Sir Roger Penrose is a mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science, and Nobel Laureate in Physics.
His famous body of work includes Penrose diagrams, twistor theory, Penrose tilings, and the incredibly bold claim that intelligence and consciousness are uncomputable physical phenomena related to quantum wave function collapse.
Dr. Penrose is such a genius that it's just interesting to unpack his worldview, even if it’s totally implausible. How can someone like him be so wrong? What exactly is it that he's wrong about? It's interesting to try to see the world through his eyes, before recoiling from how nonsensical it looks.
00:00 Episode Highlights
01:29 Introduction to Roger Penrose
11:56 Uncomputability
16:52 Penrose on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
19:57 Liron Explains Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
27:05 Why Penrose Gets Gödel Wrong
40:53 Scott Aaronson's Gödel CAPTCHA
46:28 Penrose's Critique of the Turing Test
48:01 Searle's Chinese Room Argument
52:07 Penrose's Views on AI and Consciousness
57:47 AI's Computational Power vs. Human Intelligence
01:21:08 Penrose's Perspective on AI Risk
01:22:20 Consciousness = Quantum Wave Function Collapse?
01:26:25 Final Thoughts
Show Notes
Source video — Feb 22, 2025 Interview with Roger Penrose on “This Is World” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biUfMZ2dts8
Scott Aaronson’s “Gödel CAPTCHA” — https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/captcha.html
My recent Scott Aaronson episode — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsGqWeqKjEg
My explanation of what’s wrong with arguing “by definition” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueam4fq8k8I
Watch the Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate introduction to AI x-risk! https://www.youtube.com/@lethal-intelligence
PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of: https://pauseai.info
Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!
Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.
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