Re: Extra Terrestrials

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 14:36:47 EDT

In a message dated 08/12/2000 11:12:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
meekerdb.domain.name.hidden writes:

> I
> guess I still don't see a problem here - unless it is the peculiarity that
'
> his
> universe' is defined retrospectively from his death. I don't see that the
> large number of other branches which have split from 'his universe' have
any
> bearing on anything.
>

OK. You are in good company here. I guess you share Jacques Mallah's opinion.

> Also, I see no reason to believe there are infinitely
> many - though of course the number must be extremely large. If one
> postulates
> a computational model of the multiverse, as is often done these
discussions,
> then the fact that only countably many numbers are computable would seem to
> imply only a finite number of branches within a finite time.

The plenitude is a philosophical concept that seems to find an echo in
physics, (and in Murphy's law :-)) Any assumption about the plenitude would
decrease its size and introduce information. Any assumption could also be
matched with the opposite assumption. Since the plenitude is "all that is
possible," assuming that it could be modeled by a discrete machine could be
countered that this is only part of it and that the other part would have to
be continuous, even at the infinitesimal level. Hence the plenitude is
infinite in every respect. The branching is infinite. So while our world
seems to be discrete, (Quantum Theory - in fact discreteness may be an
essential requirement for the evolution of consciousness), the variations
ACROSS worlds does not seem to be similarly constrained.

George Levy
Received on Sun Aug 13 2000 - 11:42:46 PDT