Danny Mayes writes:
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This is my understanding as well. Also, in regards to Hal's comments about how unlikely the OP theory is, or how our universe does not appear likely to collapse, even accepting these points if the OP computer is physically possible it must occur under the MWI (somewhere in the multiverse), correct?
***
Yes, this is true, and I believe Tipler threw it in as an afterthought in his book. The question arises, however, why would you bother with such an elaborate mechanism for immortality as the OP theory if the MWI of QM is correct? The MWI ensures immortality through an infinite number of possible scenarios which collectively must be far more likely than Omega Point.
***
I'm sure everyone is familiar with the ancient philosophical argument that time and space must be quantized, because if they were not you could never get to a determined point in space or time given that the distance left to travel could be infinitely divided in two...
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Actually, I thing that this argument (Zeno) came about because the ancient Greeks did not have any concept of an infinite series which converges to a finite value. There is a related argument, however: if reality is analogue, then any physical parameter would require an infinite number of non-repeating decimal places to describe it exactly. This would mean that what appears to be a finite system, such as an analogue voltmeter measuring a voltage, actually contains an infinite amount of information, which is absurd. Therefore, physical reality must be digital rather than analogue at the finest level.
I am not sure where I first heard the above argument, and I am not sure about the absurdity of an infinite amount of information being contained in finite system.
Stathis Papaioannou
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I'm sure everyone is familiar with the ancient philosophical argument that time and space must be quantized, because if they were not you could never get to a determined point in space or time given that the distance left to travel could be infinitely divided in two...
Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I thought that quantum theory (in all its flavours and interpretations) *does* imply that reality is"digital". For example, if light is quantised, then the light reflected from a real object will produce a pixelated image, albeit far more finely grained than the image on any computer screen. The Bekenstein Bound sets an upper limit to the amount of information that can be contained in a given volume, or a lower limit to how finely grained an object or its representation can be. Everything is digital; analogue is an illusion.
Stathis Papaioannou
From: "Norman Samish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Omega Point theory and time quanta
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 22:22:01 -0700
Perhaps mathematics, which is digital, is incapable of precise simulation of
reality, which is not digital.
Norman Samish
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 9:36 PM
Subject: Omega Point theory and time quanta
There has been some discussion in recent posts about Tipler's Omega Point
theory, which postulates that an infinite amount of subjective time can be
squeezed into the last few moments of a collapsing universe. This is
straightforward mathematically using infinite series, but if time is
quantised, it would not work in reality; and it seems to be widely accepted
that time is indeed quantised. Is there a way around this difficulty?
Stathis Papaioannou
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