#2541 - Thomas Campbell

Joe Rogan (0:00)

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Thomas Campbell (1:56)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Shrain by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.

Good to see you again, Joe.

Joe Rogan (2:07)

How are you doing?

Thomas Campbell (2:08)

I'm doing fine. Just been really, really busy.

Joe Rogan (2:12)

You were just telling me and I told you we got to save this for the year. You were just in Montreal at a convention of physicists?

Thomas Campbell (2:20)

Yes. It was a gathering of 29 scientists. We had mostly physicists, about two-thirds were, and not just any old physicists, but really good, top-end physicists. And there was a bunch of neural science guys. There was some, maybe a psychologist or two, a couple of mathematicians, and a few others. But it was 29 of us. And the thing that was amazing about this, something I've been trying to do for a long time, and that was bring scientists to the table to talk about consciousness.

And I've had very little success up till now. Mostly, they just don't want to join that conversation because to them, consciousness either doesn't exist or it's not part of science. It's the subjective part of our experience. And they tend to relegate themselves only to the objective part of experience, which is really sad because if you think about your life and all of the experiences you have, the objective part is the small part of your life that's not all that important. The subjective part is where love is and justice and caring and relationship and, you know, what's the value of a relationship? Give me a number. Well, you can't do that, you know, there's, it doesn't...

Joe Rogan (3:42)

Well, it also seems insane to want to ignore consciousness, which is one of those fundamental aspects of being a human being. And the thing that we believe separates us from everything else.

That might not be right. It might not be correct. I think we might be wrong about that. I think I bet you believe that too. But the idea of physicists ignore, I kind of understand it from their perspective because they have to get published, right?

And this stuff is slippery. Consciousness is one of those things like you can't use a ruler. There's no, you can't set it on a scale. Like what exactly are we talking about and how can we measure this and how deep do they want to go? So unless they want to dedicate the entire rest of their career to trying to crack this egg, that you've been working on for decades, you know, it gets daunting for them, I believe. Yes, it is. Also, there's a lot of ridicule attached to the conversation.

Thomas Campbell (4:44)

That's the big problem. Now, if you talk to physicists one on one, you'll find consciousness isn't such a terrible subject. They don't mind and they have experiences and they can talk to it. But you get them in a group of physicists and they won't admit any of that because it's a career killer.