Nir Lahav: What If Consciousness Follows the Rules of Relativity?
3/5/20263 hr 9 min
A physicist proposes a relativistic theory of consciousness based on spacetime geometry and information.
Physicist Nir Lahav joins me to argue that the hard problem isn't hard so much as confused—a consequence of treating consciousness as an absolute property rather than a relative one. Drawing on the principle of relativity, he proposes that subjective experience is a genuine physical property that manifests only from within a cognitive system's own internal simulation, where the felt sense of good and bad becomes as real as location in space. This conversation requires zero prior background in physics or philosophy. Every co...
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First 90 secondsCurt Jaimungal· Host0:00
The default assumption for most people in the West is that the brain generates consciousness. So something brainy, neurological happens, neurons are firing, and then consciousness pops out like steam from a kettle. Now, you think this is not just wrong, you think it's confused. Before we get technical, what's the short version of what you think's actually happening?
Nir Lahav· Guest0:23
What actually is ha- happening here is, um, a physical process, and not only computational process. Uh, because of relativity, that from the outside we can measure neural patterns, and from the inside we measure a new physical entity which we call consciousness. So this is like a one line, you know, of, of, of the theory.
Curt Jaimungal· Host0:49
[laughs] Okay, explain how most people, most of your colleagues who aren't educated in these matters, think of consciousness.
Nir Lahav· Guest1:00
I guess... So if we take, uh, people from the street and ask them, "What do you think about consciousness?" Most, most of the people, including me when I was a child, would think that consciousness is separate than matter. It's something different. You know, very dualistic way of thinking. I guess maybe because of, uh, the influence of religion, you know, we tend to think of a soul or something like that, right?