My philosophy on death is everyone who's alive, who's lived or who ever will live has or will die(at some point), it's as natural as being born.
Death completes the life cycle.
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My philosophy on death is everyone who's alive, who's lived or who ever will live has or will die(at some point), it's as natural as being born.
Death completes the life cycle.
Order of Kilopi
My philosophy on death is "Do not go gently into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Hey, that's not bad, someone should write that down. ; )
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Tipler's theory, which I don't subscribe to, is that a moment before the end we will have infinite processing power and the availability to run infinite simulations. By definition, infinite simulations would have to reproduce everything that ever existed since everything that ever exiated is a finite number.Originally Posted by HenrikOlsen
Even if it could happen, we would not be living on. It would be a copy of us, which is completely distinct from us, which I noted earlier in this thread.
Order of Kilopi
It could very well be infinite wrong simulations as easily as infinite correct simulations.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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I can't buy that. If infinite simulations are run every possible combination will be simulated an infinite number of times, as long as the number of possible combinations are finite.
Order of Kilopi
Imagine two parallel lines. Both are infinite, yet they never intersect.
Now imagine a computer running simulations for all eternity, and every time it does so it leaves out key variables that it just isn't programmed to consider. Not "every possible" combination of ideas, just "every imaginable" combination.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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That's just trite.<wink>
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They grow more channels on the synapses?
I guess it really comes down to what the wreckage looks like at that scale. If it's possible to deduce what it looked like--where and how many channels there were on the synapses--from the broken remains in the cell membranes, then theoretically it should be possible to duplicate. If you can't, then it's impossible.
It'd be a good idea for a scientist to look at old synapses under an AFM and assess the damage. Could save people a lot of money.
Order of Kilopi
Exactly.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
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Does it strike anyone else that if it was possible to run infinite simulations of reality, it would be infinitely immoral to do so?
Think about how much unnecessary suffering that would cause. Infinite suffering. You haven't created heaven, but hell. Let the dead stay dead.
Order of Kilopi
Life, simulated or not, isn't just suffering, it also contains pleasure. So it wouldn't really be hell, or heaven either.
But if I ever find myself in charge of virtually resurrecting the dead, I'll definitely give the subject careful thought.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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you can have some interesting philosophical discussions about consciousness.
If I wanted to ease my mind about mortality, I would be thinking that while the mind surely dies with the body, all the new borns will develop self awareness and it is fundamentally no different to yours. There is only a break in continuity which separates one of those minds to that of your own. Consciousnesses only exists in the moment, and memory provides the continuity which perhaps gives the illusion that we are more than that moment.
best i can do
Order of Kilopi
We might be near the Omega Point right now in a simulation of a possible universe that never really existed. Our simulation apparently won't have an Omega Point of its own but the real universe does. If it weren't for someone else simulating us, we would never have existed at all.
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Occam's razor is your friend.
Order of Kilopi
Or is that Occam's simulation's razor simulation?
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We also have an existance in the effects we have on the world around us that linger long after we're gone. While it's not the same as individual consciousness, it is a form of life after death.
Order of Kilopi
Yep, having infinite computing power does not a guarantee completely filling solution space, Tipler has no idea what he's talking about even if he'd be correct about infinite computing power which in closed spacetime is absurd as well.
And even if he was right, infinite monkeys in infinite time rolling out infinite copies of the second quarto version of Shakespeare's Hamlet ignores that they'd also be grinding out an exactly equal number of the bad quarto version, of the first folio version and of Shakespeare's The merry widowers of Milton Keynes and there's be no way to distinguish between them.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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Why is it anyone would ever need to pull a "(gulp)" to alleviate lashback? What kind of forum would ever lash back at such an honest question?
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But that's not Tipler's idea. His simulation runs 'every possible combination'.
Tipler's idea of how we would get to there is absolute hokum, but his math is completely correct. There are a finite number of quantum states in the human brain. If a computer could somehow find some kind of order to that, it could run through them all.
Here's just an example, but with small numbers. If there are 100 possible quantum states to the human mind, and a computer runs through them all, it would take 100 simulations for all those minds to be simulated. To be 100% certain any one mind would be simulated, we would also need to run all 100 simulations. Where it gets weird is that infinity/100 is still infinity. Every single one of those 100 quantum states is going to be simulated infinitely. And, it doesn't matter what number you use. The possible number of quantum states in the human mind, since there have been billions of humans with no duplication and there is a different quantum state at every moment of time, is unimaginably huge. But it is finite. At some point, all possible combinations will have to be exhausted. Whatever that number is, if you divide infinity by that number the answer is still infinity.
So it's not infinite parallel lines of combinations with untried combinations between them. It's a cube with all possible combinations inside with the simulation running each possible combination an infinite number of times.
I'm no expert on Tipler. I read two of his books only once and immediately traded them in at the used bookstore. But from what I recall, he believes that time will speed up as the universe contracts. At the moment right before the 'Big Crunch' he thinks that time will have sped up so much that it becomes infinite. For an observer outside our frame of reference, nothing will appear to change and our universe will just appear to wink out of existence. But for us, inside the universe, that moment becomes eternal. Every possible evolution of the universe since the big bang would be simultated infinitely.
But it's not like our minds would be 'resurrected' to live out our lives. Rather, every moment of our lives will be simulated. It sounds like the same thing, but there's a difference. There wouldn't be any continuity of thought. It would seem to us that there was, but it would be an illusion. To make it easier to see... try to prove to someone that the entire universe didn't just come into existence five minutes ago. Common sense tells us that is crazy, but we can't prove it. That's what it would be like. Every moment would be simulated infinitely, but it would be in a still frame. We wouldn't be moving through the picture.
To make it even more crazy that that, if Tipler's idea is correct, it is highly unlikely that we are not already living in that simulated reality. If there are infinite simulations, and only one 'original' the chances that we are the original are very very low.
With all that being said, I think he is a crackpot, and that's putting it gently. I think he had a brilliant career but that he has now allowed his own fears to overcome his rationality. In order for his theory to be correct, humans have to spread through the entire universe and then cause it to collapse. The first time we run into someone who doesn't want us to do that it will blow our entire plan. And that's not even mentioning the impossibility of spreading to areas of the universe that we can't access.
Last edited by primummobile; 2012-Aug-01 at 11:55 AM. Reason: typos
Order of Kilopi
I admit I don't know enough about quantum states of the brain or higher math to discuss the subject on this level. I would think Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle would prevent perfect recreation of those states, but I just don't know.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
The first CAD system I used was quite capable of finding an intersection. One of my co-workers gave it a command to trim two lines at their intersection but accidentally clicked a parallel line. Both lines shot out into space. About 2/3 of the way to the moon, in fact. It was, of course, a rounding error, which is something that you'd have to consider in your computer simulations!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Order of Kilopi
That's right, an infinite computer means debugging infinite software ...forever!
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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I think that's a pretty good take on reality.
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The point to infinite processing in a simulation is that anything that could ever happen would be simulated. It wouldn't just be things that really did happen. It's just that in the process of simulating everything that could happen (a very large set) it would also simulate everything that ever did happen. (a small set, by comparison) Given infinite computation, even a simulation with errors would eventually reproduce correct results.
The problem here is that we are messing with infinity. As an engineer, any time I see an infinity in any type of calculation I can be fairly certain that my calculation is wrong, so I cringe anytime I see it anywhere else even if it could be applicable. Infinity isn't just some number that you get by adding one to a really big number. It's a difficult concept to visualize, and I think that our disagreement lies there. I have one idea of what it can do, and you have another.
In some multiverse theories, the universe is infinite and the parallel universes are actually in our space but just impossibly far away. But in an infinite, homogenous universe there would have to be infinite copies of Earth and everyone on it. An infinite number of copies would be exactly the same. An infinite number of copies would be only slightly different. An infinite number of copies would be a little more than slightly different, and on and on. I was listening to a popular lecture one time on a podcast, and the physicist giving the lecture said that if the universe was infinite the closest we would expect to find a copy of Earth would be 1x10^43,000,000,000,000 light years away. Even that number is beyond comprehension, yet compared to infinity it is still almost nothing. But in the case of the 'Omega Point' all you are doing is simulating, so it would be even simpler to come up with everything that could have happened. .......I hope all that makes sense.
So, I guess our take on infinity is a little different. You think of it as being more linear than what I do. I don't know which is correct.
Order of Kilopi
Not quite, my take is that there are infinite kinds of infinities and not all of them "overlap". So you could, for example, have an infinite universe with only one Earth (As I said, I'm no mathematician so I could be wrong. That's just my layman's take on it)
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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You could have an infinite universe with only one earth. I'm just not sure you could have an infinite homogenous universe with only one Earth.
Order of Kilopi
Maybe it could be like Pi, a non-repeating infinite...
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Well, Pi is an infinite digit, but is not an infinite value. I'm thinking of an infinite value, in that it encompasses everything. But I see what you are saying now.
Order of Kilopi
It would have to mean, of course, that the further from Earth you get, the stranger and more different the Universe gets, since there are only a huge-but-finite number of ways that elementary particles, forces and empty space can be rearranged and not eventually repeat. I don't know if that's really homogenous or not.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Well, I just meant homogenous as we say now that the universe is homogenous on large scales. The same physical laws, same types of particles, and close to average temperature and density.... that sort of thing.
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