Fields medalist mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky passed away recently. Here's his NYTimes tribute

In an interview from a few years ago he describes power experiences. I figure this would be of interest to someone here. Unfortunately, the interview has been taken down, and it was originally in Russian. So to view it you have to dig up the archive and then translate it. Doing so and using Google Translate here are some interesting pieces.

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- A couple of years ago a conference devoted to general scientific issues was held in St. Petersburg. You spoke there and said the following. "What we now call the crisis of Russian science is not only the crisis of Russian science: there is a crisis of world science, real progress will consist in a very serious fight between science and religion that will end with their unification.
I confess, when I read this statement, I laughed happily, I just covered my happiness, because someone spoke about a deep, not about politics-financing-economy, but about what is really important. But this statement certainly remained incomprehensible to many. You are a person who has been brought up in materialistic paradigms, with the corresponding ideology, aesthetics, and morality. Kastovo is a Soviet intellectual, at the same time, who made a brilliant scientific career. And society, stereotypes, templates scream from everywhere that in the life of such a person there is no place for religion and mysticism. But you openly start talking about some kind of unification of science and religion, at your home the table is covered with Hindu books, Sanskrit textbooks, books in Ancient Greek, books on supernatural phenomena, shamanism, history of religions stand on the shelves. How so?

"Here's the story." As I said, I'm pretty good, for a layman, I know the natural sciences. Several areas of physics, several areas of biology, chemistry, a bit of geology and paleontology. In addition, I was seriously interested in artificial intelligence and the semantics of languages. In 1997-1999, I read many modern books, the authors of which tried to create a kind of scientific philosophy, i.e. from existing scientific theories to combine the general picture of our world. I particularly well remember Edward Wilson's book "Consilience" (I do not know how it is in Russian). As a mathematician, I am very sensitive to "holes" in arguments, to those places where the conclusion does not follow formally from the premises, and what is called, are pulled by the ears. So, having read all these books, I became convinced that those who say that modern science explains our world are wrong. Yes, some sciences very successfully and accurately explain certain groups of phenomena. But in the full picture of the world, these explanations are by no means "glued together." Moreover, some so-called scientific explanations are in fact, I'm not afraid of this word, profanation. The most important example of this situation is Darwinism. There is no doubt that the biosphere of the earth developed and develops, and the processes of natural selection and random mutations play a certain role in this development. But they in no way explain this development. I note by the way, that now it is gradually beginning to be discussed by serious biologists, but even ten years ago, in America, a biologist, having expressed such a point of view, could seriously spoil his career.

Understanding how little our science really explains, it came to me somewhere when I was 35 years old. approximately in 2001. Then I did not connect it with the fact that in the 20th century science excluded from the field of its attention what is now called "supernatural." I still treated everything mystical-religious as a deception or delusion. At this position, I stood very firmly until 2007. The period from 2001 to 2006 was very difficult. For several years I was only saved by the fact that I was engaged in wildelife photography. Some of my photos of that period can be found here: pics.livejournal.com/vividha/

"It happens that people of search become after contact with something that does not fit into their old understanding, into the familiar picture of the world. For example, they say that Gurdjieff as a child witnessed a ritual act, in which children outlined the circle around the Yezidi boy, and he could not escape from this circle. Struck by what he saw as supernatural, as well as human cruelty, Gurdjieff began to seek new knowledge about the world and man. Did you have any points, events, inexplicable phenomena that triggered a rethinking?

- In 2006-2007 a lot of external and internal events happened to me, after which my point of view on the questions of the "supernatural" has changed significantly. What happened to me during these years, perhaps, can be compared most closely to what happened to Karl Jung in 1913-14. Jung called it "confrontation with the unconscious". I do not know what to call it, but I can describe it in a few words. Remaining more or less normal, apart from the fact that I was trying to discuss what was happening to me with people whom I should not have discussed with, I had in a few months acquired a very considerable experience of visions, voices, periods when parts of my body did not obey me and a lot of incredible accidents. The most intense period was in mid-April 2007 when I spent 9 days (7 of them in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City), never falling asleep for all these days.

Almost from the very beginning, I found that many of these phenomena (voices, visions, various sensory hallucinations), I can control. So I was not scared and did not feel sick, but perceived everything as something very interesting, actively trying to interact with those "creatures" in the auditorial, visual and then tactile spaces that appeared (themselves or by call) around me . I must say, probably, to avoid possible speculations on this subject, that I did not use any drugs during this period, tried to eat and sleep a lot, and drank diluted white wine.

Another comment - when I say beings, then naturally I mean what in modern terminology is called complex hallucinations. The word "beings" emphasizes that these hallucinations themselves "behaved", possessed a memory independent of my memory, and reacted to attempts at communication. In addition, they were often perceived in concert in various sensory modalities. For example, I played several times in a (hallucinated) ball with a (hallucinated) girl and this ball I saw, and felt tactile palm when I threw it.

Despite the fact that all this was very interesting, it was very difficult. It happened for several periods, the longest of which lasted from September 2007 to February 2008 without breaks and there were days when I could not read, and days when coordination of movements was broken to such an extent that it was difficult to walk.

I managed to get out of this state due to the fact that I forced myself to start math again. By the middle of spring 2008 I could already function more or less normally and even went to Salt Lake City to look at the places where I wandered, not knowing where I was in the spring of 2007.

It should be said that despite many conversations with non-material "creatures" during this period, I completely did not understand what actually happened. I was "offered" many explanations, including hypnotists, aliens, demons and secret communities of people with magical abilities. None of the explanations explained everything I observed. Eventually, since some terminology was needed in conversations, I began to call all these beings spirits, although now I think that this terminology is not true. The terms "world system" (apparently control over people) and, especially in the beginning, "the game hosted by fear" sounded in this context.

After I returned to a more or less normal state, and in particular I could read serious books again, I began to study very actively those areas of knowledge that I had previously ignored. First of all, I began to try to find descriptions of similar events that occurred with other people. I must say that it was not possible for me (not counting Jung). Something a little bit similar, but without visions, was with Karen Amstrong, who later began to write books about different religions. There were many descriptions of how people experienced visions, voices, unusual emotional states , etc. in the course of hours or days ("mystical experience"). As a rule, it either strengthened them in the religion in which they grew up or made them religious. A classic and very interesting example, when events of this kind continued with the man long is Swedenborg. In my case, however, it did not seem like that - Swedenborg quickly accepted what was happening to him as coming from God, and after that the process was completely different. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me was the story of the "confrontation with the unconscious" of Carl Jung, but there the situation was also different because Jung, unlike me, came across "super-natural" events from his childhood and believed in God.

>From part 2

- Here we are talking about a lot of aspects of a very peculiar experience, but it gives the impression of an uncontrolled flow of complex phenomena. And what did you learn from this experience and fix it inside yourself as important?

"The truly profound things that I have learned over the years are the ability to observe my own inner world on both the verbal and other levels, and it is rational to analyze these observations. For example, to notice when new "voices" are woven into my mind-stream, or to distinguish between styles of visual and other sensory hallucinations. These skills all, in one way or another, require keeping the clarity of thinking, even when you are immersed in an intense sensory and emotional state, and pay attention to details, to the "technique of building" the impressions that you experience, and not just their content .

Another group of observations, which I consider important, boils down to the fact that what we perceive as inner world events that we actively "create" in real time is often not. Basically, these are blanks that are "lost" in such a way that a very realistic illusion arises that what is happening is created with our participation and "now."


...
- I'm quoting. "I will express a timid hope that in the second part there will be words about a critical analysis of the causes of those visions that have visited you, and about the relationship of these visions to physical reality."

"First, about a very general idea that I was difficult to accept, but based on all the experience I went through over the past five years, I could not think of anything else. Around us there are inhuman minds. Under the word "mind", I understand here an information system that has memory, motivation, the ability to model the external world and to plan. They are not "extraterrestrial," but primordial terrestrial and, most likely, evolutionarily older than humans. These minds actively (and sometimes negatively) affect people's lives.

The world of these minds is very complex, maybe even comparable in complexity to that part of the world as a whole, which we now call physical reality. I would not like to speculate about the structure of this world, because I do not have enough for this facts, observations. Even the simplest questions for me today do not have unequivocal answers. I am sure that these minds interact with people. Almost sure that with higher animals. And how do they interact with lower animals? With inanimate matter? Considerations of logical consistency, which the complete picture of the world should satisfy, prompt that they somehow interact. In this sense, they are also part of the "physical reality". It's just a part about which we know very, very little. This part of the world needs to be studied and studied using scientific methodology.

Of course, attempts at such a study have been made. Especially in the late nineteenth century, but then there was not enough for this opportunity. Now it seems to me that such a study can begin with the group of phenomena that Jung called sinchronicity. In a simple way, these are unnatural in terms of existing models, patterns in the individual and collective behavior of people. In Russian it, as I understood from the comments to the first part of the interview, is called "synchrony."

Now, for the first time, it became possible to document such regularities (ie, instrumental) in a document and begin to understand their structure. It appeared due to the existence of a huge number of records of both human speech (for example, interviews on radio stations) and human movements (for example, "security cameras" in airports). These data need to be analyzed taking into account their binding to physical time. I am almost sure that in this way it is possible to discover regularities in the behavior of people who, on the one hand, are not explained by their conscious activity and on the other hand are too complex, and are too closely tied to objective (physical) time, so that they can be attributed to individual subconscious.


I personally do not want to do this, although I sometimes feel the internal pressure pushing me in this direction. I really hope that there will be people who have both access to the right data, as well as courage and the desire to deal with this problem. It will be real science. From here the chain to the present will understand the structure and driving forces of the historical process, and then the process of the evolution of life as a whole.

One specific idea is this. Make a website (for example, a page in LiveJournal) where people can leave a comment if they are synchronized when they are listening to the radio or TV and thinking about something their own, suddenly they hear a word continuing their thought or answering the question posed in their head . The main thing in such a commentary should be a word or phrase pronounced over the radio. As additional information, you can leave, or you can not leave, the thought-context, the time when it happened and the radio / TV station. Especially valuable in this respect are the cases when the synchronization occurs at the moment the radio is turned on and such cases must be necessarily indicated.

My hypothesis is that in the stream of words that we hear on the radio, there are regularities by binding certain words or words from certain co-sense groups to moments of time (with a second accuracy) not known to the consciousnesses of those who say these words. Next is a good voice recognition software that can generate transcripts from time stamps to individual words and make up a large array of sequences of moments of time uttering each of those words with which people most often have synchronies. After this, it is necessary to look for deviations from randomness in these sequences.

Now there is a whole field of mathematics called the theory of pseudo-random sequences. These are sequences that at first glance look accidental, but are in fact highly predictable. We have a whole group working on them here. So, it is mathematically possible to find the presence of hidden regularities.

- There were also a few questions about doctors and schizophrenia. Clearly, for many, such revelations are perceived as schizophrenia. The person openly talks about visions and complex hallucinations.

- There were also a few questions about doctors and schizophrenia. Clearly, for many, such revelations are perceived as schizophrenia. The person openly talks about visions and complex hallucinations.

- I'll try to answer. The first thing I did when I came back from Salt Lake City, it went to the hospital and asked me to do standard tests and X-rays of several parts of the body, because besides mental, this period was accompanied by a lot of unusual somatic sensations. I was told that I am completely healthy. In general, my physical health has improved over the past five years, although I'm obviously older.

I have not addressed this to psychiatrists. Somehow from the very beginning it was clear that this is not schizophrenia.

There is in all this a more general theme - the connection between mental disorders and those minds, of which I spoke above. This topic is complex and I believe that honest, clever and courageous specialists should first of all deal with this. I do not want to go into this here.

Some parts of it are hard to parse, like "game hosted by fear". Maybe someone who speaks Russian could help.

In the comments (which are hard to get to load and translate), Voevodsky responds to people.

Interesting read, OP, despite the translation issues. Thanks for posting.
I need to read Jung

So uh some wicked smaht math autist also has schyzophrenia? That's fun, but fuck you very much for wasting my time

Why is he doing the Isis finger?

bump

>"game hosted by fear"
The literal translation of his words describes a 'game' with 'horror/terror'(is a better translation than fear) as its 'game master'. It seems like Voevodsky used some kind of metaphor made up by himself which makes it hard to understand even for a native russian speaker like me...

is the rest of the interview worth it?

Russian speaker here, it should probably be something like "game controlled by fear", or "a game, where the rules are laid out by fear".
or as said.

I don't know anything about his work OP but I'm interested in the passing of any Fields medalist, as I recently surveyed the set to determine which members were dead and which members were still alive (this was prompted by Marzakhani's unfortunate but also slightly funny passing right after becoming a medalist).

My conclusions a few months ago were these:

-Fully 3/4 of all medalists were still alive, a very high number for a prize given over several decades, even accounting for the fact that it is awarded to younger people, and even accounting for the fact that the prize has only been given out over several decades. /More of these people should be dead/, one wants to say.
-The previous can be explained partially by the fact that mathematicians tend to live very dull and safe beta lives. Further, by the very nature of the type of work that they do, the profession selects for patient, intelligent people who already have decent socioeconomic status so that they can stay alive into their 80s, that is, beyond actual mean (male) life expectancy. Amphetamines and coffee might be involved at times, but mathematicians don't go skydiving or doing speedballs or breaking into ex-girlfriend's apartments to kick the new boyfriend's ass. They are actually content taking walks and reading books, for the most part.
-The "Classes of two" are the old-style, while the "classes of four" are the contemporary standard (The OP's guy comes from an outlier class of two). The two oddball "classes of three" occurred at both points in the 1980s when awards were handed out.
-The Fields Medal is one of many types of world-class ceremonies/prizes which were interrupted by WWII (IIRC nobel prizes, world cups, Olympics).
-Especially with Mirzakhani's passing, there is /no way/ that TPTB do not recognize at least one woman for next year. There must exist at least one living token. (no black is on the vanguard because, y'know, c'mon).

Pic updated to reflect new information.

His cause of death was described by NYT as an anyeurysm (sic) so he literally had something wrong going on in his brain, one way or another.

Ah yes, I had wanted to say:

Historically (as it seems to li'l old me who is not deeply acquainted with any one person's work), the "big two" classes were 1966 and 2006: Cohen with forcing, Grothendieck being Grothendieck, and Smale coming back from fucking up in school and doing whatever he did and so being an inspiration that there's always hope. Then in 2006 you have Perelmeme of course and Tao's result (IIRC?) about arbitrarily long arithmetic sequences in the primes.

Was there any other "class" more important or path-breaking than the two just mentioned, Veeky Forums?

>is the rest of the interview worth it?
Why don't you read it and find out?

>-Fully 3/4 of all medalists were still alive, a very high number for a prize given over several decades, even accounting for the fact that it is awarded to younger people, and even accounting for the fact that the prize has only been given out over several decades. /More of these people should be dead/, one wants to say.
I do not find this odd. baby boomers will continue to die massively within 15 years so you only have to wait.

Also, I do not know any woman who could receive the prize next time.