Danny Mayes writes:
***
This is my understanding as well. Also, in regards to Hal's comments about
how unlikely the OP theory is, or how our universe does not appear likely to
collapse, even accepting these points if the OP computer is physically
possible it must occur under the MWI (somewhere in the multiverse), correct?
***
Yes, this is true, and I believe Tipler threw it in as an afterthought in
his book. The question arises, however, why would you bother with such an
elaborate mechanism for immortality as the OP theory if the MWI of QM is
correct? The MWI ensures immortality through an infinite number of possible
scenarios which collectively must be far more likely than Omega Point.
***
I'm sure everyone is familiar with the ancient philosophical argument that
time and space must be quantized, because if they were not you could never
get to a determined point in space or time given that the distance left to
travel could be infinitely divided in two...
***
Actually, I thing that this argument (Zeno) came about because the ancient
Greeks did not have any concept of an infinite series which converges to a
finite value. There is a related argument, however: if reality is analogue,
then any physical parameter would require an infinite number of
non-repeating decimal places to describe it exactly. This would mean that
what appears to be a finite system, such as an analogue voltmeter measuring
a voltage, actually contains an infinite amount of information, which is
absurd. Therefore, physical reality must be digital rather than analogue at
the finest level.
I am not sure where I first heard the above argument, and I am not sure
about the absurdity of an infinite amount of information being contained in
finite system.
Stathis Papaioannou
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attached mail follows:
This is my understanding as well. Also, in regards to Hal's comments
about how unlikely the OP theory is, or how our universe does not
appear likely to collapse, even accepting these points if the OP
computer is physically possible it must occur under the MWI (somewhere
in the multiverse), correct?
I'm sure everyone is familiar with the ancient philosophical argument
that time and space must be quantized, because if they were not you
could never get to a determined point in space or time given that the
distance left to travel could be infinitely divided in two...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I thought that
quantum theory (in all its flavours and interpretations) *does* imply
that reality is"digital". For example, if light is quantised, then the
light reflected from a real object will produce a pixelated image,
albeit far more finely grained than the image on any computer screen.
The Bekenstein Bound sets an upper limit to the amount of information
that can be contained in a given volume, or a lower limit to how finely
grained an object or its representation can be. Everything is digital;
analogue is an illusion.
Stathis Papaioannou
From: "Norman Samish"
<ncsamish@mindspring.com>
To: <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: Omega Point theory and time quanta
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 22:22:01 -0700
Perhaps mathematics, which is digital, is incapable of precise
simulation of
reality, which is not digital.
Norman Samish
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou@hotmail.com>
To: <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 9:36 PM
Subject: Omega Point theory and time quanta
There has been some discussion in recent posts about Tipler's Omega
Point
theory, which postulates that an infinite amount of subjective time can
be
squeezed into the last few moments of a collapsing universe. This is
straightforward mathematically using infinite series, but if time is
quantised, it would not work in reality; and it seems to be widely
accepted
that time is indeed quantised. Is there a way around this difficulty?
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Mon Aug 02 2004 - 01:59:55 PDT