Channeling Neumann-Feynman this is a fragment of what I want to write.
In Feinman’s proposal, earthshaking as it appeared to him, later disproved in part, Einstein and Olin? And others were there. After the proposal was presented mathematically, Olin had objections and he asked Einstein for his opinion.( no mind you, I had never heard of this on the internet or on any other prior occasion. Be as it may, the concern of Einstein over Olin’s objection was that Olin primarily brought up the critical facts against Feinman, for theoretical reasons, but needed a stamped authority to back him up.
Olin’s reliance on the uncertainty, not that built on Heisenberg’s but namely a doubly edged uncertainty about tthe all encompassing field going back to its very sources of derivation.
So Einstein said something which I’ll have to re search and fill in later.
So. I’m trying to recall this incident in feinman’s life that was overwhelmingly the forte of his life and the subsequent research which consumed the rest of his life, but that was not behind what I wanted to write about primarily.
I needed to show why I may have found out about Van Neumann in the first place in those shadowy and confusing times past WW2, and how all this may have engendered my optically illusion need to look into the depths undeterred by the warning of something in those unfathomable depths staring back .
Now among those present, the peer groups opinion of Van Neumann’s intelligence being over and above all present there, who admittedly were the cream of the crop not only of the scientific community at that point, but widely admitted to be the greatest minds of that era. Von Neumann particularly was conceded to be the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century, exceeding those in the room.
There was an inexplicably pathos to all this nearing ironic self indulgence, that Van Neumann knew this all his life up until lying in his deathbed and continue ed to solve the problem of death up to his laying on his own deathbed , in Walter Reed Hospital, Washington DC, .
That such brain, an ultimate organizational genius, knowing he encompassed all the mathematical formulations ever considered, realized or must have the importance of his own brain, vis. The dawning significance of how important it was to the survival of ideas, a monumental work of colossal significance, and how it related to his many felt work in the architecture that could be put to use in other areas such as game theory, and the very elementary dynamic underlying their reactions to magnetism. Oh it was Ullam, I previously not remember. Just remembered,
So. His mind became a huge all included globes, quite outside the very objective he sought to commune with his peers. And so he did not comment, after Einstein’s uneducable retort, but his silence spoke volumes.
Needless to say, feymN’s recall of this incident marked the rest of his life, and got the noble prize for it, bu on his death bed, he was much more assured about where It,’ goes afterwards, and conceded I presume the problem of non being having the ultimate concern of all, following Aristotle’s, with whom a new community may have been formed by neo-platonists, quite certainly Wittgenstein nominally tried to describe this effort, not for self serving reasons , but beyond the scope of self preservation, to protect those yet unborn. He claimed that nobody starts out as a blank slate.
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And if there IS a Faustian deal involved in this process, simply invert the scenario:
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Ah, I see—you’re taking it a step further. The trick isn’t just escaping the debt; it’s turning the collector into the debtor, infinitely.
Here’s how that works in Feynman’s hands:
The Knowledge-as-Power Loop
Faust typically trades his soul for finite knowledge or pleasure. But if Feynman bargains for the power to know—not a fixed set of facts, but the method of infinite inquiry—then every new thing he learns generates new insights, which in turn reveal new questions. That’s a divergent series.
The collector, being a being of contracts, thinks in terms of settled accounts. He expects a one-time transfer: soul for knowledge. But Feynman would argue: “You gave me the ability to know. By knowing, I now know you better—your rules, your loopholes, your nature. That new knowledge is itself a thing of value. And since you gave me the power to generate it, every bit of it is traceable back to your original gift. Therefore, you owe me for each new insight I produce using your own tool.”
The Infinite Taps
You mention “taps of instances”—I think you mean opportunities for the collector to be outwitted, each one generating a new debt. Yes. Imagine:
· Each time the collector tries to collect, Feynman says: “By appearing before me, you’ve just taught me something about demonic manifestation. That’s new knowledge. You now owe me one.”
· Each failed collection attempt adds a debt. The collector can never catch up because the act of collection itself produces more knowledge for Feynman.
· It’s a mathematical divergence: The collector’s debt grows faster than any finite collection schedule.
The Collector’s Dilemma
To collect the original soul, he must interact. But interaction gives Feynman data. Data gives Feynman power. Power gives Feynman leverage to demand payment from the collector. The collector’s only escape would be to never engage—but then he forfeits the original due.
So yes: Feynman doesn’t just delay. He inverts the polarity of the deal. The collector ends up owing an infinite series of “taps” (moments of being outwitted), each one a new instance where Feynman holds the marker.
The final trick? Feynman would write the collector a receipt: “Paid in full—for all debts past, present, and future—with interest compounded by the square of each new question.” Then he’d walk away, bongo drum under his arm, leaving the collector to calculate an infinite sum that never converges.