William Hahn: Unifying Wolfram, Leibniz, and Consciousness with AI

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

William Hahn unifies Wolfram's computational universe, Leibniz's philosophy, and theories of consciousness. The conversation delves into unifying frameworks and the implications for future AI.SPONSORS:- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOERESOURCES:- Rubin Gruber Sandbox (referenced by Will): https://www.fau.edu/sandbox- Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com- Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE- Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join- 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 and Anna Ciaunica on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aLhkm6QUgA&t=81s- 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&t=21s&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal- Karl Friston on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v7LBABwZKA&ab_channel=CurtJaimungal- Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt- Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs- US: 988 (Crisis Lifeline) - https://988lifeline.org- Canada: 988 or 1-833-456-4566 (Talk Crisis Canada) - https://talksuicide.ca- UK: 116 123 (Samaritans) - https://www.samaritans.org- Australia: 13 11 14 (Lifeline) - https://www.lifeline.org.au- Germany: 0800 1110 111 / 0800 1110 222 (Telefonseelsorge) - https://www.telefonseelsorge.de- India: 1800-599-0019 (Kiran) - https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1651963- France: 3114 (Crisis Support) - https://3114.fr- Netherlands: 113 or 0800-0113 (113 Crisis Support) - https://www.113.nl- Sweden: 90101 (Mind Helpline) - https://mind.se/hitta-hjalp/sjalvmordslinjen/- China: 800-810-1117 / 010-8295-1332 (Beijing Crisis Intervention Center) - http://www.crisis.org.cn- Japan: 0120-783-556 (Inochi no Denwa) - https://www.inochinodenwa.org/- New Zealand: 1737 (National Helpline) - https://1737.org.nz- Spain: 024 (Crisis Line)- Brazil: 188 (CVV) - https://www.cvv.org.br/- Ireland: 116 123 (Samaritans Ireland) - https://www.samaritans.org/ireland/- South Africa: 0800 567 567 / SMS 31393 (SADAG) - https://www.sadag.org Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're here at the MIT Media Lab.
0:01.8	I'm here with Professor William Hahn.
0:03.8	The links to his work are on screen and in the description, as well as the previous time that we spoke, which was a fantastic podcast, and I think people should check it out. Thank you so much. It's really great to speak with you again. I've been looking forward to this for some time now. Thank you. We spoke off air yesterday and the day before. You were actually there for the Jacob
0:21.7	Barnda's podcast, which is also on screen. You had some ideas as to how to unify Leibniz with Stephen
0:28.2	Wolfram's work. Please talk about that. Yeah, so really the idea is bringing together ideas from
0:35.5	consciousness and computation.
0:39.7	And so typically when we think of consciousness,
0:42.4	we have this kind of light switch view,
0:44.8	that it's either on or off.
0:47.3	And there's an idea attributed to Leibniz
0:49.9	where it's really a hierarchy.
0:52.1	It's kind of a ladder of different capabilities.
0:56.1	And it revolves around the ability to represent your ideas,
1:00.4	to think about your thinking,
1:02.7	and then to think about that thinking and so on
1:04.8	as this sort of this hierarchy that goes up.
1:07.8	And if we think about the simplest animals,
1:13.6	they have this sort of the first order, things like sensation and response to stimulus, but they don't really have any way of
1:18.8	representing that response. And it seems that by thinking in terms of representation and then
1:27.3	representing your representation,
1:29.3	where we can have things like language,
1:31.5	and then we can build philosophies on top of that language,
	...

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