Episode
#111 - Tim Maudlin: Consciousness, Turing Machines, Problems with Quantum Mechanics and Ai
- Podcast
- Giants Shoulder
- Published
- Apr 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 5844
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-giants-shoulder-6943930/episodes/111-tim-maudlin-consciousness-turing-machines-problems-with-quantum-mechanics-and-ai/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-giants-shoulder-6943930/111-tim-maudlin-consciousness-turing-machines-problems-with-quantum-mechanics-and-ai.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Upgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulder Tim Maudlin is a philosopher of physics at NYU and founder of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. In 1989 he published a paper proving that consciousness cannot arise from computation — thirty-five years before the world started panicking about whether ChatGPT can think. Expect to learn why no computer programme will ever be sufficient for consciousness, why large language models operate nothing like human brains, the critical difference between intelligence and consciousness that the AI industry keeps collapsing, why Penrose's arguments about consciousness are wrong, why quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the mind, why the mind-body problem may be the most intractable problem in all of science, and much more… Timestamps: 00:00 Why Consciousness Is Not Computable 02:35 Maudlin's 1989 Paper: Computation and Consciousness 06:01 The Thought Experiment: Beer Cans, Windmills and Conscious Machines 08:11 Why Running a Programme Can't Be Enough for Consciousness 10:36 Counterfactuals: What the Machine Would Have Done 13:56 The Cog and Wheel Machine: Stripping It Down 16:18 The Strange Anaesthesia: Jamming the Gears 19:10 Why Computational Structure Is the Wrong Level 20:08 Is This For or Against Computationalism? 23:01 The 2026 AI Consciousness Debate 25:06 Why the Turing Test Is Trivially Defeatable 27:00 Neural Nets Are Nothing Like Brains 29:12 Why the Brain Is Far More Than Neurons 31:01 HAL 9000 and How Children Actually Learn 33:27 The Car Wash Question That Breaks ChatGPT 35:18 Defining Intelligence and Consciousness 37:53 Twin Earth: Why Definitions Don't Work the Way You Think 43:06 Locked-In Syndrome and the Lobster Problem 47:08 Compu…