Talk:Roger Penrose

"English" nationality?
The British government does not confer "English" nationality on its citizens - "British" is the correct nationality.

Penrose a Doctor?
The caption for the image of him at a conference, in section Physics and consciousness says Doctor and not Professor. I changed it to Professor. F = q(E+v×B) ⇄ ∑ici 15:24, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, Sir Roger Penrose a doctor - earned first PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in 1957 and was awarded honorary doctorates afterwards.  MoS or omitting prefix MoS should be fine too (honorifics can be broad and confusing). However, until subject expresses a different wish, main official title is Sir. Partial list of honors acknowledged by Wikipedia. Please archive this section after reading. Fakedeeps (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Recreational Mathematician?
Is it right to described Penrose in the lead sentence of the article as a "recreational mathematician"? Does this refer to his discovery of the quasi-fivefold symmetrical tiling pattern (Penrose tilings)? That actually has some relevance to mathematical physics (crystal structures), and in any case it seems odd to describe such a distinguished physicist and mathematician as a "recreational mathematician" just because he made that discovery. It would be like calling Einstein a "hobbyist designer of tee shirts" because E=mc2 is printed on tee shirts. Also the article includes only one or two sentences on the subject of tilings (along with a picture). Almost the entire article is devoted (as it should be) to his work in general relativity (the singularity theorems) and his development of twistor theory, and so on. I suggest removing the words "recreational mathematician" from the lead sentence - unless someone can point to a good source for him being notable as a recreational mathematician.Longerboats5 (talk) 00:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Seems an odd choice to make as well considering that recreational mathematics is usually carried on by amateurs. Would we describe Feynman the same way? (going to check entry) Philosophyfellow (talk) 14:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Recent Papers
While Penrose is widely respected for his early work, his recent work on "conformal cyclic cosmology" (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706) has become a laughing stock for cosmologists. The rebuttal papers (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1305, http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1268) show that Penrose's analysis is flawed. This wikipedia entry misrepresents the consensus in the scientific community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.149.252.186 (talk) 04:39, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of capitalization of universe
There is request for comment about capitalization of the word universe at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. Please participate. SchreiberBike talk 00:46, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

New infobox proposal
While compiling information for Roger Penrose navbox (the bottom collapsible table with links), I noticed some problems with current infobox (top table with title and picture): crowding, formatting, style, relevance... - so, I decided to update it. However, end result is significantly different from original, therefore I seek criticism and reviews before uploading to the article. Please visit my talk page, if you would like to see the new infobox, express opinion, give advice or refer to experts/authorities. Fakedeeps (talk) 18:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Notification of request for comment
An RfC has been commenced at MOSCAPS Request for comment - Capitalise universe.

Cinderella157 (talk) 03:23, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

The Penrose hourglass node
please make page, don't merge it with other Penrosianisms. we must await for new analyses (types etc.) though of the phenomenon

You can interact even with particles which are outside your future Penrose cone, iff these particles are entangled with some inside your future cone or simply interacting with them. You always are at the center of your Penrose hourglass node, but simply because some particles are either entangled either interacting with particles outside your theoretical clean reach, gravity, space bending and other phenomena occur. Nature isn't a clean diagram. If you aren't aware of that, you miss the answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4114:C800:D889:A530:D235:968A (talk) 01:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
 * why gravity? because of Lorentz corrections, otherwise your would make a human error when calculating the maximum permissible speed. You cannot coerce nature to obey human error. You can rethink though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4114:C800:D889:A530:D235:968A (talk) 02:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Tubicles and the looping Universe

 * 1) His "quantum tubicle consiousness" is moronic for many reasons.
 * 2) The individual doesn't define the physical laws of microstructure.
 * 3) We already know that the self-aware experiential and introspective consciousness is the rendering of a complex functional brain. Neuroscience is the exact ontology. Damaged brains with problematic memory, sensation and memoremotional limbic system may render problematic consciousness. Of course we must be specific about the injury and we must record that on fMRI. Roger simply penetrated many things he knew, but these aren't defined by the individual. Consciousness is the probabilistic flow of information in a functional connectome. Roger was lazy to study the brain analytically. He merely penetrated some great but erroneous in causality maths.
 * 4) His looping Universe theory is correct. Before the CMB wall there supposedly was a Planckian wall, but that can never happen! His old dying Universe theory is correct because:
 * 5) It kills creation. Eternity is simpler. All possible systems exist somewhere but are inaccessible to us because we aren't related immediately. We are related to different in nature universes in a way of probabilistic occupancy (to exploit all possibilities). Our parental Universe wasn't of different nature though, instead of the same topological algorithm.
 * 6) His looping Universe kills the Planckian wall pseudo-problem. The universe when it's extremely old or young it's exactly at a Planckian phase transition called Big Bang. That's not an absolute wall. Mathematically it's solvable.


 * Add more data about his looping Universe and tell him to provide us with more mathematical types on the subject. Claiming that consiousness is the fact that someone is lazy to study neuroscience or that the supposed violations of the initially correctly distributed randomness is merely a joke. A very intelligent way to be silly... at an extreme level.
 * Wikipedia is not a forum for debating cosmology or psychology, nor is it a place for original research, and a bio is not meant to be used to communicate with its biographical subject. If you have criticism that is relevant, please cite an RS.TricksterWolf (talk) 00:16, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Controversy: Doubly wrong microtubule theory

 * 1) no proof of the mechanism, not based on neuroscientific data
 * 2) even if the theory was correct, microtubules would be a "component of consciousness" based on statistical properties of physics, that isn't attributed as "free will" of the person, but as "statistical mechanics emerging from fundamental laws". Consciousness is an emerging property. The term consciousness is philosophical and psychological. Functional healthy brains in rich environments do evolve consciousness as a whole. Consciousness isn't a result of one physical component. The person itself, doesn't dictate who the probabilistic nature of the physical fields interact. The person itself is a servant of the laws of physics, and can cause changes, only if enough probabilistic potential (probability density) is accumulated, and that has nothing magical in it!
 * Wikipedia is not a forum for debating theories of consciousness. If you want to suggest the inclusion of specific criticism, cite a reliable source and keep it succinct.TricksterWolf (talk) 00:14, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Controversy (Minkowski does it faster)
If we map the causal cone (of subluminally receding or non-receding particles) of the future allowable interactions from the Minkowski space upon the common 3D space, the Minkowskian causal cone of the future allowable interactions then becomes a sphere, which is not tautological to the observable universe from an arbitrary central point, because the observable universe is the photons which hit on our detectors (eyes, telescopes, etc), and not the position now afar atoms have. Thus there isn't only one virtual sphere in astrophysics. That Minkowskian subluminally causal cone of the future will shrink, and that will happen to all infinite cosmic points (because the central observing point is arbitrarily chosen throughout the universe) of fragmented now superluminal causality due to dark energy, and that will cause the next Big Bang way before Roger Penrose kills us with his rescaling Big Bang. (At least Roger isn't a murderer.)
 * If you want to edit something, you should find an RS that describes the criticism you're providing. For a bio it should probably be less technical (more concise) than this, though, and not include the joke about murder. :)TricksterWolf (talk) 00:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

How to Spaceship faster than light? I can answer this question. ( from Thailand )
ผมเคยคิดที่จะนำหลุมดำมาขับเคลื่อน ยานอวกาศ โดยสร้างหลุมดำจิ๋ว ไว้ข้างหน้าให้ดูด แล้วให้หลุมดำจิ๋ว หายไปทันที ที่ถูกดูดเข้าไป ยานอวกาศก็จะขับเคลื่อนไป ด้วยความเร็ว ที่เร็วกว่าความเร็วแสง และเพราะว่าในอวกาศ ไม่มีแรงเสียดทาน ทำให้ยานอวกาศ สามารถเคลื่อนที่ได้ ด้วยความเร็วคงที่ ฉนั้นจึงสร้างหลุมดำ แค่ขาไปและขากลับเท่านั้น หรือ เบรค แล้วเดินหน้าใหม่ การเบรคก็ใช้วิธีสร้าง หลุมดำในทิศทางตรงข้ามกัน

ปล. ปรากฎว่า โรเจอร์ เพนโรส คิดเหมือนผม โดยที่ผมไม่เคยรู้จักเขามาก่อน และไม่เคยอ่านผลงานของเขามาก่อน ผมดีใจที่เขาคิดเหมือนผม ตรงที่ว่า

ด้วยความเร็วแสงที่เร็วกว่า ความเร็วแสง ***** ซึ่งแปลว่า เราจะสร้าง Time Machine ได้นั้นเองครับ 😇
 * หลุมดำจะดูดวัตถุเข้าไป


 * หลุมดำจิ๋วสามารถใช้เครื่องมือสร้างขึ้นมาได้แบบของ CERN ***** Ekarath (talk) 09:59, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia article talk pages are not a forum for discussing these topics, especially not on a bio. If you want to add something it should be relevant to the article and appropriately sourced. Also, this is the English Wikipedia.TricksterWolf (talk) 00:09, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Add a paragraph called controversies because we do the same in Wikipedia whenever an article has controversial notions

 * microtubules aren't the core component of thought
 * the wavefunctional collapse (it's usually about spin in his idea, but not necessarily when altered by others) isn't personocratic/or in simple English: The collapse of the wave function is not defined by the individual. (Even if it were, that still would require a rigorous proof. Also that's a self-iterating logical fallacy, because the thinking individual is defined gradually by its fundamental mechanics, and cannot magically play god to define the behavior of physics inside itself.


 * Roger says that he only accepts false-neuroscience of microtubular consciousness, but not religion/supernaturalism and personocratic/personocentric control over the physical laws. His microtubular consciousness causes problems to how defines the collapse of the wave function, the magical person, or the physical flesh which obeys the laws of physics, with personhood being a result of (impersonal, nonpersonocratic) physical processes and not the other way around.

What you're describing is criticism, not controversy, and a criticism section on a biography would be overkill leading to NPOV violations. I agree there should be more criticism of some of his theories than currently exists on the article. If you want to suggest some, cite an RS.TricksterWolf (talk) 00:20, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

== Even if the microtubules defined personhood, still personhood wouldn't pre-exist the natural mechanism in generates it (Roger Penrose actually religiously believes in a Tao of pre-existing magical/antiphysical personhood) == The microbules as a consciousness definer is a wrong theory. Even if the theory were correct about the spins, still THEY would define personhood AFTER the probabilistic collapse = controlled by physics and probability but NOT by the individual.
 * Wikipedia is not a forum for debating theories of consciousness. If you want to suggest the inclusion of specific criticism, cite a reliable source and keep it succinct. If you disagree with the characterization of his religious beliefs in the bio, you need an RS for that as well.TricksterWolf (talk) 00:22, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Penrose's theories on CCC and consciousness are very fringe but described as mainstream.
I realize a lot of people are injecting criticism here without citing sources and in some cases just to spout their own theories, but they're right about one thing: there is undue bias on a few of Penrose's fringe viewpoints that make them seem far more credible and more mainstream than they are. Those sections also tend to ramble and are not encyclopedic in nature.

Specifically, Roger Penrose has proposed some theories in his books and published later work which are given a great deal of discussion in his bio but described in a manner that belies their lack of scientific basis and lack of acceptance by other scientists. They're also named in a confusing way. I would suggest that "Later activity" should probably be "The Penrose interpretation" (with the last paragraph moved up to the end of the previous section), "An earlier universe" should be "Conformal cyclic cosmology theory", and "Physics and consciousness" should (maybe) be "The Penrose-Lucas argument and quantum consciousness".

I hope these rambling paragraphs can be trimmed and summarized better than they currently are, and with a fairer description of the standing of these theories from a scientific perspective. Roger Penrose is a brilliant man who has done amazing things in many fields, but this sadly does not mean everything he says is reasonable or scientific. TricksterWolf (talk) 01:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) The Penrose interpretation section should briefly mention criticism drawn from the article of the same name. Despite the name, it's not an interpretation of quantum physics at all. It's a hypothesis about quantum gravity, which should probably be made clearer. I want to stress that this hypothesis, unlike the two sections which follow, is not considered fringe and is being investigated with active research.
 * 2) The CCC theory is very much fringe, it has no legitimate scientific support from observational data, and it is not theoretically sound for numerous reasons. It is not taken seriously by cosmologists or physicists. It's notable (and concerning) that Penrose has gone to great lengths to tweak existing data to fit his theory, including modification of the theory post-hoc to account for specifics in the data he claims to be evidence. The article currently implies that CCC is a mainstream theory, and it absolutely is not. (Some RS also appear to present it as mainstream, but these are mainly interviews with Penrose which don't bother to check with other scientists. Win a Nobel and fewer people question your ideas—though I do not contest that Penrose is brilliant and deserving of a platform for them.) Even the CCC article provides an inadequate amount of criticism, but at least it has some. This article ignores even criticism from the RS it uses, like quotes from scientists at the end of the article "New evidence for cyclic universe claimed by Roger Penrose and colleagues" (currently [50]) who all oppose the theory both because it is not supported by data and because it has numerous theoretical flaws. Currently it reads like the theory is sound and factual, and it makes unusually bold claims such as, "the Big Bang can be understood without unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics". I think it is also overly technical, especially since there is already a separate Wikipedia article for the theory.
 * 3) The reception of the Penrose-Lucas argument is described accurately, but Penrose's theory on consciousness could use more organization that clarifies its true reception by physicists. Currently it says "The reception of the paper is summed up by this statement... (counter-argument here)" which is indirect at best, and also inaccurate because the reception is not due to a single argument from Darwinism, it is a rejection based on numerous factors which make the theory unsound. The statement in the previous sentence about decoherence is not clear to a layperson, either: the fact that the time scale of neuronal firing is slower than decoherence by a factor of ten billion means (for Tegmark's description of the system at least, which Penrose disputes) the mechanism of the theory is completely impossible. This should be directly stated. The back-and-forth between Penrose and critics on this is similar to how he has dealt with the CCC criticism: by modifying the theory to try to make it work in the face of overwhelming evidence suggesting it is false when predictions or theory fails, and in some cases moving the goalposts. In the article, the description makes it sound like Penrose's responses to his critics are on even keel scientifically with what he attempts to rebut, and this is not the case. It reads almost like a description of "creation science" in the article of a CS supporter, listing all the common criticisms to CS and "rebutting" each one with arguments that do not hold up and are not considered reasonable by scientists.

WP:SYNTH in lede
It looks like WP:SYNTH is in the lede at the end, where numerous sources are cited. There may be a way to distribute these sources throughout new text to avoid the congestion. Born25121642 (talk) 01:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Edits discussed on Wikiproject physics
Recent edits were discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics#Roger_Penrose_reversion.

The topic was two minor references in the consciousness section which were deleted. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

“They had” children vs “They have” children
Article says of children from both first and second marriages that "They had" kids. This sounds like somebody's dead. As far as I can tell all are still alive wouldn't conventional phrasing be "They have"? Strider98107 (talk) 23:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Penrose elected to World Digital Technology Academy
For inquiries, please contact info@wdtacademy.org. There is no need to apply for the membership in WDTA Academician Council. Only top scientists and engineers are nominated based on their contributions and influence to the world. 129.222.38.182 (talk) 21:17, 31 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for opening this discussion!
 * If Penrose's "election" is notable, then there would be public notice in some form. There should no need to ask.
 * More important to begin with: why is the World Digital Technology Academy notable? Once that is established and Penrose's special status covered in the media, then we can debate whether this is something to add to the article. As it currently stands, you are claiming basically without evidence that an unknown entity "honored" Penrose, but this seems to be more about the unknown entity being honored by having Penrose's name attached.
 * Let try to say the same thing another way: why do you want to include this in the article if no one, including the web site for the World Digital Technology Academy mentions it? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:57, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Consciousness
Large sections of the "Consciousness" section is not biography. If the topic covered here beyond Penrose's direct involvement is notable, it should be covered in a separate article. The Hameroff, Tegmark, and Tetlow content belongs elsewhere. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:00, 20 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I cut a chunk of this out, but it is still too long. The section should be strictly about Penrose, not about other peoples ideas, even when they are related to Penrose's ideas. If the topic is notable it will have an article, as it does in this case, Orch-OR. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:59, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that the section on Tegmark's paper should be removed from this section. It's peripheral to Penrose's biography and should be a separate article or an addition to Tegmark's page. His ideas are complex enough without adding other people's research to try to decipher. Pillarfog (talk) 18:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)