- Go to https://expressvpn.com/theoriesofeverythingyt to find out how you can get up to 4 extra months thanks to our sponsor, ExpressVPN - Let AI do the note-taking. Visit https://plaud.ai/toe and use code TOE for 10% off at checkout. Every episode days early, ad-free, plus my essays: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe 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. SUPPORT: - Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e LINKS MENTIONED: - Nir's Website: https://www.lahavnir.com/about-me - Nir's Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LFMD5RkAAAAJ - Nir's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Nir.Lahav - Nir's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thewonderofscience9863/videos - A Relativistic Theory of Consciousness [Paper]: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704270/full - Church-Turing Thesis: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/ - What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [Paper]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf - On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies [TOE]: https://users.physics.ox.ac.uk/~rtaylor/teaching/specrel.pdf - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/037575766X?tag=toe08-20 - Discourse on Metaphysics [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1474457789?tag=toe08-20 - The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity [Paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/cosmology_2025/pdf/Einstein_Extension_Relativity_1916.pdf - Some Functional Effects of Sectioning the Cerebral Commissures in Man [Paper]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.48.10.1765 - Reasoning or Reciting? [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.02477 - The Conscious Mind [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0195117891?tag=toe08-20 - Consciousness Iceberg [TOE]: https://youtu.be/65yjqIDghEk - Michael Levin [TOE]: https://youtu.be/c8iFtaltX-s - Karl Friston [TOE]: https://youtu.be/2v7LBABwZKA - Daniel Dennett [TOE]: https://youtu.be/bH553zzjQlI - Bernardo Kastrup [TOE]: https://youtu.be/lAB21FAXCDE - Joscha Bach [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3MNBxfrmfmI - Matt Segall [TOE]: https://youtu.be/DeTm4fSXpbM - Leo Gura [TOE]: https://youtu.be/YspFR9JAq3w - What Is Energy, Actually? [TOE]: https://youtu.be/hQk9GLZ0Fms - Plato's Cave [TOE]: https://youtu.be/PurNlwnxwfY - Iain McGilchrist [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Q9sBKCd2HD0 - Andres Emilsson: https://youtu.be/BBP8WZpYp0Y - Ruth Kastner [TOE]: https://youtu.be/-BsHh3_vCMQ - Urs Schreiber [TOE]: https://youtu.be/1KUhLHlgG2Q - Ted Jacobson [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8 - Stephen Wolfram [TOE]: https://youtu.be/0YRlQQw0d-4 - Emily Adlam and Jacob Barandes [TOE]: https://youtu.be/rw1ewLJUgOg - David Chalmers [TOE]: https://youtu.be/RH5qjdHhtBk - Donald Hoffman and Philip Goff [TOE]: https://youtu.be/MmaIBxkqcT4 - Donald Hoffman [TOE]: https://youtu.be/CmieNQH7Q4w - Michael Levin and Anil Seth [TOE]: https://youtu.be/_kuwwmFnxGY - Elan Barenholtz [TOE]: https://youtu.be/A36OumnSrWY - Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/b_DUft-BdIE - Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE