Re: Belief Statements

From: Norman Samish <ncsamish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 11:28:04 -0800

I can't conceive of space-time being anything other than infinite. The
existence of "all logically possible worlds" seems necessary in infinite
space-time, where ". . . anything that can happen must happen, not only once
but an infinite number of times."

The difficulty, as Hal Finney points out, is that we so far do not know what
"can happen."

Why does infinite space-time exist? Perhaps because it must - what
alternative could there be?

Norman Samish
.
----- Original Message -----
From: ""Hal Finney"" <hal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: Belief Statements


Alastair Malcolm writes:
> For my own part, I give strong credibility (>50%) to the existence of many
> worlds in some guise or other, and in particular to the existence of all
> logically possible(*) worlds (alpw). For me the existence of one world
> (ours) so conveniently life-suited - sufficiently spatio-temporally
> extended
> and quiescent but with particular properties enabling wide diversity in
> chemistry etc - demands a specific explanation, and the only other
> candidate
> final explanation - a Creator (say a God, or a 'higher' civilisation) -
> suffers (at least) the problem of requiring an explanation for *it*.

That's a great question. I agree that assuming that this is the only
world is quite problematic. On the other hand it does not necessarily
follow that all possible or conceivable worlds exist. From hearing
some physicists speak, I get the impression that they are being "dragged
kicking and screaming" towards many worlds and anthropic ideas, but are
resisting. They still hope to come up with some kind of mathematical or
philosophical reason to at least restrict the number of possible worlds.
<snip>
All in all I'd say that I see too much confusion and uncertainty to hold
to any position regarding the existence of multiple universes.

Hal Finney
Received on Sun Jan 09 2005 - 14:31:24 PST