If I pursue a beam of light ...

Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | Library of Congress, Wellcome Collection

Having AI do sophisticated searches and analysis into complex ideas is one thing, asking it to do research on it's own poses interesting questions as doing research requires curiosity, common sense and asking the  question, why is this the way it is? For example, Einstein, While recounting the efforts that led to the special theory of relativity, he recalled"... a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light ...

The thought is simplicity itself. Here is light, a waveform propagating at c:

... or the discovery of benzene beginning by visualizing the ouroboros as start point. 

Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake biting its own tail (a symbol in ancient cultures known as the ouroboros).[41] This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds.

A dragon-like ouroboros in a 1478 drawing in an alchemical tract

Skeletal formula detail of benzene.

 In Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation, the book starts off with a joke. To me, the best one is Henny Youngman's Take my wife, please. This is bisociation or the adding together of two or more seemingly dissimilar things that produce a heretofore unexpected result. In this case, irony and humor. Regarding  H2O, hydrogen and oxygen are explosive. When combined, they become water.

And so it begins - Kurt Vonnegut.

OpenAI is refocusing its research efforts and throwing its resources into a new grand challenge. The San Francisco firm has set its sights on building what it calls an AI researcher, a fully automated agent-based system that will be able to go off and tackle large, complex problems by itself. ​​OpenAI says that this new research goal will be its “North Star” for the next few years, pulling together multiple research strands, including work on reasoning models, agents, and interpretability. 

There’s even a timeline. OpenAI plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern”—a system that can take on a small number of specific research problems by itself—by September. The AI intern will be the precursor to a fully automated multi-agent research system that the company plans to debut in 2028. This AI researcher (OpenAI says) will be able to tackle problems that are too large or complex for humans to cope with.

Asking Gemini regarding research & it's connect to creativity produced this ...

OpenAI’s pivot toward building a "fully automated researcher" marks a transition from Large Language Models (LLMs) to what are increasingly termed Large Reasoning Models (LRMs). By focusing on reasoning, agentic behavior, and interpretability, the goal is to move beyond probabilistic word prediction and toward structured problem-solving. However, assessing this goal through the lens of Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation reveals a significant gap between logical computation and bisociation.

1. Bisociation vs. Iterative Search

Koestler’s central thesis in The Act of Creation is the concept of "bisociation"—the sudden, intuitive leap that occurs when two independent, previously incompatible "matrices of thought" collide to create a new meaning.

OpenAI’s current trajectory (exemplified by models like o1) focuses on System 2 thinking, which utilizes "Chain of Thought" and "Search" to explore multiple logical paths. While this is highly effective for "Refining" a solution or finding errors in complex code, it remains a linear or branched search within a known mathematical space. It is "Logical Refinement" rather than a "Conceptual Leap." A fully automated researcher would need to move beyond searching for the best answer and begin "seeing" connections between unrelated fields—the hallmark of Archimedean discovery.

2. The Curiosity Gap

In AI research, "curiosity" is often modeled as Intrinsic Motivation or Novelty Search—rewarding the agent for finding data that it cannot yet predict. This is a digital simulation of curiosity, but it lacks the Aesthetic Sense or "Wonder" that Koestler argues is vital to the creative act.

A human researcher is often driven by an "aesthetic itch"—a feeling that a theory is "ugly" or "clunky." Current AI lacks this subjective evaluator. Without a sense of "Aesthetic Fitness," an automated researcher may generate millions of valid but uninteresting or "soulless" connections, lacking the curiosity to pursue the one that feels "right" in a deeper, human sense.

3. Common Sense and the "World Model"

Koestler emphasizes that creativity is grounded in an "Analog" understanding of reality—the common sense derived from physical existence. OpenAI’s goal of building an "AI Intern" by September 2026 relies on the model’s ability to use digital tools (like Python or search engines) to solve research problems.

However, "Common Sense" in research often involves knowing when a digital result contradicts a physical reality. If the AI researcher remains "Digital-First," it may fall into the trap of Digital Hallucination—constructing internally consistent logical towers that have no foundation in the "Bones" of reality.

4. Multi-Agent Systems (2028) as a "Community of Mind"

OpenAI’s plan for a multi-agent system by 2028 mirrors Koestler’s idea that the creative mind functions as a hierarchy of sub-skills. In theory, a "Multi-Agent Research System" could simulate a scientific community, with different agents playing the roles of the "Innovator," the "Critic," and the "Logician."

The risk is that without an external "Analog" grounding, these agents may simply reinforce each other’s biases, creating a "Digital Echo Chamber." For such a system to achieve the "Act of Creation," it must have the ability to "break" its own programming—to engage in the "benign insanity" required to look at a 100-year-old problem from an entirely "wrong" (and therefore new) perspective.

Conclusion

OpenAI's "North Star" is a milestone in Infrastructural Efficiency. If successful, it will drastically speed up the "Maintenance" side of science—checking proofs, running simulations, and organizing data. But the "Act of Creation" remains a different class of problem. Until an AI can experience the "frustration" of a paradox and the "joy" of its resolution, it may remain a highly sophisticated Research Assistant rather than a true Researcher.

Late Fall - 11:00PM

And so it goes - Kurt Vonnegut

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act,

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, a set of actions defined by John Boyd's OODA loop. shows, in depth, the steps every organism takes in order to survive also applies to better understanding how the limits of knowledge, driven by uncertainty, incompleteness and entropy, depict a reality we will never fully understand.  To see why, the animation depicting one example of chaos beckons. :) 

An animation of a double-rod pendulum at an intermediate energy showing chaotic behavior.
Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a vastly different trajectory. The double-rod pendulum is one of the simplest dynamical systems with chaotic solutions.

Interesting enough, OODA, when examined closely, relates to the act of creation without question.

Cause I'm a million miles away

And at the same time, I'm right here in your picture frame. Jimi Hendrix | Voodoo Chile

1. The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler: The creative act is the joining together of two or more seemingly dissimilar ideas that generate a heretofore unexpected result. i.e. Chemistry - H20 consists of 2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen atoms, both explosive yet, when combined, becomes water. 
2. The joke: Henny Youngman - Take my wife, Please. :)
3. Creativity starts with curiosity, the start point to the asking of a question:
   Why is this the way it is?
4. Question everything - Einstein
5. Creation & destruction is part of the creative process as everything has a cost thanks to the two laws of thermodynamics.
6. The ability to see relationships is key as everything is connected because reality is a Quantum space and entanglement stitches it together.
7. The creative act is always visual. Think Stevie Wonder and Songs in the Keys of life.
8. Play is indispensable. What if ... is the real deal here. A sense of wonderment is key.
9. Creativity takes courage as new ideas disrupt the "natural" order of things.
10. Creativity is problem-solving. It matters not the discipline used save that said discipline shapes how the creative act is produced.
11. The act itself is ineffable and cannot be explained. Like quantum, creativity just happens. It cannot be forced, only acted upon when the idea shows up. The finished act can be explained after the fact without question.
12. Practice makes better. Beginners mind and intuition rule.
13. Attention to details.
14. Passion is a prerequisite to create anything of value.
15. The creative act is selfish. One does not create for others, only for oneself.
16. The size of the problem solved dictates the significance of the creative act. i.e. Mixing anchovies with pineapples on a pizza is a creative act. The size or importance of the problem solved, not so much while Einstein's Theory of relativity proving that Newton was wrong at universal scale, is.
17. Creativity, like tech and existence, has no morality. It simply is.
18. Stay hungry, stay foolish - Stewart Brand/Whole Earth Catalog. :)
19. AI is but a tool, the issue now becomes, does the tool become the master? A good question to ask is it not?
20. Being first to come up with a new idea is essential. Darwin & Wallace relates as Wallace was two weeks later than Darwin in explaining why evolution matters.
21. The Act of Creation, whenever possible, runs counter to the limits of knowledge as needs warrant.

Circularity

 Characteristics of great art

1. Clarity.
2. Simplicity. It's easy to be complex, simplicity is hard. Einstein: Keep it simple, not simpler.
3. Good artists create, great artists steal. - Picasso
4. Great art always involves the process of discovery.
5. Timeless. Bach, like fine wine, never ages.
6. No spin. 
7. Details, details, details.
8. As stated before, great art applies to all disciplines.
9. Connections to differing disciplines apply.
10. Less is more. Dizzy Gillespie
11. Great artists are never afraid to make mistakes.
12. Doggedness. It takes thousands of hours to become good at something. 

TANSTAAFL: a plan for a new economic world order
by Pierre Dos Utt (1949)

Connections example ...

Kanji characters for shodō (書道)

Kind of Blue is considered to be the greatest jazz album of all time even though
Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth is right up there on the pantheon of the greatest of all time IMHO. This is not about KOB per se but rather about Bill Evans' liner notes and why his writing is just as profound as the album itself because it's all about improv and it's role in the creative process.

To whit.

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation.

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.

Details example ... 

There was a problem with the orbit of Mercury. Seems it was off by 1/100th of a degree thanks to Newtonian mechanics, an error Einstein knew had to be corrected if we are to better understand how the universe works at deep level. To that end, General Relativity and the notion of space time came to be or in John Wheeler's words, Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

A notion of Einstein's Special Relativity ... Vue style :)

Remember, walking is controlled falling. 

The ultimate recycler

ER = EPR is a theory involving wormholes and entanglement, thus providing the support structure enabling the particle zoo to emerge as we are but temporary arrangements of the quantum foam
as described by Susskind and Maldacena.

Time emerges from entanglement. The only entities not experiencing time
are photons, gluons and gravitons
as all are massless and travel at the speed of light.

ER = EPR is a conjecture in physics stating that two entangled particles (a so-called Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen or EPR pair) are connected by a wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge)[1][2] and is thought by some to be a basis for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics into a theory of everything.[1]

The conjecture was proposed by Leonard Susskind and Juan Maldacena in 2013.[

So, what could cause this connect to be able to link two objects together instantaneously without regard to distance? As a total lay person not versed in math or physics in anyway, the take yours truly will take may be laughable but it's not totally crazed when one thinks about the quantum foam, a construct conceived by physicist John Wheeler to explain what space time would look like at the Planck length of 10-20 of a diameter of a proton. Seems the foam would not have space or time assigned to it as the foam is conjectured to consist of minuscule black holes winking in and out of existence at about 10-43 seconds, the time it takes for light to traverse the Planck distance of 10-20 of a diameter of a proton.

If this is the case, the question to ask is, does time exist in the quantum foam where only virtual particles issue forth and disappear according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, thus precluding any chance of time happening in the foam as "real" protons, neutrons and all the rest of the subatomic zoo appear, AFAIK, to be temporary arrangements of the quantum foam subject to varying rates of decay, thus creating the illusion of time as seen in this part of the multiverse. If this is true, then, could the act of entanglement create a link consisting of, in some weird way, a "thread" akin to a wormhole of the quantum foam, forever separate from the constraints of time or the speed of light in enabling two (or more) linked particles to instantly "talk" to one another no matter how far apart they may be. RM

Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?

Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Volume I (1760), Chapter I

Entanglement, the Link to Forever

A fun meander for the ages begins to show why nature's the ultimate recycler. :)

Hawking radiation

Hawking Evaporation with the black hole exploding as end result

On creation and destruction. Black holes/Wormholes evaporate and explode as per Stephen Hawking's brilliant conjecture that nothing is forever save for photons, gluons and gravitons as all three are massless and travel at the speed of light. As possible proof, we may have actually seen one explode. 

As a study in the journal Nature noted last year, the neutrino was more than 100,000 times as energetic as any particle ever produced in colliders on Earth, and more energetic than astrophysicists can easily explain based on the part of the sky the neutrinos came from. But astrophysicists are trying, and some have proposed a truly ambitious explanation: This cosmic bullet came from an exploding black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravity.

In 1974, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated that black holes leak and eventually explode, releasing energy that had been entombed for centuries in a sort of mini-replica of the Big Bang. But no one has ever seen it happen.

The recycle

Exploding blackholes/wormholes at the Planck length of 10-35 - The Quantum Foam

Wheeler's Quantum Foam slightly zoomed out

If the NYTimes piece rings true, then black holes of all sizes evaporate and explode from Planck length size of 10-35 to the one we live in, the only difference being the size of the hole and the life time of same, which means ... endless big bangs have powered reality forever. 13.7 billion years ago "our" big bang was just one of the endless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO42WP9cPoc Everything spins. 

A mass–radius log plot of various objects

In particle physics and physical cosmology, Planck units are a system of units of measurement defined exclusively in terms of four universal physical constants: c, G, ħ, and kB. Expressing one of these physical constants in terms of Planck units yields a numerical value of 1. They are a system of natural units, defined using fundamental properties of nature (specifically, properties of free space) rather than properties of a chosen prototype object. Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, they are relevant in research on unified theories such as quantum gravity.

If this is the case, the question to ask is, does time exist in the quantum foam where only virtual particles issue forth and disappear according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, thus precluding any chance of time happening in the foam as "real" protons, neutrons and all the rest of the subatomic zoo appear, AFAIK, to be temporary arrangements of the quantum foam subject to varying rates of decay, thus creating the illusion of time as seen in this part of the multiverse. The answer is yes save for photons, gluons and gravitons as these massless particles, aka bosons,  travel at the speed of light, hence they are immortal and do not experience time.

The start point, Wheeler's Quantum Foam & Wormholes

ER=EPR the connect to It from Bit

It from Bit

Reality is a transaction engine. Jonathan Wheeler's It from Bit proves this to be so.

"It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe. 

What's also true is It from Bit arises whenever a black hole evaporates and explodes due to the participatory nature of existence. Also, the exact moment the transaction occurs is the blur, the infinitely thin speed of light/timeless entity enabling reality to complete the process of going from analog to digital in order to balance out the energy equation generated by the two entities in question. Think Day in the life when the rising indefinite analog pitch of the piece races to the ultimate, only to be firmly resolved by the finality of the E Major Chord for the ages.

The analog, forever separated by the timeless blur from digital. Said transaction goes both ways.  

The white line is the 10-15 width timeless blur forever separating analog from digital & vis versa

Why timeless? Because the speed of light and the move from analog to digital demands it as S.O.L. is the both the exact blur of energy transitioning to matter, i.e. E =. MC2, and analog to digital. The vis versa bit applies because whenever an electron releases the digital photon, aka a quanta, the newly released photon, running in free space, becomes analog once again.

What is this? Being rather math challenged to the extreme, I asked Gemini to verify my explanation for the Einstein and Wheeler-DeWitt equations as I understand the first as C = light/Photon, a Boson, the force carrier particle equivalent to matter with the dividing line being the speed of light as that is the exact center point where the analog boson of light transitions into digital matter i.e. Photon transitions to a quanta to enter into the Electron. Think photoelectric effect to visualize why this is so. In effect, Einstein's equation depicts the analog to digital process from the energy side.

 

Note: Photons, gravitons and gluons travel at the speed of light.

As for Wheeler-DeWitt, it depicts the analog to digital transition as a balancing act, directly equivalent to Einstein in execution but different in application as it shows why the collapse of the wave function from analog to digital (decoherence) dissipates the energy of analog by transiting to digital. Think the E Major chord in Day in a Life - Sgt. Peppers and Yang & Yin as the two equations are complementary.

Fermat's principle, also known as the principle of least time, is the link between ray optics and wave optics. Fermat's principle states that the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time. The principle of least action deals with classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and general relativity.[1] where nature will also choose the most efficient path in going from point A to point B. Nature's lazy, never expending more energy than absolutely necessary to accomplish any given task. 0.57721 aka slippage, is also necessary as without it, existence would freeze up like a car engine without oil.

Principle of least action where the optimal path is the one always selected. 

Nature doesn't draw straight lines as energy is generated from within. Man draws straight lines
as energy is applied from without. Think corporate identity.

I/O the logo for Ionomer - RM

Self similarity, the fractal

In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set.[1][2][3][4] This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine self-similar.[5] Fractal geometry relates to the mathematical branch of measure theory by their Hausdorff dimension.

From the Planck length of 10-35 to the black hole in which we all live, the images shown here detail scale invariance, an essential trait necessary to show how reality works at deep level.

Lastly,incompleteness and uncertainty rule and there is no certitude.
Remember, when going to a store, one knows a parking space will open up,
we just don't know when. :)

And ... This sentence is false.

"Space acts on matter, telling it how to move.

In turn, matter reacts back on space, telling it how to curve.”  - Johnathan Wheeler 1973

God must be a boogie man - Joni Mitchell

Note; All the art in the post was created by yours truly using NanaBana 2 on Magnific
save the Wikipedia graphic depicting the Planck Units.

Convergence ...

Convergence

This small image, generated by yours truly on, sadly, no longer existing 3D fractal software, is not AI enhanced nor should it be as there's a time and place appropriate for the melding of AI to art, something I've done for over 50 years in various genres from music composition and writing to the visual including painting, graphics, photography and video with some degree of competency. With this in mind, the long Wired Kevin Kelly piece titled Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips gives one pause as there is inevitable cost in doing anything thanks to the two laws of thermodynamics.

The word assume yet again.

Scholars of creativity refer to something called Uppercase Creativity. Uppercase Creativity is the stunning, field-changing, world-altering rearrangement that a major breakthrough brings. Think special relativity, the discovery of DNA, or Picasso’s Guernica. Uppercase Creativity goes beyond the merely new. It is special, and it is rare. It touches us humans in a profound way, far beyond what an alien AI can fathom.

To connect with a human deeply will always require a Creative human in the loop. This high creativity, however, should not be confused with the creativity that most human artists, designers, and inventors produce day to day. Mundane, ordinary, lowercase creativity is what we get with a great new logo design or a cool book cover, a nifty digital wearable or the latest must-have fashion, or the set design for our favorite sci-fi serial. Most human art, past and present, is lowercase. And lowercase creativity is exactly what the AI generators deliver.

But this is huge. For the first time in history, humans can conjure up everyday acts of creativity on demand, in real time, at scale, for cheap. Synthetic creativity is a commodity now. Ancient philosophers will turn in their graves, but it turns out that to make creativity—to generate something new—all you need is the right code. We can insert it into tiny devices that are presently inert, or we can apply creativity to large statistical models, or embed creativity in drug discovery routines. What else can we use synthetic creativity for? We may feel a little bit like medieval peasants who are being asked, “What would you do if you had the power of 250 horses at your fingertips?” We dunno. It’s an extraordinary gift. What we do know is we now have easy engines of creativity, which we can aim into stale corners that have never seen novelty, innovation, or the wow of creative change. Against the background of everything that breaks down, this superpower can help us extend the wow indefinitely. Used properly, we can make a small dent in the universe.

Kelly is right about the emergent power of AI but Scholars of creativity??? 

What the hell is that? 

Creativity 101:

1. The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler: The creative act is the joining together of two or more seemingly dissimilar ideas that generate a heretofore unexpected result. i.e. Chemistry - H20 consists of 2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen atoms, both explosive yet, when combined, becomes water. 
2. The joke: Henny Youngman - Take my wife, Please. :)
3. Creativity starts with the asking of a question: Why is this the way it is?
4. Question everything - Einstein
5. The ability to see relationships is key because everything is connected as reality is a Quantum space and entanglement stitches it together.
6. Play is indispensable. What if ... is the real deal here. A sense of wonderment is essential.
7. Creativity takes courage as new ideas disrupt the "natural" order of things.
8. Creativity is problem-solving. It matters not the discipline used save that said discipline shapes how the creative act is produced.
9. The act itself is ineffable and cannot be explained. Like quantum, creativity just happens. It cannot be forced, only acted upon when the idea shows up. The finished act is anything but as it can be explained after the fact without issue.
10. Practice makes better. Beginners mind and intuition are key.
11. The size of the problem solved dictates the significance of the creative act. i.e. Mixing anchovies with pineapples on a pizza is a creative act. The size or importance of the problem solved, not so much while Einstein's Theory of relativity proving that Newton was wrong at universal scale, is.
12. Creativity, like tech and existence, has no morality. It simply is.
13. Stay hungry, stay foolish - Stewart Brand/Whole Earth Catalog. :)

AI is but a tool, the issue now becomes, does the tool become the master? A good question to ask is it not?

Dividing line ...

The genius myth ...

 

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

High IQ does NOT equate to genius. Richard Feynman's IQ was 125. The last time I checked, Feynman was a genius so ... high IQ does NOT equate to genius. These characteristics, IMHO, do.

Curiosity, as prime driver, is the key to creativity without question.

The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler: The creative act is the joining together of two or more seemingly dissimilar ideas that generate a heretofore unexpected result. i.e. Chemistry - H20 consists of 2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen atoms, both explosive yet, when combined, becomes water. 

The joke: Henny Youngman - Take my wife, Please. :)

Creativity starts with the asking of a question: Why is this the way it is?

Question everything - Einstein

The ability to see relationships is key because everything is connected as reality is a Quantum space and entanglement stitches it together.

Play is indispensable. What if ... is the real deal here. A sense of wonderment is essential.

Creativity takes courage as new ideas disrupt the "natural" order of things.

Creativity is problem-solving. It matters not the discipline used save that said discipline shapes how the creative act is produced.

The act itself is ineffable and cannot be explained. Like quantum, creativity just happens. It cannot be forced, only acted upon when the idea shows up. The finished act is anything but as it can be explained after the fact without issue.

Practice makes better. Beginners mind and intuition are key.

The size of the problem solved dictates the significance of the creative act. i.e. Mixing anchovies with pineapples on a pizza is a creative act. The size or importance of the problem solved, not so much while Einstein's Theory of relativity proving that Newton was wrong at universal scale, is.

Creativity, like tech and existence, has no morality. It simply is.

Stay hungry, stay foolish - Stewart Brand/Whole Earth Catalog. :)

AI is but a tool, the issue now becomes, does the tool become the master? 

As per the Atlantic ...

Who has the highest IQ in history? One answer would be: a 10-year-old girl from Missouri. In 1956, according to lore, she took a version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test and recorded a mental age of 22 years and 10 months, equivalent to an IQ north of 220. (The minimum score needed to get into Mensa is 132 or 148, depending on the test, and the average IQ in the general population is 100.) Her result lay unnoticed for decades, until it turned up in The Guinness Book of World Records, which lauded her as having the highest childhood score ever. Her name, appropriately enough, was Marilyn vos Savant. And she was, by the most common yardstick, a genius.

Vos Savant hasn’t made any scientific breakthroughs or created a masterpiece. She graduated 178th in her high-school class of 613, according to a 1989 profile in New York magazine. She married at 16, had two children by 19, became a stay-at-home mother, and was divorced in her 20s. She tried to study philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, but did not graduate. She married again and was divorced again at 35. She became a puzzle enthusiast, joined a high-IQ society, and occasionally wrote an essay or a satirical piece under a pen name for a newspaper. Mostly, she devoted herself to raising her boys.

What did happen, though, is that on the back of her anointment in Guinness, vos Savant built a career as a professional genius. She wrote books such as the Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest and Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks. Billing her as “the smartest person in the world,” Parade magazine gave her an advice column, where she answered readers’ queries and published puzzles. (She didn’t respond to my attempts to contact her through the magazine.) Her specialty was logic problems—which showcase the particular type of mental ability most readily identified by IQ tests. In one column, she provided a solution for an apparently insoluble conundrum, the Monty Hall problem. Angry readers wrote in to correct her, but she stood firm.

Vos Savant’s life perfectly illustrates how genius can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. She was a housewife raising her children in total obscurity, until she was labeled a genius. And then she became one.

Reality is fractal.

A temporary arrangement ...

 

Gravity Well

Back in 2012, yours truly talked about time, entanglement and the quantum foam in a piece titled Entanglement, the Link to Forever, stating that time may be a temporary arrangement of the quantum foam as said foam would be timeless but artifacts like protons, neutrons and sub atomic particles coming out of it would be but temporary arrangements of the QF, thus experiencing the notion of time. Well, it seems researchers far more versed that moi have expressed the same concept indirectly referencing the brilliant ER=EPR conjecture created by Leonard Susskind and Juan Maldacena in 2013.[3] 

They proposed that a wormhole (Einstein–Rosen bridge or ER bridge) is equivalent to a pair of maximally entangled black holes. EPR refers to quantum entanglement (EPR paradox).

The symbol is derived from the first letters of the surnames of authors who wrote the first paper on wormholes (Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen)[4] and the first paper on entanglement (Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Rosen).[5] The two papers were published in 1935, but the authors did not claim any connection between the concepts.[2]

ER = EPR is a conjecture in physics stating that two entangled particles (a so-called Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen or EPR pair) are connected by a wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge)[1][2] and is thought by some to be a basis for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics into a theory of everything.[1]

The kicker ...

The authors pushed this conjecture even further by claiming any entangled pair of particles—even particles not ordinarily considered to be black holes, and pairs of particles with different masses or spin, or with charges which aren't opposite—are connected by Planck scale wormholes.

If so, the lifetimes of  Planck scale wormholes would be incredibly short, thus giving rise to how reality works at deep level so the question to ask is ... does the quantum foam consist of wormholes operating under the dictates of the ER = EPR conjecture as articulated by Leonard Susskind and Juan Maldacena because if so, the existence of wormholes becomes scale invariant able to exist from the very tiny with lifetimes infinitesimally small to the ultra massive lasting trillions of years as needs warrant.

Carte Astronomique

As per my non-mathematical take in 2012 ... :)

Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?

Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Volume I (1760), Chapter I

Here we find our author/narrator, after six weeks of composition, fourteen chapters into the affair of a character who has however not yet been born. Tongue securely in cheek, Sterne, through the voice of Tristram, supplies his impatient reader a kind of apology -- or better to say, perhaps, an apology of a very curious yet, already by this stage of the proceedings, familiar and characteristic kind.

I quote Tom Clark's excellent analysis of Tristram Sandy vis a vis the time equation as segue into the dark heart of Quantum Physics, the issue of entanglement and what it means to time, space and non-locality, issues physicists and mathematicians have wrestled with for more then 100 years and still have not come up with a definitive answer as to why two entangled particles, atoms or even molecules, can be separated millions (or billions) of light years apart yet their shared state remains inviolate. i.e. If entangled electron is "spinning" up, the partner's spin will be "spinning" down or in scientific terms...

When a measurement is made and it causes one member of such a pair to take on a definite value (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair will at any subsequent time[7] be found to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin). Thus, there is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may have been separated by arbitrarily large distances.[8]

If this is the case, does time emerge from the quantum foam when protons, neutrons and all the rest of the subatomic zoo appear, entities well known to science to be subject to varying rates of decay without question. Additionally, can entanglement create a connect not only enabling two (or more)  particles to instantly "talk" to one another no matter how far apart they may be but also be able to generate the reality of time experienced by all parties existing in this part of the multiverse. 

Lastly, could the ER=EPR conjecture finally explain how gravity not only issues forth from the quantum foam but also how gravity, in the form of entangled wormholes, knits together a a reality we will never fully understand.

Resonance 2010

The new research ...

To resolve this problem, the researchers turned to a theory called the Page and Wootters mechanism. First proposed in 1983, the theory suggests that time emerges for one object through its quantum entanglement with another acting as a clock. For an unentangled system, on the other hand, time does not exist, and the system perceives the universe as frozen and unchanging.

By applying the Page and Wootters mechanism to two entangled but noninteracting theoretical quantum states — one a vibrating harmonic oscillator and the other a set of tiny magnets acting as a clock — the physicists found that their system could be perfectly described by the Schrödinger equation, which predicts the behavior of quantum objects. Yet, in place of time, their version of the famous equation ran according to the states of the tiny magnets acting as a clock. 

This insight is not new, but the team's next step was. They repeated their calculations twice, assuming first that the magnet clock and then the harmonic oscillator were macroscopic (larger) objects. Their equations simplified into those for classical physics, suggesting that time's flow is a consequence of entanglement even for objects on large scales.

As I have finally learned, equations are exquisitely configured to render valid thought experiments like the ones seen above, a process similar to how curiosity, passion and intuition drives the act of creation in other art forms no matter what shape the creative act takes. 

Science, done right, never disappoints. :)