangements of the universe,
00:01:32.300 | there are some that contain memories of others.
00:01:36.720 | Literally, Julian Barber calls them time capsule states
00:01:40.580 | where you're like, yeah,
00:01:41.480 | not only do I have a scratch on my arm,
00:01:43.680 | but also this state of the universe
00:01:45.600 | also contains a memory in my head
00:01:48.160 | of being scratched by my cat three days ago.
00:01:51.000 | And for some reason, those kinds of states of the universe
00:01:55.360 | are more plentiful or more likely.
00:01:58.200 | - When you say those states,
00:01:59.520 | the ones that contain memories of its past
00:02:02.400 | or ones that contain memories of its past
00:02:05.160 | and have degrees of consciousness?
00:02:07.800 | - Just the first part,
00:02:09.200 | because I think the consciousness then emerges
00:02:12.600 | from the fact that a state of the universe
00:02:15.560 | that contains fragments or memories of other states
00:02:21.480 | is one where you're going to feel like there's time.
00:02:25.000 | You're going to feel like, yeah,
00:02:26.560 | things happened in the past.
00:02:28.840 | And I don't know what'll happen in the future
00:02:30.400 | because these states don't contain information
00:02:32.040 | about the future.
00:02:33.200 | For some reason, those kinds of states
00:02:36.440 | are either more common, more plentiful,
00:02:40.680 | or you could use the anthropic principle and just say,
00:02:43.280 | well, they're extremely rare,
00:02:44.920 | but until you are in one, or if you are in one,
00:02:48.160 | then you can ask questions
00:02:49.280 | like you're asking me on this podcast.
00:02:51.280 | - Why questions?
00:02:53.120 | - But yeah, it's like, why are we conscious?
00:02:55.000 | Well, because if we weren't,
00:02:55.880 | we wouldn't be asking why we were.
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