Your Brain Is a Virtual Machine. Not Hardware.

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]That's the idea I'm excited about the most is thinking about virtual machines.

[00:00:04]Um this is something that the technological world, if you go to Amazon, they use what's called virtual machines and we can talk about that more. But this these layers between the code and the thing that you're experiencing, the app, in the in the software world and technology on your laptop, it's not one-to-one.

[00:00:21]None of the programs you're using are talking to the chip.

[00:00:24]They're talking in some other language, C or Python, and then Python is talking to the chip with even more intermediates. And I think that we need to consider that our brain and our mind and our self, the ability to instantiate multiple selves, is because of this kind of virtualization.

[00:00:39]>> I I If I can just quickly uh to me that is even more than sort of the realization of that this is a an explanation of language or explanation of the brain, it's it is this radical departure from thinking of we we thought of math for a long time as as a as a method of description of the physical environment physical physical processes, but we really have to it's not about the symbols on the board.

[00:01:04]Uh the symbols on the board in some ways are we're we're an early aperture into the fact that there's this informational life, that there's there's sort of computation is is this, you know, it's a phenomenon. It it's that in some ways it's is mind independent.

[00:01:19]And what we're seeing now is we're we're actually capturing some of these things truly coming to life in silicon. By seeing them in silicon, by seeing them take take take flight, uh so to speak, outside of their their traditional uh medium. And there we we are now we have to step back and have almost a newfound respect for the informational uh itself as as being maybe more fundamental. Uh as as Michael Levin mentioned, right? That that our brain is channeling uh certain informational patterns in this case. And and in the case of language, it's I think it's evident. If if you buy that what we are doing is the the thing as large language models, then it's there's no other conclusion. Language has its own informational life that plays out in our in our brains. And then the question is, well well how what else, right? What else lives there?

[00:02:08]What else lives there? What else can live there? What else lives in the in the physical universe more generally?

[00:02:13]And it it change it radically changes your your entire metaphysics.