2.7M views · Mar 31, 2020 · 1:27:57 · 3 HN recommenders · 6 mentions · discussed 2020–2022
Lex Fridman interviews physicist Roger Penrose on consciousness, the limits of computation, quantum mechanics and his cyclic cosmology. It covers his views on AI and the big bang.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as an accessible walkthrough of Penrose's ideas on consciousness and cosmology, interesting even if debatable.
“Penrose delivered a very accessible walkthrough of his historical and current thoughts on the topic.”HN comment, 2022
“I recommend his recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast”
Penrose interviewed on podcast
Such a joy to see Sir Roger Penrose awarded with this honor. One of my favorite contemporary intellectuals. If anyone hasn't seen it, I recommend his recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast: this video
“I don't take Roger's view about consciousness for granted but it is very interesting nevertheless.”
Penrose's view of consciousness, interesting though debatable
Consciousness is Not a Computation (Roger Penrose) | AI Podcast Clips link Full episode: this video I don't take Roger's view about consciousness for granted but it is very interesting nevertheless.
“Penrose delivered a very accessible walkthrough of his historical and current thoughts on the topic.”
Accessible walkthrough of Penrose's microtubule consciousness thoughts
Lex Fridman interviewed Penrose on this topic recently (2020) and Penrose delivered a very accessible walkthrough of his historical and current thoughts on the topic. this video (Deep-link half-way through to his discussion on microtubules)
“At 1:02:57, Penrose proposes "infinite cycles of the big bang”
Penrose proposes cycles of the big bang
Thanks for the link. At 1:02:57, Penrose proposes "infinite cycles of the big bang" this video Is that multiverse theory disproven by Wolfram's latest blog post? "could there be other universes? The answer in our setup is basically no." link
Penrose's skepticism of true AI
It doesn't get moved so much as we discover that a certain mathematical manipulation plus all our previous mathematical manipulations don't amount to an AI. It also seems like with every breakthrough this complaint is raised without addressing the underlying issues with the new AIs shortcomings. My hot take: true AI is so far out of reach of our ability it's not even funny, which makes the whole field either a search for the fountain of youth at worst, or at best a search for tools to inform humans or to replace humans in rote tasks. See this video
“he calls that out and says it explicitly isn't a separate parallel universe.”
Penrose clarifies cyclic universe is not a parallel universe
He doesn't say it's a new universe, e.g. in an interview with Lex Fridman[1] he calls that out and says it explicitly isn't a separate parallel universe. It's more an argument that if you don't have mass because all the mass has decayed, through Einstein's relation of mass and energy and Planck's relation of energy and frequency, and frequency involving distance and time, with no mass, you lose notions of distance and time. Then the infinitly large distant future universe and the infinitely small distant past big bang become indistinguishable with the loss of "large" and "small" to distinguish them. They are both "at infinity", they both "contain" all the energy in the universe, and what we see as a tiny big bang, aliens on the other side saw as a huge expanded universe. From what I (layperson) can tell, it's like the expand/crunch cyclic universe theory, but without the need to crunch back down again. [1] this video
