The Theory That Shatters Language Itself
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
The Journey of Language Acquisition
This chapter explores the evolution of language acquisition in infants, highlighting the transition from vocalizations to meaningful symbols. It examines the relationship between spoken and written language, questioning the nature of words and their physicality in communication.
As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe Professor Elan Barenholtz, cognitive scientist at Florida Atlantic University, joins TOE to discuss one of the most unsettling ideas in cognitive science: that language is a self-contained, autoregressive system with no inherent connection to the external world. In this mind-altering episode, he explains why AI’s mastery of language without meaning forces us to rethink the nature of mind, perception, and reality itself... Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Timestamps: 00:00 The Mind and Language Connection 02:09 The Grounded Thesis of Language 09:29 The Epiphany of Language 13:06 The Dichotomy of Language and Perception 16:24 Language as an Autonomous System 19:48 The Problem of Qualia and Language 23:35 Bridging Language and Action 31:32 Exploring Embeddings in Language 38:21 The Platonic Space of Language 44:17 The Challenges of Meaning and Action 51:05 Understanding the Complexity of Color 52:53 The Paradox of Language Describing Itself 58:19 The Map of Language and Action 1:07:48 Continuous Learning in Language Models 1:11:46 The Nature of Memory 1:22:46 The Role of Context 1:32:18 Exploring Language Dynamics 1:39:44 The Shift from Oral to Written Language 2:11:34 Language and the Cosmic Whole 2:21:35 Reflections on Existence Links Mentioned: • Elan’s Substack: https://elanbarenholtz.substack.com • Elan's X / Twitter: https://x.com/ebarenholtz • Geoffrey Hinton on TOE: https://youtu.be/b_DUft-BdIE • Joscha Bach and Ben Goertzel on TOE: https://youtu.be/xw7omaQ8SgA • Elan’s published papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2grAjZsAAAAJ • Ai medical panel on TOE: https://youtu.be/abzXzPBW4_s • Jacob Barandes and Manolis Kellis on TOE: https://youtu.be/MTD8xkbiGis • Will Hahn on TOE: https://youtu.be/3fkg0uTA3qU • Noam Chomsky on TOE: https://youtu.be/DQuiso493ro • Greg Kondrak on TOE: https://youtu.be/FFW14zSYiFY • Andres Emilsson on TOE: https://youtu.be/BBP8WZpYp0Y • Harnessing the Universal Geometry of Embeddings (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.12540 • Yang-Hui He on TOE: https://youtu.be/spIquD_mBFk • Iain McGilchrist on TOE: https://youtu.be/Q9sBKCd2HD0 • Curt interviews ChatGPT: https://youtu.be/mSfChbMRJwY • Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674251555 • Karl Friston on TOE: https://youtu.be/uk4NZorRjCo • Michael Levin and Anna Ciaunica on TOE: https://youtu.be/2aLhkm6QUgA • The Biology of LLMs (paper): https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/biology.html • Jacob Barandes on TOE: https://youtu.be/YaS1usLeXQM • Emily Adlam on TOE: https://youtu.be/6I2OhmVWLMs • Julian Barbour on TOE: https://youtu.be/bprxrGaf0Os • Tim Palmer on TOE: https://youtu.be/vlklA6jsS8A • Neil Turok on TOE: https://youtu.be/ZUp9x44N3uE • Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jayaraasi/ • On the Origin of Time (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593128443 SUPPORT: - Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join - Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal - Support me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9 - Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 SOCIALS: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs #science
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