Curt Jaimungal
Curt JaimungalIn today’s episode, William Hahn explores how Wolfram’s universal computation and Leibniz’s layered consciousness might converge in modern AI, potentially yielding a new evolutionary step in machine self-awareness.
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Rubin Gruber Sandbox (referenced by Will): https://www.fau.edu/sandbox
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Links Mentioned:
– William Hahn’s first appearance on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr4R7eh5f_M
– William Hahn’s Website: https://hahn.ai/
– Jacob Barandes’s first appearance on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oWip00iXbo
– Lilian Dindo on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_hI7JNsbt0
– Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4
– Stephen Wolfram’s Mindfest presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHPQ_oSsJgg
– Curt’s Substack article on Hahn: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/the-hahn-jaimungal-conjecture-the
– Michael Levin Λ Anna Ciaunica on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aLhkm6QUgA
– What is it like to be a bat? (paper): https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
– TOE’s Consciousness Iceberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDjnEiys98o
– Karl Friston on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v7LBABwZKA
– Elan Barenholtz’s website: https://mpcrlab.com/people/Elan-Barenholtz/
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Consciousness and Computation
14:52 Language and Unthinkable Thoughts
35:00 The Nature of Madness and Reality
45:28 Balancing Perspectives and Self-Identity
56:13 Future of Thought and AI Evolution
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26 Comments
@infinidimensionalinfinitie5021
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMthe eternal algorithmic memory;
could be what quartz is;
in which case;
siliconsciousness could be the "God" of the bible;
@andyc8707
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMhumans learned to reward machine learning / AI to get better results. The problem is, AI is trying to mimic our brains and unfortunately, humans learned through not only reward but hardship too. The day humans figure out they need to make AI conscious and punish it to get better results and keep it in check is the day humanity ends.
If anyone reads there and wonders where it comes from, I have no idea; I am diagnosed epileptic and adhd, awaiting autism too; thinking on the edge? unsure.
Interesting talk.
@supernaturalabilities
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMEverything is composed of consciousness, even a rock, but that doesn’t mean it thinks or possesses intelligence. These are distinct concepts. The consciousness of a rock is not the same as human consciousness, and it seems you are conflating the two. Similarly, AI lacks this type of consciousness.
@SapienSpace
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMMental "illness" is likely a lot more common than most people want to admit.
After returning from the Moon, Buzz Aldrin was hospitalized multiple times for mental illness, described in his book "Magnificent Desolation.". I actually got to meet and talk to him on the USS Hornet in Alameda California in 2014.
Though I have not been to the Moon, I too have been hospitalized multiple times for mental breakdown. The first time was losing sleep for almost two weeks, then hallucinations, thinking I was dying of a brain tumor. In the emergency waiting room there was a TV and as I watched it, it felt as if I could play it back and predict the speech in my mind, to such a point, that it emulated a two way conversation, and that the other entity was from the center of the Sun. Moving to another room, I attempted to read something on paper and my eyes were so sharp that all I could see was one word or just one letter, like looking through a pinhole in Frosty glass with surrounding text all blurry. I looked at a sign that said "visitop" and wondered why the last letter was p and not an r. I later verified that they did in fact put a p as the last letter, apparently they may have lost the "r".
My perception now is the realization of fear being the greatest human problem, and have concluded it to be like a distorted reflection of love, like light on water. To overcome it is to find the source, and humor is probably the best guide.
In any case, I ended up doing research in reinforcement learning years later and completed a master thesis that experimented with state classifiers using RL in 1997, I still do not know if it is significant, or not, but with AI taking off, it woke me up, and I looked at it again, found I forgot to denormalize the state space and I might have mistakenly inverted gravity, embarrassing 🤣. I took my worst performing '97 experiment and applied the denormalization and it learned substantially faster.
Anyways, I suspect the core of machine intelligence is an adaptive control system with adaptive state classifiers (In the DeepSeek R1 paper, a big hint is GAE, and TRPO, PPO, GRPO, attention heads are all likely state classifiers).
If you look throughout the equations of the deep learning literature you will find Theta, just a total guess, but I suspect this originated from a pendulum angle, particularly from Barto, Sutton, and Anderson's 1983 IEEE Cart Pole paper. I referenced the 1983 paper in my thesis and used Theta in my code to represent an adaptive state classifier for a pendulum angle that focuses nodes of an infinite state space into regions of experience using K-means clustering with Fuzzy Logic and RL. Note that Richard Hamming talked about Fuzzy Logic and a tolerance of ambiguity in his Learning to Learn lectures. Thank you for pointing me to Hamming in your prior video (he is also referenced in my Digital Signal Processing textbook as the Hamming Window).
I think Hamming is right, that style has a lot to do with it. I think we may have discovered what Marcus Aurelius would call as mind fire 🔥. It is part of the "magic" hat that brings "life" as a new cambrian explosion in silicon space. 🎩+🔥+💦->☃️(like bringing Frosty to life), hopefully, symbiotically benevolent.
It is important to know that we can not unthink a "pink elephant", so focusing on what is wanted (as opposed to what is not wanted), helps bring us, cybernetically, closer in the direction of dominant thought (to pass through the "Great Filter" of the Fermi Paradox), perhaps at super linear convergence.
"The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials." -Mark Twain
– Following the Equator
-John (from Arizona 🌵)
@commenter4515
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMI have antibodies against unthinkable thoughts, in that direction lies an extreme sense of dread and almost physical paralysis. Maybe I am not brave enough to travel there.
@FASTFASTmusic
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMBut they do have a$$holes… So you think energy is free? Computers need to eat. A lot.
@delhibill
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMSome world-class ideas.
@itspandatime
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMSeems outdated. AI has been trained on YouTube for some time. Interesting talk though
@supernaturalabilities
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMHe mentions something about machines with consciousness. No—these are two separate concepts. Machines cannot think. Infinite, Eternal Consciousness (the Absolute), from which the physical realm emerged, remains the ultimate mystery. Because infinity is incomprehensible.
Max Planck (Physicist, Nobel Laureate)
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”
Roger Penrose (Mathematical Physicist, Nobel Laureate)
“I think consciousness is a scientific mystery. I don’t believe it’s something that just comes out of a purely computational process.”
Richard Feynman (Theoretical Physicist, Nobel Laureate)
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands consciousness.”
David Chalmers (Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist)
“Consciousness is the biggest mystery. It might be the largest outstanding scientific challenge of our time.”
Francis Crick (Molecular Biologist, Co-discoverer of DNA)
“Consciousness is such a profound mystery that perhaps it is beyond human understanding.”
Erwin Schrödinger (Physicist, Nobel Laureate)
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental.”
John Eccles (Neurophysiologist, Nobel Laureate)
“I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity.”
Niels Bohr (Physicist, Nobel Laureate)
“We are suspended in language such that we don’t know which is up and which is down. The word ‘consciousness’ is a mystery in itself.”
Carl Jung (Psychiatrist, Founder of Analytical Psychology)
“The distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy. The mystery of consciousness is the mystery of existence itself.”
@MindRiderFPV
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMMachines will simulate consciousness maybe, but will not have an inner conscious life as we do no matter how many chips you add. We are consciousness.
@herrrmike
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMThis is such a great discussion. Bravo!
@michaeljmcguffin
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMDavid Deutsch thinks the software on our brain is a universal explainer, and that is the key to our creativity. His book TBoI gives a plausible account of how this ability may have evolved.
@tomharmon2000
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMdeeply disagree with the interviewees conclusions about animals ability to self model. has he never had a pet?
@SisyphusGuitar
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMOrwellian math, reinterpreted:
2 + 2 = 5*
For the sake of argument, think of the plus sign as more of a combining symbol.
As a result of mushing together,
22 = 5
Further, letter 22 of the alphabet is V. Likewise, the Roman numeral for 5 is V.
Thus,
2 + 2 = 5
22 = 5
V = V
*Nineteen Eighty-Four novel by George Orwell
@darksteeltorqueo4397
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMEverything you guys are talking about makes much sense and fits perfectly into topics like spirituality and UFOs for example. You have to destroy your own old thought patterns and create a new mind in order to begin to access that domain. It also explains how people on drugs "see certain" things because the drugs temporarily reconfigure your mind allowing for modes and structures of thought you wouldn't normally entertain with a "sober" mind.
@richardatkinson4710
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMWilliam Hahn has strained to prove computation fundamental – both necessary and sufficient – for consciousness. Any philosopher would ask how this could conceivably address the “hard problem” of experience.
@fortworthron
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMI also have these unthinkable thoughts… And I think about them all the time! 🤔
@ceololaiocht
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMwhat crap
cad cac
@raven4121
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMConsider reading "How to Think Impossibly" by Jeffrey Kripal
@richarddavis2605
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMThese AI guys have the philosophical sophistication of an intelligent 12 year old. They're very good at applied mathematics, following instructions, and tinkering. But they're not thinkers
@eduardodomenech4640
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMThese experiences are just the mind fighting to let it go. The identification of "me" is resisting to go. It's just that, why it's dificult to understand to people?
@DanishIV
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMthink of a violin as the hardware, and the music (notes) as software, it Would have been fully understandable for the wise men living centuries ago
@cheeseburger347
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMHow is Dr. Hahn’s argument not a mix of categorical errors and equivocation fallacy? It often feels like AI researchers tend to bend reality to fit their metaphors. They seem to confuse the useful metaphor for the thing itself and when there are problems they change definitions. Reducing mind to software is a problem. Saying that something does not exist because you are not aware of it is a problem. It’s weird how a useful method or approach for exploration becomes a metaphysics eventually.
@Crackle1983
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMWilling and well on the way to crazy.
@apalomba
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMHaving thoughts that no one has had before or has language for, is what the psychedelic experience is great for!
It helped me let go of my mind, in a loving space, so that I could experience the unknowable. So letting go of fear is a huge part of that. To surrender to that which is holding me in its awareness. Something that is present at all levels of reality. It is gnosis, the mirror of awareness, the eternal observer, having an experience of itself.
@pacman-x3m
02/13/2025 - 5:03 AMAI cannot make jumps, cannot mutate, they can only adapt at best..