Joscha Bach: The Self Is a Story Your Brain Tells Itself
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 call "the world" isn't outside you. It's a simulation your brain produces. And the self that experiences it may not exist the way you think it does.
Joscha Bach is an AI researcher and cognitive scientist working 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 hand-waving.
We cover why the world you perceive is a model your brain generates rather than the physical world itself, what's actually wrong with Roger Penrose's quantum consciousness theory, why simulating a connectome won't reproduce behavior, what neuroscience is still missing, whether AGI is possible on current hardware, how religion functions as an operating system for civilizations, and 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.
CHAPTERS
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 Minds
30:40 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
———
📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
📚 My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
🌐 More:
🏄♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating
✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe