David Chalmers is a philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and consciousness. He is perhaps best known for formulating the hard problem of consciousness which could be stated as “why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?”

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00 – Introduction

02:23 – Nature of reality: Are we living in a simulation?

19:19 – Consciousness in virtual reality

27:46 – Music-color synesthesia

31:40 – What is consciousness?

51:25 – Consciousness and the meaning of life

57:33 – Philosophical zombies

1:01:38 – Creating the illusion of consciousness

1:07:03 – Conversation with a clone

1:11:35 – Free will

1:16:35 – Meta-problem of consciousness

1:18:40 – Is reality an illusion?

1:20:53 – Descartes’ evil demon

1:23:20 – Does AGI need conscioussness?

1:33:47 – Exciting future

1:35:32 – Immortality