Donald Hoffman
@donalddhoffman
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Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Research: Visual perception, evolutionary psychology, consciousness, AI.
Irvine, CA
Joined May 2010
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"The truth is that your left brain has been interpreting reality for you your whole life, and if you are like most people, you have never understood the full implications of this...we mistake the story of who we think we are for who we truly are."
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"Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be."
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Tasting mint, smelling garlic, seeing chartreuse. We enjoy countless specific conscious experiences. Not one of them can be explained by any current physicalist or functionalist theories of consciousness. This failure is principled. I discuss why.
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"The universe is not locally real, and the (2022) physics Nobel Prize winners proved it. Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality."
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Spacetime is doomed. It is not fundamental. Nor are its objects. Hence local realism is false.
"...the demise of local realism has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
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“One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking.”
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"Increasing entropy is but an artifact of an observer’s inability to keep track of information, resulting from a serial downsampling of an infinitely complex reality."
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Now in paperback. The Case Against Reality argues that evolution shapes sensory systems to guide adaptive action, not to show us the true nature of reality. We must take our perceptions seriously, but we should not take them literally.
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"This suggests that consciousness—of some primitive and rudimentary form—is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on. The physical world can be conceived of as a structure of conscious experiences."
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Our new paper, "Fusions of consciousness," is published today, and free. We propose a dynamics of conscious agents beyond spacetime, and a mapping of this dynamics into spacetime physics via our new application of decorated permutations to Markov chains.
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Do we perceive reality as it is? A new theorem raises the stakes on this perennial problem. My take: Spacetime is doomed. Spacetime and its contents are not objective reality. There are countless structures beyond spacetime to be discovered. Let's do it.
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"Increasing entropy is but an artifact of an observer’s inability to keep track of information, resulting from a serial downsampling of an infinitely complex reality."
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"A paradigm shift occurs when unexplained phenomena overwhelm a scientific model. Though incredibly successful, the standard model of cosmology may be facing a crisis because it cannot provide a solution for at least six major problems"
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"In Irvine, California, one cognitive scientist has put forth a new theory of perception, which suggests, among other things, that he doesn’t have a brain."
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"Everything acts like a wave while it propagates, but behaves like a particle whenever it interacts. The origins of this duality go way back."
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"In our common experience, you can't get something for nothing. In the quantum realm, something really can emerge from nothing."
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Whatever objective reality might be, it's not what you see. What you see, according to evolution by natural selection, is just an adaptive fiction. That includes spacetime and all objects within spacetime. They are a user interface, not objective reality.
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"We propose a mathematical model in which “conscious agents” are fundamental and interact via a Markovian dynamics. Some agents create spacetime as an interface whereby they interact. Physics is the projection of agent dynamics onto this interface."
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"Instead, quantum states are about our knowledge of the world. They are descriptions encoding our interactions with particles. QBism would say it’s not the particle’s state — it’s your state about the particle."
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Could a theory of consciousness beyond spacetime allow us to reverse engineer spacetime and develop new technologies? I discuss the possibilities with Jake Newfield.
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It was a pleasure to talk with Jordan Peterson about perception, evolution, reality, and consciousness.
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My apologies for a long silence. I had a cardiac procedure last June and recovery is slow.
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"There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head." Neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. So they can produce nothing, including conscious experience.
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Spacetime is our headset, not objective reality.
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"the results of quantum measurements are...tied to the interaction dynamics between the measuring device and the system, challenging traditional views of fixed physical properties and suggesting that reality is shaped by the context of these interactions."
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Spacetime is doomed. Spacetime and its particles are not fundamental. But the Standard Model of particle physics is an incredible achievement. Any theory of what is beyond spacetime must show how it projects to the Standard Model. Here is a great video.
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Who am I?
Not an object in spacetime.
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For any theory of consciousness emerging from a non-conscious substrate, ask: What specific conscious experience can this theory explain? The taste of chocolate? The smell of garlic? No hand waves please. Give me a precise theory of a specific experience.
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Evolution by natural selection shapes sensory systems to be user interfaces that hide objective reality and guide adaptive actions. Seeing the truth won't make you more fit. It will make you extinct.
@lexfridman
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in this podcast
@lexfridman
asks excellent questions. We discuss spacetime, reductionism, evolutionary games, consciousness, visualizing reality, ephemerality of life, simulation theory, love, meaning of life, and why seeing truth would make us less fit.
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How might the dynamics of a network of entities beyond spacetime project to bosons, leptons, and quarks in spacetime, and precisely predict mass, energy, momentum, and spin? I look forward to speaking Saturday about a proposed computational experiment.
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Spacetime is a headset. It's not fundamental reality. Spacetime ceases to have any operational meaning for distances and times smaller than the Planck scale. What lies beyond the headset? Decorated permutations. But why? Who ordered decorated permutations?
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“At a fundamental level, only a few particles and forces govern all of reality. How do their combinations create human consciousness?” They don’t. But this article nicely describes a physicalist approach to consciousness.
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Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises from the complexity of matter. But the physicist Erwin Schrödinger did not share that assumption. For him, the universe contained a single mind. Article written by Robert Prentner.
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Consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and can be usefully described as a network of conscious agents.
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“Like it or not, the reality of what you observe depends on how and whether you observe it; you simply get different experimental outcomes owing to the specifics of your measurement apparatus.”
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"A close look at fundamental symmetries has exposed hidden patterns in the universe. Physicists think that those same symmetries may also reveal time’s original secret."
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"Could consciousness be more fundamental than matter and spacetime?" I discuss this question on the On Humans Podcast with Ilari Mäkelä.
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"Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality."
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“It is well known that spacetime has no operational meaning beyond the Planck scale .... The arrow of time is an artifact of projection of a stationary dynamics, entirely beyond spacetime and quantum theory, whose entropy does not increase.”
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Spacetime is not fundamental. It is our data structure, our headset. Objects in spacetime, such as neurons, are icons that we render and delete as needed. Neurons don't exist unless we render them. Neurons have no causal powers. They cause no experiences.
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"A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable truth: We still don’t have a solid theoretical grasp of even the simplest nuclear systems."
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Can the idea that consciousness is fundamental be turned into a testable scientific theory? I discuss this on the Wondros podcast.
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"If the theory is indeed bankrupt, then the ordinary mechanisms of science will demonstrate as much."
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"Since at least Einstein we have seen spacetime as fundamental. But modern physics, from quantum field theory to gravity, now suggests spacetime is doomed. So, what lies beyond spacetime? We, ourselves, might be part of the answer..."
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"Perception is not a window on reality; it is more like a desktop interface on your laptop."
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"“Okay, I’m the conservative person,” laughs Penrose upon learning of Hoffman’s view. Penrose is a physicalist. Whatever consciousness is, he’s convinced it can be explained by the laws of physics..."
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Spacetime and objects are data structures that we create and delete as needed. We are not tiny objects within a vast spacetime. We are the authors of spacetime.
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Can AI become truly conscious? Are we living in a simulation? What is reality? Do objects in space and time exist even if unperceived? Or do we render reality on the fly when we look, much as a video game renders images on the fly as you move in the game?
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It was a pleasure to discuss the intersection of science and spirituality with Swami Sarvapriyananda.
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Spacetime and quantum theory are not fundamental. Physicists have found structures beyond spacetime, such as the amplituhedron, that give rise to spacetime and quantum theory. Quantum theory is not deep enough to ground an explanation of consciousness.
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"Today, an international team of researchers shared an extraordinarily detailed atlas of human brain cells, mapping its staggering diversity of neurons."
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Spacetime is doomed. It is not fundamental reality. What science might lie beyond spacetime? And how might that science relate to insights from spiritual traditions? It was a pleasure to take part in the film "Know Thyself."
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The question to each physicalist theory of consciousness is this: What specific conscious experience does your theory explain? E.g. can it explain the taste of vanilla? Or the difference in experience between visual space, auditory space, and haptic space?
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How does it feel to take seriously the idea that spacetime and its objects, including my own body, are just a headset, and not objective reality? I discuss the personal and emotional side of this with
@lexfridman
.
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In this talk I explain why I think that (1) AI or any physical system cannot create consciousness, but (2) technologies like AI might allow us to open new portals into preexisting consciousnesses.
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"For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart."
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"Could consciousness be more fundamental than matter and spacetime?" This is Part 2 of my discussion with Ilari Mäkelä for his On Humans Podcast .
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At the deepest level of reality, questions like “Where?” and “When?” simply may not have answers at all. “We have a lot of hints from physics that spacetime as we understand it isn’t the fundamental thing,”
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Evolution shapes sensory systems to guide adaptive behavior. It does not, in addition, shape sensory systems to reveal truths about the structure of objective reality, whatever that reality might be.
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What is consciousness? Physicalist, dualist, panpsychist, and illusionist theories of consciousness all assume that spacetime, and some of its particles, are fundamental. But this assumption is false. Spacetime is not fundamental. It's doomed.
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The information processing in cell biology and cell replication is stunning in its complexity and sophistication. We have no idea how the laws of physics and chemistry could give rise to the coding systems, copying systems, and error correction mechanisms in cells.
Incredible time lapse of a dividing cell 🔬 This process is playing out in your body nearly two trillion times a day!
This footage is shot with a new laser technique called holotomography, that lets you visualize living cells in real time
#NanoLive
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"If the current experiment turns out to violate the predictions of classical physics, it will bring the quantum world almost palpably close to our own."
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I discuss the science and philosophy of agency and consciousness with Philip Goff and Curt Jaimungal on the Theories of Everything podcast. Also: Are evolutionary arguments against veridical perception necessarily self refuting? Some philosophers think so.
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"In the AI age, the question of consciousness is more prevalent than ever. Is every single thing in the universe self-aware? What does it actually mean to be conscious? Are our bodies really just a vessel for our thoughts?"
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“10 of the most mystifying open questions in science:
From how life emerged on Earth to why we dream, these unanswered questions continue to perplex scientists.”
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Local realism is false. Experiments demonstrating this won the Nobel Prize in physics last year. I discuss, with Carlos Farias, the implications of this for physicalist theories of consciousness, and answer several questions from the audience.
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"Getting down to attosecond-level precision is an incredible achievement; after all, an attosecond represents ... a billionth of a billionth of a second. As fast as that is, however, it isn’t fast enough to measure everything that occurs in nature."
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Spacetime and its objects are not fundamental. In this talk I propose that consciousness is fundamental and gives rise to spacetime. Since this talk, we have found a mapping to spacetime via "decorated permutations" rather than just the Birkhoff polytopes.
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Solving a notorious quantum quandary could require abandoning some of science’s most cherished assumptions about the physical world.
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“Science tells us about the structure of reality. No experiments can reveal to us the ultimate nature that exhibits this structure.”
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"If a tree falls in the forest but there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Do neurons exist when no one looks?
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"In this 10-part series, astrophysicist Dr. Marcelo Gleiser explores the history and conceptual weirdness of quantum mechanics from its early years to the present day — along with its unsettling philosophical implications."
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"At the heart of the various lines of investigation is a growing appreciation that measurements do more than just gather information. They are physical events that can generate genuinely new phenomena."
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"After 2 years in space, the James Webb telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?"
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"The brilliant mind who discovered the spacetime solution for rotating black holes claims singularities don't physically exist. Is he right?"
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"Chalmers … argued that neither 40-hertz oscillations nor any other strictly physical process could account for why perceptions are accompanied by conscious sensations … "
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What is the relation between science and consciousness? Is consciousness an illusion or recent evolutionary product that science studies? Of is science itself just a method by which consciousness explores its possibilities? I discuss this with
@lexfridman
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A great piece on consciousness by my friend and brilliant colleague Anil Seth. Thought-provoking experiments on neural correlates of consciousness. Anil seeks a physicalist theory. I seek to show that spacetime and its objects arise within consciousness.
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I talk with Michael Phillip about consciousness and spacetime, for the Third Eye Drops podcast.
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"The reason some scientists take seriously the possibility of a multiverse in which the constants vary in different universes is that it seems to explain the fine-tuning. But on closer examination ... "
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This conference will explore consciousness from the lens of various scientific disciplines and examine the challenges and opportunities that these models present in arriving at a deeper understanding of consciousness.
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"The biologist Michael Levin thinks cells use bioelectricity to decide what to become." "...he believes that mastering the code of electrical charges in its tissues will give scientists unprecedented control over how and where they grow."
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What is consciousness? What is death? What happens when we meditate? I discuss these questions with Nick Standlea on his podcast.
Apple Podcasts:
Spotify:
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A scientific theory of consciousness beyond spacetime must eventually be able to predict all properties of elementary particles (bosons, leptons, quarks), such as their mass, momentum, energy, and spin. Here we discuss how the theory of conscious agents might meet this challenge.
A New Experiment To Test If Consciousness Gives Rise to Physics & Not Vice Versa with
@donalddhoffman
. Enjoy!
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It was a pleasure to discuss the nature of consciousness with my friend Professor Anil Seth
@anilkset
. We take opposing views. That helps expose their strengths and weaknesses.
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"In Rethinking Death, scientists, physicians, and survivors of cardiac arrest explore the liminal space between life, death and beyond, breaking down these stunning scientific breakthroughs to tell the remarkable, scientific story of what happens ... "
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"DNA isn't the only builder in the biological world -- there's also a mysterious bioelectric layer directing cells to work together to grow organs, systems and bodies, says biologist Michael Levin."
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"Mathematics is like the bones of the living conscious experience. They can’t be divorced from each other. There’s more to experience than just math, but there’s not less than math."
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Is the mind the right instrument for exploring consciousness? How can we explore beyond spacetime? What are the limits of language and thought? These are some of the topics I discuss with Rupert Spira in a dialogue on science and spirituality.
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“Quantum mechanics has been screaming at us that measurement matters for 100 years. Hearing that and taking it to heart is exactly what QBism brings to the table.” QBism needs a theory of the agent that measures.
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It was a pleasure to talk with
@tferriss
about The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More.
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It was a pleasure to talk with Tom Campbell about the similarities and differences in our views about consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. Thanks to Jack and AMA for hosting this.
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Billions of neurons and trillions of synapses spring into action each time we open our eyes and look around. What are they up to? Visual Intelligence explores and illustrates the cognitive neuroscience of visual perception, and implications for technology.
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Spacetime is not fundamental, and neither is quantum theory. Physicists are finding new structures beyond both, such as the amplituhedron and decorated permutations. These structures may the unlock mysteries of quantum entanglement.
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Great questions from the audience after my talk “Consciousness and Its Physical Headset” for the Caltech, MIT, Stanford colloquium series “Consciousness & Reality”. The first talk of the series was titled “Consciousness and Its Physical Substrate.”
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"Spacetime is doomed. There is no such thing as spacetime fundamentally in the actual underlying description of the laws of physics." Nima Arkani-Hamed, Cornell Messenger Lecture 2016.
@lexfridman
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