From: Lawrence Foard (entropy@farviolet.com)
Date: Thu Aug 21 2003 - 08:24:57 MDT
On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:
> Here's Davies' paper on the topic, where he assails Tegmark as, in effect,
> a naive deist; hmmm:
>
> http://aca.mq.edu.au/PaulDavies/Multiverse_StanfordUniv_March2003.pdf
In general I think all these arguments have a flaw. They use a narrow
definition of life which neglects the fact that what we normally call
life is only an extreme of what the universe does all the time.
Tornados and hurricanes are self sustaining, so are atoms.
Fire reproduces, so does the motion of an individual snow flake
in a avalanche.
In these cases however too little information is passed from generation
to generation to allow much evolution to take place.
We are only an extreme, we are self sustaining, self reproducing
phenomenon, which can pass significant amounts of information forward,
giving us a decent capacity to evolve.
When you forget about carbon, who is to say that somewhere electrical
activity in stars, or motions of particles in neutron stars, etc. hasn't
also obtained a similar level to us? Its obvious that machines could be
constructed that are not carbon based, which can reproduce, and write
poetry at the same time (possibly even poetry about the act of
reproducing).
So its quite possible that any possible (*) universe which contains clumps
of matter, may contain self reproducing phenomenon, some of which may be
able to carry information forward to future generations, thus allowing
prolonged evolution.
The possibility of life, and evolution to me seems to be written into
math, rather than physical law. Physical law only provides a particular
implementation. Even a 'failed' universe containing a big bang with matter
later being scattered, might contain exotic forms of life in its first
instants. Our universe like its is also doomed, eventually our universe
will be unable to support life, there's just runs out much sooner.
(*) - We don't know enough to say if any other set of physical laws is
possible, any more than we can say what the googleth digit of PI
is.
--
Be a counter terrorist perpetrate random senseless acts of kindness
Rave: Immanentization of the Eschaton in a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
We are nothing but sunlight detours, in the road between fusion and eternity.
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