John Collins wrote: > For instance, our planet might have > experienced an unusually high number of 'near misses' with other > astronomical bodies.
I'm always amused by the sense of deja-vu which occured on mailing lists. There I was looking at the moon, thinking how lucky we are it caught a number of astronomical bodies instead of us, only to come to the computer and find the same/similar topic being broght up. Sit on enough mailing lists and it soon becomes apparent the same/similar thing gets thought of (and at times communicated) by a significant number of people for it to be more than mere co-incidence. (Brings to mind the research being done as to whether a mass concentration of thought can actually affect the outcome of a random computational process - with some successes already being demonstrated) See the Global Consciousness Project http://noosphere.princeton.edu for more information on this. > Now that we're here to watch, the universe will be > forced to obey the law of averages, so there could be a significantly > higher probability of a deadly asteroid collision than would be > indicated by the historical frequeny of said events. Perhaps we should > carefully compare how often the other planets have been hit with how > often we have: They certainly look more craterful.... See above :-) What if on an purely unconscious level we can manipulate reality itself? If in a group of prepared trials, a number of people concentrating on a single number (all the same number) can cause a computational random number generator to be statistically less than random for the duration of that 'group' thought then maybe the same process can apply outside of merely influencing an electrical process. Maybe it can be extended to matter itself? Perhaps there are two ways of looking at it: a) in any universe which gives rise to complex organisms (perhaps sentient) there is a statistically lower averare of astronomical collissions compared to other bodies in the same region, leading to the argument that the lower than average collisions allowed for complex organisms to form b) in any universe which gives rise to complex organisms, the number of astronomical collisions will decline in proportion to the complexity of the biological organisms present (even if that means sending organisms into space to reroute potential collisions :-P) Bretton -- Cellular: +27.82.494.6902 Yahoo: bretton_cubed ICQ: 175753755 GPG key : http://bretton.hivemind.net/bretton_public.key trends::nu-media::techno-philosophy::ai "I suppose the secret to happiness is learning to appreciate the moment." -Calvin