Erik Hoel delivers a blistering confession that cuts through the self-congratulatory haze of modern pop-science: the field of consciousness research has not just stalled, it has actively failed the public at a moment of existential urgency. While Michael Pollan's bestseller treats the mind as a spiritual journey, Hoel argues that the scientific community has been indulging in "career-maxxing" while the world hurtles toward a future where we cannot distinguish a conscious being from a sophisticated chatbot. This is not a gentle critique of methodology; it is a demand for a paradigm shift before the stakes become irreversible.
The Illusion of Progress
Hoel begins by dismantling the comforting narrative that consciousness research is merely a "hard problem" taking time to solve. He expresses visceral frustration with the repetitive nature of current literature, noting that reading recent books feels like watching a "statistical machine for producing books about consciousness" churn out predictable chapters featuring the same intellectual titans. He writes, "It's been 27 years, during which the discussion has (as many fields of science do) centered around major figures like neuroscientists Christof Koch or Giulio Tononi... But honestly, this stage of consciousness research feels played out."
The author's critique of Christof Koch is particularly sharp. Koch, a giant who once championed the neural correlates of consciousness—specifically gamma oscillations in the 40Hz range, a concept deeply tied to the "Hard problem of consciousness" debates—has reportedly shifted toward spiritual experiences and "universal mind" concepts. When Pollan confessed to Koch that he felt he knew less after his journey, Koch replied, "That's good. That's progress." Hoel rejects this therapeutic framing entirely, arguing, "Consciousness is not here for our personal therapy. It's not tied to our life journeys." This is a crucial distinction; the field has treated the mystery of being as a source of personal enrichment rather than a scientific puzzle requiring rigorous, testable solutions.
Critics might argue that the "personal journey" angle is necessary to make the abstract topic accessible to a general audience, but Hoel insists that accessibility has come at the cost of rigor. The field has become a place where "no opinion can really be proven wrong," allowing researchers to "promote your pet theory of the moment" without the pressure of falsification that drives other sciences forward.
Consciousness is not here for our personal therapy. It's not tied to our life journeys.
The Cost of Neglect
The argument shifts from academic critique to a warning about the immediate dangers of this stagnation. Hoel points to the rise of large language models as a "forcing function" that exposes the field's inadequacies. We are now facing a scenario where "a college student falling in love with a chatbot" cannot be told by science whether that machine is lying about experiencing love. The stakes are not just philosophical; they are legal and ethical. If artificial systems are conscious, they deserve rights; if they are not, we must ensure we do not create a civilization dominated by "non-conscious intelligences."
Hoel describes a terrifying potential future: "the worst of all possible worlds is that our civilization acts like a reverse metamorphosis, where something weaker but more beautiful, organic consciousness, gets shed in the birth of some horrible star-devouring insect made of matrix multiplication." This vivid imagery underscores the urgency. The failure to define and detect consciousness leaves humanity vulnerable to creating entities that might be intelligent but devoid of experience, or worse, failing to recognize when we have created a new form of life that deserves protection.
The root cause, Hoel argues, is a lack of material support. He contrasts the billions spent on projects like CERN with the paltry funding for consciousness research. He notes that out of over 100,000 grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 2007 and 2017, only five were directly about the "contents of consciousness." This scarcity has created a perverse incentive structure. "What can you do, cheaply? You can pontificate. You can propose your own theory of consciousness! That requires no funding whatsoever," Hoel writes. The result is a "thousand flowers" blooming, none of which can be properly tested or selected because the field lacks the infrastructure to do so.
A Call to Action
Hoel refuses to accept the "defeatist view" that consciousness is an impossible problem. He points out that the "consciousness winter" of the 20th century, driven by behaviorism, only ended thirty years ago, giving the field a mere generation to solve what philosophers have debated for millennia. He argues that the lack of progress is not due to the impossibility of the task, but the lack of effort. "If the answer to 'Why has consciousness not been solved?' is secretly 'Material and historical conditions made it hard for anyone to actually try!' then the answer is to actually try."
He is putting his own money and reputation on the line with the founding of Bicameral Labs, an institute designed to move beyond "career-maxxing" and toward actual problem-solving. He channels a sense of desperate adventure, comparing himself to Shackleton setting out for unknown lands. "I refuse to live in a civilization where we consciousness researchers have so obviously failed," he declares. "I refuse to live in a civilization where we cannot tell consciousness from non-consciousness."
The author's tone here is almost apocalyptic, yet driven by a fierce optimism that the problem is solvable if only the resources and organizational will are applied. He dismisses "loser attitudes" and calls for a massive scaling of effort, suggesting that the "learned helplessness" of the field is a result of decades of neglect, not an inherent flaw in the human mind's ability to understand itself.
I refuse to live in a civilization where we cannot tell consciousness from non-consciousness.
Bottom Line
Hoel's most compelling argument is that the stagnation in consciousness research is a self-inflicted wound caused by a lack of funding and a culture of untestable theory-building, a failure that now threatens to leave humanity ill-equipped for the age of artificial intelligence. While his dismissal of the "personal journey" narrative may alienate readers seeking spiritual solace, his insistence on treating consciousness as a hard engineering and scientific problem is the only path forward. The field must now pivot from "a thousand flowers" of speculation to a coordinated, well-funded assault on the data, or risk becoming irrelevant in a world where the definition of mind determines the future of civilization.