Re: Extra Terrestrials

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 01:16:51 EDT

In a message dated 08/12/2000 9:37:31 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
meekerdb.domain.name.hidden writes:

> As to the question or whether measure increases or remains constant at
death -
>
> I assume here one means the measure of a particular person (the one who
died)
> .
> The idea of decrease already assumes a time order. From a 4-dimensional
> space-time viewpoint the person's measure is constant. Along the
world-line
> of
> the person (following any particular branch) there is the death of that
> person;
> so if you refer to measures on space-like hypersurfaces later than that
> death,
> the persons measure must be zero. This seems so straightforward that I
> wonder
> if I have mistaken your meaning?

I think this is Jacques' approach. It is an absolutist point of view which
assumes an external observer looking at the death of a person and observing
the "trimming" of his branches.

The following is the relativistic approach which requires a first person
perspective: what would the person who "dies" sees along the "few" branches
where he is still alive. Does he see a decrease in his own measure (as the
independent observer sees) or does the universe appear to him to be more or
less always the same? My contention is that branches are infinitally
divisible, and no matter how many times he has died, there will still be an
infinity of branches still available to him. FROM THE SURVIVOR'S PERSPECTIVE,
the world appears the same. If he had an instrument to measure "measure" he
would not detect any difference. In fact the infinity in the number of
branches makes the design of such an instrument, a physical impossibility.

BTW, in Astronomy, the constancy of the universe with position and
orientation is called the Cosmological Principle. I am proposing to extend
this principle to the MW.

We have all in fact died many times already, except that we are not aware of
it. So, dying a few more times should not change things much anyways.

George Levy
Received on Sat Aug 12 2000 - 22:20:55 PDT