No. That is actually not possible. 25000 years of co-evolution calls bullshit on that. Anybody who has lived alongside a dog and actually been awake during that experience knows that to be utter nonsense. If this sort of negation is the end result of the amazing work in the Ted talk I would chuck in the garbage bin. But I don't think that is what dude is really heading for. Nothing personal. Nonsense though. Zero waffle factor.

You’re welcome, Max. I’m glad you found this stuff interesting, and also glad that the topic has inspired some lively discussion. I was just listening (I’m about 1/3 of the way through it) to this conversation, which I’m finding to be a more thorough analysis of the subject.

Is there an Infinite Mind? | Donald Hoffman Ph.D. | Waking Cosmos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az18Onc0e58&t=1240s

I've had many dogs over the years. I think I know them pretty well. They are amazing at reading our thoughts and emotions from tiny little clues from our body language and tone of voice that we, ourselves, are not even aware of.

And I also know that, like Andrew, Hoffman is talking about something far deeper than most of us would imagine. The question is: do spacetime, quantum particles/fields, and the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) somehow produce consciousness, or does consciousness itself produce spacetime, etc.? In other words, are the known laws of physics fundamental, or is consciousness what is fundamental? I don't know, but I think it's interesting to ponder.

To put it another way, are dogs and humans real? Is consciousness an illusion? Or is it the fundamental reality of the universe? (Now I'm going to walk my dog and then go listen to the rest of the video.)

Martin, my problem is deciding if you are real, or a percussionist fantasy of mine.

Clearly my dog analogy--which I didn't get from Hoffman--was unhelpful. I'm still not convinced that our observation of dogs' behavior tells us tells us with certainty very much about what they perceive, by which I don't mean to argue that my picture of their perception is plausible.

As I dig deeper, I'm finding potential stumbling blocks for Hoffman's theory, but nothing yet that I know enough to be able call a definite stumble.

Offhand, it sounds like smeared out solipsistic pantheism without the theism. Now, though the universe we experience can seem somewhat annoyingly weird sometimes, I’d like more structure than this appears to offer. But then, I haven’t listened to the videos.

I'm a percussionist only when a "conscious agent" (like you) hears me play percussion! Even the sounds you hear might only be your personal perception. The vibrations of the air are merely the interface between you and some deeper reality (according to his theory).

it sounds like smeared out solipsistic pantheism without the theism

That could be except for the fact that Hoffman says that he has made a rigorous mathematical formula of his theory of what he calls "conscious realism," which is a network of conscious agents. That seems rather like some universal Facebook or Twitter. (I'm still listening, on and off, to that last video I linked to above.) I'm getting more familiar with many of the details of his hypotheses. But it still sounds to me rather far-fetched.

Don't worry, Max. I don't get it all either. I'll have to listen to the rest of the video before I really feel I'm starting to understand it. But, as Hoffman says himself, the theory is quite radical and probably false. But I find it interesting in that it encompasses theories about spacetime and quantum mechanics.

O caloric, o phlogiston, where are you when the times cry out for your mathematical rigor once again? O quantum instability as big as all outdoors 13.8 billion of our years ago, what were you unstable in, cream cheese or reverse imaginary time (so called)? Are you hiding at the i•t hardware store thinking about all those generations of exploding and reforming stars that gave us gold and neat stuff (hah) like Cobalt 60? O Martin, percussionist of percussors, are you imitating the Large Bang with your drumsticks? O YouTube videos of Lagrange common sense that I sort of understand (not having taught it), bring me a least action that I can do to make extraterrestrials understand that they aren’t here in any physical sense, and that they should stay in their own backyard. Nimby. O, I must eat more breakfast before I brew more coffee and yell at Plato’s classroom. O mammoths and trilobites, I love you and miss you desperately. Merry Christmas, mammoths and Denisovans. Merry Christmas and a Happy Better New Year!!

I love it, Allen!

I stayed up too late last night watching that silly podcast and now am a bit tired (not having rested my imaginary body after taking several long imaginary walks yesterday), but I learned a little more about what Hoffman was trying to say.

I guess the gist of it is this: Consciousness is all there is. Particles don’t exist. And there is a vast network of conscious agents interacting and producing a vaster consciousness. (I need to watch the end of the podcast to find out what the ultimate vast consciousness is supposed to be like.)

He says his theory is akin to panpsychism. The main difference is that most versions of panpsychism are dualistic (mind/matter), which suggests magic and is unscientific. (Electrons have not only their quantum mechanical properties like spin and momentum but supposedly have some kind of rudimentary consciousness.) Whereas Hoffman’s theory gets around the dualism by saying that there is nothing besides consciousness — not my snare drum sticks, nor my dog, nor my neurons, nor the quarks and electrons that make up me, nor the photons of the cosmic microwave background, the relic radiation from the Biggest Bang there ever was.

I’m sure you know that, if you tune a radio between stations, a small part of the static you hear is the remnant radiation from the still bonging bang. Same with an old TV. I guess Hoffman would say that this uniform background of weak microwave radiation is just a figment of a “conscious agent’s” imagination. And also the gravitational waves from a pair of merging black holes that LIGO recently detected are not real either?

You had mentioned The Bang, which got me wondering what Hoffman would say about it. Are The Bang and everything else just parts of the “icons on the desktop”? That sounds pretty fishy to me.

I just started listening to this interview, which takes a totally different look at the topic of consciousness:

David Chalmers: The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #69

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW59lMvxmY4

Have a super-duper holiday!

It doesn’t take an overbeardly bombasticator to discover that consciousness—though it may be implicit or potentially latent in the energy structure of the world as we know it—is an epiphenomenon: a “superstructure” that can develop upon and through a material “base”. Anyone who has gotten even slightly inebriated knows that things have changed. All as a result of new a liquid in the system. What happens to consciousness during intense sexual arousal is also available free of charge to consenting adults, though the cause is less obvious. So, consciousness as we know it — or I know it — isn’t automatically universal. What is wrong with this philosophical infant, Hoffman? I have week’s worth of ninety minute lectures ready to drop on paying customers. Like Sam Johnson kicking a rock, I refute him with a bottle of Tom Lehrer single malt.