Physical Limits to Cognition - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Black Hole Thermodynamics

Explore a 24-minute conference talk from Models of Consciousness Conferences that delves into the intersection of information theory, cognitive science, and black hole thermodynamics. Examine how Shannon Information Theory's limitations in describing intensional properties of computational systems lead to a novel approach using Kolmogorov complexity. Learn how modeling cognitive agents as simplified "spherical cows in a vacuum" enables the application of black hole thermodynamics to understand physically-embodied agents, classify behaviors, and discover universal limits to cognitive tasks. Discover the fascinating connection between information-theoretic entropy and physical entropy, offering new perspectives on the fundamental constraints of cognition in our universe.