Exploring Free Will, Pain, and Consciousness

Episode 132

I spoke with Manuel and Lenore Blum about:

* Their early influences and mentors

* The Conscious Turing Machine and what theoretical computer science can tell us about consciousness

Enjoy—and let me know what you think!

Manuel is a pioneer in the field of theoretical computer science and the winner of the 1995 Turing Award in recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its applications to cryptography and program checking, a mathematical approach to writing programs that check their work. He worked as a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley until 2001. From 2001 to 2018, he was the Bruce Nelson Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Lenore is a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and former Professor-in-Residence in EECS at UC Berkeley. She is president of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science and newly elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lenore is internationally recognized for her work in increasing the participation of girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. She was a founder of the Association for Women in Mathematics, and founding Co-Director (with Nancy Kreinberg) of the Math/Science Network and its Expanding Your Horizons conferences for middle- and high-school girls.

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Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (03:09) Manuel’s interest in consciousness

* (05:55) More of the story — from memorization to derivation

* (11:15) Warren McCulloch’s mentorship

* (14:00) McCulloch’s anti-Freudianism

* (15:57) More on McCulloch’s influence

* (27:10) On McCulloch and telling stories

* (32:35) The Conscious Turing Machine (CTM)

* (33:55) A last word on McCulloch

* (35:20) Components of the CTM

* (39:55) Advantages of the CTM model

* (50:20) The problem of free will

* (52:20) On pain

* (1:01:10) Brainish / CTM’s multimodal inner language, language and thinking

* (1:13:55) The CTM’s lack of a “central executive”

* (1:18:10) Empiricism and a self, tournaments in the CTM

* (1:26:30) Mental causation

* (1:36:20) Expertise and the CTM model, role of TCS

* (1:46:30) Dreams and dream experience

* (1:50:15) Disentangling components of experience from multimodal language

* (1:56:10) CTM Robot, meaning and symbols, embodiment and consciousness

* (2:00:35) AGI, CTM and AI processors, capabilities

* (2:09:30) CTM implications, potential worries

* (2:17:15) Advice for younger (computer) scientists

* (2:22:57) Outro

Links:

* Manuel’s homepage

* Lenore’s homepage; find Lenore on Twitter (https://x.com/blumlenore) and Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenore-blum-1a47224)

* Articles

* “The ‘Accidental Activist’ Who Changed the Face of Mathematics” — Ben Brubaker’s Q&A with Lenore

* “How this Turing-Award-winning researcher became a legendary academic advisor” — Sheon Han’s profile of Manuel

* Papers (Manuel and Lenore)

* AI Consciousness is Inevitable: A Theoretical Computer Science Perspective

* A Theory of Consciousness from a Theoretical Computer Science Perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine

* A Theoretical Computer Science Perspective on Consciousness and Artificial General Intelligence

* References (McCulloch)

* Embodiments of Mind

* Rebel Genius