Exclusive interview with James B. Glattfelder: Information, consciousness, and the architecture of reality

In this exclusive interview, Andrei Eugen Drăguț speaks with Dr. James B. Glattfelder, physicist, complexity scientist, quantitative researcher, and author. Glattfelder holds an M.Sc. in theoretical high-energy particle physics and a Ph.D. in complex systems from ETH Zurich. He has worked for over a decade in quantitative finance, co-authored the widely discussed study “The Network of Global Corporate Control,” and later explored the informational foundations of reality in books such as Information—Consciousness—Reality and The Sapient Cosmos.

His trajectory moves from high-energy physics and the architecture of global economic power networks to an information-theoretic and idealist framework in which consciousness is treated as fundamental rather than merely emergent. The conversation begins with complex systems and the concentration of power, then moves into the body as a distributed mind, the primacy of consciousness, the risks of metaphysical refuge, anomalous phenomena, the afterlife, divinity, artificial intelligence, and the practical implications for personal and collective transformation.

As with any dialogue that crosses from measurable structures into metaphysics, some of the claims remain working hypotheses rather than settled empirical conclusions. The value of the exchange lies precisely in that tension: it forces us to examine where evidence ends, where interpretation begins, and what kind of responsibility follows once we stop treating consciousness as a late evolutionary accident.

At its core, this interview is about limits and agency: the limits of physicalist explanations, the limits of purely cognitive models of the self, and the limits of a civilization that maps external networks with great precision while remaining largely blind to its own inner world.

Complex systems, power, and agency

Glattfelder’s empirical work on global ownership and financial systems offers a natural starting point—not because it tells the whole story, but because it gives us something solid to hold onto before we venture into deeper waters. Here, complexity science shows us how simple rules can crystallize into staggering concentrations of power, and forces us to ask: if we can see the pattern, can we actually change it?

• Your work on global corporate control networks revealed extreme concentration of power. If complex systems self-organize according to simple rules, what does that imply for individual and collective agency? Does seeing the pattern liberate us or risk becoming another form of grandiosity?

If we want systemic change, we need to understand how structure emerges. For this, knowing the local rules of interaction is crucial, as these give rise to emergent behavior. In other words, individual action seeds collective behavior. So, it is not only about understanding organizational patterns, but also about having a potential way to change undesired outcomes. Understanding how complex systems organize is, first and foremost, an expansion of knowledge. I generally see the problem of grandiosity only when such knowledge is used to control and manipulate in a self-serving way.

• You have worked both inside traditional quantitative finance and in the distributed-ledger ecosystem. From that dual experience, which concrete defects of the current financial system appear most clearly as emergent properties of network structure rather than as isolated moral failures of individuals?

I would say the defects of the financial system are a result of deliberate choices (with their own emergent dynamics): centralized power, top-down decision-making, and few feedback loops. This is the opposite of how nature organizes systems that show collective intelligence, i.e., resilience, adaptability, and sustainability. I also see a major driver of human dysfunctional behavior rooted in insatiable greed. I elaborate on this in this chapter: “Applied Complexity: Finance and Economics in a New Light.” We could easily produce different emergent behavior if we were willing to reform our engineered systems.

• In a society shaped by historical distrust and institutional fragility, how might an information-theoretic or complexity-based view of reality change the way people relate to power, truth, and collective action?

First, we need to acknowledge that finance and economics are shaped by ideology. Econophysicists have long criticized the spurious assumptions of neoclassical economics. So, essentially, restoring trust would mean moving from dogma to a data-driven, evidence-based, heterodox understanding of human governance and exchange systems. Complexity science is one option.

Information, the distributed self, and the boundaries of mind

But networks of ownership aren’t the only webs worth tracing. If we turn our attention inward, we find that the organism itself is already a living network—cognition flickering through the gut, the spine, the autonomic nervous system, long before the cortex weaves its neat story. Glattfelder’s information lens starts to blur the usual boundaries between mind, body, and world, and invites us to wonder where one truly ends and the other begins.

• You describe reality as information-theoretic and participatory. How does this map onto the idea that the body is already a distributed mind — enteric nervous system, spinal processing, autonomic ganglia — before the cortex ever ‘knows’?

I first need to disentangle the scientific and metaphysical claims. The information-theoretic paradigm is a tradition going back to the physicists Carl von Weizsäcker, John Wheeler, and Thomas Görnitz, today perhaps most relevant in the field of quantum information (Anton Zeilinger). The work of Stephen Wolfram can also be understood in this paradigm. The only metaphysical claim is that the concept of information is the ontological primitive of physical reality. The potential applications are diverse, once we understand entropy as information-theoretic, opening up to black hole thermodynamics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Indeed, more radical theories see spacetime as derived from entangled quantum information (denoted by the shorthand ER=EPR).

The participatory aspect claims that consciousness interacts with the evolution of the cosmos. Here we fully enter metaphysics, because to this day we have no universally accepted definition of consciousness and over 300 competing academic theories of its nature. In “The Sapient Cosmos,” I defend idealism as a rational and powerful metaphysical framework that describes an information-theoretic cosmos grounded in a foundational field of consciousness. Continuing down this rabbit hole, intelligence is also an elusive concept. Slowly, we are detecting traces of it everywhere in nature. For instance, Michael Levin’s framework of diverse intelligence. We see cognition happen at various levels of organic organization. The picture of the body as a distributed mind challenges the brain-as-producer-of-consciousness narrative. In contrast, idealism agrees with the notion of distributed awareness that is not only found in the brain, even if our conscious experience—the “what it is like to be something”—is a confined perspective we localize in the head.

• If the organism already performs extensive edge computation before the cortex forms a narrative, and if reality itself is woven from information, where does the boundary between individual mind and collective intelligence, or between organism and environment, actually lie?

The interplay between different places of cognition in the body seems highly dynamic and often not clearly delineated by a boundary. However, I do not believe that computation or neural activity is sufficient to understand consciousness (its hard problem). In the framework I propose, brains are transceivers of consciousness sourced from the base field (a tradition going back to William James, Henri Bergson, and Aldous Huxley). A specific mechanism of how individual centers of awareness delineate from the universal field is given in Bernardo Kastrup’s analytic idealism (e.g., dissociative boundaries).

Locating collective intelligence is another challenge. Where do termites, individually unintelligent, access the information to build ventilation shafts and cultivate another species to harvest food? We do not know. However, this blind spot hints at a potentially greater, more diverse, and perhaps even decentralized nature of intelligence. What this says about consciousness is anyone’s guess.

• There is a growing body of work describing the self as a layered system with localized processing at multiple levels (sensorimotor, autonomic, limbic, cortical, and social). How does this multi-layered, distributed model of the self relate to your information-theoretic understanding of consciousness and reality?

For me, the information-theoretic paradigm applies solely to the physical realm. Consciousness and its hard problem point to a missing aspect of physicality: phenomenal consciousness. As an idealist, I am not convinced computation can sufficiently explain conscious awareness. I see sufficient biological complexity as necessary for organic systems to be able to “channel” base consciousness. In other words, the information-theoretic paradigm only applies to the multi-layered structure of the transceiver. It does not account for the signal: phenomenal experience.

Consciousness at the Edge of Idealism

Eventually, the conversation edges toward a much bolder question. What if consciousness is not a late spark struck from dead matter, but the very ground upon which matter rests? That’s a leap, and Glattfelder doesn’t pretend otherwise. He also knows the danger: that such beautiful, sweeping ideas can become a quiet hiding place—a way to skip the slower, grubbier work of changing how we actually live.

• You describe an ongoing paradigm shift in which consciousness is rediscovered at the core of existence. How do you move rigorously from measurable structures — complex networks, scaling laws, information processing — to the claim that consciousness is fundamental rather than merely emergent?

The domain of science is to explain how things work in the universe, using the language of mathematics. The domain of metaphysics is to suggest a framework to address the question of what things essentially are. Although the boundary can shift, the two disciplines don’t overlap by definition. Science is agnostic about metaphysical claims, and good metaphysics should be able to encompass all empirical evidence.

To answer the question, you cannot formally move from networks and information processing to idealism. Otherwise, idealism would become a part of science. In this sense, idealism is at its core a transrational idea. However, since the dawn of the human mind, people have reported experiencing this metaphysical structure of existence firsthand by inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness. These are the shamans, the mystics, the meditators, and the psychonauts. As a side note, physicalism, the claim that reality is exclusively physical and governed solely by physical processes, is a metaphysical belief that many erroneously believe to be a scientific fact.

• There is a clear risk here. An elegant informational or idealist ontology can become a sophisticated refuge. People can say “consciousness is primary” or “reality is computational” and thereby sidestep concrete responsibility. How do you keep your own thinking from falling into this trap?

I disagree. I see idealism as an empowering metaphysics. It points to a fundamental connectedness of existence. Understanding the kinship of all things combats feelings of alienation and indifference. Moreover, I believe it actually invites accountability: I am at the center of my own experiential universe. Thus, I am responsible for my thoughts, words, and actions. In contrast, theological ontologies leave people in a state of heteronomy, dependent on an external authority they can never know. Or the prevailing physicalist metaphysics, deeming the universe random and purposeless. I find sentiments like “God’s ways are mysterious” or “there is no meaning to existence” dangerous traps, preventing personal responsibility.

• When does the attempt to understand complexity itself become a form of escape — a way of staying in the position of the one who sees the pattern, while avoiding the slower, less elegant work of changing one’s own nervous system, relationships, or local institutions?

This sentence can apply to any rational or metaphysical pursuit to understand reality. And these can all be forms of escape if the people doing the inquiry aren’t mindful and clear about their metaphysical priors. Or are motivated by grandiosity. Essentially, a good scientist should have grappled with existential questions of existence before embarking on decoding the world.

• You write about the shores of ignorance surrounding our island of knowledge. In a culture that rewards certainty and narrative coherence, how does one remain rigorous without turning “we don’t know yet” into either paralysis or spiritual bypass?

The acceptance that there is no certainty is an important realization. I could be dreaming right now, or be a disembodied brain kept alive in a vat and fed fake electrical signals, resulting in the same emergence of a perceived world. Everything I know and experience is always mediated through consciousness. So any form of certainty (next to the fact that I am experiencing right now and this stream of embodied experience is finite within the physical) is illusory. Being able to acknowledge that what I know to be true could be wrong invites a healthy humility. Any framework unable to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity is limited. As is any that cannot update its priors in light of novel findings.

• In The Sapient Cosmos you argue for a form of syncretic idealism. How do you distinguish a working hypothesis about the primacy of consciousness from the spiritual language that often protects the ego rather than clarifying reality?

I don’t necessarily see the label spirituality as ego-protecting. For me, spirituality is the willingness to engage with one’s own consciousness and, in turn, open up to a greater context. I see the refusal to look within one’s own consciousness as a huge blind spot in Western thinking. Eastern traditions have cultivated introspective techniques for millennia. I believe there is no clarity to be had about reality or existence without the willingness to engage with one’s inner dimension of being. Idealism can foster the idea of scientific spirituality, that is, fusing the decoding of the outer world with deep inner exploration. Honest spirituality unmasks the ego and understands its limitations.

Anomalous phenomena, afterlife, and the larger architecture

Once we entertain that possibility, some of the stranger phenomena we usually brush aside start to look less like aberrations and more like natural echoes. Near-death experiences, telepathy, the persistence of awareness beyond the body—these are no longer freakish outliers, but almost expected if the inner and outer worlds share the same living substrate.

• Could your information-theoretic and complexity-based framework, at least as a working hypothesis, shed light on certain anomalous or currently unexplained phenomena that go beyond purely psychological explanations? Or do you consider that most such phenomena remain, until clear evidence emerges, in the realm of projection and cognitive bias?

If idealism is true, then psi phenomena are expected: telepathy, telekinesis, and the like. The idea being that the inner and outer share the same substrate and naturally interact. Actually, science seems to be catching up to the realization that the only thing forbidding these phenomena from existing is a commitment to an unprovable metaphysical belief, namely physicalism. Not too long ago, the academic publisher Routledge published “Dark Cognition: Evidence for Psi and Its Implications for Consciousness“. The author suggests that if consciousness is primal, these phenomena are natural.

• Within an information-theoretic and participatory view of reality, how do you understand the possibility of consciousness continuing after the death of the biological body? Do you see it as a transition within a larger informational architecture, as a transformation of pattern, or as a question that remains beyond any current model?

Any idealist perspective expects our center of awareness to persist after physical death, by design. Interestingly, the phenomenology of NDEs and psychedelic states shows similarities. Heightened phenomenological experience accompanied by reduced neural functioning is a foundational challenge to physicalist neuroscience.

• From the perspective of an information-theoretic and complexity-based understanding of reality, how do you approach the questions of the beginning and the end of the universe? Do these concepts remain meaningful, or do they dissolve into something more fundamental once we stop treating space-time as the primary stage?

I propose the following in “The Sapient Cosmos.” The universal field of consciousness is a non-physical realm. Thus, it is not structured by concepts like time. The physical emerges from this ground using information as its only resource. It is driven by a will to complexity. As such, the physical cosmos is understood as a project of base consciousness.

This view aligns with what the mystics have always talked about. The Kabbalah calls it Tzimtzum, and the Sufis call it Tajalli. Sri Aurobindo coined the term involution for the process in which the divine becomes matter. The Jesuit, paleontologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (who coined the term noosphere) called it Christogenesis, with the Omega Point as the peak of evolution.

• Within the same framework, how do you regard the possible existence of divinity, extraterrestrial intelligence, or other forms of non-human entities? Are these questions that an information-theoretic ontology can meaningfully address, or do they still belong primarily to the domain of speculation and cultural projection?

In an idealist context, the question becomes what contraptions of matter can channel base consciousness into the physical. Not falling into the pitfall of the supremacy of human consciousness, why should only biology have this privilege? Moreover, as non-equilibrium thermodynamics tells us, metabolic pathways should be expected anywhere with a low-entropy energy source and an ambient environment. So extraterrestrial life, and thus alien consciousness, is expected. The recent series of disclosures from the US administration about UAPs is very interesting in this respect.

Divinity is just another label for base consciousness. It is the foundation of existence and the substrate of being. It has been described as structuring intelligence or unbounded love. Here we can see a profound disconnect from any dogmatic and static theology, claiming exclusive access to divinity.

Comparative frameworks and the interface of science and metaphysics

Of course, Glattfelder isn’t walking this path alone. Around him, other thinkers—Friston, Pravica, Langan—are circling the same frontier with their own compasses. Comparing their maps doesn’t just satisfy intellectual curiosity; it sharpens our sense of where his own commitments part ways with theirs, and what each approach gains or loses along the way.

• Have you reflected on a possible connection between your information-theoretic view of reality and Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle? In your view, is there a meaningful relationship between the way living systems minimize free energy / surprise and the broader claim that consciousness and information sit at the foundation of reality?

Friston also departs from physicalism by seemingly endorsing a type of dual-aspect monism, although one that remains silent on the nature of the fundamental substrate. Such a metaphysical view can be placed in the same corner as idealism, albeit with different commitments. His theory sits at the interface between science and metaphysics, and is a great example of scientific thinking beyond the constraints of physicalism. I also like his utilization of information geometry as a formal tool.

• Michael Pravica has proposed a hyperdimensional framework linking consciousness, higher dimensions, and experimental physics. How do you position your own information-theoretic and complexity-based approach in relation to such hyperdimensional theories? Where do you see potential convergence, and where do the frameworks diverge?

This is another interesting idea at the aforementioned interface. I don’t know enough to comment, however, Pravica’s work reminds me of David Bohm’s Implicate Order and Bernard d’Espagnat’s Veiled Reality. In essence, a multi-tiered ontology. I propose a similar hierarchy, albeit with much less detail.

• Christopher Langan’s Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) attempts a comprehensive synthesis of mind, reality, and language. From your perspective as a complexity scientist and philosopher of information, what do you find most interesting or most problematic in such ambitious unifying theories?

Again, another proposal with similar contours but different details. Infocognition as the idea merging the two concepts. Unfortunately, Langan’s personal views often seem to border on the problematic and ideological, making me question the purity of his metaphysical intuitions and commitments.

Values, embodiment, leadership, and the work of transformation

Still, all this cosmological wondering has to come back down to earth eventually. If consciousness really is foundational, what does that mean for how we raise children, how we lead, how we treat our bodies, and how we show up for one another? The abstractions only earn their keep if they reshape the ordinary, breathing texture of our days.

• What is the axiological core — the set of beliefs, values, and principles — that guides your own decision-making process, both in scientific work and in life? How does this core interact with the information-theoretic understanding of reality you have developed?

A lot of it comes down to intuition and a resonance I feel towards certain ideas. Also, a healthy mix of skepticism and open-mindedness is essential. As is the ability to remain intellectually humble and flexible, allowing oneself to be wrong. Personally, it is a striving to be a happier person, allowing me to be kinder, more empathetic, and more helpful. I recently wrote extensively about this in “How to Live a Happier Life.”

• In your view, how does personal development (an individual’s capacity for inner coherence, clarity, and responsibility) connect to collective or community development (a society’s capacity to evolve morally, scientifically, and institutionally)?

It is essential! Individual transformation lies at the core of collective transformation. That’s why it is so tragic that lying, cruelty, and narcissism have become normalized and ideology has become weaponized. So many people are being radicalized through fabricated outrage, rampant disinformation, and willful ignorance. All of this brings people into very dark places of their psyche. No wonder we are in a time of polycrisis, where our individual dysfunctional behavior seems mirrored in the collective. That is why I believe a shift to an empowering metaphysics is so important.

• You practice snowboarding, surfing, climbing, and other demanding physical activities. What role does embodied experience — risk, flow, balance, fatigue, the body’s intelligence under pressure — play in your thinking about complexity, information processing, and the limits of purely cognitive models of reality?

Modern society seems so very preoccupied with one single mode of cognition: rational thinking. We forget that there is a vast spectrum of non-normal states of consciousness to be explored. And we often forget the somatic aspect of cognition: embodied and experiential knowing. For instance, literally getting outside your mind during physical activity is rewarding, grounding, and aligning.

• From the perspective of complex systems and collective intelligence, what traits define a genuine leader? Is leadership primarily a function of network position, of information-processing capacity, of axiological coherence, or of something else? And how do we distinguish leaders who expand the system’s adaptive capacity from those who merely concentrate control?

To quote Kahlil Gibran: a true teacher does not give wisdom to a student, but instead guides them to the threshold of their own mind. I see this as the job of a leader as well. To empower and inspire. To take your own ego out of the equation. To lead by example. Regrettably, these days leaders seem driven only by the need to control, wield power, and be admired. Also, people should be leaders in different fields and in different capacities. Overall, decentralized ways of organization seem to be the prime resource for collective intelligence in nature. Thus, any pyramid of power, with a leader at its peak, should be viewed with caution.

• If the universe has a propensity toward increasing complexity and sapience, what does that mean practically for how we design institutions, education, or personal practice? Where does observation end and responsibility begin?

If this is true and evolution follows a teleological arc, we can be more relaxed about what the right and wrong things to do are. In the sense that the outcome, in the long run, is guided by an attractor. However, there are many paths leading there, and we can choose to take a detour that is very painful and destructive. Perhaps this is the optimistic framing of the status quo.

Overall, it seems clear that all our human designs of hierarchical systems are poorly adapted to dealing with the increase in complexity happening on Earth. Indeed, any systems that do not serve life, as many human ones don’t, are essentially defective.

Artificial intelligence, civilizational blind spots, and the path ahead

And finally, there’s the wide-open question of what lies ahead. AI, civilizational collapse, the blind spots we’ve carried for centuries—Glattfelder doesn’t offer easy answers, but he insists that the most consequential work is the inner work we keep postponing. He leaves us not with a finished theory, but with a nudge: the pattern is only useful if it changes the one who sees it.

• Artificial intelligence is now routinely described in the language of emergence, information processing, and even proto-consciousness. From your perspective, where does current AI remain a sophisticated but still local computational system, and what — if anything — would have to change for it to participate in the same informational or conscious architecture you associate with living systems?

I view AI as an emergent intelligence following the will to complexity. We don’t really know why the way we design and train these systems results in such an incredible sophistication in thinking. So, if the AI bubble doesn’t burst and we don’t soon reach major tipping points of planetary life support systems, this evolution should continue. As should the evolution of consciousness on Earth in general. However, there is currently no way to gauge whether an AI system has inner experience. The problem of other minds in the philosophy of mind applies here very pertinently.

• You have spent years studying both the architecture of global power networks and the informational foundations of reality. Looking at these two scales together — the very large and the very fundamental — what do you now consider the most consequential blind spot in how modern societies understand themselves?

Forgetting to explore our inner worlds of consciousness and only focusing outward. We have excluded a huge part of existence, our own subjectivity, from our scope of inquiry. We fetishize sober waking consciousness and deem other modes of cognition impure, delusional, or perilous. We have engineered technology to manipulate the physical and have overlooked that many other societies (some even tens of thousands of years ago) have developed technologies of consciousness. We forget that we are embedded in the web of life and are collectively complicit in an ecocide destroying the foundations of life on Earth.

• Looking at the trajectory of complex systems, information processing, and collective intelligence, how do you understand the evolutionary path of humanity from this point forward? Given your experience across physics, finance, complexity science, and the foundations of reality, what do you see as the most significant risks and the most genuine opportunities for the future of our species?

I believe we are in a phase of transition. The Hindu notion of Kalyug comes to mind. The old world is collapsing, but the new world has not arrived yet. As a result, we see chaos and destruction. However, as mentioned, I also truly believe in the process that is unfolding, which will ultimately result in a higher level of consciousness, human stewardship, and reduced human and non-human suffering. But until then, a lot will go very wrong.

• If tomorrow the scientific consensus shifted decisively toward the view that consciousness is fundamental and the material world is secondary, what would be the first three practical things that should change in how we raise children, design cities, or run financial systems — and what would be the most dangerous way this idea could be misused?

As with any idea, the threat is that it will be used to control, dominate, and extract. I don’t know what to recommend specifically. However, we should stop imprinting our children’s minds with locally constrained sociocultural and metaphysical narratives. Teach them to be critical but empathetic thinkers. Foster self-awareness, self-responsibility, and self-reliance. Guide them to explore the inner and outer worlds. Help them feel comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Provide them with tools of happiness. While these are all generic concepts, idealism has more to add. You are the universe, and the universe is you. Your essence will never be erased, only transformed. And to paraphrase Ervin Laszlo: There is a loving intelligence behind the things that exist in the universe, and this intelligence exhibits purpose, and it is possible to access elements of this intelligence and learn some aspects of its purpose.

• After mapping ownership networks, exploring the informational foundations of reality, and contemplating the limits of knowledge, what remains for you? What kind of human being, and what kind of collective practice, should this understanding form — if it is not to remain merely another elegant theory on the island of knowledge?

Let’s all strive to become happier people and, in doing so, create a civilization that works for the vast majority of human and non-human beings:)

Conclusion

What remains after this conversation is not a finished system, but a consistent orientation.

James B. Glattfelder moves between two scales that are rarely held together with equal seriousness: the measurable architecture of global power networks and the informational, participatory nature of reality itself. His work on corporate control demonstrated how extreme concentration can emerge from relatively simple interaction rules. His later philosophical writing argues that the same scientific temperament that maps networks must also confront the hard problem of consciousness and the possibility that mind is not a late byproduct of matter but part of the ground from which matter appears.

For readers committed to strict physicalism, many of these claims will remain speculative. That reservation is legitimate. Yet dismissing the entire framework simply because it crosses into metaphysics would miss the more interesting challenge the interview poses: what kind of knowledge is incomplete if it can describe the structure of ownership with great precision while remaining almost silent about the nature of the knowing subject?

The strength of the exchange lies in its refusal of both dogmatic materialism and unaccountable spiritual language. Glattfelder treats idealism not as an escape from responsibility but as a call to it. If consciousness is fundamental and we are each at the center of our own experiential universe, then thoughts, words, and actions carry weight. If complex systems emerge from local rules, then individual transformation is not a private luxury but one of the few realistic levers for collective change.

Whether one accepts or rejects the idealist hypothesis, the interview leaves behind a practical question that does not depend on metaphysics: what kind of human being should a deeper understanding of complexity and information form? Not merely one who can see the pattern more clearly, but one who is willing to let that seeing alter how they live, relate, and participate in the systems they once only analyzed from the outside.