From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 21:33:24 MDT
> "Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> writes:
> > > Your reasoning there is flawed. The impact on our universe is entirely
> > > caused by items within our universe interacting -- such as scientists
> > > and the WMAP satellite interacting with information about the thermal
> > > fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation. The fact that this
> > > can confirm or falsify a flat geometry for our universe does not mean
> > > we're getting information out of other universes.
> >
> > I agree that empirical observations can confirm or falsify a
> flat geometry
> > for our universe, but I'm not sure why the flatness (or
> otherwise) of our
> > universe necessarily implies the existence of a bunch of other
> universes.
>
> Have you read Tegmark's paper? Given a flat universe, we have an
> infinite universe, and other Hubble volumes may be thought of as
> parallel worlds -- indeed, if you think of the Hubble volumes as being
> much like volumes in Borges's "Library of Babel" you're sure to find
> every possible arrangement of matter, an infinite number of times. You
> can choose to think of these distant Hubble volumes as parallel
> universes (or not, as your taste goes).
I skimmed Tegmark's paper a while ago, but I have not studied the topic
carefully, I confess.
I can see that this Library of Babel metaverse is possible, but I'm not sure
why it's necessary... I guess the argument is that it's the simplest
hypothesis, then...?
ben g
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