The Empowering Neurologist Podcast

The Laws of Thought: What AI Reveals About the Human Brain with Tom Griffiths, PhD | E216

June 2, 2026·57 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

🧠 Stay ahead with the latest in science, nutrition, and wellness by subscribing to Dr. Perlmutter’s newsletter at: www.drperlmutter.com. ✉️🌱====Thank you to our sponsors:EVY -  Go to https://www.optoceutics.com/perlmutter  to get $200 off & free shipping (90 days risk-free). 3x4 Genetics - https://3x4genetics.com/DrPerlmutterfor a special offer when you sign up to decode your genetics and get personalized, science-backed health recommendations.====Dr. Perlmutter’s groundbreaking new book, Brain Defenders, is now available for pre-order. Discover how to protect your brain and future health - reserve your copy today at https://www.braindefenders.com.====What if AI isn't on a path to become a better human — but a fundamentally different kind of mind altogether? In this episode, Tom Griffiths joins me to challenge how we think about intelligence itself — and to make a compelling case that AI systems are best understood not as smarter or dumber than humans, but as "alien organisms" solving problems in ways our brains never could.Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University, and head of Princeton's AI Lab. He is the co-author of the international bestseller Algorithms to Live By and author of the new book The Laws of Thought — an ambitious survey of three centuries of attempts to capture human thinking in mathematics.We dig into the three mathematical frameworks scientists use to model thought, why a human toddler can learn language from a fraction of the data a large language model requires, what "resource rationality" reveals about mental health and decision-making, and what we stand to lose — and gain — as we increasingly outsource our thinking to machines.====00:00 - Introduction00:46 - A New Way to Think About Brain Health: Brain Defenders05:27 - Welcoming Cognitive Scientist Tom Griffiths06:04 - The Great Mystery: Can Math Explain How We Think?08:23 - Three Threads of Cognitive Science: Rules, Networks, Probability10:17 - Why AI Needs 10,000x More Data Than a Child12:27 - Intuition Decoded: How Neural Networks Mirror Implicit Learning15:03 - The Creativity Gap: Why AI Can't Think Outside the Box18:06 - 40 Hz Light Therapy and Cognitive Decline20:07 - Inductive Bias: The Evolutionary Head Start of the Human Brain22:41 - Mental Health Through Three Levels of Analysis25:25 - Resource Rationality: Why Humans Aren't Actually Irrational29:33 - Free Will Through the Lens of the Laws of Thought31:35 - Rethinking Education With Cognitive Science34:33 - Evolutionary Mismatch: The Mind Meets Modern Technology37:23 - AI as Alien Intelligence: A New Mental Model38:04 - Personalized Brain Health: 3X4 Genetics39:55 - Uncertainty: The Hidden Engine of Human Cognition43:34 - Bayesian Inference: The Math of "Best Guessing"44:37 - The Biggest Misconceptions About Intelligence47:14 - Algorithms to Live By: Optimizing Daily Decisions49:22 - Five Years From Now: The AI Forecast51:33 - The Calculator Effect: What Happens When We Outsource Thinking53:56 - Metacognition: Becoming the Manager of AI55:34 - Closing Thoughts====Instagram:   / davidperlmutter  Website: https://www.drperlmutter.com/Subscribe to our channel:   / @davidperlmuttermd

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