Introduction: The Nature of Perception and Reality

• Current cognitive science suggests we construct perceptions in real time. Evolution suggests our perceptions don’t reflect true reality, but are optimized for survival, challenging the idea that space-time is fundamental.

Projects and Perspectives

• Levin’s Lab: Focuses on understanding collective intelligence, communication with cellular swarms, and exploring competencies of gene regulatory networks and other models. Applications include cancer, birth defects, and regenerative medicine.
• Hoffman’s Project: Investigates structures beyond space-time (like the amplituhedron and decorated permutations) and aims to derive these from a dynamical system based on Markov chains of conscious agents. He proposes linking properties of conscious agent dynamics (e.g., mass, momentum, spin) to physical properties. He aims to predict parton distributions inside protons from this theory.
• Levin’s Childhood Anecdote: A lost toy prompted thoughts about the persistence of objects and self across time, leading to questions about stability, change, and the reconstruction of self from memory traces.

The Nature of Time and Self

• The self needs constant reconstruction. Memories are accessed and rebuilt, not statically stored. The “space-time loaf” is a framework, but physicists are questioning its fundamental nature.
• Space-time may be a “data structure” that breaks down at very small scales (10^-33 cm, 10^-43 s), suggesting a deeper reality beyond it.
• Time and space could be “interface concepts” — useful tools, but not reflecting the ultimate reality, which exists outside space-time. Evolution by natural selection supports this; our perceptions are optimized for survival, not truth.
• Neurobiology is far more complex than previously thought, as it needs to be reverse-engineered from this deeper reality beyond space-time.
• In the conscious agent model, the “arrow of time” may be an artifact of the projection process (loss of information), not inherent in the fundamental dynamics.
• Agents build models of the world. Those might or not match the model of the world.

Agency, Tools, and Perception

• The tools we use (e.g., voltmeters, rulers) limit what we perceive to low-agency, mechanistic phenomena. Minds, however, are good at detecting other minds, suggesting the need for different “tools” to understand agency and higher-level properties.
• Objects, including our bodies and brains, are not fundamentally conscious. Consciousness is a *perception* recreated “on the fly” as needed, similar to an avatar in a virtual reality.
• Object permanence (the belief that objects exist even when unseen) is a deeply ingrained, pre-rational belief, programmed early in life, making it difficult to fully accept the non-fundamentality of objects.
• Levin presented the Skydive memory question: You can have experience, or remeber having, the former group is the ephemeral types while the latter group are of the people for which, only the collection of their memory are considered important to their self.

Implications and Analogies

• Analogy: VR, just like how avatars and objects are not “real” inside a virtual world, neither exist except that moment when rendered. Analogously there may be some outside computer of the VR. Agreement on perception (like seeing a dinosaur bone) doesn’t imply pre-existing reality; it reflects shared interpretation within a “headset.”
• Split-brain patients: Different hemispheres can hold contradictory beliefs (e.g., atheist vs. theist), raising questions about the unity of self and negotiation between internal “agents.”
• The distinction between living and non-living, or conscious and unconscious, may be an artifact of our interface, not a fundamental distinction in reality. (Analogy: conscious vs. unconscious pixels on a Zoom screen).
• A thought experiment describes a patient with a disruptive “partier” personality facing integration therapy, highlighting the ethical complexities of altering or erasing a coherent “self,” even within a single body. The key question: where does the conscious go after integrating.

Conscious Agents and the Fundamental Nature of Reality

• Conscious agent model: A mathematically precise model where agents have experiences, take actions affecting other agents, and interact through a Markov chain.
• There is potentially ONE final agent (infinite) so it cannot be described in practice. So any analysis must be limited.
• Observation: In the model, consciousnesses observe other consciousnesses. Any collection of conscious agents is itself a bigger agent.
• Little Agent and Trace Chain: by picking only subsets and some finite temporal windows of these collection we create little agents. Little agent perspective.

Consciousness, Cognition, and Biology (Levin’s Perspective)

• Cognition is different from consciousness. Levin focuses on cognition, defining it extensively in a recent paper (detained paper). He believes cognition is prevalent throughout the universe, not limited to “living” things.
• His framework, TAME (Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere), is an engineering approach focusing on the practical benefits of a “cognitive lens.” It aims to generate new experiments and interventions in biomedicine.
• Bioelectricity is a key “cognitive glue” for scaling up cognition, but not the only mechanism. Levin advocates dropping “teleophobia” (fear of attributing goals) to unlock new research programs.
• Every cell is some other cell’s environment. And at every biological scale, you see this ‘part within the whole’, that makes drawing the limit of one self hard and challenging.
• All of our bodies (or maybe even our environment!) all are nested, various collections with organs having their own intelligences/cognitions,
• If your “cognitive lens” were, for instance, tracking chemicals instead of visual light, then you might “perceive” and “understand” your internal organ systems and the liver might also have intelligence.

Hoffman’s responses and additions.

• Distinguishing between Subject and Objective Reality: He proposes that we understand object (external reality independent of observers), and there are objects dependent on the perception. His work point to objective reality being different.
• Monodology, and Leibnizian, views are a very good match. In Leibnizian worldview, experiences and probabilistic relationship among those experiences, very similar to his model’s perspective of reality.

Further Discussions and Q&A Highlights

• Fitness vs. Truth: Perceiving the truth (e.g., toggling millions of voltages) would lead to *less* fitness than perceiving a simplified “interface” (e.g., steering wheel, gas pedal) in a virtual reality game. Theorems, not just simulations, show that fitness payoff functions generally contain *no* information about objective reality’s structures. This implies optimization in VR reality will lead to obscuring most information, including truth.
• Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT): Critics argue that using EGT to disprove the fundamentality of physical objects is self-contradictory. Hoffman counters that *all* scientific theories make assumptions, and good theories reveal the *limits* of those assumptions (like Einstein’s theory revealing the limits of space-time). The work being done, is precisely in the spirit of EGT, with the objective to highlight that there is potentially some underlying realities behind our models/reality.
• Space time isn’t fundamental, neither is quantum.
• The hard problem of consciousness isn’t one for Hoffman. Hoffman starts with assuming conscious is all.
• Bayesian Inference and Markov Blankets: Perception as Bayesian inference doesn’t imply perceiving the “true” state of the world. The conditional independence imposed by a Markov blanket shows that we only access an *interface,* not the underlying reality.
• Hoffman acknowledges Delbrück’s similar non-reductionist viewpoint on evolution.
• Relationship between consciousness and high energy physics is, is communicating or collaborative (trace chains), that it has properties correlating and communicating with our real (or rather rendered) world objects like photons and so forth.
• Nima Arkani-Hamed (high-energy physicist): Hoffman recommends his 2019 Harvard lectures for a (relatively) accessible introduction to the amplituhedron and related concepts.
• Physics perspective of Don and Leven were not quite aligned. Hoffman works at physics being secondary and being derived by concious, and a conscious being the ultimate and first truth, while Levin sees cognition very similar, but believes that both are still important perspectives, with intelligence spanning multiple hierarchies/agents. Levin had functional framework it’s called t-a-m-e.

导言：感知与现实的本质

• 当前的认知科学表明，我们是实时构建感知的。进化论表明，我们的感知并不反映真实的现实，而是为了生存而优化的，这挑战了时空是基本概念的观点。

项目与观点

• 莱文的实验室：专注于理解集体智能、与细胞群体的交流，以及探索基因调控网络和其他模型的各种能力。应用领域包括癌症、出生缺陷和再生医学。
• 霍夫曼的项目：研究超越时空的结构（如振幅多面体和装饰排列），并旨在从基于意识主体马尔可夫链的动力学系统中推导出这些结构。他提出将意识主体动力学的属性（例如，质量、动量、自旋）与物理属性联系起来。他旨在从这个理论预测质子内部的部分子分布。
• 莱文的童年轶事：一个丢失的玩具引发了关于物体和自我在时间中持续存在的思考，导致了关于稳定性、变化以及从记忆痕迹中重建自我的问题。

时间和自我的本质

• 自我需要不断重建。记忆是被访问和重建的，而不是静态存储的。“时空面包”是一个框架，但物理学家正在质疑其基本性质。
• 时空可能是一个“数据结构”，它在非常小的尺度（10^-33 厘米，10^-43 秒）上会崩溃，这表明存在一个超越它的更深层次的现实。
• 时间和空间可能是“界面概念”——有用的工具，但不反映终极现实，终极现实存在于时空之外。自然选择的进化论支持这一点；我们的感知是为了生存而不是真理而优化的。
• 神经生物学远比以前认为的复杂得多，因为它需要从超越时空的更深层现实中进行逆向工程。
• 在意识主体模型中，“时间之箭”可能是投影过程（信息丢失）的产物，而不是基本动力学中固有的。
• 主体构建世界的模型。 这些模型可能匹配也可能不匹配世界的模型。

自主性、工具和感知

• 我们使用的工具（例如，电压表、尺子）将我们的感知限制在低自主性、机械现象上。然而，心智善于检测其他心智，这表明需要不同的“工具”来理解自主性和更高级别的属性。
• 物体，包括我们的身体和大脑，并非根本上有意识。意识是一种“即时”按需重新创建的*感知*，类似于虚拟现实中的化身。
• 客体永久性（相信即使看不见物体也存在）是一种根深蒂固、非理性的信念，在生命早期就被植入，这使得人们难以完全接受客体的非基本性。
• 莱文提出了跳伞记忆问题：你可以有经验，或者记住有经验，前者是短暂的类型，而后者是那些认为只有记忆的集合对他们的自我来说才重要的人。

启示与类比

• 类比：虚拟现实（VR），就像虚拟世界中的化身和物体不是“真实的”一样，除非在渲染的那一刻存在。 类似地，可能存在虚拟现实之外的计算机。对感知的共识（比如看到恐龙骨骼）并不意味着存在预先存在的现实；它反映了“头显”内的共享解释。
• 裂脑患者：不同的半球可以持有矛盾的信念（例如，无神论者与有神论者），这引发了关于自我统一和内部“主体”之间协商的问题。
• 生物与非生物、意识与无意识之间的区别可能是我们界面的产物，而不是现实中的根本区别。（类比：Zoom 屏幕上意识与无意识的像素）。
• 一个思想实验描述了一位具有破坏性“派对狂”人格的患者面临整合治疗，突出了改变或擦除一个连贯的“自我”的伦理复杂性，即使是在一个身体内。关键问题是：整合后意识去了哪里。

意识主体与现实的基本本质

• 意识主体模型：一个数学上精确的模型，其中主体有经验，采取影响其他主体的行动，并通过马尔可夫链进行交互。
• 可能存在一个最终主体（无限的），因此无法在实践中描述。因此，任何分析都必须是有限的。
• 观察：在模型中，意识观察其他意识。任何意识主体的集合本身就是一个更大的主体。
• 小主体和轨迹链：通过仅选择这些集合的子集和一些有限的时间窗口，我们创建了小主体。小主体的视角。

意识、认知和生物学（莱文的观点）

• 认知不同于意识。莱文专注于认知，并在最近的一篇论文（详细论文）中广泛地定义了它。他认为认知在整个宇宙中普遍存在，而不仅限于“生物”。
• 他的框架，TAME（无处不在的心智技术方法），是一种工程方法，侧重于“认知透镜”的实际好处。它旨在在生物医学中产生新的实验和干预措施。
• 生物电是扩大认知的关键“认知粘合剂”，但不是唯一的机制。莱文主张放弃“目的恐惧症”（害怕归因目标）以解锁新的研究项目。
• 每个细胞都是其他细胞的环境。在每一个生物尺度上，你都会看到这种“整体中的一部分”，这使得绘制一个自我的界限变得困难和具有挑战性。
• 我们所有的身体（甚至可能是我们的环境！）都是嵌套的，各种集合，器官有它们自己的智能/认知。
• 如果你的“认知透镜”是跟踪化学物质而不是可见光，那么你可能会“感知”和“理解”你的内部器官系统，肝脏也可能有智能。

霍夫曼的回应和补充

• 区分主体现实和客体现实：他提出我们理解物体（独立于观察者的外部现实），并且存在依赖于感知的物体。他的工作指向不同的客观现实。
• 单子论和莱布尼茨的观点非常吻合。在莱布尼茨的世界观中，经验和这些经验之间的概率关系，与他的模型的现实视角非常相似。

进一步讨论和问答要点

• 适应性与真理：感知真理（例如，切换数百万个电压）将导致比感知虚拟现实游戏中的简化“界面”（例如，方向盘、油门踏板）*更低*的适应性。定理，不仅仅是模拟，表明适应度收益函数通常包含*不*包含有关客观现实结构的信息。这意味着在虚拟现实中优化将导致掩盖大多数信息，包括真相。
• 演化博弈论（EGT）：批评者认为，使用EGT来反驳物理对象的基本性是自相矛盾的。霍夫曼反驳说，*所有*科学理论都做出假设，好的理论揭示了这些假设的*局限性*（就像爱因斯坦的理论揭示了时空的局限性）。正在完成的工作，正是本着EGT的精神，目的是强调在我们的模型/现实背后可能存在一些潜在的现实。
• 时空不是根本，量子也不是。
• 对霍夫曼来说意识的难题不是问题。霍夫曼从假设意识是一切开始。
• 贝叶斯推断和马尔可夫毯：作为贝叶斯推断的感知并不意味着感知世界的“真实”状态。马尔可夫毯施加的条件独立性表明，我们只访问一个*界面*，而不是底层现实。
• 霍夫曼承认德尔布吕克在进化论上持有类似的非还原论观点。
• 意识与高能物理之间的关系是，正在沟通或协作（追踪链），它具有与我们的真实（或者说是渲染的）世界物体（如光子等）相关的属性和交流。
• 尼马·阿尔卡尼-哈米