Freeman Dyson, at the age of 94, is still disturbing the universe. He has a new book out, Maker of Patterns, a collection of annotated letters that tells his life story through the 1970s. He continues writing splendid essays for The New York Review of Books. His latest, in the May 10 issue, ends with the Dysonian sentence, “Freedom is the divine spark that causes human children to rebel against grand unified theories imposed by their parents.”
Hoping to do a Q&A with him, I sent him a dozen questions. I asked, for example, about his assertions that the environmental movement has been “hijacked by a bunch of climate fanatics” and that “paranormal phenomena are real.” (See my 2011 post on Dyson’s “bunkrapt” ideas.) He ignored all the questions except for one about the Singularity. Here is our exchange:
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