Conscious Agents

Donald Hoffman, in his book “The Case Against Reality,” introduces the Interface Theory of Perception, which suggests that our perception systems evolved to extract only useful information from the environment, ruthlessly removing all irrelevant details. The result of this idea is that nothing we perceive is truly how it exists outside of our mind. Instead, it’s a useful icon on the desktop of our mind, applicable not only to macroscopic objects but also to cosmic and microscopic ones, including stars, galaxies, neurons, and elementary particles. All of these objects are useful facsimiles that our mind conjures up whenever we look at them, regardless of what they are in reality. He even goes as far as to hypothesize that space and time themselves are functional constructs of our minds, which was supported by the recent Nobel Prize in Physics for Bell’s theorems.

There is extensive research on place cells in the brain. The current hypothesis suggests that they encode physical space within the brain’s model of the local 3D environment. They are reused when the brain reaches a new location. Here’s a bold reframing: the activity in these cells correlates with different locations because the structures that the neuron icons represent are responsible for creating what the brain perceives as the “real” 3D space. Essentially, these “cells” are responsible for producing a functional copy of space (based on the actual data structure of reality) rather than being imprinted with real “reality,” as the current view in neuroscience suggests.

Donald Hoffman also presents the model of conscious realism, which proposes that true objective reality consists of conscious agents and their interactions. Initially, I thought he was suggesting that living beings were the main real nodes of reality. The world they perceive might be artificial, with many parts removed to enhance the observer’s fitness by focusing their attention on aspects of reality that help pass on their genes.

However, the deeper I delve into his last chapter, the more it becomes clear that he views all parts of reality as a network of conscious agents. Neurons are conscious and operate within their own perception matrix, guiding brain activity. Extending this idea, human society as a whole is also such a network. What would be the conscious experience of a country or humanity at large, on a planetary scale? It’s hard to say because the “interface” of an individual is very different from that of human society (if considered as a single entity), just as a neuron cannot understand what its combined activity and everyone else’s does, yet is unaware of the owner of the brain.

If I were to zoom in further, aren’t the forces in physics and physical laws then just manifestations of the possible experiences, actions, and interactions of conscious agents that we perceive (in our version of “reality interface”) as elementary particles? Isn’t that why the activity of cellular machinery appears so goal-driven, i.e., conscious?

If this is an accurate view of the world, then the paintings by Alex Grey, “The Net of Being,” where heads are interconnected and looking at each other, take on a whole new meaning. I think I finally understand its significance. It genuinely depicts the idea that all parts of reality, from elementary particles to galactic filaments, are these consciousnesses observing each other. The eyes in those paintings and psychedelic experiences symbolize perception or interaction because that’s how we mainly engage with the world: through our eyes. However, this is merely a means to illustrate the concept of “interaction.”

So, then, the magic lies in passing your intent to the network of these smaller, or finer, if you will, conscious agents and guiding them, or persuading them, to change their default interaction. A fireball, then, would be a conspiracy of air molecules to collide with each other with fanaticism and ferocity.

This way, writing is like magic because making molecules in the air believe a message and follow the magician’s will is similar to the interaction between the reader and writer. Interesting.

Remote viewing, then, involves asking the agent lattice to transmit information from a “distant” location that is “inaccessible via the default set of rules.”