Joscha Bach: Life, Intelligence, Consciousness, AI & the Future of Humans | Lex Fridman Podcast #392

1. 0:00 – 1:15

   Introduction

   1. JBJoscha Bach0:00

      There is a certain perspective where you might be thinking what is the longest possible game that you could be playing. A short game is, for instance, uh, cancer is playing a shorter game than your organism. It's... Cancer is an organism playing a shorter game than the regular organism. And because the cancer cannot procreate beyond the organism, um, except for some infectious cancers, like the ones that eradicated the Tasmanian devils, uh, you, uh, typically end up with a situation where the organism dies together with the cancer. Because the cancer has destroyed the larger system due to playing a shorter game. And so ideally you want to, I think, build agents that play the longest possible games. And the longest possible games is to keep entropy at bay as long as possible by doing interesting stuff.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:48

      The following is a conversation with Joscha Bach, his third time on this podcast. Joscha is one of the most brilliant and fascinating minds in the world, exploring the nature of intelligence, consciousness, and computation. And he's one of my favorite humans to talk to about pretty much anything and everything. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Joscha Bach.

2. 1:15 – 13:37

   Stages of life

   1. LFLex Fridman1:15

      You wrote a post about levels of lucidity. "As we grow older, it becomes apparent that our self-reflexive mind is not just gradually accumulating ideas about itself, but that it progresses in somewhat distinct stages." So there's seven of the stages. Stage one, reactive survival, infant. Stage two, personal self, young child. Stage three, social self, adolescence, domesticated adult. Stage four is rational agency, self-direction. Stage five is self-authoring. That's full adult. You've achieved wisdom. But there's two more stages. Stage six is enlightenment. Stage seven is transcendence. Can you explain each, or the interesting parts of each of these stages? And what's your sense why there are stages of this, uh, of lucidity, as we progress through life, in this too-short life?

   2. JBJoscha Bach2:12

      This model is derived from concept by the psychologist Robert Kegan, and he talks about the development of the self as a process that happens in principle by some kind of reverse engineering of the mind, where you gradually become aware of yourself, and thereby build structure that allows you to interact deeper with the world and yourself. And I found myself using this model not so much as a developmental model. I'm not even sure if it's a very good developmental model, because I saw my children not progressing exactly like that. And, um, I also suspect that you don't go through these stages necessarily in succession, and it's not that you work through one stage and then you get into the next one. Sometimes you revisit them, sometimes stuff is happening in parallel. But it's, I think, a useful framework to look at what's present and the structure of a person and how they interact with the world and how they relate to themselves. So, uh, it's more like a philosophical framework that allows you to talk about how minds work. And at first, when we are born, we don't have a personal self yet, I think. Instead, we have an attentional self, and this attentional self is initially, in the infant, tasked with building a world model, and also an initial model of the self. Mostly it's building a game engine in the brain that is tracking sensory data and uses it to explain it, and in some sense, you could compare it to a game engine like Minecraft or so, so colors and sounds, um, people are all not physical objects. They're a creation of our mind at a certain level of, of course, training. Models that are mathematical, that use, uh, geometry and, um, that, uh, use manipulation of objects and so on to create scenes in which we can find ourselves and interact with them.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:59

      So Minecraft? (laughs)

   4. JBJoscha Bach4:00

      Yeah. And this personal self is something that is more or less created after the world is finished, after it's trained into the system, after it has been constructed. And this personal self is an agent that interacts with the outside world. And the outside world is not the world of quantum mechanics, the, not the physical universe, but it's the model that has been generated in our own mind. Right? And this is us, and we experience ourself interacting with that outside world that is created inside of our own mind. And outside of ourself, there's feelings, and they presented our interface to this outside world, they pose problems to us. These feelings are basically attitudes that our mind is computing that tell us what's needed in the world, the things that we are drawn to, the things that we are afraid of. And we are tasked with solving this problem of satisfying the needs, avoiding the aversions, following on our inner commitments and so on, and also modeling ourselves and building the next stage. So after we have this personal self in stage two online, uh, many people form a social self. And this social self allows the individual to experience themselves as part of a group. It's basically this thing that when you are playing in a team, for instance, you don't notice yourself just as a single node that is reaching out into the world, but you're also looking down. You're looking down from this entire group and you see how this group is looking at this individual, and everybody in the group is in some sense emulating this group spirit to some degree. And in this state, people are forming their opinions by assimilating them from this group mind. They basically gain the ability to act a little bit like a hive mind.

   5. LFLex Fridman5:43

      But do, are you also modeling the interaction of how opinions shapes and forms through the interaction of the individual nodes within the group?

   6. JBJoscha Bach5:51

      Yeah, it's basically the way in which people do it in this stage is that they experience what are the opinions of my environment, they experience the relationship that I have to the environment, and, uh, they resonate with people around them and, um, get more opinions in this, through this interaction, through, um, the way in which they relate to others. Um-And at stage four, you basically understand that stuff is true and false independently, what other people believe, and you have agency over your own beliefs in that stage. You basically discover epistemology, the rules about determining what's true and false.

   7. LFLex Fridman6:27

      So you can... You start to learn how to think?

   8. JBJoscha Bach6:30

      Yes. I mean, at some level, you're always thinking. You are c- constructing things, and I believe that this ability to reason about your mental representation is what we mean by thinking. It's an intrinsically reflexive process that requires consciousness. Without consciousness, you cannot think. You can generate the content of feelings and so on outside of consciousness. It's very hard to be conscious of how your feelings emerge, at least in the early stages of development, but, um, thoughts is something that you always control.

   9. LFLex Fridman7:00

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JBJoscha Bach7:00

       And if you are a nerd like me, you often have to skip stage three because you lack the intuitive empathy with others. Because in order to resonate with a group, you need to have a quite similar architecture, and if people are wired differently, then it's hard for them to resonate with other people and basically have, um, empathy, which is not the same as compassion, but it is a shared perceptual mental state. Empathy happens not just via inference about the mental states of others, but it's a perception of what other people feel and where they're at.

   11. LFLex Fridman7:35

       Can't you not have empathy while also not having a similar architecture, cognitive architecture as the others in the group?

   12. JBJoscha Bach7:40

       I think, yes, but you o- well, I experienced that too, but you need to build something that is like a meta architecture.

   13. LFLex Fridman7:47

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JBJoscha Bach7:47

       You need to be able to embrace the architecture of the other to some degree, or- or-

   15. LFLex Fridman7:50

       I see it.

   16. JBJoscha Bach7:51

       ... find some shared common ground. And, uh-

   17. LFLex Fridman7:54

       (laughs)

   18. JBJoscha Bach7:54

       ... it's also this issue that, uh, if you are a nerd, normally it's often p- basically, neurotypical people have difficulty to resonate with you. And as a result, they have difficulty understanding you, uh, u- unless they have enough wisdom to- to feel what's going on there.

   19. LFLex Fridman8:08

       Well, aren't we... Isn't the whole process of the stage threes to figure out the API to the other humans that have different architecture, and you yourself publish public documentation for the API that- that- that people can interact with for you? (laughs) I mean, isn't this the whole process of socializing?

   20. JBJoscha Bach8:26

       My experience as a child growing up was that, um, I did not find any way to interface with the stage three people, and they didn't do that with me. So took me-

   21. LFLex Fridman8:36

       Did you try?

   22. JBJoscha Bach8:36

       Yeah, of course. I tried it very hard. But, uh, it was only when I entered the mathematics school at, uh, ninth grade, uh, lots of other nerds were present, um, that I found people that I could deeply resonate with, and had the impression that, "Yes, I have friends now. I found my own people." And before that, I felt extremely lonely in the world. There was basically nobody I could connect to. And I remember, um, there was one moment in all these years where I was in, uh, there was a school exchange, and there was a Russian boy, um, kid from the, uh, Russian garrison station in eastern Germany visit our school. And we played a game of chess against each other, and we looked into each other's eyes, and we sat there for two hours playing this game of chess. And I had the impression, "This is a human being." (laughs) "He- he understands what I understand." We didn't even speak the same language.

   23. LFLex Fridman9:29

       I wonder if, uh, your life could've been different if you knew that it's okay to be different, to have a different architecture, whether like accepting that the interface-

   24. JBJoscha Bach9:41

       Well-

   25. LFLex Fridman9:41

       ... is hard to figure out, takes a long time to figure out, and it's okay to be different. In fact, it's beautiful to be different.

   26. JBJoscha Bach9:50

       It was not my main concern. My main concern was mostly that I was alone. It was not so much the question, is it okay to be the way I am? The... I couldn't do much about it, so after th- I had to deal with it. But, um, my main issue was that I was not sure if I would ever meet anybody growing up that I would connect to at such a deep level that I would feel that I could belong.

   27. LFLex Fridman10:13

       So there's a visceral, undeniable feeling of being alone.

   28. JBJoscha Bach10:17

       Yes. And I noticed the same thing when I came into the math school that, I think at least half, probably two-thirds of these kids were severely traumatized as, uh, children growing up, and in large part due to being alone, because they couldn't find anybody to relate to.

   29. LFLex Fridman10:33

       Don't you think everybody's alone-

   30. JBJoscha Bach10:35

       No.
3. 13:37 – 20:12

   Identity

   1. LFLex Fridman13:37

   2. JBJoscha Bach13:37

      At stage five, you discover how identity is constructed.

   3. LFLex Fridman13:40

      Self-offer. ???

   4. JBJoscha Bach13:41

      You realize that your values are not terminal, but they're instrumental to achieving a world that you like and aesthetics that you prefer.

   5. LFLex Fridman13:49

      Yeah.

   6. JBJoscha Bach13:49

      And, um, the more you understand this, the more you get agency over how your identity is constructed, and you realize that identity and interpersonal interaction is a costume and you should be able to have agency over that costume, right? It's useful to be a costume. It tells something to others and it allows to interface in roles, but, um, being locked into this is a big limitation.

   7. LFLex Fridman14:13

      The word costume kind of implies that it's fraudulent in s- in some way. Is costume a good word for you?

   8. JBJoscha Bach14:20

      No.

   9. LFLex Fridman14:21

      Like we present ourselves to the world...

   10. JBJoscha Bach14:22

       In some sense, I learned a lot about costumes at Burning Man. Before that, I did not really appreciate costumes and saw, saw them more as uniforms, like wearing a suit if you are working in a bank or if you are, uh, trying to, uh, get, um, startup funding for, uh, from a VC-

   11. LFLex Fridman14:38

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JBJoscha Bach14:38

       ... in Switzerland, uh, right? Then you dress up in a particular way, and this is mostly to show the other side that you are willing to play by the rules and you understand what the rules are. But, um, there is something deeper. When you are at Burning Man, your costume becomes self-expression and there is no boundary to the self-expression. You're basically free to wear what you want, to express other people what you feel like this day, and, uh, what kind of interactions you want to have.

   13. LFLex Fridman15:04

       Is the costume a kind of projection of, uh, of who you are?

   14. JBJoscha Bach15:10

       That's very hard to say, because the costume also depends on what other people see in the costume, and this depends on-

   15. LFLex Fridman15:16

       Sure.

   16. JBJoscha Bach15:16

       ... the context that the other people understand, and you, so you have to create something, if you want to, that is legible to the other side, and, uh, that means something to yourself.

   17. LFLex Fridman15:25

       Mm-hmm. Do we become prisoners of the costume 'cause everybody expects us to be?

   18. JBJoscha Bach15:29

       Some people do, but, um-

   19. LFLex Fridman15:31

       Yeah.

   20. JBJoscha Bach15:31

       ... uh, I think that once you realize that you wear a costume at Burning Man, a variety of costumes, realize that you cannot not wear a costume.

   21. LFLex Fridman15:40

       Yeah.

   22. JBJoscha Bach15:41

       Right? Basically, everything that you wear and present to others, uh, is, uh, something that is to some degree an addition to what you are deep inside.

   23. LFLex Fridman15:52

       So this stage, in parentheses, you put (full adult, wisdom) . Why is this full adult? Why would you say this is full, and why is it wisdom?

   24. JBJoscha Bach16:04

       It does allow you to understand, um, why other people have different identities from yours.

   25. LFLex Fridman16:10

       Ah.

   26. JBJoscha Bach16:10

       And it allows you to understand that the difference between people who vote for different parties and might have very different opinions and different value systems is often the accident of where they are born and what happened after them t- uh, after that to them and what traits they got f- um, before they were born. And at some point, you, uh, realize the perspective, where you understand that everybody could be you in a different timeline.

   27. LFLex Fridman16:36

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JBJoscha Bach16:36

       If you just flip those bits.

   29. LFLex Fridman16:38

       How many costumes do you have?

   30. JBJoscha Bach16:41

       I don't count, but in-
4. 20:12 – 26:43

   Enlightenment

   1. JBJoscha Bach20:12

      So-

   2. LFLex Fridman20:13

      S- stage six.

   3. JBJoscha Bach20:13

      ... stage six, um, at some point you can collapse the division between self, uh, personal self and world generator again. And a lot of people get there via meditation, or some of them get there via psychedelics, some of them by accident. And you suddenly notice that you are not actually a person, but you are a vessel that can create a person. And the person is still there, you observe their personal self, but you observe the personal self from the outside.

   4. LFLex Fridman20:41

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JBJoscha Bach20:42

      And you notice it's a representation. And you might also notice that the world that is being created is a representation. If not, then you might experience that I am the universe, I am the thing that is creating everything. And of course what you are creating is not quantum mechanics, um, and the physical universe, what you're creating is this game engine-

   6. LFLex Fridman21:00

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JBJoscha Bach21:00

      ... that is updating the world, and you are creating your valence, your feelings, your, uh, and, um, all the people inside of that world, including the person that you identify with yourself in this world. It's the-

   8. LFLex Fridman21:11

      Are- are you creating the game engine or are you noticing the game engine?

   9. JBJoscha Bach21:15

      Um, you notice how you're generating the game engine. And, I mean, when you are dreaming at night, you can... uh, if you lu- have a lucid dream, you can learn how to do this deliberately. And in principle, you can also do it during the day. And the reason why we don't, uh, get to do this from the beginning and we do- why we don't have agency of our feelings right away is because we would game it before they have the necessary amount of wisdom to, uh, to deal with creating this dream that we are in.

   10. LFLex Fridman21:44

       You don't... you- you don't want to get access to cheat codes too quickly, otherwise you won't enjoy the game.

   11. JBJoscha Bach21:48

       So, uh, stage, uh, five is already pretty rare, and stage six is even more rare. You're supposed to basically find this mostly with advanced, uh, Buddhist meditators and so on that, uh, are dropping into this stage and can induce it at will and spend time in it.

   12. LFLex Fridman22:03

       So stage five requires a good therapist, stage six requires a good, uh, Buddhist spiritual leader?

   13. JBJoscha Bach22:11

       Uh, yes. So it does... for instance, could be that is the right thing to do. But it's not that these, uh, stages give you scores or levels, uh, that you need to advance to. Uh, it's not that the next stage is better.

   14. LFLex Fridman22:23

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JBJoscha Bach22:23

       You live your life in- in the mode where it works best at any given moment. And when your mind decides that you should, uh, have a different configuration, then it's building that configuration. And f- for many people, they, uh, stay happily at state three and experience its- themselves as part of groups.

   16. LFLex Fridman22:39

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JBJoscha Bach22:39

       And there's nothing wrong with this. And for some people, this doesn't work and they're forced to build more agency over their, uh, rational beliefs than this and construct their norms rationally, and so they go to this level.

   18. LFLex Fridman22:51

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JBJoscha Bach22:51

       And, um, stage seven is something that is more or less hypothetical. That would be the stage in which... it's basically a transhumanist stage in which you understand how you work and which the mind fully realizes how it's implemented and, uh, can also in principle enter different modes in which it could be implemented. And that's the stage that as... uh, as far as I understand, is not open to people yet.

   20. LFLex Fridman23:14

       Oh, but it is possible through the process of technology?

   21. JBJoscha Bach23:17

       Yes. And who knows? If there are biological agents, um, that are working at different timescales than us that basically become aware of the way in which they're implemented on ecosystems and, um, can change that implementation and have agency over how they're implemented in the world. And what I find interesting about the discussion about AI alignment, that it seems to be following these stages very much. Most people seem to be in stage three also according to Robert Kegan.

   22. LFLex Fridman23:45

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JBJoscha Bach23:45

       I think he says that ab- about 85% of people are in stage three and stay there.

   24. LFLex Fridman23:49

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JBJoscha Bach23:50

       And if you are in stage four, uh, four, uh, three and your opinions are the result of social assimilation, then what you're mostly worried about in the AI is that the AI might have the wrong opinions.

   26. LFLex Fridman24:02

       Yeah.

   27. JBJoscha Bach24:02

       So if the AI says something racist or sexist, we are all lost because, uh, we will assimilate the wrong opinions from the AI. And so we need to make sure that the AI has the right opinions and the right values and the right structure and-Um, if you are at stage four, that's not your main concern. And so most nerds, uh, don't really worry about, um, the- um, the algorithmic bias and the model that it picks up because if there's something wrong with this bias, the AI ultimately will prove it. At some point, we'll get it there that it makes mathematical proofs about reality and then it will figure out, um, what's true and what's false. But you're still worried that AI might turn you into paper clips because it might have the wrong values, right? So if it's set up with the wrong function, uh, that controls its direction in the world, then, um, it might do something that is completely horrible and there's no easy way to fix it.

   28. LFLex Fridman24:49

       So that's more like a stage four rationalist kind of-

   29. JBJoscha Bach24:51

       Yes.

   30. LFLex Fridman24:52

       ... worry.
5. 26:43 – 33:31

   Adaptive Resonance Theory

   1. LFLex Fridman26:44

      Well, I think this is a good opportunity to try to sneak up to the idea of enlightenment. Uh, so you wrote a series of good tweets about consciousness and panpsychism, so let's break it down. First you say, "I suspect the experience that leads to the panpsychism syndrome of some philosophers and other consciousness enthusiasts-"

   2. JBJoscha Bach27:03

      (laughs) .

   3. LFLex Fridman27:03

      "... represents the realization that we don't end at the self, but share a resonant universe representation with every other observer coupled to the same universe." This actually eventually leads us to a lot of interesting questions about AI and AGI, but let's start with this representation. What is this resonant universe representation? Um, and what do you think? Do we share such a representation?

   4. JBJoscha Bach27:30

      The neuroscientist, uh, Grossberg has come up with a cognitive architecture that he calls the adaptive resonance theory, and his perspective is that our neurons can be understood as oscillators that are resonating with each other and with outside phenomena. So the coarse-grained model of the universe that we are building in some sense is resonance with objects and outside o- of us in the world. So basically, we take our patterns that, uh, of the universe they be coupled with, and our brain is not so much understood as circuitry, even though this perspective is valid, but it's, um, almost an ether in which the individual neurons are passing on-

   5. LFLex Fridman28:11

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJoscha Bach28:12

      ... chemo-electrical signals, or arbitrary, uh, signals across all modalities that can be transmitted between cells, stimulate each other in this way, and produce patterns that they modulate while passing them on.

   7. LFLex Fridman28:23

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JBJoscha Bach28:24

      And this speed of signal progression in the brain is roughly at the speed of sound, incidentally, because the, uh, time that it takes for the signals to hop from cell to cell, which means it's relatively slow with respect to the world. It takes an appreciable fraction of a second for a signal to go through the entire neocortex, something like a few hundred milliseconds. And so there's a lot of stuff happening in that time while the signal is passing, and so your brain, including in the brain itself, so nothing in the brain is assuming that stuff happens simultaneously. Everything in the brain is working in a paradigm where the world has already moved on when you are very, uh, ready to do the next thing to your signal, including the signal processing system itself. That's quite a different paradigm than the one in our digital computers where we currently assume that, um, your, uh, GPU or CPU is pretty much globally in the same state.

   9. LFLex Fridman29:17

      So you mentioned there the non-dual state and say that some people confuse it for enlightenment.

   10. JBJoscha Bach29:22

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman29:23

       What's the non-dual state?

   12. JBJoscha Bach29:25

       There is a state in which you, uh, notice that you are no longer a person, and, uh, instead you are one with the universe.

   13. LFLex Fridman29:32

       So that's-

   14. JBJoscha Bach29:32

       And this-

   15. LFLex Fridman29:32

       That speaks to the resonance?

   16. JBJoscha Bach29:34

       Yes. Uh, but this one with the universe is, of course, not accurately modeling that you are indeed, um, some god entity or indeed the universe is becoming aware of itself even though you get this experience. I believe that you get this experience because your, uh, mind is modeling the fact that you are no longer identified with the personal self in that state, but you have transcended this division between the self model and the world model-

   17. LFLex Fridman29:58

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JBJoscha Bach29:59

       ... and you are experiencing yourself as your mind, as something that is representing a universe.

   19. LFLex Fridman30:04

       But that's still part of the model?

   20. JBJoscha Bach30:05

       Yes. So it's inside of the model still. You are in-

   21. LFLex Fridman30:08

       Yeah.

   22. JBJoscha Bach30:08

       ... still inside of patterns that are generated in your brain and in your organism, and, uh, what you are now experiencing is that you're no longer this personal self in there, but you are the entirety of the mind and the- its contents.

   23. LFLex Fridman30:22

       Why is it so hard to get there?

   24. JBJoscha Bach30:25

       A lot of people who get into this state think there's... Or associate it with enlightenment. I suspect it's a favorite training goal for a number of meditators. But, um, uh, I think that enlightenment is, in some sense, more mundane, and it's a step further or sideways. It's the state where you realize that everything is a representation.

   25. LFLex Fridman30:44

       Yeah, you say enlightenment is a realization of how experience is implemented.

   26. JBJoscha Bach30:49

       Yes. So basically, uh, you notice at some point that your qualia can be deconstructed.

   27. LFLex Fridman30:55

       Reverse engineered? What, like, uh, almost like a schematic of it? What, what, uh...

   28. JBJoscha Bach31:01

       You can start with, uh, looking at a face. When maybe you look at your own face in the mirror.

   29. LFLex Fridman31:05

       Yeah.

   30. JBJoscha Bach31:05

       Look at, uh, your face for a few hours in the mirror or for a few minutes. At some point, it will look very weird, and you-
6. 33:31 – 43:31

   Panpsychism

   1. JBJoscha Bach33:31

   2. LFLex Fridman33:31

      So if we look at this, as you write in the tweet, if we look at this more rigorously as a sort of... Take the panpsychist idea more seriously, almost as a scientific discipline, you write that, quote, "Fascinatingly, the panpsychist interpretation seems to lead to observations of practical results to a degree that physics fundamentalists might call superstitious. Reports of long-distance tele- telepathy and remote causation are ubiquitous in the general population. I am not convinced," says Joschabak, "that establishing the empirical reality of telepathy would force an update of any part of serious academic physics, but it could trigger an important revolution in both neuroscience and AI from a circuit perspective to a coupled complex resonator paradigm." Are you suggesting that, um, there could be some rigorous, uh, mathematical wisdom to panpsychist perspective on the world?

   3. JBJoscha Bach34:32

      So first of all, panpsychism is the perspective that consciousness is inseparable from matter in the universe. And I find panpsychism quite unsatisfying because it does not explain consciousness, right? It does not explain how this aspect of matter produces. It's also when I try to formalize panpsychism and write down what it actually means in- with a more formal mathematical language, it's very in- difficult to distinguish it from, uh, saying that there is a software side to the world in the same way as there are software side to what the transistors are doing in your computer. So basically, there is a pattern at a certain coarse graining of the universe that in some regions of the universe leads to observers that are observing themselves, right? So panpsychism maybe is not even, when I, I write it down, a position that is distinct from functionalism. But, um, intuitively, um, a lot of people feel f- that the activity of matter itself, of mechanisms in the world is insufficient to explain it, so, uh, it's something that needs to be intrinsic to matter itself.

   4. LFLex Fridman35:32

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JBJoscha Bach35:32

      And you can, uh, apart from this abstract idea, have an experience in which you experience yourself as being the universe-

   6. LFLex Fridman35:43

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JBJoscha Bach35:43

      ... which I suspect is basically happening because you managed to dissolve the, um, division between personal self and mind that you establish as an infant when you construct a personal self and transcend it again and understand how it works. Um, but there is something deeper that is that you feel that you're also sharing a state with other people, that you, um, have an experience in which you notice that your personal self is moving into everything else, that you basically look out o- of the eyes of another person, that, um, every agent in the world that is an observer is, in some sense, you. And-

   8. LFLex Fridman36:21

      So if we l-

   9. JBJoscha Bach36:21

      ... we forget that we are the same agent.

   10. LFLex Fridman36:24

       So is it that we feel that or do we actually accomplish it? So is telepathy possible?Is it real?

   11. JBJoscha Bach36:33

       So for me, that's just a question that I don't really know the answer to. In, uh, Turing's famous 1950 paper in which he describes the Turing test, he does speculate about telepathy interestingly and asked himself, um, if telepathy is real and he thinks that it very well might be. What, uh, would be the implication for AI systems that try to be intelligent because he didn't see a mechanism by which a computer program would become telepathic. And I suspect if telepathy would exist or if all the reports that, uh, you get from people when you ask the normal person on the street, um, I find that very often they, uh, say, "I have experiences with telepathy." The scientist might not be interested in this and might not have a theory about this, but I have difficulty explaining it away. And so you could say maybe this is a superstition or maybe it's a false memory, or maybe it's a little bit of psychosis. Who knows? Uh, maybe somebody wants to make their own life more interesting or misremember something. But a lot of people report, um, "I noticed something terrible happen to my partner and I mo- notices exactly the moment it happened," or, uh, "My child had an accident and I knew that was happening and the child was in a different town." Right? So, uh, maybe it's this false memory where this is later on mistakenly attributed, but a lot of people think this is not the correct explanation. So if something like this was real, what would it mean? It probably would mean that either your body is an antenna that is sending information over all sorts of channels, like, um, maybe just electromagnetic, um, radio signals that you're sending over long distances and you get attuned to another person that you spend enough time with to, uh, get a few bits out of the ether-

   12. LFLex Fridman38:16

       Yeah.

   13. JBJoscha Bach38:16

       ... to, uh, figure out what this person is doing. Or maybe it's also when you are very close to somebody and you become empathetic with them, what happens that, is that you go into a resonance state with them, right? Similar to when people go into a seance and they, um, go into a trance state and they start shifting a Ouija board around on the table. I think what happens is that they- their minds go by their nervous systems into a resonant state in which they basically create something like a shared dream between them.

   14. LFLex Fridman38:44

       Physical closeness or closeness broadly defined?

   15. JBJoscha Bach38:48

       With physical closeness, it's, uh, much easier to experience empathy with someone, right?

   16. LFLex Fridman38:52

       Yeah.

   17. JBJoscha Bach38:52

       It's- it's- I suspect it would be difficult for me to have, uh, empathy for you if you were in a different town also. Um, how- how would that work? But if you are very close to someone, you pick up all sorts of signals from their body, not just by your eyes, but with your entire body.

   18. LFLex Fridman39:09

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JBJoscha Bach39:09

       And, um, if the nervous system sits on the other side and the intercellular communication sits on the other side and it's integrating over all these signals, you can make inferences about the state of the other. And it's not just the personal self that does this by our reasoning, but your perceptual system. And what basically happens is that your interact- uh, representations are directly interacting. It's the physical, um, resonant models of the universe that exist in your nervous system and in your body might go into resonance with others and start sharing some of their states. So you basically, by next to- being next to somebody, you pick up some of their vibes and, uh, feel without looking at them what they're feeling in this moment. And it's difficult for you, uh, if you're very empathetic, to detach yourself from it and, uh, have an emotional state that is completely independent from your environment. People who are highly empathetic are describing this. And now imagine that, uh, a lot of organisms in- in- on this planet have representations of the environment and operate like this and they are adjacent to each other and overlapping, so there's going to be some degree in which there is basically some chained interaction and we are, uh, forming some slightly shared representation. And, you know, relatively few neuroscientists who consider this possibility, I think, um, um, a rarity in this regard is Michael Levin who is considering these things in earnest. And, uh, I stumbled on this train of thought mostly by, um, noticing that the tasks of a neuron can be fulfilled by other cells as well. They can send different typed chemical messages and physical messages to the adjacent cells and learn when to do this and when not, make this conditional, and become universal functional approximators. The only thing that they cannot do is telegraph information over axons very quickly over long distances, right? So neurons in this perspective are a specially adapted kind of telegraph cell that, uh, has evolved so we can move our muscles very fast, but, um, our body is in principle able to also make models of the world, just much, much slower.

   20. LFLex Fridman41:18

       Mm-hmm. (sighs) It's interesting though that at this time at least in human history there seems to be a gap between the tools of science and, uh, the subjective experience that people report, like you're talking about with telepathy, and it seems like we're not quite there.

   21. JBJoscha Bach41:38

       No, I think that there is no gap between the tools of science and telepathy. Either it's there or it's not, and it's an empirical question. And if it's there, we should be able to detect it in a lab.

   22. LFLex Fridman41:46

       Mm-hmm. So why is there not a lot of Michael Levins walking around?

   23. JBJoscha Bach41:50

       I- I don't think that Michael Levin is, uh, specifically focused on telepathy very much. He is focused on self-organization in, uh, living organisms and in brains, uh, both as a paradigm for development and as a paradigm for information processing. And when you think about how organization processing works in organism, there is first of all radical locality, which means everything is decided locally from the perspective of an individual cell. The individual cell is the agent. And the other one is coherence. Basically, there needs to be some criterion that, uh, determines how these cells are interacting in such a way that order emerges on the next level of structure.

   24. LFLex Fridman42:29

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JBJoscha Bach42:29

       And this principle of coherence of...... um, imposing constraints that, uh, are not, uh, validated by the individual parts, and lead to coherent structure, um, to basically transcend our agency where you form an agent on the next level of organization is, uh, crucial in this perspective.

   26. LFLex Fridman42:49

       It's so cool that radical locality leads to the emergence of complexity-

   27. JBJoscha Bach42:55

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman42:55

       ... at- at the higher layers.

   29. JBJoscha Bach42:57

       And I think what Mike L- uh, Levin is looking at is- is nothing that is outside of the realm of science in any way. It's just that he is a- a paradigmatic thinker-

   30. LFLex Fridman43:07

       Mm-hmm.
7. 43:31 – 51:25

   How to think

   1. LFLex Fridman43:31

      once again returning to the biblical verses of your tweets.

   2. JBJoscha Bach43:34

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman43:35

      Uh, you write, "My public explorations are not driven by audience service, but by my lack of ability for discovering, understanding, or following the relevant authorities. So, I have to develop my own thoughts. Since I think autonomously, these thoughts cannot always be very good." That's you apologizing for the chaos of your thoughts, or perhaps not apologizing, just identifying.

   4. JBJoscha Bach43:59

      Yeah. Mm-hmm.

   5. LFLex Fridman43:59

      But let me ask the question, uh, since we talked about Michael Levin and yourself, who I think are very kind of, uh, radical, big, independent thinkers, uh, can we reverse engineer your process of thinking autonomously? How do you do it? How can humans do it? How can you avoid being influenced by, uh, what is it, stage- stage three?

   6. JBJoscha Bach44:29

      Well, why would you want to do that? It's, uh, you see what is working for you, and if it's, uh, not working for you, you build another structure that works better for you, right?

   7. LFLex Fridman44:38

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JBJoscha Bach44:38

      And so I fo- found myself in... when I was thrown into this world, in a state where my intuitions were not working for me. I was not able to, um, understand how I would be able to survive in this world and build the things that I was interested in, build the kinds of relationship I needed to build, um, work on the topics that I, uh, wanted to make progress on. And so I had to learn, and I... for me, Twitter is not some tool of publication. It's not something where I put stuff that I entirely believe to be true and provable. It's an interactive notebook in which I explore possibilities. And I found that when I try to understand how the mind and how consciousness works, I was quite optimistic. I thought there need to- uh, needs to be a big body of knowledge that I can just study and that works. And so I entered, um, studies in philosophy and computer science, and, um, later psychology and a bit of neuroscience and so on, and I was disappointed by what I found, because I found that the questions of how consciousness and- and so on works, how emotion, uh, works, how it's possible that the system can experience anything, uh, how motivation emerges in the mind were not being answered by, uh, the authorities that I met and, uh, the schools that were around. And instead, I found that it was individual thinkers that had useful ideas-

   9. LFLex Fridman46:03

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JBJoscha Bach46:04

       ... that sometimes were good, sometimes were not so good, sometimes were adopted by a large group of people, sometimes were rejected by large groups of people. But, um, for me, it was much more interesting to see these minds as individuals. And in my perspective, thinking is still something that is done not in groups, that has to be done by individuals.

   11. LFLex Fridman46:22

       So that motivated you to become an individual thinker yourself.

   12. JBJoscha Bach46:25

       I didn't have a choice.

   13. LFLex Fridman46:26

       Hmm.

   14. JBJoscha Bach46:26

       Because I didn't find a group that thought in a way where I felt, okay, um, I can just adopt everything that everybody thinks here and now I understand how consciousness works, right? So- or how the mind works or how thinking works or what thinking even is or what feelings are and how they're implemented and so on. So to figure all this out, I had to take, uh, a lot of, um, ideas from individuals and then try to put them together in something that works for myself. And on one hand, I think it helps if you try to go down and find first principles on- on which you can recreate how thinking works, how languages work, what representation is, whether representation is necessary, how the relationship between a representing agent and the world works in general.

   15. LFLex Fridman47:11

       But how do you escape the influence? Once again, the pressure of the crowd. Whether it's you in responding to the- the pressure or you being swept up by the pressure. If you even just look at Twitter, the opinions of the crowd.

   16. JBJoscha Bach47:27

       I don't feel pressure from the crowd. I'm completely immune to that.

   17. LFLex Fridman47:31

       (laughs)

   18. JBJoscha Bach47:31

       In the same sense, I don't have respect for authority. I have respect for what an individual is accomplishing or have, uh, uh, respect for mental firepower or... so, but it's not that I meet somebody and get slack-jawed and, uh, unable to speak. Um, or when a large group of people has a certain idea that is different from mine, I don't necessarily feel inti- intimidated, which has often been a problem for me in my life because I lack, um, instincts that other people develop at a very young age and that, uh, help with their self-preservation in a social environment. So I had to learn a lot of things the hard way (laughs) .

   19. LFLex Fridman48:09

       Yeah. So is there a practical advice you can give on how to think paradig- paradigmatically, how to think independently? Or, you know, because you've kind of said, "I had no choice." But I think to a degree you have a choice, because you said you want to be productive, and I think thinking independently is productive if what you're curious about is understanding the world.Especially when the problems are very, kind of new and open. And so it seems like this is a active process. Like, we can choose to do that, we can practice it.

   20. JBJoscha Bach48:52

       Uh, it's a very basic question, when you read a theory that you find convincing or interesting, how do you know? It's very interesting to figure out what are the sources of that other person not, uh, which authority can they refer to that is then taking off the burden of being truthful. But how did this authority intern know, what is the epistemic chain to observables, what are the first principles from which the whole thing is derived? And, uh, when I was young, I was not blessed with a lot of, um, people around myself who knew how to make proofs from first principles.

   21. LFLex Fridman49:26

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JBJoscha Bach49:26

       And I think mathematicians do this quite naturally, but most of the great mathematicians do not become mathematicians in school, but they tend to be self-taught, because, uh, school teachers tend not to be mathematicians, right? They tend not to be people who derive things from first principles. So when you ask your school teacher, "Why does two plus two equal four?" Um, does your school teacher give you the right answer? Like, um, it's a- a simple game, and there are many simple games that you could play, and, um, most of th- those games that you could just take different rules would not lead to an interesting arithmetic. And so it's just an exploration, but you can try what happens if you take different axioms. And here is how you build axioms and derive, um, addition from them, and, uh, build addition as some basically syntactic sugar in it. And so this, I wish that somebody would have opened me this vista and explained to me how I can build a language in my own mind and from which I can derive what I'm seeing, and how I can, which I can make geometry and counting and, um, all the number games that we are playing in our life. On the other hand, I felt that I learned a lot of this while I was programming as a child.

   23. LFLex Fridman50:39

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JBJoscha Bach50:39

       When you start out with a computer like a Commodore 64 who doesn't, which doesn't have a lot of functionality, it's relatively easy to see how bunch of relatively simple circuits, uh, uh, just makes you performing hashes between, uh, bit patterns and how you can build the entirety of mathematics and computation on top of this, and all the representational languages that you need.

   25. LFLex Fridman51:02

       Man, Commodore 64 could be one of the sexiest machines ever built, if I so, say so myself. If we can return to, uh, this really interesting idea that we started to talk about with panpsychism. (laughs)

   26. JBJoscha Bach51:18

       Sure.

   27. LFLex Fridman51:19

       And, uh, the complex resonator paradigm, and the verses of your

8. 51:25 – 1:09:20

   Plants communication

   1. LFLex Fridman51:25

      tweets. You write, "Instead of treating eyes, ears, and skin as separate sensory systems with fundamentally different modalities, we might understand them as overlapping aspects of the same universe, coupled at the same temporal resolution and almost inseparable from a single shared resonant model. Instead of treating mental representations as fully isolated between minds, the representations of physically adjacent observers might directly interact and produce causal effects through the coordination of the perception and behavior of world modeling observers." So the- the modalities, the distinction between modalities, let's throw that away. The distinction between the individuals, let's throw that away. So what does this interaction representations look like?

   2. JBJoscha Bach52:13

      When you think about how you represent the interaction of us in this room-

   3. LFLex Fridman52:18

      Yeah.

   4. JBJoscha Bach52:19

      ... at some level, you can, uh, the modalities are quite distinct. They're not completely distinct, but you can see this as vision, you can close your eyes and then you don't see a lot anymore. Uh, but you still imagine how my mouth is moving when you hear something, and you know that it's, um, very close to, uh, the sound that you can just open your eyes and you get back into this shared merged space. And, uh, we also have these experiments where we notice that the way in which my lips are moving are affecting how you hear the sound.

   5. LFLex Fridman52:48

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJoscha Bach52:49

      And also vice versa, the sounds that you're hearing have an influence on how you interpret some of the visual features. And so th- these, uh, modalities are not separate in your mind, they two are merged at some fundamental level where you are, uh, interpreting the entire scene that you are in. And your own interactions in this scene are also not completely separate from the interactions of the other individual in the scene. But there is some resonance that is going on where we also, uh, have a degree of shared mental representations and shared empathy due to being in the same space-

   7. LFLex Fridman53:22

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JBJoscha Bach53:22

      ... and having vibes between each other.

   9. LFLex Fridman53:24

      Vibes. So the question though is how deeply interbind is this multi-modality, multi-agent system? Like, how... I mean, this is going to the telepathy question without the woo-woo meaning of the word telepathy. Is like how... Like, what's going on here in this room right now?

   10. JBJoscha Bach53:48

       So if telepathy would work, how could it work?

   11. LFLex Fridman53:51

       Yeah.

   12. JBJoscha Bach53:52

       Right? So imagine that, um, all the cells in your body are sending signals in a similar way as neurons are doing.

   13. LFLex Fridman53:59

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JBJoscha Bach53:59

       Right? Just by touching the other cells and sending chemicals to them, the other cells interpreting them, learning how to react to them, and they learn how to approximate functions in this way and compute behavior for the organisms. And this is something that is open to plants as well.

   15. LFLex Fridman54:14

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JBJoscha Bach54:14

       And so plants probably have software running on them that is controlling how the plant is working in a similar way as you have a mind that is controlling how you are behaving in the world.

   17. LFLex Fridman54:23

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JBJoscha Bach54:23

       And, um, this, um, spirit of plants, it is something that has been very well described by our ancestors and they found this quite normal, but, uh...... for some reason, since the Enlightenment, we are treating this notion that, uh, there are spirits in nature and that plants have spirits as a superstition. And I think we probably have to, uh, rediscover that, that plants have software running on them.

   19. LFLex Fridman54:47

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JBJoscha Bach54:47

       And, uh, we already did, right? M- m- you notice that there is a control system in the plant that connects every part of the plant to every other part of the plant, and produces coherent behavior in the plant. That is, of course, much, much slower than the coherent behavior in an a- animal like us that has a nervous system, that, where everything is synchronized much, much faster by the neurons. But, um, what you also notice is that if a plant is sitting next to another plant, like you have a very old tree, and this tree is building some kind of information highway along its cells so it can send information from its leaves to its roots and from some part of the root to another part of the roots, and there is a fungus living next to the tree, the fungus can probably piggyback on the communication between the cells of the tree and send its own signals to the tree. And vice versa, the tree might be able to send information to the fungus. Because after all, how would they build a viable firewall if that other organism is sitting next to them all the time and it's never moving away? And so they will have to get along. And over a long enough timeframe, um, the networks of roots in the forest and all the plant, other plants that are there, and, uh, the, uh, fungi that are there, uh, might be forming something like a biological internet.

   21. LFLex Fridman56:00

       But the, the, the question there is, do they have to be touching? Is biology at a distance possible?

   22. JBJoscha Bach56:06

       Of course you can use any kind of physical signal. You can use sounds. You can, uh, use electromagnetic waves-

   23. LFLex Fridman56:12

       Yeah.

   24. JBJoscha Bach56:12

       ... that are integrated over many cells. So it's conceivable that, uh, across, um, distances, there are many kinds of information pathways. But also, uh, our, uh, planetary surface is pretty full of organisms-

   25. LFLex Fridman56:26

       Yeah.

   26. JBJoscha Bach56:26

       ... full of cells. So-

   27. LFLex Fridman56:27

       So just everything is touching everything else-

   28. JBJoscha Bach56:28

       Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman56:28

       ... in some sense.

   30. JBJoscha Bach56:29

       And, uh, it's been doing this for, um, many millions and even billions of years. So, there was enough time for information processing networks to form. And if you think about how a mind is self-organizing, basically it needs to, in some sense, reward the cells for computing the mind, for building, uh, the necessary dynamics between the cells that allow the mind to stabilize itself and remain on there. But, uh, if you look at these spirits of plants that are growing very close to each other in the forest, they might be almost growing into each other.
9. 1:09:20 – 1:34:57

   Fame

   1. LFLex Fridman1:09:20

      And people should definitely follow your Twitter, because you explore these questions in, um, in a beautiful, profound, and hilarious way at times.

   2. JBJoscha Bach1:09:28

      No, don't follow my Twitter. I already have too many followers.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:09:31

      Yeah.

   4. JBJoscha Bach1:09:31

      At some point, it's going to be unpleasant. I notice that, uh, a lot of people feel that, uh, it's totally okay to punch up. And, uh, it's a very weird, uh, notion that you feel that you haven't changed, but your account has grown, and suddenly you have a lot of people who casually abuse you.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:09:51

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJoscha Bach1:09:51

      And, uh, I don't like that, that I have to block more than before, and I- I don't like this overall vibe shift. And right now, it's still somewhat okay, so, uh, pretty much okay, so I can go to a place where people work on stuff that I'm interested in, and there's a good chance that a few people in the room know me, so there's no awkwardness. But, um, when I get to a point where random strangers feel that they have to have an opinion about me one way or the other, I don't think I would like that.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:10:19

      And random strangers, because of your kind of el- uh, in their mind, elevated position.

   8. JBJoscha Bach1:10:26

      Yes. So basically, uh, whenever you, uh, are in any way prominent or some kind of celebrity, uh, random strangers will have to have an opinion about you.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:10:36

      Yeah, and they kind of forget that you're human, too.

   10. JBJoscha Bach1:10:39

       I mean, you notice this thing yourself that, uh, the more popular you get, the higher the pressure becomes. Uh, the more winds are blowing in your direction from all sides. And, um, it's stressful, right? And it does have a little bit of upside, but it also has a lot of downside.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:10:55

       I think it has a lot of upside, at least for me currently, at least p- perhaps because of the podcast.

   12. JBJoscha Bach1:11:00

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:11:01

       Because most people are really good, and people come up to me, and they have love in their eyes. And over a stretch of like 30 seconds, you can hug it out, and you can just exchange a few words, and you, you reinvigorate your love for humanity.

   14. JBJoscha Bach1:11:16

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:11:17

       So, that's an upside-

   16. JBJoscha Bach1:11:18

       Yes.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:11:19

       ... for a loner. I'm a loner.

   18. JBJoscha Bach1:11:21

       (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman1:11:22

       Because... (laughs) Because otherwise, you have to do a lot of work to find such humans. And here, you're like thrust into the full humanity, the goodness of humanity, for the most part. Of course, maybe it gets worse as you become more prominent. I hope not. This is pretty awesome.

   20. JBJoscha Bach1:11:42

       I have a couple handful of very close friends, and I don't have enough time for them and attention for them as it is, and I find this very, very regrettable.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:11:50

       Yeah.

   22. JBJoscha Bach1:11:50

       And then there are so many awesome, interesting people that-

   23. LFLex Fridman1:11:53

       Yeah.

   24. JBJoscha Bach1:11:53

       ... I keep meeting, and I would like to integrate them in my life, but I, uh, just don't know how, because, um... Well, there's only so much time and attention. And the older I get, the harder it is to bond with new people in a deep way.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:12:06

       Yeah. But can you enjoy... I mean, there's a picture of you, I think, with Roger Penrose and Eric Weinstein and a few others that are interesting figures. Can't you just enjoy random interesting humans-

   26. JBJoscha Bach1:12:18

       Very much.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:12:18

       ... for a short amount of time?

   28. JBJoscha Bach1:12:20

       I'm also... I, I like these people, and I... What I like is intellectual stimulation, and I'm very grateful that I'm getting it.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:12:26

       Can you not be melancholy? Or maybe I'm projecting. I hate goodbyes. Can we just not hate goodbyes and just enjoy the hello, take it in, take in a person, take in their ideas, and then move on through life?

   30. JBJoscha Bach1:12:40

       I think it's totally okay to be sad about goodbyes, because that indicates that there was something that you're going to miss.

Episode duration: 2:53:45