John Horton Conway Quotes

[R]elativity is an important part of the game.

I have a very simple way of explaining relativity theory... and if you follow that you'll understand how... it's impossible to... transmit information faster than the speed of light. The reason is, if you could, then seen from another person's point of view, you'd transmit information backward in time... [W]e would know the result of somebody's experiment before they performed it, and if they have free will... you'd know the result of their choice before they've made it, and they're free to make another one.

[Y]ou've probably heard of the theory of relativity. ...Most of us have heard the assertion that you can't transmit information faster than the speed of light. Most of us... hear it on authority only. We don't really understand why not. ...The reason is ...there's no absolute notion of time. Time depends on which coordinate system you're using... on your frame of reference... As seen from one frame of reference, event A can be before event B and as seen from another frame of reference, event B came first. The world [universe] hasn't got a standard definition of time.

[S]uppose I had a twin brother... [M]y sisters would have had a much better chance... [T]hey could... interrogate us separately... Then we can't change the object. ...Without transmitting information ...we couldn't win... [T]hat's what manages to happen in the particle case. ...[T]his ...Simon also thought of a long time ago.... but he didn't... deduce the .

When I was a little boy, I had two sisters... and we used to play ...and I had no moral sense ...when playing ...[I]f I thought that my sisters were getting near to my object, I changed ...the object ...[Y]ou have to select a new object which answers the ...questions ...already ...asked ...That's what the particles do. ...If you ask them this ...spin question, they don't have an object in mind. Think of a cleverer boy... who never bothers to select an object... just gives... answers at random, and then starts thinking what the object is. ...[T]hat's what the particles do. They don't have an answer in mind for each direction... [K]ochen and Specker proved that a long time ago... and the reason... is that there's a little puzzle... that puzzle has no solution. ...[T]hey use 117 directions, but ...Asher Peres ...reduced this set of directions to 33... [T]here's no conceivable set of answers... that's consistent with ...the spin law.

Here's a particle, and I... direct my finger at it... and ask... What's it's spin in that direction? ...This particle is quantized. ...[I]t can only give two answers ...1 and 0. If I hadn't put that word squared in it could give three answers, 1, -1 and 0 ...Initially, it was... obvious... to believe that this concept existed before you measured it, but that was found not to be so. ...[W]hat the says is that it can't exist before you measure it... because there's no consistent set of answers to every question.

[T]his Kochen-Specker paradox ...what it does ...[T]here's a problem in physics ...the measurement problem ...that's a wrong description. There's ...measuring the squared spin of a spin one particle. ...Let's say "measuring the spin" or measuring the [squared] component of spin ...of a spin one particle in a certain direction.

The Free Will Theorem [s]ays roughly, that "if... humans have free will, then so do the elementary particles outside us.
Uses three axioms SPIN, FIN, (or MIN) and TWIN." I only mean this in a very restrictive sense. I don't suppose much free will. The supposition is only that the human can choose which one of 33 buttons he want to press. ...[T]his choice affects the future history of the world in a minor way. ...We know that button was pressed ...before it was pressed we didn't know which one it was and ...a human experimenter has that much free will. That's the only amount of free will I suppose. We suppose nothing about these deep questions of moral responsibility and so on.

<nowiki>[</nowiki>Robert Nozick]: Philosophical Explanations "...it would be foolhardy ...to place ...significant weight upon the necessity or even truth of SR. ...Moreover theorems show that any theory that retains certain features of Quantum Mechanics also will not satisfye SR." SR is Leibniz's . ...[T]here's a reference to the Kochen-Specker paper ...in which Kochen, my co-author, and Specker ...both logicians, not physicists ...prove this ...From our point of view this is not enough. The is not as strong as the new theorem.

The consistency of determinism doesn't mean that it's true. Mathematicians are accustomed to have consistency proofs. They say nothing about truth. They just say something about what might be true.

There isn't anything really, in the last resort that isn't inductive. Even the laws of deductive logic have been established only by induction. ...We can't use deductive logic ...

[T]he arguments that suggest that we have free will can't be turned into logical deductive proofs. There's nothing wrong with that. If you argue in a court of law... we ...conclude, although we haven't got a proof, that probably the culprit was Mr. X.

Dennis Overbye ...says ~everything we know of science convinces me ...that the world is deterministic, nevertheless I cling to the illusion of free will.~ (I'm not quoting his exact words.) ..~I can't run my life without this illusion.~ Some people have described it as a necessary illusion. We don't think it's an illusion ...It's not ...We think we have free will.

[S]omebody said, ..."We have to believe in free will. There's no choice." That's a nice ...sort of paradox ...

The rise of determinism, it's just a consequence of the fact, science advanced tremendously, as a result mostly of... Newton and people like Laplace. They could determine things, but it's only the large scale science that ...seems ...deterministic. This century it's not been so.