He Saved Humanity From Nuclear War

episode

Previously titled “Quantum Consciousness: The Man Who Saved the World from a Computer Error | Irreducible Book Club” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026

Thinking On Paper not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from Thinking On Paper

Fear Is Holding Us Back From Asking Questions │ Pia Lauritzen 4 min · 03 Aug 2026

AI And The Hyper-personalization of Music 5 min · 28 Jul 2026

AI Governance: Where Does Recursive Self Improvement End? 50 min · 22 Jul 2026

Make GPUS 25% More Efficient | Moshe Tanach, CEO NeuReality 41 min · 14 Jul 2026

Is Cultivated Meat The Death Knell For Industrial Animal Farming? - Bruce Friedrich 53 min · 08 Jul 2026

Mining Asteroids For Platinum | Matthew Gialich, CEO Astroforge 51 min · 23 Jun 2026

All episodes from Thinking On Paper →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded20 Nov 2025

Publisheranchor.fm ↗

Handlerec:6140371

Show notes

If the military had been using AIs in 1983, everyone would be dead. Machines will never be conscious, and that animal instinct saved the world. This is the story:On 26 September 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov sat in a Soviet early-warning bunker watching computers tell him that US nuclear missiles were on their way. The data said “launch.” His intuition said “wait.” Petrov chose to override the system and, in doing so, probably saved the world.In this Thinking on Paper Book Club short, Mark and Jeremy use the Petrov story as a live case study for one of Federico Faggin’s core arguments in Irreducible: information is not the same as consciousness.Across a few minutes, they unpack:Why Petrov’s decision shows the gap between mechanical rule-following and conscious judgmentHow “information makes consciousness” sits at the center of Federrio Faggin’s new consciousness theoryWhy AI systems that only flip 1s and 0s can’t replicate intuition or qualia. In other words, why AI will never be conscious. This is a short from our 13-part Book Club on Federico Faggin’s Irreducible.If you’re interested in AI, consciousness, and the limits of information theory, listen to the full episode for more on information, consciousness, and why Faggin thinks consciousness is irreducible. Cheers, Mark and Jeremy.Keep Thinking On Paper. --We like you. Connect with us:⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [email protected]

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.