From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Wed Jul 02 2003 - 16:20:13 EDT
Hi Howard, you wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Howard J. Van Till [mailto:hvantill@chartermi.net]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 12:10 PM
>Thanks for opening up a topic related to the purpose of the ASA's
>existence.
>I have not read Max Tegmark's essay, but here are a few brief responses to
>your summary & questions.
It is worth reading, at least I thought so, because of the philosophical
implications.
>
>I would be most surprised to discover that God (or The Sacred, if you
>prefer) :) would desire this sort of predetermination. If predetermination
>eliminates surprise and the adventure that accompanies it, why
>would God not
>lose interest in it?
Is this not an anthropomorphism of God? God is like me, I would get bored
in such a universe, therefore God would get bored also, therefore God
wouldn't do it this way. Seems to me that God is what God is, our
expectations of his view of recreation shouldn't carry any more weight than
my expectations of George Murphy's preferred means of recreation (I choose
George, because to the best of my knowledge he has never spoken of his
hobbies on this board. perchance his hobby is this board)
>
>> As far as one can tell there are no hidden variables i.e. no
>> underlying rules which govern quantum events. They appear to be chance
>> related, unpredictable.
>>
>> But if, the universe was rigged so that every possible
>permutation occurred,
>> then the universe is entirely predictable. Only the location in
>the greater
>> universe of a particular Hubble arrangement isn't predictable.
>
>Question: Does "every possible permutation of matter distribution within a
>Hubble volume" also include "every possible history within that Hubble
>volume"? According to Tegmark, would the history of a particular Hubble
>volume be as determined as the matter distribution within in it at some
>instant?
That is an interesting but ultimately irrelevant question. To get another me
in another region of our universe requires that the history of matter
converge to a similar solution. But assume for a moment that the histories
must also match, then the number of universes required to do that is some
number larger than 2^(10^118), say it is
(2^(10^118))^H(t) where H(t) is some function of time. It means that the
universe must be many fold larger than Tegmark's universe. But it is still
finite. So, I view this objection as fundamentally being irrelevant. If
the universe can be large enough but still finite for Tegmark's view, a
larger, but still finite universe could handle the history problem.
>Why would it? Are you thinking that the predetermination of all
>things looks
>too easy, almost unavoidable?
Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Trivial predetermination--every
possiblitiy carried out, but that does seem to me that it diminishes the
view of God's control. It is like saying I will roll a pair of dice and I
have pre-determined that given enough rolls (large enough universe in the
case before us) every possibility will take place. It will but it seems
kind of trivial.
Which raises an interesting question in my mind. Isn't an examination of
every possible calculation what a quantum computer is supposed to do? In
paraticular I am thinking of Shor's quantum algorithm described in this
article:
"Shor, in constructing his proof of a quantum computer's
potential, in effect wrote a program for a computer that doesn't
exist. It factors large numbers by working on all the possible
answers to a problem simultaneously. Correct answers--that is,
factors of the number in question--appear in the form of a unique
interference pattern at the end of the computer's calculations,
which the computer could read like some otherworldly supermarket
bar code. Shor's program cleverly causes all numbers that aren't
factors to cancel out in the interference pattern, like waves whose
crests and troughs annihilate each other."
Tim Folger, "The Best Computer in All Possible
Worlds," Discover Oct. 1995, p. 95
Is the universe a quantum computer for God? :-) A computer which examines
all possibilities.
>
>Howard Van Till
>
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