Did Sam Harris just play a hoax on the listeners of his podcast?

The interior of the church La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain

Episode 178 of the podcast of Sam Harris, “Making Sense”, is titled The Reality Illusion and is just short of 3 hours long. In it, Sam Harris and his wife Annaka interview Donald Hoffman, a professor at the University of California at Irvine. Hoffman starts by making the argument that our minds evolved to hide reality from us, so that the real nature of reality is completely different from what we experience. Depending on how far you want to take this, it is either obvious or an appeal to radical skepticism. It would be obvious because our senses clearly do not show the real world as made of atoms, photons and the like. They make a model of the world that we can use to do things in the world and to predict the outcome of those actions. In that our minds are quite successful, thank you very much! Radical skepticism is the idea that we cannot be sure about anything that we think we know. Ironically, even though skepticism is considered the enemy of religion, radical skepticism is an argument for religious belief because, since we cannot know anything, we may as well believe in religion. Clearly, the success of science is a good argument against radical skepticism.

But is in the second part of Hoffman’s argument when things get really weird. After much hand waving, he basically says that this reality that we cannot perceive (because our senses lie to us) is composed of “conscious agents” that have an effect on the world. He sustains, with Annaka enthusiastic agreement, that consciousness is the fundamental reality. Why? Well, because we don’t understand consciousness, so we may as well make it the fundament of reality. Since consciousness is already there in the world, we do not need to explain what it is. This is a classic example of the “argument from ignorance” fallacy. Too bad that all the training that Sam and Annaka have on critical thinking does not let them recognize that. The idea that consciousness, or mind, is fundamental to reality is an old one, and it is called panpsychism. It’s a weird, mystical idea that clashes against modern materialism, more correctly called physicalism (everything follows the laws of physics) or naturalism (the laws of nature are necessary and sufficient to explain reality). However, what Hoffman is saying is much crazier than panpsychism. He is saying that the world is full of “conscious agents” that we cannot perceive. To me, this sounds like saying that he believes in angels, or ghosts. Because, what is a “conscious agent”? “Conscious” means that it has a mind like our own. “Agent” means that it does stuff in the world. This contradicts the principle of causality, stating that every natural phenomenon has to have a natural cause. Which is a basic axiom of science, without which all magical beliefs are possible. But this does not bother Hoffman because… guess what? He doesn’t believe in causality! Nor does he believe in space-time. These are illusions created by our minds, which cannot perceive the real reality… With all its angels, ghosts, leprechauns, elves, “conscious agents”… whatever you want to call these spiritual, invisible, inaudible, untouchable beings.

What evidence does Professor Hoffman have for the existence of these beings? Well, he has a mathematical model. In the 3 hour-long podcast, he does not even hint of how this mathematical model is supposed to work. Because, you see, mathematics is just too hard to explain to the common person. At Annaka’s instance, he did admit that he introduces consciousness into the model at the onset. So, consciousness in, consciousness out. Garbage in, garbage out. That’s how mathematical models work. They are a great tool of science, but if they become disconnected from the actual results of experiments they can lead to all kinds of wild conclusions. Like believing in angels.

The reasoning used by Hoffman, and to a certain extent, Annaka, is too similar to the reasoning of quacks to be the product of honest, serious minds trained in critical thinking. That’s why I think this has to be a hoax. I am rushing to call it before Sam Harris tells us what fools we have been in believing it. In fact, it is quite similar to the famous Sokal hoax. Physicist Alan Sokal published an article in Social Text, a postmodernist journal, saying that physical reality is a social and linguistic construct. This is very similar to the title of this podcast episode: The Reality Illusion, isn’t it? Ever since the Sokal hoax, several copycat hoaxes have been attempted, with limited success. So perhaps Sam Harris got into his mind to do a better one.

But, wait, Donald Hoffman has written a book about all this: The Case Against Reality. The book is for sale at Amazon. Maybe the book itself is a hoax? Judging from the description of the book, it seems that is about the initial, less outrageous claims of Hoffman. So maybe only the second part of his claim, his mystical “conscious agents”, is the hoax.

The truly terrifying idea would be that this is not a hoax, that Sam and Annaka Harris swallowed this crackpot theory hook, line and sinker. That would be a real shame, because I really like Sam Harris and his podcast, even though I strongly disagree with his ideas about free will (he says it’s an illusion) and consciousness (he has a glorified view of it as the one and only uncontroversial truth). His pushback against religion (kind of forgotten now) and political correctness are much needed. As a life-long meditator, I also sympathize with his effort to popularize meditation and mindfulness. I just hope that he does not go too far into mysticism and magical thinking. That one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism would fall prey to superstition would be tremendously ironical, and a real shame.