Science has progressed, the fundamental questions remain open. In memory of Zvi Yanai

This is how the evening "Conversations with Scientists" emerged, in which scientists who were interviewed in 2000 for Zvi Yanai's book and for educational television confronted their position then and now. In the meantime, we have discovered evidence for the expansion of the universe, we have solved math puzzles, we have made progress in the study of sleep (but not in solving dreams) and we have not come close to extending life expectancy. The event took place as part of the Israeli Science Day.

Many fields interested the late science communicator Zvi Yanai. He was interested in the questions of whether a computer will ever be able to replace man? Will we have eternal life (lecture a lot about telomeres)? He liked to argue with psychologists about the question of whether dreams have a meaning or are they just a random processing operation of the brain? He wanted to know what would happen to the universe, was interested in unsolved issues in mathematics, and of course he liked to challenge philosophers.

On January 26, a panel moderated by Gilad Shenhav from YNET was held as part of the Israeli Science Day, in which the best scientists who spoke with Yanai were guests, trying to understand what has changed in their field since the beginning of the millennium.
The event was attended by: astrophysicist Prof. Avishai Dekel from the Hebrew University, Zvi Atzmon, a senior lecturer at David Yelin College in Jerusalem; Dr. Micha Ankouri, clinical psychologist, one of the founders of the new Israeli Jungian Society; Prof. David Harel, recipient of the Israel Prize for Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science; and Prof. Menachem Magidor, professor of mathematics and former president of the Hebrew University.

Astronomy has been flying for the past 14 years
The first guest was Prof. Dekel, who at the time of the interview with Yanai still had open questions regarding dark matter, dark energy (a field then in its infancy) and the mystery of the beginning of the universe.
In a conversation with Shenhav, Dekel explained that in all these areas significant developments have been registered in the last 14 years.
As for the dark matter: we know how much and where it is, through the gravitational force it exerts on luminous bodies. We hope to discover the nature of dark matter particles through their "weak" interaction with normal matter (atoms, etc.). This is a difficult technical challenge because the probability of such an interaction is very small.
As for dark energy: we learned that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The universe will probably expand forever. We hope to better understand the source of dark energy. This requires a better understanding of the Big Bang.
As for the beginning of the universe and the inflationary inflation: last week a polarization was discovered in the cosmic background radiation that indicates gravitational waves (first discovery to predict the theory of general relativity). Such gravitational waves could only have been created when the universe was very, very dense, and suddenly began to expand rapidly, at an inflationary rate. This indicates the event of inflationary inflation in the first fraction of a second of the universe and it confirms the inflation model, which until now was only a theoretical idea, as an integral part of the standard model of the Big Bang.

Life expectancy will be extended but what's the point?

Zvi Atzmon, a senior lecturer at David Yelin College in Jerusalem, was quoted as answering Zvi Yanai's question as to whether there is a limit to life span: "We need to distinguish between the population and individual people - it is clear that just as there is variation in height, there is also variation in life expectancy, but stories about people who are 140-160 years old are Unfounded, and it is accepted that the limit is 115-120 years."

On stage in 2014, Atzmon said: "In recent years, especially, there has been a lot of talk about extending life expectancy. I talked with Zvi Yanai about the question of why there is a pause in life and we did not focus on the question of whether it can be extended. I admit that today, if you open a means of communication, what stands out is the prediction of a leap forward, according to which people will live immeasurably longer than today, perhaps hundreds of years. Personally, it scares me terribly. The fact that there is an asymptotic limit that can be approached but cannot be crossed was a great comfort, all the mistakes I made and I made a lot in my life - erase them all and start something else."

"Zvi, too, if I understood him correctly, was not so sorry that there was a limit to this, although he less emphasized the consolations of that. In terms of science, some people say that life expectancy will increase. I don't fully understand how. It will be possible to exchange organs, grow stem cells and transplant substitutes. There is one organ where this is not possible - the brain. I am asked if it will eventually be possible to transplant a brain? The question is actually different - will it be possible to transplant a body around the brain? It is possible to transplant a heart, kidneys and face, but it is impossible to transplant your identity. As far as I know, the brain loses cells and the cells that remain in it also lose their abilities, most of the talented people are very successful at a young age and less so later. In politics we have Peres, but in many fields the abilities are fading away."

Ivory: "Does evolution require us to have a limited lifespan?"

Atzmon: "Unicellular creatures actually live forever and also a few multicellular creatures, but most of the multicellular creatures die at one point or another. Sometimes it's pathetic times - a butterfly that dies of old age after ten days or one-season plants. There are life-extending creatures. Man is endowed with a very long life expectancy according to what is expected of him - for example in the index of the number of heartbeats. These days I am taking care of a dog who is in his last days, I have to pick him up, he wets himself. It's not because something was neglected in him, you see he's coming to the end of his life."

Dream and dissolve
From biology to psychology, do you know how to clearly distinguish when you are asleep and when you are awake? On this issue, Yanai confronted Prof. Peretz Lavi, currently the president of the Technion and for many years headed the sleep research laboratory at the Technion School of Medicine, with Dr. Micha Ankouri, a clinical psychologist, one of the founders of the new Israeli Jungian Society.

In a conversation on stage, Ankouri claimed (this time without his partner Prof. Lavi) that the physiological question that Lavi and his colleagues express that dreaming is only a phenomenon of neurons and that dreaming has no meaning, bothers him "but I did not find the connection between the fields. There is the research in the sleep laboratories, but I did not find there the phenomenon of dreaming or the dream, this is a question that was not resolved at the time, but it is doubtful whether it will be resolved. What is the connection between the body and the mind, between me and my body, this is a question that did not find its solution 14 years ago and not today."
"I am awake to the mental phenomena that occur in the dream and meanwhile I do not see any contribution from the sleep laboratories, and there is no reference there to the story of the dream, Peretz Lavi says that these are pulses from the brain stem that go to the cortex and there the brain tells us stories. The psychological school believes that there is a meaning to dreams and that you should listen to these stories."

Is the Turing test relevant?

The next guest, Dr. David Harel from the Weizmann Institute, was asked by Yanai in 2000 whether the computer would be able to develop an intelligence close to human intelligence, when Turing, according to the late Yanai, predicted that a computer would be able to pass his test only in 2010 and mentioned the prediction of CEO IBM that five computers will be enough to manage the entire world. Harel then answered him that no one anticipated the internet revolution in which a network of millions of computers would make the entire revolution possible (we must not forget that those were the days of the dot.com bubble).

Harel said on stage: "A long time ago they got rid of the idea that the goal is to make computers intelligent in the general sense. It was in a conversation with Zvi Yanai that he brought up the matter of chess. For example, the software that defeated Kasparov. With the ideas developed for this purpose, IBM was able to develop Watson, not to solve a basic problem, but any problem. But as I mentioned at the time, this is not an unimpressive achievement. The computer has also been a champion in calculating salaries for 45 years, so what? The idea of ​​the Turing test is a big and broad idea, but this is not the goal of computer science and the world of computers. Some of the ideas developed in Deep Blue were realized with Watson's participation in Jeopardy, but still Watson is not intelligent."

"But what is intelligence? We want to build a device that behaves like you and me. There are things that have such an intelligent touch, for example the dry and technical concept - to program a computer. You have a box, you want it to do something. The computer scientist's use of programming is specific, but native languages ​​are highly technical. I make a leap and use the concept of programming in a different way - when I raise my children, guide the insurance agent or manage my students in the laboratory - I make others do what I want. I sometimes give them instructions in a negative way - do what you want, but at 11 you're home."

"We can say that the computer is intelligent if we are able to program computer systems in the way we educate or manage and make others do things. You want the computer to learn, generalize, be able to have an intelligent conversation about what it has done. Nobody thinks today that it is possible to pass the Turing test."

"We need to produce computers that learn that the relationships change dynamically. Three Turing awards that people have received in recent years are related to learning, probability, and another technical topic that I won't go into. The advances in computer science, although a very small part of them are aimed directly at artificial intelligence, they are designed to perform all kinds of tasks better, but they are not necessarily more intelligent.

Shanhav: "What about Ray Kurzweil and the singularity theory that holds that in the future a computer will be developed that can produce a smart computer from it?"

"Not that I don't buy what he says, he is not a scientist and certainly not a computer scientist. It reminds me of the story about Descartes, that when I grow up I will be a mathematician and I will have a pencil, paper and a garbage can, and after a year he said I will be a philosopher because I don't need the garbage can either. Both about consciousness and about the singularity - let it go, we are working and making progress even without regard to the fact that a computer will replace man."

"There is a Turing test of a different kind - to build a model of a multicellular organism that is so real and so true - for example the C. elegans worm. I want to reach a situation where a computer is used as a model of such a worm and in another room there is a real worm in the laboratory, and that the experts will not be able to distinguish which room is the worm and which is the computer. The Turing test is a test of imitation. It's a kind of Turing test that should and can be aspired to. The benefit to humanity from such a comprehensive and accurate model of an animal will be much more important than a computer that will not be able to distinguish between it and a person."

"An animal with a thousand cells will give us a good understanding of life. The blue brain project is as grandiose as the artificial intelligence project. Mimicking the worm is a less grandiose project but will contribute more to the understanding of medicine."

What is the most important discovery to reach in computer science?
Harel: "There are many directions. In my opinion the most important discoveries in computer science will be in the use of probability in calculation, could anyone imagine that you want to write an algorithm to bake a cake or give instructions to a child that you introduce uncertainty and ask the computer to flip a coin. Will it improve programming? - Most people will say that it is best to walk in a straight line, but a discovery by several researchers, led by Michael Rabin, showed that the use of probability can result in a smarter execution of the task. Another important discovery will be the ability to build computers that will play with animals or communicate with humans. The use of probability and learning are things that are discovered in computer science and it will have uses in everyday life."

Mathematics scares children

Prof. Menachem Magidor, mathematician, former president of the Hebrew University, spoke about the connection between mathematics and its application in economics and the life sciences, since mathematics is universal, the unsolved puzzles and the reasons that cause many in Israel to stay away from the field.

In 2000, Prof. Magidor said to Zvi Yanai that he does not foresee unemployment for mathematicians in the foreseeable future.
On stage, Prof. Magidor was asked what had progressed in mathematics in the last 14 years and he replied: "There have been a series of mathematical discoveries in recent years, but due to the great abstraction required, it is difficult to explain their importance in one word.

"A very famous conjecture that has been solved over the last 14 years is the 150-year-old Poincaré conjecture (the Poincaré conjecture is a conjecture that characterizes the three-dimensional count among all canvases of the same dimension) which was solved by the mathematician Gregory Perlman."

"And also a killer hypothesis that says: "Let's look at the natural numbers. Within them are numbers that are a power of another number. Those numbers that are exact powers are quite rare. Katlan's hypothesis was that there is almost no case where two powers of numbers occur in powers of 1 such as 8 and 9." Katlan's hypothesis was that this was the only case and the mathematician Romani Michalescu about 8-9 years ago proved that Katlan's hypothesis was correct. A private case of her appears in the Rabbi Levy ben Gershom, in the 14th century. that a power of 2 cannot be close in number to a power of 3 and cannot appear except for 8- and 9."

"There are problems similar to Fermat's theorem that are still open and if they are solved they will make good PR for mathematics. The most prominent of them is the Goldbach hypothesis - that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers. What all these problems in number theory have in common is that they are easier to explain to the public because they can be formulated in terms of elementary school."

Shanhav: "There are claims that the economic crisis of 2008 was caused by mathematical models"

"I am not an economist, I have talked with several economists including Nobel laureates. There are various explanations, few think that the use of sophisticated mathematical models are the reason for the collapse of the housing market in the USA. Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the models became so sophisticated and so complex in terms of the mathematical tools they used and the decision makers did not fully understand the tools they used. Those who escaped said they adopted a policy of what they don't understand they don't use. It is desirable that those involved in the field also understand it, to the praise of the physicists, for example, the theorists understand what they are talking about when they use operators in the Hilbert space."

Shenhav: "You told Zvi Yanai that for you mathematics is absolute. Is that still true?”

Prof. Magidor: "In mathematics we work according to certain rules, axioms, inference rules, the question why these rules and not others is a good question. You can imagine other mathematics. Maybe it depends on the structure of our brain or it's a cultural thing, but the gut feeling is that mathematics is absolute. We discover, we don't invent."

Shenhav: "In recent years, alarming figures have been published about a decrease in the number of students approaching matriculation with 5 units in mathematics. Why in the Israel of 2014 does mathematics scare the Israeli youth so much and how can the trend be changed?"

Prof. Magidor: "I don't know if the trouble of many is half consolation. This happens in many countries in the world, I don't think that in the US math is any less scary. It's a combination of several things: First, everything depends on the way math is taught, the quality of the teachers (the people may be good but they don't understand the subject). The CBS data for 2009 is that in the upper division, among teachers who study mathematics, only 22% have a degree in mathematics. In all probability, someone whose main subject is not mathematics will not be able to create enthusiasm and interest and present the beauty of the subject. A second problem related to the mathematics curriculum is that she did not know how to choose the things that are more beautiful and aesthetically fascinating and practical. The third problem arises from the fact that mathematics requires intellectual effort and in the Western world there is a tendency to give up intellectual effort to students. A combination of all these things causes a deterioration in the field of mathematics."

Shenhav: "Israel is a powerhouse in mathematics, is there any fear that this will stop?"

Prof. Magidor: "The mathematical superiority of the State of Israel is very noticeable. In the meantime, we received approval for this after Elon Lindenstrass won the Fields Prize - the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. The State of Israel is still at the top of the mathematical world. Losing the interest, a smaller part of the public that will be enthusiastic about it and see it as important will affect Israel's position in the world of mathematics."

In his memory
Prof. Rafi Melnik, vice president of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center: "We miss the figure of Zvi. It is important to remember him and his work and to miss that, a similar field will emerge in society and fill his place."

Director General of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, Bina Bar-On: "I would sum it up in one word: original." He was original in everything he took care of. Talking about music is like dancing architecture. Before I came here, I wondered how to sketch his character and his many faces. If there was a way to dance architecture, Zvi Yanai would excel at it. He knew how to unite different languages ​​into one linguistic complex."