Edward Frenkel

Time is relative to the observer, for instance.

So science of 19th century had the, from modern perspective, and I don't want to offend anybody, had the delusion that somehow you could analyze the world being completely detached from it.

We now know after the landmark achievements of the first half of the 20th century, that this is nonsense.

That is simply not true.

And this has been experimentally proved time and time again.

So to me, I'm thinking maybe it's a hint that I should take my first-person perspective seriously as well and not just rely on kind of objective phenomena, things that can be proved in a traditional sort of objective way by setting up an experiment that can be repeated many times.

Maybe I fall in love in the deepest love of my life, perhaps.

Perhaps it hasn't happened yet.

Perhaps I will fall in love.

But it's unique.

It's a unique event.

You can't reproduce it necessarily, you see.

So in that sense, you see how these things are closely connected.

I think that if we are declaring from the outset that all there is to life is computation in the form of neural networks or something like this, however sophisticated they might be,

I think we are from the outset denying to ourselves the possibility that, yes, there is a side of me which is not faking it.

Yes, there is a side of me which cannot be captured by logic and reason.

And you know what another great scientist said, Blaise Pascal?

He said, the heart has its reasons, of which the reason knows nothing.

And then he also said, the last step of reason is to grasp that there are infinitely many things beyond reason.

How interesting.