Joscha Bach: The Self Is a Story Your Brain Tells Itself - #555
Into the Impossible With Brian KeatingShow Notes
The AI theorist who thinks consciousness is a software agent — and that God, AGI, and the apocalypse are all pointing at the same thing.
What you think is "the world" isn't outside you. It's a simulation your brain produces, and the self that experiences it may not exist in the way you think it does.J oscha Bach is an AI researcher and cognitive scientist whose work sits at the intersection of computation, consciousness, and the architecture of the mind. He's one of the few thinkers willing to explain what experience actually is in mechanistic terms — without retreating to mysticism or handwaving.
We cover:
-why the world you perceive is a model your brain generates — not the physical world itself
-what's actually wrong with Roger Penrose's quantum consciousness theory
-why simulating a connectome won't produce behavior
-what neuroscience is still missing; whether AGI is possible on current hardware -how religion functions as an operating system for civilizations
-why atheists like Sam Harris may be more Protestant than they realize
The self is not the substrate. You are not your neurons — you're the pattern running on them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
00:00 You Don't Live in the World — It Lives in You
10:05 Why Scientists Refuse to Explain Reality
14:50 Where Joscha Disagrees with David Deutsch
21:10 What Would a Truly Intelligent Machine Actually Do?
25:00 Why Chess Destroys Good Minds30:40 Can You Upload a Brain? What Neuroscience Gets Wrong
38:45 Why Einstein Needed a Body to Discover Relativity
46:00 AI Companies as Prophets of the New Religion
50:10 You Don't Die Because You Were Never Really Alive
57:50 Religion as a Civilizational Operating System
1:04:00 What the Torah Knew That Sam Harris Doesn't
1:12:00 What Is God, Actually?
1:18:00 What Bach University Would Teach
1:27:50 Confronting Your Own Death ———
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