Download SessionII_scripts

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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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,
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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