- There's ideas of panpsychism where people believe that whatever consciousness is, is a fundamental part of reality. It's almost like a physics law. Do you think, what's your views on consciousness? Do you think it has this deep part of reality or is it something that's deeply human and constructed by us humans?

- Start nice and light and easy. - Easy. - Nothing I ask you today has actually proven answer. So we're just hypothesizing. - So yeah, I mean, I should clarify, this is all speculation and I'm not an expert in any of these topics and I'm not God. But I think that consciousness is probably something that can be fully explained within the laws of physics.

I think that our bodies and brains and the universe and at the quantum level is so rich and complex. I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room for consciousness there. And why should we be conscious? Why are we aware of ourselves? That is a very strange and interesting and important question.

And I think for the next few thousand years, we're going to have to believe in answers purely on faith. But my guess is that we will find that within the configuration space of possible arrangements of the universe, there are some that contain memories of others. Literally, Julian Barber calls them time capsule states where you're like, yeah, not only do I have a scratch on my arm, but also this state of the universe also contains a memory in my head of being scratched by my cat three days ago.

And for some reason, those kinds of states of the universe are more plentiful or more likely. - When you say those states, the ones that contain memories of its past or ones that contain memories of its past and have degrees of consciousness? - Just the first part, because I think the consciousness then emerges from the fact that a state of the universe that contains fragments or memories of other states is one where you're going to feel like there's time.

You're going to feel like, yeah, things happened in the past. And I don't know what'll happen in the future because these states don't contain information about the future. For some reason, those kinds of states are either more common, more plentiful, or you could use the anthropic principle and just say, well, they're extremely rare, but until you are in one, or if you are in one, then you can ask questions like you're asking me on this podcast.

- Why questions? - But yeah, it's like, why are we conscious? Well, because if we weren't, we wouldn't be asking why we were. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)