David Pearce is a British philosopher with Utilitarian leanings, and his
extensive "HedWeb" site has been around for many years. His main thesis is
contained in a book-length article called "The Hedonistic Imperative", in
which he argues that the aim of civilization should be the ultimate
elimination of all suffering in sentient life. He proposes that this be done
not primarily through traditional methods, such as banning animal cruelty
(although he has much to say about that as well), but by directly accessing
and altering the neural mechanisms responsible for suffering, through
pharmacological and neurological means initially, and eventually through
genetic engineering so that no organism is physically capable of
experiencing suffering.
Pearce's thesis does not really address the next stage after
neuroengineering often discussed on this list, namely living as uploaded
minds on a computer network. The interesting question arises of how we would
(or should) spend our time in this state. It would be a simple matter of
programming to eliminate suffering and spend eternity (or however long it
lasts) in a state of heavenly bliss. The obvious response to such a proposal
is that perpetual bliss would be boring, and leave no room for motivation,
curiosity, progress, etc. But boredom is just another adverse experience
which could be simply eliminated if you have access to the source code. And
if you think about it, even such tasks as participating in discussions such
as the present one are only really motivated by anticipation of the complex
pleasure gained from it; if you could get the same effect or better,
directly, with no adverse consequences, why would you waste your time doing
it the hard way?
--Stathis Papaioannou
>Hal,
>
>Thanks for an illuminating explanation of Tipler's paper.
>
>I wonder if you and/or any other members on this list have an opinion about
>the validity of an article at
>
>http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm
>
>This is a discussion of "WHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST?" (The author is
>apparently a David Pearce. There are many with that name and I am unable
>to
>determine which one.) His conclusion is that ". . . the summed membership
>of the uncountably large set of positive and negative numbers, and every
>more fancy and elaborate pair of positive and negative real and imaginary
>etc terms, trivially and exactly cancels out to/adds up to 0. . . . Net
>energy etc of Multiverse = 0 = all possible outcomes. . . if, in all, there
>is 0, i.e no (net) properties whatsoever, then there just isn't anything
>substantive which needs explaining." (Please go to the URL to avoid
>misinterpretations which I may have introduced by my editing.)
>
>Norman Samish
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: ""Hal Finney"" <hal.domain.name.hidden>
>To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>; <Fabric-of-Reality.domain.name.hidden.com>
>Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 5:16 PM
>Subject: Re: Tipler Weighs In
>
>
>Lee Corbin points to
>Tipler's March 2005 paper "The Structure of the World From Pure Numbers":
>http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/68/4/R04
>
>I tried to read this paper, but it was 60 pages long and extremely
>technical, mostly over my head. The gist of it was an updating of
>Tipler's Omega Point theory, advanced in his book, The Physics of
>Immortality. Basically the OP theory predicts, based on the assumption
>that the laws of physics we know today are roughly correct, that the
>universe must re-collapse in a special way that can't really happen
>naturally, hence Tipler deduces that intelligent life will survive
>through and guide the ultimate collapse, during which time the information
>content of the universe will go to infinity.
>
>The new paper proposes an updated cosmological model that includes a
>number of new ideas. One is that the fundamental laws of physics for the
>universe are infinitely complex. This is where his title comes from; he
>assumes that the universe is based on the mathematics of the continuum,
>i.e. the real numbers. In fact Tipler argues that the universe must
>have infinitely complex laws, basing this surprising conclusion on the
>Lowenheim-Skolem paradox, which says that any set of finite axioms
>can be fit to a mathematical object that is only countable in size.
>Hence technically we can't really describe the real numbers without an
>infinite number of axioms, and therefore if the universe is truly based
>on the reals, it must have laws of infinite complexity. (Otherwise the
>laws would equally well describe a universe based only on the integers.)
>
>Another idea Tipler proposes is that under the MWI, different universes
>in the multiverse will expand to different maximum sizes R before
>re-collapsing. The probability measure however works out to be higher
>with larger R, hence for any finite R the probability is 1 (i.e. certain)
>that our universe will be bigger than that. This is his solution to why
>the universe appears to be flat - it's finite in size but very very big.
>
>Although Tipler wants the laws to be infinitely complex, the physical
>information content of the universe should be zero, he argues, at the
>time of the Big Bang (this is due to the Beckenstein Bound). That means
>among other things there are no particles back then, and so he proposes
>a special field called an SU(2) gauge field which creates particles
>as the universe expands. He is able to sort of show that it would
>preferentially create matter instead of antimatter, and also that this
>field would be responsible for the cosmological constant (CC) which is
>being
>observed, aka negative energy.
>
>In order for the universe to re-collapse as Tipler insists it must,
>due to his Omega Point theory, the CC must reverse sign eventually.
>Tipler suggests that this will happen because life will choose to do so,
>and that somehow people will find a way to reverse the particle-creation
>effect, catalyzing the destruction of particles in such a way as to
>reverse the CC and cause the universe to begin to re-collapse.
>
>Yes, he's definitely full of wild ideas here. Another idea is that
>particle masses should not have specific, arbitrary values as most
>physicists believe, but rather they should take on a full range of values,
>from 0 to positive infinity, over the history of the universe. There is
>some slight observational evidence for a time-based change in the fine
>structure constant alpha, and Tipler points to that to buttress his theory
>- however the actual measured value is inconsistent with other aspects,
>so he has to assume that the measurements are mistaken!
>
>Another testable idea is that the cosmic microwave background radiation
>is not the cooled-down EM radiation from the big bang, but instead is the
>remnants of that SU(2) field which was responsible for particle creation.
>He shows that such a field would look superficially like cooled down
>photons, but it really is not. In particular, the photons in this special
>field would only interact with left handed electrons, not right handed
>ones. This would cause the photons to have less interaction with matter
>in a way which should be measurable. He uses this to solve the current
>puzzle of high energy cosmic rays: such rays should not exist due to
>interaction with microwave background photons. Tipler's alternative does
>not interact so well and so it would at least help to explain the problem.
>
>Overall it is quite a mixed bag of exotic ideas that I don't think
>physicists are going to find very convincing. The idea of infinitely
>complex natural laws is going to be particularly off-putting, I would
>imagine. However the idea that the cosmic microwave background interacts
>differently with matter than ordinary photons is an interesting one and
>might be worth investigating. It doesn't have that much connection to
>the rest of his theory, though.
>
>Hal Finney
>
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Received on Mon May 16 2005 - 23:44:53 PDT