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Neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín delivered an activist speech at the Science of Consciousness Conference in Barcelona, followed by an interview with Essentia Foundation. His central claim is that materialism has already failed as a framework for understanding consciousness, but rather than admit defeat, the field rebranded its failure as the "hard problem"—effectively extending materialism's intellectual life by a century. He argues this metaphysical cover-up matters urgently because consciousness is now becoming a battleground: as artificial intelligence and transhumanism advance, the materialist claim that consciousness is mechanically engineered from matter opens the door to treating human consciousness as something to be designed and controlled. The interview spans ninety-two minutes, moving from philosophy of mind through technology ethics to experimental anomalies and strategies for shifting scientific worldviews.
Gómez-Marín contends that dogmatic skepticism itself has become unfalsifiable pseudoscience—by assigning zero prior probability to anomalous phenomena, skeptics make their position immune to evidence, turning "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" into an infinite goalpost. He illustrates this with discussions of remote viewing and other phenomena that standard science dismisses without investigation. He also critiques how materialism functions as a predatory ideology that suppresses competing frameworks while claiming objectivity, and argues that theories of consciousness have proliferated into over two hundred competing "isms," most not deserving the name theory. The conversation then widens into territory touching transhumanism, the political economy of scientific publishing, the dangers of psychedelics used naively, and strategies for changing minds—whether through direct experience, lay-audience pressure on institutions, or rigorous empirical work in the "mud" of difficult experiments. Throughout, Gómez-Marín positions this as a stakes-raising moment: consciousness studies is no longer an academic puzzle but a front in a conflict over what it will mean to be human.
Gómez-Marín argues that materialism quietly died at the birth of scientific consciousness studies and was merely rebranded as the 'hard problem,' and that defending non-materialist views (and anomalous phenomena like remote viewing) is now urgent because AI/transhumanism is a 'consciousness war' threatening to redefine and engineer the human condition.
- The 'hard problem' was a strategic cover-up that gave materialism a 100-year extension rather than admitting its failure
- Dogmatic skepticism assigns a zero prior to anomalous phenomena, making it unfalsifiable pseudo-science
- If materialism were true, consciousness could be engineered, which makes the metaphysics of consciousness a high-stakes political battleground
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Dogmatic skepticism is the worst pseudoscience: skeptics who assign a zero prior probability to anomalous phenomena have made their position unfalsifiable, so 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' is a trick because the bar is set at infinity and the claim is 'extraordinary' only relative to their worldview.
“the worst pseudo the worst pseudocience is this kind of dogmatic scientism”
A wrong theory of consciousness can negatively impact lives because materialist dogma, sold in the name of science, shapes lay people's beliefs about themselves and enables agendas (like transhumanism) that aim to engineer the human condition.
“Can a wrong theory about consciousness negatively impact our lives?”
Science advances not only through data and theory but through ego, greed and frustration; scientists who have spent decades 'carving their toothbrush' (their pet theory) will not break it even when data contradicts it.
“If you've been carving your toothbrush for decades, are you willing to just break it when you see that the data doesn't support it? No.”
The hard problem question 'how does the brain give rise to consciousness?' smuggles in an assumption by asking 'how' rather than 'whether'; the correct prior question is whether the brain produces consciousness at all, and the word 'how' has misdirected the entire conversation.
“I would protest and say wrong question. You're tricking me here because you're asking me how. And maybe the question is whether”
Capitalism must exponentially grow, so once the physical world is fully marketized it turns inward to conquer attention and consciousness; thus the next frontier of capitalist expansion is a battle for our minds and 'souls.'
“capitalism now needs to conquer our attention conquer our souls and now it is a battle for consciousness”
AI will squash human jobs and meaning, but the option is not between being a Luddite and a Silicon Valley cultist; we can integrate technology while it forces us to recover what it is to be human and discover what is truly unique about us.
“The option here is not between between being a ludite and a Silicon Valley kind of cultlike member. Maybe we can integrate technology but it will force us to recover what it is like to be human.”
Theorists should 'get in the mud' and run risky, ridiculous-looking experiments (like Sheldrake's studies of dogs sensing owners returning) because going into the empirical trenches—risking ridicule—is what makes theories land on earth, unlike armchair theorizing.
“I think you need to have an extra point of courage and humility to be able to go to the mud”
Materialism should have been declared dead in the 1990s at the first consciousness meeting, but instead the field rebranded its failure as the 'hard problem,' effectively granting materialism a 100-year loan rather than admitting consciousness cannot be reduced to matter.
“materialism should have died in the '90s at the first consciousness meeting”
To shift a worldview, showing all the literature often fails because skeptics simply won't look; many people need a single direct experience before they gain openness, since you cannot simply throw away your decades-old toothbrush and adopt someone else's — it must be broken, often by a traumatic event like an NDE, awakening or psychedelic trip.
“She said I can show them all the literature everything thousands of papers and it they just won't look. They need one experience”
Materialism functions as a 'predatory' ideological system: it is acceptable while other isms can coexist, but it has become a system that does not let competing isms express themselves, which is the real problem.
“if materialism just it's a predatory system that doesn't let other isms Express we have a problem”
Objectivity is intersubjective consensus and matter itself is a mystery; what we call physical reality may be built out of something more primary, so 'objective' facts are not a self-evident foundation.
“objectivity is interubjective consensus. I mean, matter is a mystery.”
A second strategy for influence is to invest energy in reaching lay people (the 'masses around the citadel') through mainstream media and podcasts, creating a popular clamor that pressures the scientific priesthood to investigate anomalous phenomena — which is what the Telepathy Tapes podcast illustrates as an experiment.
“why don't we create the change there? the masses, the citadel, the people around the citadel rather than trying to convince the king or the pope”
Studying nature biosemiotically requires becoming like the thing studied — to research plants you must become plant-like — which entails a humility and participatory stance opposed to the detached, mechanistic objectivity of materialist science.
“if you want them to reveal themselves you have to become like a plant. And there are serious papers on this is not woo stuff.”
The contemporary Western use of psychedelics is both naive and irresponsible: if these substances open genuinely other realities rather than mere hallucinations, then one must ask who lives there and what their valence is — these realms are not Disneyland, and casual ceremonial use risks real harm.
“the way we do it is both naive and super I think super irresponsible”
There is no 'hard problem' for ordinary people unless they have been indoctrinated by science-communication celebrities (e.g. Dawkins, Tyson) who have hammered materialist claims onto lay people as ideological banners disguised as scientific fact.
“Unless they've been indoctrinated forever with the Richard Dawkins of the world or the Neil Degrass Tysons of the world”
Using AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) for writing or interview prep dumbs you down because you only work with data already out there, causing you to miss truly novel ideas; the process of writing itself—the struggle and growth—has intrinsic value beyond producing output.
“I think there are studies now that they they they start to show that it it will dump you down”
Scientific publishing is a sophisticated Ponzi scheme / misdirection game: researchers beg for government funding, do the science, fight reviewers, and then pay journals huge fees (2,000–11,000) to publish, all to inflate CVs and secure renewal — a business primarily benefiting publishing companies.
“I think scientific publishing is a misdirection game... It's simply a huge business for publishing companies and we are their rats in the maze”
Western institutions are in decadence, living off the prestige of past generations: education, knowledge production, healing, and food provision are largely failing in schools, universities, hospitals and supermarkets respectively, even though we are still trapped within and dependent on these systems.
“I don't see that education is going on in schools... I don't see a lot of healing happening in hospitals. And I don't see a lot of food being sold in supermarkets.”
There are now over 200 theories of consciousness classified into different 'isms,' so the field has moved from low-signal/low-noise to high-signal/high-noise — most so-called theories are not even theories.
“with Robert Lawren's landscape of consciousness we can actually see that there are more than 200 options classified in different isms”
Precognitive (future-directed) remote viewing experiments are empirically advantageous because they eliminate nearly all need for experimental control against sensory leakage — if the target hasn't been selected yet, there is nothing to leak — and practitioners report stronger results doing it ahead of time.
“you eliminate virtually all need for experimental control because there cannot be sensory leaking of information”
He personally witnessed a man perform remote viewing — drawing images that had not yet been selected, which were later chosen by a true random number generator from a pool unknown to him — and the results held up to statistical scoring by trained judges.
“this man could, as I mentioned, write draw things that images that we hadn't that we hadn't picked yet and we picked them later with a random number generator of a pool of images that he didn't know about”
Theories of consciousness are like toothbrushes: everyone has one but no one wants to use anyone else's.
“theories of consciousness are like toothbrushes. Everyone has one but no one wants to use another ones.”
Schools teaching extraordinary perception abilities (e.g., extraocular vision) to children ignore the ethical/side-effect question: if a latent perceptual ability is awakened, children may see things they don't understand and become scared or unable to sleep, yet practitioners treat it like a pharmaceutical company denying side effects.
“if these kids see things they don't understand they're scared even being scared they don't sleep well at night”
The transhumanist agenda is a dark force that wants to extinguish humankind while telling us it will be great; it is a pseudo-religion dressed in techno-scientific language whose program (immortality, redemption) is essentially religious, and it seeks to edit the human condition though its proponents are a small Silicon Valley group not representing humanity.
“the transhumanist agenda to me is a very dark force. It's a force that wants to extinguish humankind while telling us it's going to be great.”
Beyond materialism there are further hidden 'isms' — secularism (treating the sacred as a joke), rationalism (unreasonable overuse of reason), and literalism (the false dilemma between fact and fiction) — and transcending them, especially literalism, opens a 'realm of imagination' between fact and fiction where reality can manifest more fully.
“There's secularism. The idea that everything that's sacred, it's kind of a joke... And that's paired with rationalism... And there are more isms like literalism.”
Investigating anomalous phenomena is not merely intellectual but personally demanding and risky ('ontological shock'); the researcher is like a tightrope walker ('funambulist of consciousness') who can fall, holding simultaneous hardcore doubt and moments of deep belief, captured by the Gollum/Sméagol split.
“I came back home with Gollum and Smeiggel on my shoulders”
We must understand from a theoretical standpoint why and when a physical system can be conscious before corporations or governments plant in lay minds the duck-test intuition ('it quacks like a duck, so it's conscious') — otherwise people will soon believe turning off an algorithm is killing a pet.
“very soon people will think that if you turn off their their their algorithm you're killing their pet”
Analytic idealism is effective not just for its content but for its tone/context: it is the way to present idealism to smart people whose 'head is the bouncer of the heart' and who will only accept it if delivered in a purely rational, logical form — context is constitutive, not just content.
“it's the way to tell idealism for those who will only really swallow it if you present it in a purely rational logical way”
His defensive stance is not to claim anomalous phenomena are real but to insist no one can metaphysically declare them impossible; the role is to 'bully the bullies' / dogmatic skeptics whose dismissals rest on dogma, giving voice and permission to ordinary people who have had anomalous experiences and been told they are stupid or crazy.
“I will just say you cannot metaphysically say it's not possible. And then we have some pretty solid stuff. You just cannot say that.”
Helping one person feel permission to trust and share their anomalous experience (e.g., a man finally sharing a 41-year-old near-death experience) is more valuable to humanity than another CV-burnishing paper in Science — this is 'consciousness in action.'
“what's what's more valuable to society, to humanity? another paper that will make my CV look more shiny or that this person now has changed that”
Against the technocratic 'transhuman' (e.g., Neuralink delivering literal telepathy), there is an alternative 'superhuman' path in which psi capacities are already innate within humans — a 'science of the impossible' exploring the edges of consciousness.
“maybe we have these capacities already within us as humans. So maybe that's a way to come back to what I call a science of the impossible.”
Analytic reasoning is necessary but not sufficient for reaching idealist/non-materialist truths; one cannot get there without being analytic, but if one is only analytic one will never get there — experience, trauma, imagination and intuition are also required.
“Analytic is one way. I don't think we can get there without being analytic. But if we're only analytic, we won't get there.”
He deliberately refuses to commit to his own theory of consciousness (the 'un-theory') so as not to spend 30 years invested in his own 'toothbrush' and become an old scientist who cannot change his mind — preferring to remain able to learn and update.
“I don't want to invest in the stock market of my own toothbrush for the last 30 years and then be unconvincible of something else when I'm old”
Good interviewing has a twofold goal: to make the other person's ideas shine as a mirror, and to invoke a third thing ('eso') that emerges in the conversation belonging to neither participant — but this requires not being so analytically self-sure that there is no room for the new to manifest.
“it's like an invocation to this third thing to emerge in the conversation that it's not you and me”
AI is best defined as an 'Algorithmic Invasion' with five elements (Algorithmic, Invasion, Fascinating, Dangerous, plus a monopoly/capitalist aspect), where corporations sell an apocalypse narrative in order to sell their products — 'capital-apocalypse.'
“that's why I define AI as an algorithmic invasion of fascinating dangerous”
Now that materialism has 'died,' the field should not crown a new king (e.g., analytic idealism) but establish a pluralist 'republic' of approaches, since true unity is not uniformity and everyone — even opponents — has a role in understanding what it is to be human.
“I hope it's not analytic idealism. I hope we can have a republic, right? And we don't need to erect a new king.”
Materialism is an 'unholy trinity' of materialism, mechanism and reductionism.
“Materialism is the my usual dead horse with mechanism and reductionism. I call this the unholy trinity.”
Science is made by humans and humans have big egos, especially scientists.
“science is made by humans and humans have big egos especially if they're scientists”