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Scripts for Session II Panel 1 Age of the Universe Narrator – Hope you enjoyed the tour and some of our major clouds. Did you feel it took a long time, or a short time? Well maybe it was hard for us to tell while riding a roller coaster. But fortunately we have with us here this evening in neverTime, a panel of 4 expert avatars. {Each Avatar nods when they are called to acknowledge it.} Please welcome RAMBAN (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman) – a Rishon and important Mekubal, Kabbalist, Rabbi Yitzchok of Acco – his student and colleague, ARI, Rabbi Yitzchok Luria – the greatest Mekubal since the Tanna RASHBI (Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai), also in the master-student line extending from the RAMBAN, and WMAP – the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. All 4 Avatars – Thank you, glad to be here in neverSpace today. Narrator – Honored Rabbis and satellite, could you please share with us your understanding of how long that trip we took was? By the game program, it appears to have been billions of years – WMAP – 13.7 billion give or take 100 million years, to be precise. Narrator – Oh, all right, thank you. But reviewing the operating system manual, it should only have been 5,769 years?! Can anyone help me with this? RAMBAN – If I may, sir? Narrator – Yes Rabbi Moshe, please go ahead. RAMBAN – There have been only 5,768 full years, the second year began on the 6th day of the first “year.” Narrator – Doesn’t this make the question just a little stronger? RAMBAN – No, it just means that your tour basically took you through those first 6 days. 1 Narrator – Ah, I understand now. You are a great Mekubal – in your Perush, commentary, on the Torah, you always refer to the inner, Kabbalistic understanding as B’Derech Emet, by the way of Truth. So really then, the 6 days and the Shabbat that follows are really symbolic of great spiritual concepts, and that the reality is 13.7 billion years, plus or minus 100 million, just like WMAP said, right? RAMBAN – Indeed, as I said in my Perush, these days symbolically represent great spiritual concepts, deeper than the sea. But in corporeal reality the six days were six, 24-hour days. Narrator – But, but, but… RAMBAN – Six, 24-hour days. And I tell you further, I disagree with my predecessor Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchok) on a great deal. But on this point he is absolutely correct – it’s six, 24-hour days. It’s not 14 billion years any more than its eternal. Narrator – But on our tour, the players and I saw – Rabbi Yitzchok of Acco – Sir, if I might say something here. Narrator -- Yes, Rabbi Yitzchok, anything that might help to clarify matters. Rabbi Yitzchok – I speak on behalf of a number of ancient Mekubalim, in referring to the concept of the Sabbatical cycles. With all due respect to my Rav, we see clearly before us that the world is very ancient. RAMBAN – Looks can be deceiving. We cannot trust our fleshy senses; we’re in an Olam HaSheker. Rabbi Yitzchok – We are commanded by G-d at the start of the Torah to go out and subdue the world. Surely to do so we must perceive the branch reality before us as well as to receive of its roots in the supernal spheres! ARI – May I…? Narrator -- Yes, Rabbi Luria, please go ahead. ARI – Thank you. – With all due respect, Rabbi Yitzchok, you and the other Mekubalim referred to only have a broad knowledge of root and branch. 2 The Zohar – received by RASHBI, is the only book to ever provide the detailed understanding necessary. Rabbi Yitzchok – I authenticated the Zohar entrusted to Rabbi Moshe DeLion. ARI – With all due respect to the Rav, did you understand it through the Language of Kabbalah? Rabbi Yitzchok – No, through the Language of Bible, there was no way to study it otherwise. ARI – I was given understanding of it through the Language of Kabbalah. Further, my opinion is agreed to by RAMAK, Rabbi Moshe Cordevero, and is as our master RAMBAN. The system of Sabbatical cycles is purely a spiritual concept – the matter in corporeality remains six, 12-hour days. Narrator – Wait, wasn’t that six, 24 hour days? ARI – It’s a matter of perspective, no creative acts were performed at night. Narrator – But is this world “real” then? ARI – It is the most unreal, and ultimately, there is none but the Creator. Narrator – But the six days? ARI – We’re really in neverTime, of course there are no six days in the corporeal sense except in the game. But they are the central branch – the higher roots are a deeper six days, they have everything that six days in the game do. Consider the fractal tetrahedral (picture in your agenda sheets to the lower left of the hourglass graphic, a tetrahedron is a pyramid with triangular bottom and 3 triangular sides) – what is the representation in a flat world of basic two dimensional shapes, a triangle or a circle? Narrator – A triangle I suppose… ARI – Exactly. Now our fractal tetrahedron in the game’s branch language, is a triangle, and reflects down in this world through side branches too – but these are not the days of Creation in the game. The days 3 of Creation are acts of the operating system booting up and initializing the game, not the operation of the game itself. The game will reflect them differently, but that is purely the running of a simulation. Narrator – Okay, I’m confused and I bet most of the players are too. ARI – What is a day? – Literally. Narrator – Well, it’s either a 24-hour period or 12-hours, depending upon specifically what you mean. ARI – Good. Now what are these literal hours you are talking about? Narrator – Sixty minutes or 3,600 seconds. ARI – Certainly not – those measures are arbitrary. Narrator – Well so are hours, aren’t they? ARI – No. There are 4-letters in G-d’s proper Name: a Yud, a Heh, a Vov, and another Hey. There are 24 permutations, 24 possible orderings of these letters. There are 4 positions to place the Yud, in each of these cases, 3 positions to place the first Hey, in each of those cases, 2 positions to place the Vov, and the 1 remaining position where the second Hey is placed. 4 times 3 times 2 times 1 is 24. But in fact, since the two Heys are really the same letter, by not differentiating between these, the 24 are also two identical sets of twelve, and there are thus only 12 permutations. So its 24 or 12. So I ask again, what’s the real measure of these hours? What are the subunits in terms of Halacha, Jewish Law? Narrator – Chelakim? ARI – Good, you listen when the new moon is announced. There are one thousand and eighty Chelakim in an hour. This structure is due to pairing of Aleph with each letter of the proper Name, that is Aleph-Yud, Aleph-Hey, etc. for each daylight hour or Yud-Aleph, Hey-Aleph, etc., for each nighttime hours. This is done with each of 6 vowel points for each letter of a pair – that is, a matrix of 36 times. Multiplying the Gematria, numerical value, of 4 each of the pairs by 36 provides one thousand and eighty. This is connected with a larger system taking you up to months, a year, and so on. Narrator – What do Chelakim consist of? ARI – Nothing else according to our corporeal/game concept of “something.” Certainly not something that we would call a unit of time. A Chelek is, by definition an entirety – THE base unit, the quantum. Narrator – But they are three and a third seconds long! ARI – Why are you using arbitrary, relative measures again? They mean nothing in terms of absolute time. Narrator – But all time is relative, Einstein showed that! ARI – Only in the game, but not in a higher reality. A higher reality’s time, relative to ours, is absolute because it is that times Relativity itself. That is, the progression of states in cause and effect at the level of similarity of form for the game. In the Chelek is the games instantaneous reality. Relativity is fractal, not linear. Einstein didn’t realize this because he did not realize that he is in a game, and this led to mistakes in his thinking. I think you’ll be finding this out even before this session ends. Narrator – How can an absolute time be based upon the Chelek when the game reality itself has smaller units of time? And anyway, why should it be based upon the Chelek? ARI – Does the game reality have smaller units of time? It doesn’t even have larger units of time! The Chelek is the tic tock of the system clock, and there is nothing else. As to why it should be based upon the Chelek -because the Chelek is based upon you, everything in the game is based upon you! -- The Torah is written in the Language of Man. … You have much more to learn before I can say more – it would only confuse you further now. You’ll come to see as you play the game, some before you even complete this session. Narrator – Just one more thing for now at least. 5 ARI – Yes? Narrator – Rabbi Yitzchok’s point still strikes me though -- the world appears very ancient. ARI – Yes, as it should. Narrator – But why? ARI – Tell me about the counting of the Omer, between Pesach and Shavout. What are we doing? Narrator – Counting days, and – well there is a tradition – ARI – Go on. Narrator – In this tradition we ask for correction in certain spiritual traits – our counting is to correct these traits. ARI – So we count time, for 7 weeks of 7 days. And retroactively repair spiritual states. What do you think G-d does to make that possible? Do you think He perhaps takes spiritual states, and retroactively transforms them into time? Rabbi Yitzchok, in your approach, can you tell us what a “Divine day” is? Rabbi Yitzchok – “A thousand year’s in Your eyes is like a day that passes and a watch in the night.” Each day of the first 6 days is 7,000 years of Divine days -- that is 7,000 times 365,250 years (averaging Divine leap years), or 2.557 billion years. ARI – Indeed, in His eyes, for He sees it is but a game – and so to speak – composes the whole unpopulated past together in really a bit more than 5 days, with 12 hours of actuality for each full day, based upon Chalakim – again to be fully understood later. Consider now that according to the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b), Adam “arose and stood on his feet” in the 5th hour of day 6 -- that is, at some point between 5 and four twelfs days, and 5 and five twelfs days. If we do the math, this means the world that Adam would look upon would appear 2.557 billion times greater, that is, between 13.64 and 13.85 billion years. 6 WMAP, what is your opinion of this? WMAP – Again, according to the analysis performed upon my long-range sensor data, the age I get is also about 13.6 to 13.8 billion years. … ARI – You will find these 6 days reflected in the 6 thousand years of human history as well, and so on. Be patient and understanding will come – about this and many other things that appear mysterious or contradictory to you. You’ll see, it’s in you already – in all of you… Narrator – Thank you Rabbi Luria and to our entire panel. 7 Panel 2 Discussions on Clouds and Their Root Narrator – Please welcome our next and final panel for this evening, a seven honored avatars this time. {Each Avatar nods when they are called to acknowledge it.} Please welcome Prof. of Mathematics (and Physics) Roger Penrose, RASHI (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) – a Rishon and most important Biblical and Talmudic commentator, Zeno of Elea of the ancient Greek philosophical school of Radical Monism, Prof. Albert Einstein whom I think everyone here is familiar with, Prof. Niels Bohr – an important founding father of the field of quantum mechanics, Prof. Alain Aspect who did some particularly important doctoral research at the University of Paris in the 1980s, and last but not least, Prof. Kurt Gödel – a genius in mathematical logic, and close personal friend of Prof. Einstein. All 4 Avatars – Thank you, glad to be here in neverSpace today. Narrator – Honored Rabbis, professors, and philosopher – I’m sure you caught our first panel discussion. Please let’s continue about the trip that I and the players took, but specifically to focus on the clouds we saw, that is, things that violate the normal game rules. Prof. Penrose – And what were these? Narrator – Well there were a few relatively minor things out of place, but perhaps all the game rules have not been clarified to us yet – but there were three major ones that I don’t believe are that easily justified. First, at time zero, the game was a point that seemed to suddenly pop out of nowhere, and expand into the universe. Next, when we came to living things – they similarly seemed to pop out of nowhere, as well as their diverse changes. Finally, there is consciousness, self-awareness – apparently free will, at least this is what we sense. Whether other life has any of this, or to what level, one could not say off-hand. But human beings in the game certainly have it to a dramatic extent. Prof. Penrose – Let me clarify something for you about the first cloud. As to the second one, I haven’t really studied the issue, and besides, I understand that this will not be a real concern until the third game session. I understand as well, that the third cloud will not become that important 8 until session 4. However, here I can offer an important hint for now – and this, I strongly suspect, reflects upon the second cloud as well, but I’ll leave that to you to think about. There are many theories on the first cloud, the sudden beginning that you mentioned. But we obviously can’t check them out experimentally – we can’t really know much before what is called the Planck time, 10 to the minus 43 seconds even theoretically, as quantum mechanics and general relativity smack into each other there being that the universe was on the order of the Planck length, about 10 to the minus 35 meters in diameter. But the real mystery in my view, that none of these theories seriously address, are exactly where did all the information come from? Narrator – Information? Prof. Penrose – Yes – things should be much more disordered at the beginning, but as you approach the point of the Big Bang, or Creation Event, we seem to have the level of information going to infinity! Narrator – How much is there now? Prof. Penrose – Vastly less than at even the 10 to the minus 43 second first moment that everyone agrees to. But it’s big, really really big. To understand the chances of having so little disorder in the universe of today, consider the number one followed by 123 zeros. Call that the “really big number” Narrator – Wow, are the chances one over that?! Prof. Penrose – No, it’s one over the really really big number – one followed by the really big number of zeros. That is, take a one, and trillions of trillions of trillions of universes, and use all the subatomic particles as zeros! Narrator – Goodness, how do you get that? Prof. Penrose – From gravity and the possible way that mass could be distributed in the universe. It’s as though we were a computer with 10 to the 114-power gigabyte of RAM fully loaded with software. 9 Narrator – Wasn’t that fully loaded hard drive? Prof. Penrose – No RAM – I can’t begin to imagine the hard drive that feeds this, all the way back to the to where the RAM would meet its – somewhere back on the way to infinity – {looking thoughtfully into the distance} or is it even just on the way… Narrator – Any idea how it got there? Prof. Penrose – I believe it has to do with how quantum mechanics interacts with curved spacetime – that is, gravity. Narrator – Could you explain exactly what quantum mechanics is? Prof. Penrose – Well, truth is I don’t think anyone can, but – Prof. Einstein – Excuse me, but I jus had to speak up at this point. Quantum Mechanics is only an approximation, we simply do not know enough about subatomic physics yet. Prof. Penrose – Well maybe not back in the 1920s and 30s, but we sure know enough now. Prof. Bohr – Yes Prof. Einstein, why are you so opposed to this new idea – don’t you remember what it was like when you were younger and they opposed Relativity. Prof. Einstein – Baah, it’s not like this. Relativity was strange I grant you, but your Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics violates basic reality! Don’t get me wrong, I respect this science as a very practical one – technically I won my Nobel Prize for a quantum mechanics explanation of the photoelectric effect (Relativity was indeed considered still too strange back then), and I did much in my career in explaining macroscopic thermal and magnetic effects based upon quantum mechanics. But it cannot ultimately be real, it violates basic logic! As I once wrote in one communication on this, the long distance effect would be spukenhafte Fernwekugen – spooky actions at a distance. If it were true, it would be like saying every blade of grass has an angel telling it to grow! 10 Zeno – But gentlemen, there is no reality – time, motion, objects, it’s all an illusion. Think of a runner – can he complete his race before getting to the middle? But can he complete even that without getting to the half-way point? Or that without getting to the quarter-way point? No matter which point, there is always a perquisite, so none can be accomplished! Prof. Bohr – Clever sir, but not clever enough. I know what you mean – a continuum is impossible, that is, reality doesn’t go absolutely smoothly. Well that’s exactly why there is Quantum Mechanics -- all quantities have to ultimately come in finite pieces. That being said, universe exists quite nicely. Quantum Mechanics is like updating the idea of your fellow philosophers, the materialists, that everything was made of atoms – “a tom,” not cuttable. It’s just that the math of Quantum Mechanics is a little more involved, and in generalizing to quantities beyond matter, a bit more abstract, that’s all. Zeno – Well what about this: There are two groups of runners on two lanes of track at a stadium, with observers sitting in the bleachers. To these observers, the running teams are traveling at a certain speed. But to the runners themselves, the opposite team moves by at twice this speed. Thus, Taking this to infinite relative speed, and then dividing down by two no matter how far, the relative speed remains infinite! Prof. Einstein – Not so! You are quite right about the problem that reality cannot allow for unlimited speeds – but indeed it doesn’t. The speed of light is the limit and spacetime bends and adjusts as necessary for this to work for a given perspective. Zeno – Well what about this then: There is an arrow at rest on a table, at a moment that one shot into the air passes overhead. At that specific moment, how does the arrow overhead know to move in the next, and the arrow on the table knows not to? Prof. Einstein – {Smiles} This one is too easy! You are correct in that there is no motion with which to tell, but there is the Lorenz-Fitzgerald contraction. The moving arrow has contracted along the direction of motion, approaching zero as it speed approaches that of light. The information about which arrow is moving relative to which in your frame of reference, is stored in the space contraction. 11 Zeno – {Great big smile while nodding head side to side and looking down} Oh my, my poor head! However did an ancient primitive philosopher like me think to match wits with such great modern scientists as yourselves. But let me not leave this panel later in confusion – indulge me in one more question. If a runner – oh lets use your modern ideas here – if a subatomic particle, or a photon, or really lets just say the information about it, must make a quantum jump, isn’t that necessarily instantaneous travel? Prof. Bohr – {Stares blankly at Zeno for the same moment before beginning, then stuttering as he begins} Wa-Wa-Wa-Well the information doesn’t actually travel then, its – its just in one place and then the other – there just like one place. Right Prof. Einstein? Prof. Einstein – Prof. Bohr, don’t you yet see how this Coppenhagen interpretation of yours gets us into trouble! That can’t work because of the arrow issue – the information has left the universe, it would just be gone. No, here is the correct answer, the quantum theory is just an approximation, and you have shown a perfect example of where it has broken down. I do the same in a little more sophisticated way in an article I published with two colleagues back in 1935 – it’s a killer thought experiment. Zeno – But Prof. Einstein, then indeed my runner never runs his race – the continuum kills reality as you know it. Prof. Einstein – {Begins coughing uncontrollably for a moment} You’re confusing the issue with philosophical mumbo jumbo! Zeno – Please Prof. Einstein, then do clarify it for me. Prof. Einstein – As I’ve written in an earlier description of the spacetime continuum, consider adjacent points on a smooth marble surface… Zeno – Don’t marble surfaces have separate molecules and atoms as you magnify them? Prof. Einstein – Stop being so pedantic with my model! Zeno – I’m not, I’m being exacting with reality! 12 Prof. Aspect – Gentlemen, please if I might say something here. The thought experiment that Prof. Einstein referred to – well I actually performed its equivalent as my doctoral dissertation, unfortunately neither Prof. Einstein nor Bohr lived to know about it. The instantaneous transmission of information – certainly far faster than the speed of light – does seem to take place. Prof. Bohr – It did? Prof. Einstein - It can’t! Zeno – See, the reality before us is an illusion. Prof. Aspect – I’m not a theoretician or philosopher, just a humble experimentalist. I’m telling you that it did happen – it was verified in a variety of ways, and has been repeated in different forms. Gentleman, it’s a fact. Prof. Bohr – I’m elated in one way, but troubled in another due to Zeno’s point. If information disappears from spacetime, and returns intact – where did it go, and how was it stored? Zeno – Its not stored anywhere – the whole matter is an illusion! Prof. Bohr – If so, it’s a very exacting one as the information does indeed return. Narrator – It sounds to me like its stored in either the game’s machine memory, or perhaps is still active in an aspect of the software that’s hidden from thisWorld. Prof. Penrose – Well wherever it is, it appears that from the conversation we just heard it’s connected with a changing of universal states of this computer, or whatever. Narrator – What clock would run this, surely not time, as we know it. Prof. Einstein – This talk is getting quite crazy – some imaginary clocking indeed! The only real time is a continuum connected with space. 13 Prof. Penrose – Perhaps too connected. Prof. Einstein – What do you mean? How can you… Prof. Gödel – Oh my goodness, Albert, I forgot to wish you a happy 70th birthday! Prof. Einstein – Thank you Kurt, I think. But I’m 130 years old, not alive, and besides, it’s not my birthday! Prof. Gödel – Oh my goodness again! But I got a card and a present for your 70th birthday! What do I do?! Prof. Einstein – Ach, Kurt, we’re friends for so long – I won’t stand on ceremony – go ahead and read me the card. Prof. Gödel – Certainly – Ahem {Ryming poetically}: Dear Albert - For your 70th birthday, A special volume’s been published, And your science/math friends were to say, Upon Relativity, whatever they wished. As your closest colleague, I had to obey, From putting in my two cents, I didn’t desist. So I began in my own way, To introduce the Gödel Universe, a relativistic one with a twist. It rotates so fast, that one may, Design a spacecraft, and supply fuel to follow rule of engineer and scientist, Then fly it from spacetime into timespace one fine day, Till by evening one catches up with oneself back in the morning mist. And if in one universe, one can act this way, All universes have the same implication I insist! So since somewhere, tonight will be earlier this day, 14 Time, my dear Albert, simply doesn’t exist! -- Eternally yours, Kurt Prof. Einstein – That’s, er, beautiful poetry Kurt. I remember that article now… Narrator – Were you ever able to answer it. Prof. Einstein – As I said back then, I had been concerned about the possibility of such a loop in time – but that it wasn’t a real issue. Narrator – Why not? Prof. Einstein – I forget… Prof. Gödel – As I recall Albert, you only said that but offered no real explanation to the obvious fact that at least the time part of spacetime doesn’t actually exist. Prof. Einstein – Okay, okay, I’m still working on it… Prof. Penrose – Prof. Einstein, I have the greatest respect for you. The field of global general relativity that I’ve spent much of my life in is only possible because of you. But I must add another issue. Although I do have serious doubts about spacetime theories beyond our observable 3-space + 1-time actually fitting with our particular universe, I cannot challenge the basic mathematical constructs of these higher theories. And there is one in particular, called Father Theory, or just “F” Theory, which has two dimensions of time. Narrator – What?! Prof. Penrose – It sounds crazy, I know. Which way is the future? Which way the past? What is perpendicular to these? But I’m a mathematician really, rather than a physicist as Prof. Einstein, and I look at the matter differently. As a mathematician, I see presented not “spacetime” geometry, but a complex number geometry period – whether a 4-dimensional space, 3real, and 1-imaginary – you know, based on the square root of minus one -or higher dimensional one, of which 2 or more dimensions are imaginary. 15 Prof. Einstein – Yes, I have no problem with this picture – that is the spacetime continuum – the 4-dimensional version at least – that I’ve always maintained. And I was open to the extra space dimension in the KaluzaKlein theory as well, seeing as a possible key to a unified field theory whereby all forces in nature would just prove different aspects of a single force field – a single geometry just seen from different perspectives. I believe that this is what has evolved into the modern multidimensional theories. Prof. Penrose – Yes, but this means that time – the arrow of time that we perceive psychologically -- is something else entirely. Prof. Einstein – Well, it would seem to be merely imagination, since there is no arrow to actual time if Kurt is right. Prof. Gödel – Ah hah! – So after all these years you finally admit it! Prof. Einstein – I said “if” – just for the sake of further discussion, you know… Prof. Penrose – I disagree. Something is happening because of the reduction aspect of quantum mechanics – when things take on a definite value. Narrator – Could one look at this, then, as a series of these reductions taking us between different spacetime structures – whatever the time or space we might be at inside these structures? Prof Penrose – I might have put it a little differently, but that is essentially what I mean. Narrator – Prof. Einstein? Prof. Einstein – I would have laughed it off, but given Prof. Aspect’s results, it now seems very plausible. Narrator – Prof. Gödel? Prof. Gödel – Hmmm… Yes, I suppose that redefinition of time would work for me. 16 Narrator – Then to summarize where we are at, it seems that the time we sense is our movement between different states of what appears to us to be the “spacetime continuum” each with its own physical game future and past – or maybe even higher dimensions of these. Zeno – Might I suggest that these “reductions” as Prof. Penrose calls them are themselves imaginary, and the states they reduce to are merely a dream within a dream. Prof. Penrose – I can’t hold that way, I must pursue reduction as an objective physical game process. But in all honesty, I cannot disprove Zeno’s position. Narrator – But then how far may this logic be taken? --- Well perhaps it’s best left an open question for the moment. So let us just say that reality extends to at least one level above the physical game universe, and it may somehow be internal to observers such as ourselves. {All nod in agreement.} But please, Prof. Penrose, getting back to the issue of a clocking to this psychological or arrow-of-time time. … Prof. Penrose – Yes, of course. I believe this clocking to come about when the difference between different possible quantum states involve a quantum difference of spacetime curvature – that is, where the difference with interaction with mass represents a difference of one graviton – a gravity particle. This would be what is known as the Planck mass. Narrator – You mentioned the Planck time and length before and they were extremely small scales compared to what we deal with in human senses. I guess that must be true for the Planck mass as well. Maybe that’s why things look so continuous in all this. Rashi – If I might say, I don’t believe its all that small, but in fact on the edge of human physical perception – and perhaps this supports Zeno a bit. I would imagine that the Planck mass is bigger than dust, and just smaller than the size of a flea. 17 Prof. Penrose – That’s uncanny! It’s about 20 micrograms, and in a 1989 book, I described it for popular understanding exactly as you did just now – but you lived a thousand years ago! How could you know this! Rashi – I don’t claim to know any more about the science of your time than the languages of your time. However, what you have described as “clocking,” I believe can only result from the “Etzboh Elok-im,” the finger of G-d. In the Torah, this is what the Egyptian sorcerers refer to in explaining why they cannot duplicate the feat of transforming dust into parasitic creatures at the edge of visibility to the unaided eye – “Kinim” -which would be somewhat smaller than the size of a flea. I bring this down in my commentary on this referring to a Talmudic discussion about the true nature of sorcery and its penalty. The metaphysical forces being applied by the sorcerers cannot manipulate objects this small, and thus “Ruach Ha’Tumah,” a spirit of impurity, cannot fall upon tiny objects – for example, a tiny enough bone fragment. In a similar sense, insects below the visible range do not cause vegetables they infest to become nonkosher. Zeno – I do not know if I would ascribe a title to the Ultimate in terms of mastery, but I recognize a wisdom of the anthropomorphic in what Rashi says. I perceive that he understands the truth here. Only, I believe that Prof. Penrose is caught up in the symbolic. Sir, I must ask you, on all said that this physical world is not true reality, don’t you understand that a clocking that would require an internal interaction with it is also “physical” level of the game – just one step away from all the problems mentioned. I believe that we already established that one could add any number of such time dimensions and it would still all be a single geometric representation, the static state of stored software in your modern allegory. As the whole is perfectly at rest, it doesn’t even have to reside in RAM, the hard drive would seem to do quite nicely! Prof. Penrose – I’m not a philosopher – I’m not claiming to find some ultimate truth through my own intellect. I would quote here my colleague Prof. Hawking that, “I only know what I measure; I don’t know what ‘Reality’ is.” I seek a model of such measurements, and hopefully one that can at least predict some unforeseen phenomena that can also be measured. My senses and the way my brain puts it together and analyzes it is all that I’ve got to go on. 18 Zeno – My philosophical claim here merely point out an issue ever repeating on any level you wish to go to. Every level of universe or universe of universes remains static and logically contradictory. Prof. Gödel – If I might add, my Incompleteness Theorem does demonstrate Zeno’s point, at least as regards modeling everything in regards to Number Theory through simple infinity – though others, particularly Prof. Turing, have demonstrated the point on a much wider scale – I understand that is to be part of the 4th session. But for now, lets me just say that for any finite system – certainly a finite mathematical system – there are always ideas expressible within the system that cannot be proven or disproved from within. One can observe within the system that the idea is true because it happens – but one needs to add these ideas as axioms of a larger system. But then, this larger system will introduce even more new ideas that are not provable. It’s a growing vicious cycle to simple infinity, and more beyond. Narrator – Prof. Gödel, you talk as if there were something bigger than infinity? Prof. Gödel – There is, at least relative to how most people think about the idea – but again, that is out of scope for this session. My programming does not permit me to discuss the matter further at this time. Narrator – But Zeno, we do sense time – how do we sense it if you’re right. How do we even have a sense of ourselves? Zeno – I don’t know, perhaps it’s a matter of what where our consciousness lies, states of awareness. Maybe we bounce between different parts of total awareness as they grow less vague and unify toward a whole – as though a cloud was dissipating, the sunlight breaking through parts more wispy, if still in a hazy way. Prof. Gödel – I’m not what you would call religious at all, and my personal training is to believe it a sentimental superstition. But the logic of my own mathematical research has forced me to conclude a higher existence to mathematical concepts at least – like Plato if not as Zeno perhaps, and that the mind itself does not need a physical-layer brain and body to continue at some level in the game. 19 I think I recognized that however the externals of religious belief appeared to the secular world, they could be vessels of an internal, eternal Light – I don’t know. Frankly, I never had the courage to write this in a formal paper, but I have written honestly this afterlife of mind in a private letter to a dying colleague. I understand that Prof. Post was a lot gustier than I was, and actually spoke of G-d in terms of infinite regression observer in an appendix to one submitted paper but it was tossed by peer review and he’s fortunate that his career wasn’t along with it. Prof. Turing has made some hinting observations in personal correspondence as well I understand, such as the Creation being G-d’s light cone and such – a relativistic reference, but I’m not sure whether he meant it poetically like researchers mean “the Creation Event” terminology for the Big Bang, or whether he was literally serious. Prof. Penrose – I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as Prof. Gödel here, but nonetheless, I am a admittedly a Platonist in outlook, as I believe are a great many, if not most, mathematicians and physicists by the end of the 20 th century – the objective reality of the mathematics behind the physics seems almost too obvious. Prof. Einstein – Kurt, you know that I believe in the existence of a Creator, but not in the sense of some ultimate Being – and certainly I do not believe in disembodied souls. Prof. Gödel – Albert, you’ve written clearly on your views, but I believe these correspond to belief, not reason. Are your views on this then any different from that of any simple believer in any faith, accept from your belief in some sense of Creator, save your view of G-d’s existence due to the great inexplicable symmetry of mathematics and the beauty of the universe that seem to result? Beyond that I suspect some prejudice – like that, which caused you to insist upon a steady-state description of the universe until Prof. Friedman demonstrated the Big Bang from your own equations of General Relativity. Prof. Einstein – I grant you some short-sightedness as regards my cosmological constant to try to make an exactly steady-state universe, though nonetheless others are giving it another look nowadays to explain some effects in the expansion. But my other opinions have not been logically contradicted! 20 Prof. Gödel – Neither have they been proven. Albert, you’ve not written about the afterlife in terms of not believing, nor wanting, some type of continued existence after your physical death. This is not opinion in the sense of scientific opinion, but in the sense of belief. You have the right to this type of opinion, but it carries no more weight coming from a great physicist than it does a teenager. … Narrator – Gentlemen please, I’m forced to interrupt this very interesting personal discussion because we have limited time – whatever time is – and you’re going too far off subject. I want to get back to Zeno’s response about all being ultimately at rest, with consciousness reaching it through varying states of awareness like watching a cloud disappearing. Wouldn’t that imply that everything that we sense is only within us – that there is no real variation outside of us? How? Prof. Penrose – I would add something here that might help – highly speculative though – what I hinted to earlier about our minds. Narrator – Speculation seems par for the course lately, please do feel free. Prof. Penrose – There are some experimental indications, and they are controversial as regards exact measure, indicating a gap in conscious awareness of events impinging on the senses, of upwards of up to about 1 ½ seconds or more, depending on what is defines as constituting awareness relative to these measures. Given reaction times, the period grows potentially to over two seconds, possibly more. However, reaction to events are much quicker than that. It would seem as though either we do not have freewill in the moment to moment, but rather observe ourselves passively, or else this will is predictive – it intuits the next moment slightly ahead of it. I would speculate this to be a quantum mechanical effect, possibly based on microtubulules, a class of proteins found in all cells, and specifically the neurons of the brain. The question, and it is a big one, is how this quantum superposition state would survive the synaptic firing at the nerve endings in order to become a fully macroscopic effect across the brain. 21 But if it is a quantum mechanical effect of some sort, then it would be possible to be an “observer” in a very metaphysical sense, watching a purely physical passage of action and reaction of the body – conscious choice having been an illusion, or alternatively seeing ahead to the next possible states and perhaps being part of the decision of which way things go – or at least be able to agree or disagree with it, and not allow itself into being lolled into thinking that the habitual act itself was the result of free choice. Narrator – This interval of consciousness sounds to be of the order of the Chelek that was spoken of in the first panel. I wonder if all is a matter of where our consciousness is? I wonder what this would mean to other scales of observation like the six days of Creation – could they also be, so-to-speak, be scaled to some universal abstract unit of state of consciousness? In any case, this will indeed be an exciting starting point for the 4th game session where we’ll be dealing with such matters of the last few minutes’ discussion in depth, and hopefully play to some resolution. But for now, I would like to talk to the players about a related idea that will be instructive for the 3rd session, our next one, as well as the 4th session. Thank you Prof. Penrose and to our entire panel. 22