Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

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This episode is about where consciousness begins. Mark Solms, neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst at the University of Cape Town, joins to explain why he thinks it begins not in the cortex but in raw feeling from the upper brainstem. We discuss patients who lost REM sleep but kept dreaming, what that means for Freud’s wish theory, and children born without a cortex who still giggle and startle. He argues the hard problem was tackled from the wrong end, starting with visual perception instead of feeling. The conversation also covers dual-aspect monism, Markov blankets and the free energy principle, his attempt to engineer an artificial agent that feels, and why he thinks that at death the second law wins.

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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - What Is Consciousness?
- 07:00 - Why Would We Self-Sacrifice?
- 15:37 - The Beggar: Care vs Rage
- 22:33 - What Is Neuropsychoanalysis?
- 31:15 - Why Do We Dream?
- 45:42 - Affect, Sentience, Consciousness
- 51:57 - Can You Betray Your Feelings?
- 56:58 - Hidden Motives and Willpower
- 01:04:28 - Hard Problem: Wrong Starting Point
- 01:14:44 - Children Born Without Cortex
- 01:21:21 - Dual-Aspect Monism
- 01:34:22 - Against Corticocentrism
- 01:39:58 - Death and the Second Law

LINKS:
- Mark's Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ
- Mark's Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001K8A6FA/allbooks?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=ci3uq&content-id=amzn1.sym.7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_p=7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pf_rd_r=134-0336993-4380237&pd_rd_wg=QOJv5&pd_rd_r=9aa4ed5b-7598-43aa-ab31-3a27213a55fe
- Mark's Twitter: https://x.com/Mark_Solms
- The Hidden Spring [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1324021918?tag=toe08-20
- The Only Cure [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/B0FWZXMHF1?tag=toe08-20
- The Brain and the Inner World [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1855759829?tag=toe08-20
- The Neuropsychology of Dreams [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1138989584?tag=toe08-20
- The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Free Energy Principle [Paper]: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02714/full
- Inferring Affective Consciousness in an Artificial Agent [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03883
- How and Why Consciousness Arises [Paper]: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10057681/
- Dreaming and REM Sleep Are Controlled by Different Brain Mechanisms [Paper]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11515144/
- Mark Solms [Bio]: https://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/people/mark-solms
- Mark Solms, University of Cape Town [Website]: https://humanities.uct.ac.za/department-psychology/contacts/mark-solms
- A Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective on the Hard Problem [Lecture]: https://youtu.be/r6J8pFHY2Fc
- Why and How Consciousness Arises [Lecture]: https://youtu.be/F7WF5gzPG1k

Full reading list for this episode (all 72 sources): https://curtjaimungal.com

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This episode is about math after AI started solving its open problems. Scott Aaronson, director of the Quantum Information Center at UT Austin, joins to explain why there is no making this go away. We discuss who gets credit for AI proofs, what is left for PhD students, and OpenAI’s apparent proof of the unique games conjecture. His wife, the complexity theorist Dana Moshkovitz, has worked on that conjecture since they met. The conversation also covers whether a lab that proved P equals NP should release it, and how AI overturned a conjecture he and Greg Kuperberg posed, with consequences for black hole firewalls. We end with Maxwell’s demon and why he thinks integrated information theory is wrong.

FOLLOW:
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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - AI Solved the Unique Games Conjecture
- 06:01 - Is Math About Understanding?
- 14:26 - OpenAI vs. Anthropic Disclosure
- 21:21 - Who Gets Credit for AI Proofs?
- 26:46 - Mourning the Mathematician
- 35:39 - The AI Denialism Problem
- 41:31 - Association for Human Mathematics
- 47:24 - If AI Proves P = NP
- 52:53 - Is Physics Next?
- 58:51 - Unitary Synthesis Problem Solved
- 01:04:30 - Black Hole Firewalls & P vs PSPACE
- 01:15:41 - Maxwell's Demon & Pseudo-Entropy
- 01:22:32 - Why IIT Is Wrong

LINKS:
- The Mathocalypse [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10169
- The Mathocalypse, Comment #115 [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10169#comment-2041220
- P =? NP [Paper]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf
- Quantum Versus Classical Proofs and Advice [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604056
- Quantum Computation vs. Firewalls [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.4504
- Limits on Efficient Computation in the Physical World [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412143
- Talk at Columbia University [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9243
- Computational Complexity and Explanations in Physics [Lecture]: https://youtu.be/GcbLL4C3VwY
- Why I Am Not an Integrated Information Theorist [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799
- Giulio Tononi and Me: A Phi-nal Exchange [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1823
- Dispatches From the Possibly Last Days of Human Relevance [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9782
- The Age of Wonders and Terrors [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10062
- Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough Is Wrong [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=304
- AI Alignment Theory Course at UT Austin [Article]: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10125
- Dana Moshkovitz [Website]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/people/faculty-researchers/dana-moshkovitz
- The Unique Games Theorem [Paper]: https://github.com/openai/math/blob/main/preprints/The-Unique-Games-Theorem-September-23-2026/paper.pdf

Full reading list for this episode (all 58 sources): https://curtjaimungal.com

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This is a podcast about whether AI could discover the laws of physics before we do. Hirosi Ooguri, chair of Caltech’s Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, joins for his first English podcast to explain why AI has moved faster in mathematics than in physics. He fears it could solve physics in a way we cannot understand. We discuss why quantum field theory lacks a firm mathematical foundation, quantum gravity as the “final boss,” the swampland distance conjecture he proposed with Cumrun Vafa, and his estimate that, left to humans, verifying string theory could take 2,250 years. The conversation also covers the PhD thesis numbers that turned up in a Mathieu group table twenty years later. What an honor.

FOLLOW:
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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - Measuring Earth in Fifth Grade
- 06:58 - Why Physics, Not Platonic Math?
- 12:34 - Nothing Below the Planck Length?
- 23:15 - Why AI Can't Verify Physics
- 30:47 - Yang-Mills: Hardest Millennium Problem
- 36:31 - Why QFT Resists Rigor
- 46:19 - What If Yang-Mills Fails?
- 52:35 - Are LLMs Just Grad Students?
- 01:01:09 - Swampland and AdS/CFT
- 01:12:57 - Gravity Breaks Wilson's Paradigm
- 01:21:45 - Will AI Surpass Physicists?
- 01:26:58 - 2,250 Years to Verify Strings?
- 01:34:03 - Is String Theory Disappointing?
- 01:40:27 - Distance Conjecture and Inflation
- 01:46:24 - Mathieu Moonshine Discovery
- 01:52:59 - What Would Make Him Quit Strings?
- 02:02:28 - Days of Blank Paper

LINKS:
- Hirosi Ooguri [Caltech PMA]: https://www.pma.caltech.edu/people/hiroshi-hirosi-ooguri-oguri
- On the Geometry of the String Landscape and the Swampland, Ooguri & Vafa [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0605264
- Non-Supersymmetric AdS and the Swampland, Ooguri & Vafa [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.01533
- Constraints on Symmetry From Holography, Harlow & Ooguri [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.05337
- Continuous Family of CFTs and Exactly Marginal Operators, Komatsu et al. [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11045
- Universal Bounds on CFT Distance Conjecture, Ooguri & Wang [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00674
- Notes on the K3 Surface and the Mathieu Group M24, Eguchi, Ooguri & Tachikawa [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1004.0956
- Exploring the Holographic Entropy Cone via Reinforcement Learning, He, Lee & Ooguri [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19979
- The Holographic Entropy Cone, Bao et al. [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.07839
- De Sitter Space and the Swampland, Obied et al. [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08362
- Knot Invariants and Topological Strings, Ooguri & Vafa [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9912123
- Topological Lattice Models in Four Dimensions, Ooguri [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9205090
- Kodaira-Spencer Theory of Gravity and Exact Results for Quantum String Amplitudes [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9309140

Full reading list for this episode (all 103 sources): https://curtjaimungal.com

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This is Part One of a lecture where, as with Tim Maudlin, the professor was given unlimited time, so you can pause and check the derivations yourself. Philip Mannheim, professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, joins to explain why he traces dark matter, dark energy and quantum gravity to one cause: stretching Newton and Einstein beyond the solar system. We discuss the planet Vulcan that was never there, why dwarf galaxies are a bigger clue than spirals, the Tully-Fisher relation, and his fits to 138 galaxies with no dark matter. The conversation also covers general relativity from scratch, from metrics to the Riemann tensor, and whether Einstein’s equations are unique. Part Two is still to come.

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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - Three Dark Problems, One Cause?
- 08:31 - The 120-Order Cosmological Catastrophe
- 13:17 - Newton, Kepler, and Ptolemy
- 21:29 - Mercury's Anomalous Precession
- 27:20 - Neptune Found, Vulcan Vanished
- 34:12 - Galactic Rotation Curves
- 40:00 - Dwarf Galaxies Break Universality
- 45:48 - Where Are the WIMPs?
- 52:00 - Tully-Fisher: Galaxies Know
- 58:06 - Four Parameters, 138 Galaxies
- 01:06:00 - Milgrom's Law and the RAR
- 01:12:10 - Fourth-Order Poisson Equation
- 01:20:28 - Missing Mass in Plain Sight
- 01:26:13 - Confirmed Low-Acceleration Prediction
- 01:33:00 - Metrics From Scratch
- 01:39:00 - Why Einstein Changed Newton
- 01:44:31 - Riemann Tensor: Real Gravity
- 01:49:50 - Equivalence Principle Derived
- 01:55:00 - Building Einstein's Equations
- 02:00:54 - Light Bending and Ricci Flatness
- 02:07:45 - Are Einstein's Equations Unique?

LINKS:
- Dark Matter and Dark Energy Alternatives [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0505266
- The Case for Conformal Gravity [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.2186
- Conformal Gravity at Low Acceleration [Paper]: https://inspirehep.net/literature/3155698
- Conformal Gravity's Newtonian Limit [Paper]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02105226
- Quadratic Potential and Galactic Rotation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.0970
- Universal Rotation Curves and Tully-Fisher [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03921
- Local and Global Gravity [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9611038
- Fitting Galactic Rotation Curves [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3495
- Dwarf-Galaxy Radial Acceleration [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.06905
- MOND Theory [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.7661
- MOG, Cosmology and Black Holes [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.12550
- High-Resolution Rotation Curves of LSB Galaxies [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0107326
- Dark Matter: Fact or Fantasy [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11217

Full reading list for this episode (all 31 sources): https://curtjaimungal.com

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Math has a proof checker. Can physics get one? Jonathan Gorard, an applied mathematician and the cofounder and CEO of Lanyon AI, joins to explain why AI took off in math and coding but not yet in physics. We discuss an AI finishing the formal check of a Fields Medal proof and why it scared him, why he thinks “I detected a particle” rests on 20 to 50 levels of theory, and what Alan Turing’s PhD student Robin Gandy tried to build for physics. The conversation also covers his push to make physics executable, why he thinks mysteries are artifacts of description languages, and whether there is still a place for the physicist.

FOLLOW:
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TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00 - The Sphere Packing Shock
- 05:53 - Science as Product vs Process
- 11:20 - Is Science Just Hedonism?
- 20:56 - Why Academics Ignored AI
- 31:54 - Why Leave Princeton?
- 39:56 - Turing's Student and Physics Formalization
- 44:56 - Theory-Ladenness of Observation
- 50:22 - Why Math Isn't Enough
- 58:19 - Sapir-Whorf for AI
- 01:05:49 - Filtering the Paper Deluge
- 01:12:07 - Can AI Transmit Understanding?
- 01:19:38 - Human-Readable AI Reasoning
- 01:25:59 - Must AI Be Embodied?
- 01:31:50 - Mysteries Are Description Language Artifacts
- 01:41:54 - Grieving Physics
- 01:49:59 - What's Left for Physicists?
- 01:55:18 - The Next Description Language
- 02:02:26 - Spacetime Discreteness and Beacons

LINKS:
- Jonathan Gorard [Wolfram Physics Project]: https://www.wolframphysics.org/pages/people/jonathan-gorard/
- Lanyon AI: https://www.lanyon.ai/
- Lanyon AI Founding Team: https://www.lanyon.ai/company/
- Shock with Confidence: Formal Proofs of Correctness for Hyperbolic PDE Solvers [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13877
- BEACONS: Bounded-Error, Algebraically-Composable Neural Solvers for PDEs [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14853
- General Relativistic Hydrodynamics in Discrete Spacetime [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.02331
- The Empirical Metamathematics of Euclid and Beyond [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.07337v1
- Math Inc. Sphere Packing Announcement: https://www.math.inc/sphere-packing
- The Sphere Packing Problem in Dimension 8 [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.04246
- Progress in Formalizing Sphere Packing in Dimension 8 [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.23468
- On Axiomatic Systems in Mathematics and Theories in Physics [Paper]: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/ohad.kammar/scans/gandy-thesis-ocr.pdf
- Hilbert's Sixth Problem: Axioms of Physics [Paper]: https://people.reed.edu/~davidp/341/resources/hilbert.pdf
- Hilbert's Program [SEP]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hilbert-program/
- On Computable Numbers [Paper]: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf
- Lean Proof Assistant [Wikipedia]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_(proof_assistant)
- The Lean Mathematical Library [Paper]: https://leanprover-community.github.io/papers/mathlib-paper.pdf

Full reading list for this episode (all 114 sources): https://curtjaimungal.com

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