Re: Infinite universe

From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 14:02:18 MDT


"Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> writes:
> I can see that this Library of Babel metaverse is possible, but I'm not sure
> why it's necessary...

It is all around you by definition. We have:

1) A physics in which any given volume can only hold a finite number
   of possible states.
2) A physics that, thanks to quantum mechanics, generates nice even
   distributions of states.
3) Initial conditions that apparently consisted of (from the WMAP
   data) mostly uniform distribution of matter and a flat and thus
   infinite space filled with that matter.

That means if you only go far enough, you'll eventually find a volume
with any given configuration. This assumes that the universe is as the
cosmologists currently believe it to be -- which might change with
time, of course.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:42 MDT