From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Apr 25 2003 - 15:48:57 MDT
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>>
>>Universe doesn't have a plural form. There is just one (1) universe.
>
> Although "Universe" used to mean "absolutely everything", now it
> conventionally seems to mean something vaguely like "a space governed
> by a particular set of physical laws such that all points are mutually
> accessible in some manner" or something analogous, rather than
> "absolutely everything". The physicists have been speaking of things
> like "basement universes" etc. for long enough that as a term of art
> they don't mean "absolutely everything" when they say "universe".
I use the term Reality to indicate the sum of everything. If "universe"
is to be used for this, how then would we describe the relation between
our own Big Bang and its subsequent infinitely large spacetime bubble, and
that of other Big Bangs and their subsequent bubbles? In fact, I recall
that during one particular discussion of parent-child lines of Big Bangs,
I was forced to name our own Universe the "Socrates Universe" in order to
keep track. Who knows, maybe someday it'll become official.
Of course this leaves open the question of what to name our own little
nook within the Level IV worlds. Given that some Level IV worlds simulate
and overlap other Level IV worlds, our "location" may not be very well
defined.
Nonetheless, I hereby dub our home the Bayes Process.
So my address is currently:
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky,
Atlanta, Georgia,
USA, Earth,
Sol, Milky Way,
Virgo, Virgo,
Socrates, Bayes
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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