#187 - Danny Goler - DMT, Consciousness & Proof of the Simulation

**Danny Goler** (0:00)
I'm claiming we live in a simulation. I'm claiming we now starting to have proof of that, like actual proof, if you project a diffracted laser on a surface.

**Peter McCormack** (0:08)
What's a diffracted laser?

**Danny Goler** (0:10)
Just a band of light. If you are on DMT right now, what you're gonna see inside of this band, you will see what seems to be like running code. Like straight up like in The Matrix. I had a being appear next to me, which was as real as you. What if it's not a drug, but an alien disguising as a drug? Then I strum, and it's a code, it makes sense.
But I don't know how to do that. I can't prove this to anyone, but I knew nothing will ever be the same again, because at least one mind now knows for sure that they're real. We are the AGI in training, and we are going through the alignment problem.

**Peter McCormack** (0:45)
Their AI safety team created the Ten Commandments, created religion for us.

**Danny Goler** (0:49)
The second you see it for yourself, you don't need anyone else to tell you. Like you know right away you're looking at something real. It's that convincing.

**Peter McCormack** (0:58)
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Danny, how are you?

**Danny Goler** (1:24)
Thank you so much for having me, Peter.

**Peter McCormack** (1:25)
I thank you for doing this when we had Melvin on recently, and he mentioned you and the project you've been working on.
I spoke to Chelsea straight away and I said, I'm going to fly anywhere. I will go anywhere in the world because I want to talk to Danny. But I really want to start with, tell me about the hard problem of consciousness.

**Danny Goler** (1:44)
The hard problem of consciousness is the fact that there's really no way of collapsing the distance between what we think might be giving rise to consciousness, so some formulation of matter, to the fact that it's anything at all to be like a conscious being like ourselves. Now, it's interesting because some very prominent, very smart, cognitive scientists like Anil Seth, for example, one of his books I read and I really enjoyed, it's called Being You, he basically makes the case that he doesn't even understand what the hard problem is. Like he says, I don't think there's a hard problem.
And he's not alone. There's some neuroscientists who are saying this. So really to just pinpoint it, it's basically the fact that you can't really describe any path through which physical matter that isn't conscious all of a sudden becomes conscious. And there is this delusion to the people who do see the hard problem of consciousness, they see it as delusion, which is the idea that one day when we have enough complexity somehow, we'll figure out a route to make something that isn't conscious into something conscious, and it would make sense scientifically. So the hard problem of consciousness is basically outlining the fact that it seems to be insurmountable even in principle, that's why it's called the hard problem of consciousness.

**Peter McCormack** (3:08)
How matter combines to create a conscious being.

**Danny Goler** (3:12)
Yes, but if you don't have some rudimentary building blocks of what is consciousness, how can you possibly get something? So the delusion that, again, from the perspective of somebody who does see the hard problem of consciousness, it is considered to be a delusion to think, well, there is no possible logical route you can take, it's not like one day you're just missing information, it's just that it's not that kind of a thing. And for example, people would say ridiculous things like, well, what if consciousness is an illusion?
Consciousness is the one thing that can't possibly be an illusion, because then the illusion of it is what is meant by consciousness. Because all we mean is that anything is happening at all for anyone, it's just kind of something is happening. We're not asking how it comes about. We're saying the fact that it is, is proof of itself. But that's why consciousness is so different than anything else. It's the end of one. It's the one thing you have direct access to, that you need no proof of, because all you need to know that is there is the fact that you have it. That's the end of that conversation.