Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Is Reality an Illusion? | Dr. Donald Hoffman | EP 387" video.

  1. At 17:20 the metaphor of the "interface" is introduced by the guest to good effect. I see this "interface" as a "barrier region" formed where Chaos and Order meet. Chaos exerts a pressure of disorder, the spirit of perversity, offering the diabolical opposite of the order it meets as a pressure of disorder that stimulates a balancing response from order whereby the intensity of the intrusion of the pressure of disorder is modulated in an act of "judgement" on the part of order. This modulation occurs over a space which is the thickness of the barrier region. As a result of this balance, the integrity of the order is maintained as the extent of the order is delimited; expanding this limit is the business of "growth", or the ability to establish a further extent of the order. The character of the modulation defines the "interface", filter, or template representing an abstraction of the underlying stimulus, the pressure of disorder, into the order's characteristic pattern of knowledge. Ordering these patterns engenders another interface layer...and so it goes.
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  2. 22:18--"wrestled with the idea of how God could become man...Because God, of course, is infinite and everywhere", Jordan says with a flurry of his arms, as if everybody understands that perfectly well! But what does it MEAN for God to be "infinite and everywhere"?! I conceive of reality to be composed of "point-awarenesses", given that God IS Awareness--the only Awareness, everywhere and always the same. Every thing that can be said to exist does so by virtue of embodiment in a form, from subatomic particles to galaxies. The point-awareness that finds itself at the "center of gravity" of a form assumes the focal role of identity for that form. The so-called "spark of divinity" is the point-awareness located at the center of "mind", the spiritual man, the "Christ consciousness", which manifests a more subtle degree of matter/energy than the physical. Macrocosmically, there are density regions corresponding to the molecular, the atomic, the subatomic, and the quantum levels of the physical complexity hierarchy. These regions are analogous, microcosmically, to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels of psyche. What you experience as "mental", for instance, is the character of the subatomic; and the character of the atomic IS, after a fashion, what you experience as "emotion". Specific linkage is possible by precise correspondence, so that your feelings may directly affect atoms. Makes sense to me, anyway. 😊
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  3. "Space/time is just a headset", doesn't make much sense as a refutation of Jordan's idea of successive levels of translation. Each level is just a headset--so what! In saying it's a headset, does he mean it's not real, or something like "not useful"? The "mathematics of consciousness" looks like more trouble than it's worth. If you accept your own consciousness as real, you are in intimate contact with the subject of interest--what better perspective is there from which to investigate consciousness. You are the laboratory, your experience, the data; and your intent, the experiment. I do appreciate the guest's deprecation of "entropy", though.
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  4. "Space-time" is fundamental in that it is experiential. We routinely, continuously appreciate both time and space in the moment-to-moment experience of our lives. So, it's more real than fancy mathematical constructs. "As above, so below..."...why imagine there is no master patterning to existence?! Random novel patterning smacks of irrationality.
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  5. "Grant me one assumption, that everything is true, and I'll explain everything!" Assume consciousness is the awareness of God existing at every "center". The "Love of God" is the natural tendency of every center to associate with any other center. Associativity enables complexification, which, paradoxically, engenders simplification as the complexification finds a center, a focus of essential nature, the complex's "NAME", as it were. Awareness is continuously occupied with naming; these namings are invocations of the named thing. The ultimate purpose is to train matter to be responsive to spirit/awareness.
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  6. At 3:15 I see the first appearance of what promises to be a stumbling block of sorts, as Hoffman says, "Evolution shapes us to see reality as it is." Reality as it is? The real reality, you mean?! It will be interesting to see how the guest distinguishes the "real" from the...?...what? The "unreal"?! What if the logical principle of negation is only valid in sufficiently local, or narrow, contexts?! Then, the "unreal" is "impossible"! Everything is real; everything is true--it can be no other way in an ordered cosmos! Perhaps...experience bridges the real and the true...
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