nichomachus wrote:
>
> On Apr 19, 4:26 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>> nichomachus wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 19, 11:51 am, "Telmo Menezes" <te....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Those branches exist even if the experiment is not set
>>>>> up. This follows necessarily from the MWI. Pick any date in history
>>>>> that you like. There must exist fluke branches that have experienced
>>>>> unlikely histories since that time. The example I mentioned previously
>>>>> was no atomic decay since January 1, 1900.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes I agree. The second law is just a statistical property, is it not?
>>>> I believe it is possible to observe cases where the second law does
>>>> not hold, even for a long time. But it's extremely unlikely. That
>>>> being said, I would argue that it would be nice if we could come to
>>>> the conclusion that the quantum suicider experiment can work even
>>>> without the need to resort to an highly unlikely stacking of quantum
>>>> choices.
>>>>
>>> How would it work? The point of the suicider experiement is that the
>>> suicider is able to prove to himself the reality of MWI by forcing
>>> himself to experience only an absurdly low probability set of events.
>>> Thus, he demonstrates to the few versions of himself who remain the
>>> existence of fluke branches, and by extension the truth of the MWI.
>>>
>>> Right, I agree that a universe in which entropy decreases
>>> monotonically would be unlikely since it would only happen in those
>>> exceedingly rare fluke branches.
>>>
>> If it were also expanding in spacetime it would be exactly like our universe.
>>
>
> I read recently that entropy is increasing, but a measure called
> entropy density is decreasing due to inflation. This is how it was
> supposed that a universe tending toward maximum entropy could avoid
> heat death, as the theoretical entropy max grows along with the
> universe.
>
Right. That is how the universe could have started in a state of
maximum entropy (e.g. 1bit in a Planck volume) and evolved always
increasing entropy and yet be in a state far from equilibrium now. It
doesn't exactly avoid "death" though. That phrase was used to describe
a universe that came to equilibrium - all the same temperature - so that
there would be no free energy to support life. But it now appears that
the universe will expand indefinitely and will suffer "cold death". The
available free energy will still go to zero, not because the universe is
in equilibrium, but because its temperature approaches zero.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Sat Apr 19 2008 - 19:37:55 PDT