10K subscribers! A Q&A with Bernardo Kastrup

We’ve hit 10K subscribers to our channel, thanks so much! As a small thank you, in this video we discuss your questions with the director of Essentia Foundation, Bernardo Kastrup. It gets pretty wild as the conversation will range from the consciousness of bacteria, to our minds being ’time traveling machines,’ to Hans asking Bernardo if Eve performed the first quantum measurement when she ate the apple. Also: why is meditation, literally speaking, an egoistic thing to do? Did Job suffer more than Jesus? And, this one is personal for Bernardo: what is the real danger of idealism if life hits you really hard? We’ve added plenty of chapter marks so you can find the stuff you like. Thanks so much for watching and subscribing and the next stop is 100k! 00:00 Start 00:34 Introduction 01:54 Bernardo Kastrup on his work as a philosopher and as director of the Essentia Foundation 02:33 Essentia’s mission statement 04:34 Hans Busstra on his position 05:02 What about Bernardo’s Daimon? 06:04 How does the Daimon go about? 09:39 How does Bernardo’s philosophy handle the Schrödingers cat scenario? 15:58 Can we know mind at large? 18:36 Near death experiences impair dissociation 19:19 Bernardo on being stuck in his hard head 21:40 Mind at large from a pan-psychist point of view 23:20 Can you ’feel’ idealism as being real? 23:48 Panpsychism says your fist is conscious 26:13 Is the Amazon river conscious? 27:40 Isn’t panpsychism a form of dualism? 31:17 Is the quantum field mind at large? 31:54 No one has ever seen an electron? 33:03 Science operates on convenient fictions 35:19 What is meta-cognition and why is it dependent on brains and more broadly on metabolism? 38:33 Could a table or the sun be meta cognitive? 41:14 Are stars conscious? 43:15 Can the universe ’build’ on its own dreams or nightmares? 49:31 Can the universe become metacognitive? 50:08 How is human memory stored in the universe? 53:58 How worms when you cut off their head can still remember stuff 57:52 Could memory be stored in electromagnetic fields? 1:00:12 All physical states in nature are present states 1:01:23 Do we literally bring the past into presence when we recall a memory? 1:04:05 The Alan Watts metaphor that explains the problem of our thinking in terms of causality 1:07:04 Can our minds literally travel back in time? 1:07:27 Why memories are not reliable 1:09:21 Spacetime is doomed 1:10:49 If the brain were a computer could it store all our memories? 1:13:06 How to account for precognition? 1:15:52 Scientific studies indicating forms of precognition 1:17:02 On the phenomenon of retro causation 1:18:14 On the story of Genesis 1:22:18 God is not metacognitive 1:22:59 Metacognition lets you access worlds in your own mind 1:23:52 Do you apply morality to the Genesis story? 1:25:01 Did Eve perform the first quantum measurement by eating the apple? 1:28:09 Our longing back to Eden, the state before we became metacognitive... 1:29:46 On our non-heroic suffering as humans... 1:31:58 Who suffered more, Job or Christ? 1:32:57 Job put a mirror in front of God 1:34:41 How through Christianity the notion of sacrifice enters Western thinking 1:36:39 Why you will suffer less if you know how to suffer 1:38:10 Bernardo talks openly about the 30 minutes in which he wanted to end his life. 1:40:11 The danger of idealism 1:41:53 How suffering from tinnitus led Bernardo to become the director the Essentia Foundation 1:47:03 What are you proud of, now Essentia is three years old? 1:47:56 What are the two major breakthroughs we will see in the next two decades? 1:52:40 Are bacteria conscious? 1:59:22 We hide bullshit behind complexity 2:01:26 We may never have the capabilities to simulate a single bacterium from first principles 2:04:33 Becoming metacognitive is to fall from Eden 2:05:57 Why monkeys didn’t start domesticating and riding goats to then chase the bad guys 2:07:38 Does nature have a sense of being? 2:09:09 The benefit and price of metaconsciousness 2:10:52 The race between egotism and the realization that life is sacrificial determines the future of humanity 2:12:19 On the popular resurgence of Stoicism and the meaning of life 2:14:18 The 10K subscriber cake! Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.