CM memes

I am PD Dr. Claus Metzner, a theoretical physicist. In my podcast, I share personal views mainly about Science and Philosophy, but also about Buddhism, Jazz, Good Life, and more. I may use self-played short Jazz pieces as breaks in my episodes. Please send any comments to claus.metzner@zoho.com and have a look at my website: https://tinyurl.com/clausmetzner . [ Es gibt auch noch 43 ältere Podcast-Folgen in deutscher Sprache: https://anchor.fm/claus-metzner ]

Last refreshed: July 9th, 2025 at 10:39 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

CM Jam 05

Another hike in the forest with wild ideas about quantum mechanics, consciousness, the world as a multi-player game and anti-reductionist mindsets. The first 10 min may be a bit too technical for some ....

May 24, 2025•41 min

CM Jam 04

Just thinking and talking during another weekend hike.

May 10, 2025•57 min

Rebroadcast: E033 Meaning of Life

Spotify has detected a few seconds of copyright-protected music at the end of this old episode. So I had to cut that piece out and upload the episode again (-:

Apr 20, 2025•25 min

CM Jam 03

This is an embarrassing episode, recorded spontaneously during a little hiking tour. It has practically zero content and is mostly about my private fears and fancies. Better don't listen to it, or you will be angry that I have wasted your time !

Apr 12, 2025•59 min

E066 - Debunking Reductionism

In this episode, I (again) challenge the classical reductionist worldview, arguing that it fails to account for quantum non-locality, context-dependent particle properties, and the emergence of meaning. I suggest that higher-level phenomena — like intention and top-down causality — are not mere illusions, but play a real role in shaping the world. I propose that quantum 'randomness' could allow for creative influences, possibly even from a higher consciousness, to guide evolution and complex org...

Apr 06, 2025•27 min

CM Jam 02

Why are most of you satisfied with consensus reality ?

Mar 15, 2025•14 min

CM Jam 01

From now on, in between the regular 'CM Memes' episodes, I will publish free-style improvised recordings, called 'CM Jam'.

Mar 15, 2025•30 min

E065 - Trained Creators

In this episode, I explore the concept of "Trained Creators" - systems like AI, humans, or nature that generate novel, functional patterns by leveraging deep learned correlations. Building on ideas from episode #61, I discuss how these systems, after training, act as probabilistic generative models, creating outputs that combine past knowledge in surprising and innovative ways. Creativity, I argue, exists on a spectrum, from small variations to groundbreaking ideas, and emerges through hierarchi...

Feb 16, 2025•24 min

E064 - Opinions and Emotions

In this episode, I explore the relationship between opinions, emotions, and truth in today's 'post-truth' era. I discuss how mistrust in institutions, the spread of misinformation, and the echo chamber effect have made it increasingly difficult to discern reliable information. Using an analogy between consuming information and food, I highlight the importance of carefully choosing what we take in to shape our beliefs and actions. I also examine how emotional attachment to our beliefs, particular...

Jan 25, 2025•25 min

E063 - Towards Science 2.0

In this episode, I explore why we need a broader kind of science alongside traditional, reductionistic research. I respond to listener Ance’s comment that science must remain falsifiable and narrowly focused, agreeing mainstream science should keep its identity. However, I propose parallel research communities—like how mainstream and alternative medicine coexist—so fringe topics can be studied rigorously yet independently. Examples include the Monroe Institute’s work on consciousness and Avi Loe...

Jan 11, 2025•22 min

E062 - Inexhaustible Truth

I delve into the concept of 'truth' — how my understanding has evolved over the years, particularly after my shift to idealism in 2020. I reflect on my earlier, reductionist views as a physics student, where truth seemed like a set of universal rules waiting to be uncovered. I contrast this with the insights I gained from philosophy and spiritual traditions, which pointed to a more subjective and elusive understanding of truth. Drawing on perspectives from thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Donald Hof...

Jan 01, 2025•22 min

E061 - Deep Learned Correlations

I explore the concept of deep learned correlations, drawing parallels between random processes in nature, human behavior, and advanced systems like GPT. I explain how GPT generates coherent, meaningful outputs by learning complex, long-term correlations from vast amounts of data, combining determinism, randomness, and learning. This analogy is extended to human creativity, personal behavior, and even evolution, suggesting that life might not rely solely on random mutations but on an intelligent ...

Dec 05, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 61

E060 Return of CM memes

After a two-year hiatus, the host returns to explore philosophical idealism , as well as insights from the mainstream sciences that point to a future post-material era.

Nov 27, 2024•11 min•Season 1Ep. 59

E059 Free will and the pull of the future

I talk about the mind as a strange 'compass', leading our way towards unexpected (and perhaps trans-personal) goals.

Nov 27, 2022•21 min

E058 Phase Transitions Of Consciousness

After reminding the materialists among my listeners on the distinction between physical reality and experience, I speculate that the physical world may be a rigid phase of consciousness that helps people minimize their anxiety.

Oct 24, 2022•26 min

E057 From Science To Handcraft

I start talking about what goes wrong in modern science. In particular I discuss the difficulty of getting reliable data from complex systems and the problems that creates in society. I finally 'discover' traditional handcraft as a superior way of interacting with the world and of handling complexity. For a master craftsman, data gathering, model building and corrective action are unified to a single, continuous, subconscious process.

Sep 19, 2022•51 min

E056 Minds, Yetis & laughters ...

This is the first time I publish a genuine live conversation - with my old 'philosopher friend' Willi Schroll . No cuts, no edits. We talk about whether idealism is still stuck in misleading metaphors and discover our slightly different interpretations of 'existence'.

Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 5 min

E055 From my notebook

This episode is a mixed bag. After some announcements, I talk about my 'rediscovery' of room stereo, explorative habit changes, Twitter, my repeated knocking down of open doors, non-metacognitive consciousness, binaural beats and self-hypnosis.

Aug 19, 2022•40 min

E054 Some Clarifications

In response to recent listener comments, I try to clarify the 'screen of perception'-metaphore and to substantiate my naive goal of short-term happiness maximization.

Jul 31, 2022•44 min

E053 Practical Idealism (2)

After some of my usual detours and personal anecdotes, I further explore the practical aspects of Idealism: How to live when subjective experience (instead of knowledge, abstract ideas, power and material property) are of central importance ? To be continued ...

Jul 03, 2022•37 min

Bonus Episode: A 'Meditation'

I tried to report and record what is going on in mind while doing my daily 20 minutes of 'free-style' meditation.

Jun 25, 2022•21 min

E052 Practical Idealism (1)

I first reflect on my recent experiment with having a time-delayed interview on the show. Then I review the steps that let to my flip to idealism, in order to answer a listener question about how idealism has changed my daily life. Finally, I start to explore a new, 'practical' way of 'living' idealism - a topic some future episodes of this podcast may return to. References: The Lagrangian of the Standard Model (Ugly stuff) and Ian Miller's blog (Beautiful stuff)....

Jun 18, 2022•49 min

E051 Conversation with Arthur Franz (Part 2)

We start to talk about the theoretical possibility of top-down-causation, using arguments from cybernetic control theory. We end with an hypothetical agent that dreams up the world and has a bias for simplicity.

Jun 11, 2022•43 min

E050 Conversation with Arthur Franz (Part 1)

In this first non-solo episode, I have a (time-delayed) conversation with Dr. Arthur Franz, who is devoting his time to built a 'thinking machine' - a generally intelligent agent that can create deep models of the world. This episode mainly serves a test case for the 'new' podcast format and to introduce Arthur and his way of thinking. Further conversations are planned in the future where we will dive deeper into Artificial General Intelligence and related scientific and philosophical topics. Yo...

Jun 02, 2022•45 min

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