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Science

Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality 169

Posted by Hemos from the life-the-universe-and-everything dept.
There's an interesting piece by Martin Rees about the nature of the Uni/Multiverse, as well as some of the underlying mechanics. Also, a good bit on the nature of scientific research. You can get the text or the Real version. Good stuff.
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Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality More

Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality

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  • In my section of the Multiverse (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:35PM (#6002400)
    Real doesn't suck so much.
  • multi-verse theories are boring. try M-theory on for size: see http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/holo/ and http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=holographic+principle+m-theory&btnG=Google+Se arch
  • I'm a personal fan of the multiverse of Mage; particularly the Gauntlet and Avatar Storm =)

  • Real audio (Score:5, Funny)

    by fredrikj ( 629833 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:41PM (#6002441) Homepage
    You can get the text or the Real version. Good stuff.

    Great, except that the odds of getting meaningful sound out of the noise in .ram files are worse than those of finding alien signals in the SETI@Home project.

    (OT, it's great to have karma to burn)
  • Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it.

  • Don't encourage idiots... (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by I'm a racist. ( 631537 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:44PM (#6002466) Homepage Journal
    This stuff is rather speculative. And, to really understand it, valid or not, takes quite a few years of background. Invariably, when you get the general public reading things like this, it gets them started spouting all kinds of ridiculous shit. They automatically oversimplify, and pretend to actually comprehend it (despite not even knowing what a differential equation is).

    I'm all for getting people interested in science. But, is there some way to do that without only getting them to absorb a fraction of the information, and then going on to propogate gross misinformation?

    I hate to say that such things shouldn't be written, but they may actually do more harm than good. Afterall, everyone who's read one of Hawking's books thinks they could carry on a conversation with a high level theorist (in topics such as cosmology, quantum mechanics, etc), which is absolutely not the case.

    I'll bet that over 50% of the comments for this article will be pseudo-intellectuals espousing their retarded theories, misinformation, and other general stupidity... as opposed to the typical 30-40% of idiocy most /. articles draw.
    • Heh heh, damn I want to mod this up. Notice it never happens in something like chemistry. Only in math, physics, and philosophy does everyone seem to feel the need to weigh in with their oh-so-intelligent thoughts.

    • Whats wrong with you? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by m4g02 ( 541882 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:17PM (#6002656)
      Don't encourage idiots...
      I hate to say that such things shouldn't be written, but they may actually do more harm than good

      Elitist crap. Its ok if people dont understand now what he is saying, they dont need to, a lot of persons reading such an strange theory (to current common knowledge) is enough to do good for civilization. Is not like they are going to be in charge of a nuclear reactor, so why in the first place are you whining?, this kind of "for common folks" inspired documents are good to introduce ideas to the base culture, maybe it wont be undertood until 2050, but thanks to documents like this, that little by little introduce new ideas, it will be undertood some day.

      So, without prolonging more this stupid thread of yours, my guess is that you think you are way too special with your selfish elitist crap.

    • Re:Don't encourage idiots... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:43PM (#6002853)
      "I'll bet that over 50% of the comments for this article will be pseudo-intellectuals espousing their retarded theories, misinformation, and other general stupidity... "
      Guess which side of that 50% fence your comment is on! bwhahahahaaaa!
    • shit i'm probably one of those idiots and I think this is insightful
    • Good physical theories are generally intuitive enough to be understood by most people on high level. Will they be able to calculate values and forces and whatnot? No, but the theory still makes intuitive sense. You are right to say that anyone acting like an authority on a subject without knowing the math is overstepping their knowledge. But the avergage layperson really can get the gist of gravity, strings, spacetime, etc.

      Just because someone doesn't understand the math (diff eq) doesn't mean they can't u
    • I'm all for getting people interested in science. But, is there some way to do that without only getting them to absorb a fraction of the information, and then going on to propogate gross misinformation?

      Not if you're going to ask them to pay for the research...

    • Re:Don't encourage idiots... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hbo ( 62590 ) * on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @09:06PM (#6003844) Homepage
      Off-topic response to flaimbait warning.

      Afterall, everyone who's read one of Hawking's books thinks they could carry on a conversation with a high level theorist (in topics such as cosmology, quantum mechanics, etc), which is absolutely not the case.

      Heh. Well, the general public can carry on conversations with high level theorists that aren't elitist jerks.

      I actually have personal experience to back that up. For six years I worked as a system administrator at a UC Physics department. We had two Nobel Laureates. One could hardly speak to other people, including other Physicists. But that wasn't from elitism; it was more a question of poor socialization. 8) The other was quite accessible. A true gentleman, he would take the time to explain things if you asked. But I learned the most from the gradual students, many of whom seemed not to have caught the elite bug yet. (I wonder if they point a HERF gun at Physicists when they get tenure?)

      After all those years, I learned quite a lot about Physics, despite having only a rough conceptual understanding of what a differential equation is. I also learned much about human nature as it applies to Very Bright People. Some of them are the most wonderful people I've known. A few I would put in the category of "monster." And of course most fall in between the extremes.
    • At the risk of being modded down the second time, I'll repost this.

      Hey, thanks for replying and not modding like some others did, just because I have another opinion then yours. This is not a flamebait.

      I am waaaay out of my teens and I'm still an atheist. Not a fundamentalist, though. For me, Martin Reese is just lost to science. The whole page is suspicious, having more than 10 (unknown) people state he is a scientist. This was an ad for religion. The human brain wants to explain things so badly, that if

      • idiots... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by barakn ( 641218 )
        The whole page is suspicious, having more than 10 (unknown) people state he is a scientist.

        Alan Guth is the originator of the inflation model of the big bang. He is much more qualified than you to speak about Martin Reese's standing in the scientific community. Your problem stems from the fact that you believe science and religion are mutually exclusive. One can believe in science and another religion at the same time. There are no rules stating that you must believe one or the other but not both. I

    • Alright. One question. How did you get interested in Science and started understanding it? (not sure if you did, still, hypothetically speaking...)
      Don't be a jerk. And thank you for reminding everyone how not to be.

  • I thought this was interesting (Score:3, Informative)

    by spumoni_fettuccini ( 668603 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:46PM (#6002469) Journal
    This" [sciam.com] was in Scientific American a little while ago. Who knew? I had thought multiverse theory was restrained to sci-fi and comic books.

    • Re:I thought this was interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dale Dunn ( 561102 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:06PM (#6002578)
      Well, until a multiverse theory has actualy observational data pointing to it, perhaps it should stay restrained to sci-fi and comic books.

      I'm not aware of any widely accepted theory that says we can make observations to prove or disprove any multiverse theory, so it hardly seems logical to classify them as scientific. SciAm should know better, or at least admit that the article is philosophical speculation, and not scientific.

      • That is a very bold statement. Would you say the same about Super-String theories? What about black holes? At what point does something become observable ?

      • > Well, until a multiverse theory has actualy observational data pointing to it, perhaps it should stay restrained to sci-fi and comic books.

        > I'm not aware of any widely accepted theory that says we can make observations to prove or disprove any multiverse theory, so it hardly seems logical to classify them as scientific. SciAm should know better, or at least admit that the article is philosophical speculation, and not scientific.

        It's all a part of the scientific method. Before you can test hypo

      • When the gravitational wave detection experiments detect the presence of gravitational waves (and I am sure they will, it's only a question of how good our instrumentation gets), then we can and will know the Cosmic Background Radiation is not the only horizon that affects our ablity to do cosmology. Then the idea of multiverses will come.
      • OK...explain the slit experiment (you know, with photons) and the banding of photons. That, and depper quantum mechanics, has at one part in the explanation something to the effect that the banding of photons could only happen if we pretend that the photons are interacting with other photons in a different universe (gross, humongous oversimplification). Quite a bit of theory is based on that assumption, that the photon behaves as if (not because, but we just pretend as if) it interacts with another photon (

    • Its a bunch of pop-science gooblygook (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:34PM (#6002796)
      Scientific American's article is a confused mess of ideas in an attempt to take a lot of speculation in unrelated areas of theory and make it look like science. The magazine has gone down hill in credibility in the last few years, and this article is the crowning achievement so far; Scientific American is the new OMNI.

      • > The magazine has gone down hill in credibility in the last few years, and this article is the crowning achievement so far

        Surely no worse than Carolyn Meinel's article on computer security [google.com] back in 1998?

        > Scientific American is the new OMNI..

        FWIW, I still find several articles worth reading in each issue, plus lots of news material that I would have trouble picking up otherwise.

      • FYI: Max Tegmark [upenn.edu] is a leading cosmologist, working on understanding what the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure of galaxies can tell us about the universe.

        Calling this particular piece, speculative as it may be, the sign of a new "low" for Scientific American - unless you personally have also published extensively in the field [harvard.edu] - may be premature.

        -renard

      • It does blend many different interpretations of "multiverse" in the same article. But the text clearly indicates when he is talking about which variation.

        That it is speculative, there is no doubt. And it isn't Engineering. But speculation is an essential ingredient of science, and the title of the magazine is Scientific American, not Engineering American. Though they frequently run articles that are actually more appropriate the that latter magazine.

        Perhaps you are complaining because it talks about c
    • i read the article and it's interesting, but the whole time i'm thinking... it seems like the theories they propose are all geo-centric. Didn't we realize earth isn't the center of the universe a while back? All the "hubble sphere" stuff... seems like identifying "a universe" is based on earth being in the center. what if we're towards the edge? then these theories don't work (it seems).
      • hum, are you serious or not? the hubble sphere depends on us being in the centre of a sphere, but it doesn't really mean anythinng really, if You went to mars your hubble sphere's centre would be on mars, etc, etc. It's all about that after a certain distance you cannot see any further and that is true in all directions, hence a sphere. Heck, each one of us little critters on this planet got our own hubble sphere!
        please read [virginia.edu]
        • yeah I realize that, but they're saying we can calculate the distance to alternate universes from that point. So, if i drive a light-year north (just play along) then the point changes and therefore the distance to that alternate universe changes. it seems like you'd never be able to get there because it would always keep moving away from you whenever you moved.
          • well, it's not really an alternate universe, just a paret of universe we haven't bee able to see yet, since it's too far away for it's light to have traveled to us, every year our hubble sphere expands a light year in each direction. I must admit the way they talk about it as an 'alternative universe' is a bit misleading, it's not. The only reason they say there might be a planet with 'us' on is because of probability (think sometinhg along 'Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewrite

    • Funny! I just replied earlier with the same article. I also submitted it for posting, but I guess my prose wasn't so hot, or else it wasn't deemed to be a good topic :( .

  • More universes than atoms (Score:5, Funny)

    by killthiskid ( 197397 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:55PM (#6002525) Homepage Journal
    At first it was thought that there might be just one unique solution to the equations, just one possible three-dimensional universe with one possible 'vacuum state' and one set of laws. But it seems now, according to the experts, that there could be a huge number.
    In fact Lenny Susskind claims that there could be more possible types of universe than there are atoms in our universe--a quite colossal variety. The system of universes could be even more intricate and complex than the biosphere of our planet. This really is a mind-blowing concept, especially when we bear in mind that each of those universes could themselves be infinite.

    Note the bolded part of this quote... there could be a multiverse where most slashdotters have sex on a regular basis.! The best news geeks have ever heard!

  • Multiverse theories scientific? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dale Dunn ( 561102 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:56PM (#6002532)
    What is the basis for multiverse theories? Is there anything in observed physics to indicate their possible existence? Is there any data pointing to a multiverse other than the fact that the idea of existence having a finite beginning is "philosophically repugnant".

    If multiverse theories are based on philosophical preference rather than observed data, are not multiverse theories then properly classified as philosophical or metaphysical rather than scientific? Is there any conceivable test that could prove the existence of another universe? If not, then it seems multiverse theories should be published in philosophical journals, and certainly should not be classified as scientific, since science can neither prove nor disprove them.

    This author may be a brilliant scientist, but I think we should keep in mind that he's speculating outside the realm of science.

    • Maybe it's purely a philosphical topic. but it may as well yield results to understand our universe.

      Like the apparent absurd idea of the square root of -1.
    • These theories are not just philosophical wanderings. They are based in mathmatics, which, when carried out to its edges show us the shapes and ideas of our universe that sound philosophical when they are put to prose. Its that simple.

    • Re:Multiverse theories scientific? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      People say that the interference patterns created by single photons, electrons (or even atoms) in two slit experiments constitute "obsverved physical data." Wave/particle duality is another way of saying that we have evidence of many worlds, but don't want to admit it. Quantum collapse is also evidence, showing you can't directly look at one universe from another. These things have been shown over and over.

      I suppose it might be evidence of something else, but what?

      David Deutsch says that if (when) quan
    • Science can't prove evolution or the big bang (although it would love to do so) but those *theories* are still published in scientific journals. Scientists can't prove either but treats the theories just like they are laws. I wish I had a dollar every time someone made an argument for those theories, made an argument using those theories, or just said something in passing about those theories. They are that pervasive, especially if you ever watch the Discovery Channel. That channel acts like nothing else c
      • The scientific method simply denies the existence of "laws", as you've put it. Theories do tend to get disproven, or modified over time. Cases in point:

        Newton created a model of how gravity works. Einstein proved Newton "wrong" with the general theory of relativity (I actually know little about the general theory of relativity, but am pretty familiar with the special theory of relativity; the latter being a subset of the former). But, when shuttle astronauts go up into space and use their computers to

    • Perhaps you should read this article in Scientific American "click me!" [sciam.com]. It speakes to parallel universes, but explains the thinking behind them. While it is not a journal by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely an interesting read.

    • What is the basis for your post? Is there anything you've observed that indicates that this is not a testable theory based on scientific principals? Is there any data indicating that it is not scientific other than your own nagging feelings that a multiverse theory is untestable?

      If your posts are based on assumptions rather than knowledge of the field, are not your posts uninformed tripe? If so, then it seems your posts should be withheld until they can be classified as thought-out.

      Your post may have a
    • The basis for multiverse theories is that our horizon for Electromagnetism or Gravity should be different.
    • Actually, in quantum mechanics, we can see the universes split and join back together again in some cases; it very significantly changes the probabilities that certain events occur.

      What happens to any universes that didn't rejoin with ours we can't tell for sure. However, a reasonable assumption seems to be that they still exist, and we have no reason to think that they don't. Most professional physicists believe in the many histories theory of quantum physics, which implies multiple universes.

  • Info about dark matter and extra dimensions (Score:5, Informative)

    by zaneIO ( 606505 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @05:56PM (#6002536)
    Here [spacedaily.com]is some info about dark matter and extra dimensions.

  • You mean... (Score:1, Funny)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) *
    ...there could be more than one slashdot? Yuck.
  • The similarity [thepolyesterproject.com] is striking [thepolyesterproject.com]. :^)

    Actually, I watched this clip yesterday, coincidentally just after getting home from seeing the Matrix Reloaded -- interesting stuff.

  • Please.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by GeneralEmergency ( 240687 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:18PM (#6002665) Journal

    ...let this be that one 'verse where I get modded up all the time.

  • deja vu all over again (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    best quote from the article:

    "All these multiverse ideas lead to a remarkable synthesis between cosmology and physics, giving substance to ideas that some of us had ten or 20 years ago. But they also lead to the extraordinary consequence that we may not be the deepest reality, we may be a simulation. All these multiverse ideas lead to a remarkable synthesis between cosmology and physics, giving substance to ideas that some of us had ten or 20 years ago. But they also lead to the extraordinary consequence th

  • philosophy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YllabianBitPipe ( 647462 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:24PM (#6002710)

    Here's my 2 cents worth of amateur philosophy on this subject.

    I think multiple universes is highly likely because each time people have thought our existence is "special" or "one of a kind" we've been proven wrong. For example, the earth is NOT the center of the universe. Neither is the sun the center of the galaxy, neither is our galaxy the center of the universe etc. etc. There are a multitude of other planets, stars and galaxies in the universe. It is no hard leap to see that our universe is likely not special in any particular way and is not likely the only universe.

    I also do not buy into these recent claims that the universe, life on earth or anything on it in particular smacks of some "design" or pre-meditated intent by some creator. One good example is the huge amount of distances between stars and planets. Space travel from here to some other star will likely not happen for thousands of years, not only due to the distance but that speed of light thing. So, I really think if this universe was created for the intent of life, things would be moving along quite a bit quicker (not on the order of trillions of years) and any life would be spaced a bit closer together. What we have here seems to be a really, really, really dull version of the SIMS where your neighbors are trillions of miles away, and your SIMS take millions of years to step outside. If there's a god out there, he's a really boring guy.

    So the only explanation I have for life is that with an infinite amount of universes and planets, the odds are SOMETHING will happen on one infitesimally tiny part of one of them. That something in the larger scheme of things has about the significance of a blip of nothing in nothingness. And that blip is us. That doesn't sound like divine intervention to me.

    • Here's my 2 cents worth of amateur philosophy on this subject.

      Yeah, that's about all it's worth...

      I think multiple universes is highly likely because each time people have thought our existence is "special" or "one of a kind" we've been proven wrong. For example, the earth is NOT the center of the universe.

      I'll assume here that you're referring to the medieval belief that the earth was the center of the universe, and further that you're incorrectly assuming (like most who reference this belief in thei

    • Re:philosophy (Score:3, Informative)

      by jkauzlar ( 596349 ) *
      I was thinking the reasoning was more complicated than this, but I think you're right. I think its very simple! One reason I often hear to back up the multi-verse theory is that if one of our physical constants were slightly larger or smaller, then an entirely different universe would result where life as we know it would be impossible.

      So if (is it alpha?) alpha were .001 larger, we wouldn't be here. Either there IS a god that set the constants exactly right, or we are extremely lucky, or there are many uni

      • OK. But what if it were only 0.00001 larger, or smaller. Or 0.0000000000000000001? Whereever it starts working, there are an infinite number of numbers between that and zero. And perhaps an adjustment of one of the other constants could modify the effect.

        I'm not convinced of the multiverse. It's plausible, but not convincing. But what are the plausible alternatives? That's the tough question. Super-predestinationism would work, but seems a bit unreasonable. (If identical twins reaised in the same

  • What would Morpheus say? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:25PM (#6002715)
    "There is no matrix, there is only what is real." -- Laurence Fishburne in response [washingtonpost.com] to Matrix-inspired hysteria.

    It is only apropos that it is the actor who plays Morpheus who has to set us straight on what is and what is not real.
    Martin Rees is perhaps an expert on astrophysics, but Fishburne is an expert on appearance and illusion.

  • Parallel Universe article in Scientific American (Score:4, Informative)

    by ciphertext ( 633581 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @06:37PM (#6002820)

    A Scientific American (publication website) [sciam.com] article talks about a theory of parallel universes (article link) [sciam.com] that is gaining in popularity in the cosmology circles. It speaks of a "Multiverse" as well. Though, not in the same vein.

    • The article in sciam is by Max Tegmark. Tegmark and Rees have published a number of papers together - though not specifically about the multiverse. As far as I can make out from reading most of Rees's books and some of Tegmark's papers including his highly speculative "theory of everything" one - that Rees and Tegmark have very similar views on the multiverse.

      I can remember the time about eleven years ago when I first felt there was no alternative to the multiverse at least at two of the four levels Tegm


  • At first sight you might get worried about an infinity of things in themselves infinite, but to deal with this you have to draw on a body of mathematics called transfinite number theory, that goes back to Cantor in the 19th century. Just as many kinds of pure mathematics have already been taken over by physicists, this rather arcane subject of transfinite numbers is now becoming relevant, because we've got to think of infinities of infinity. Indeed, there's perhaps even a higher hierarchy of infinities: in addition to our universe being infinite, and there being an infinite number of possible laws of nature, we may want to incorporate the so-called many worlds theory of quantum mechanics.

    Why does this sound so familiar? ... Oh, I know, it sounds like the arguments I used to have with my brother:

    Me: You're an idiot
    Brother: Well, you're an idiot times infinity.
    Me: Oh yeah? Well, you are an idiot times infinity times infinity!

    And so on and so forth.

  • Interesting typo (Score:3, Funny)

    by jamesmartinluther ( 267743 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @07:03PM (#6002979) Homepage
    Maybe I am reading too much into a simple duplication, but I wonder if this was intentional:

    Once you accept the idea of the multiverse, and that some universes will have immense potentiality for complexity, it's a logical consequence that in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate parts of themselves, and you may get sort of infinite regress, so we don't know where reality stops and where the minds and ideas take over, and we don't know what our place is in this grand ensemble of universes and simulated universes.Once you accept the idea of the multiverse, and that some universes will have immense potentiality for complexity, it's a logical consequence that in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate parts of themselves, and you may get sort of infinite regress, so we don't know where reality stops and where the minds and ideas take over, and we don't know what our place is in this grand ensemble of universes and simulated universes.
    - JML
  • until a theory has any way to disprove it, it is largely a philosophic piece rather than scientific. multiverse is one such thing. I can easily say that if i had not typed this letter, everyone on this earth would have beed dead. Go prove me wrong!
    • Science is philosophy. The word Physics is derived from the Greek Physikoi, which means "Natural Philosphy." We think of science and "philosophy" (covering ethics, cosmology, ontology, metaphysics, etc) as being separate because they are taught in separate academic departments in universities. In reality, science is just a highly specialized area of philosophy. You can't study the history of science or philosophy without running into the other. Nor can you study modern philosophy or science without runn
      • In reality, science is just a highly specialized area of philosophy.

        Science is that part of philosophy to which the scientific method can be applied. In that sense the poster is correct: any statement which is inherently impossible to test scientificly may well be philosophical without being scientific and his example of writing a letter is a good one.

        Whether the mutiverse is inherently untestable or not is open to question but I would agree that, as things stand today, it is not and therefore is not cur

        • When people talk about scientific tests, they usually mean tests that produce new information and can confirm unique implications of a theory. But that isn't what testability really means. Scientific tests do not have to be experimental in form (astrophysics uses observational tests rather than empirical tests, for example). To be scientific, a theory must be testable in principle. We do not have to have the technology available to actually carry out the tests, and we do not even need to have specific test
        • Science is not done by individuals. The theoreticians are almost never the experimentalists. Generally basic science works like this:
          1) Formulate a theory
          2) Propose tests of the theory
          3) Perform a test
          3a) return to step 1
          3b) Modify the theory, and go to step 2

          All steps are performed on separate threads. Usually by separate people, though 3b and 1 are frequently done by the same person.

          Applied science is generally similar, but it is frequently the same organization doing all of the steps. (Sometimes it
  • Hey I really wanna see the video, he seems to be a great speaker. Can someone who's dl the file setup a bittorrent? Thanks.
  • Things were going a bit slowly with the Multiverse creation, so Gods Ken and Dennis went back to the Garden of Bell and created the Universe. Then their supervisor YHWH got credit for it and the rest is History.

  • Guy is way off.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Our universe is hand-crafted and unique, there's no such thing as a multiverse.

    When the first AI achieved transcendence through singularity somewhere in 3k AD, it's first (and only?) task was to spark off the big bang to ensure that it would come into existence, as it had discovered in some arcane slashdot-archive that this was it's purpose.
  • Mention of Jet Li and that horrible movie he did... You know... The One :P

  • You are living in a Computer Simulation (Score:3, Informative)

    by pyramis ( 596137 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:07AM (#6005666) Homepage
    This stereotypical topic of coffee-house philosophers and stoners gets quite a serious treatment nowadays--The Matrix notwithstanding. Now Oxford faculty member Nick Bostrom provides a logical proof [simulation-argument.com]. Whoa.

    In Rees's article, he gives the proposition even more support by showing how it's a direct consequence of multiverse theory:
    Once you accept the idea of the multiverse, and that some universes will have immense potentiality for complexity, it's a logical consequence that in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate parts of themselves...
    Taking this one step further... If there is another universe X that is more complex than our universe U, universe X has the computational resources to simulate U in its entirety.
  • Now, I don't actualy know any of the math that goes behind any of this, but when Rees talks about the simulation within a simulation, is it actualy possible to for a simulation to duplicate the randomness found on a quantum level, the same randomness that some scientists say destroys the concept of determinism? Would not a computer simulation be an excersise in determinism, or am I thinking too "21st century" here? But if a simulation could duplicate this randomness, how then could it "rewind" as Rees sta
  • One problem with the idea that some universes are simulated comes from information theory. It takes a certain number of bits to describe the state of a simulated universe, and so the simulator needs at least this number of bits. (Which is why your PC or PS/2 can only show a certain level of detail in its simulated world, up to its memory capacity.)

    This cuts through the possibility of infinite regression, and also hints at a way of testing whether a universe is simulated. I personally have serious doubts th

    • Actually if you think about it the universe may be infinite on a macro scale but it is quite finite on the micro scale. As physics turns quantum we are in essence seeing the granularity of the approximation. Ours isn't a prison of the large, its a prison of the small.

      A simulated being in a world of our current technology might experience anti-aliasing the same way we experience quantum mechanics. I imagine the simulated being would believe that the world had infinite precision if only small things didn'
  • "The possibility that we are creations of some supreme, or super-being, blurs the boundary between physics and idealist philosophy, between the natural and the supernatural, and between the relation of mind and multiverse and the possibility that we're in the matrix rather than the physics itself. Once you accept the idea of the multiverse, and that some universes will have immense potentiality for complexity, it's a logical consequence that in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate
    • "It's interesting how in one paragraph he espouses a theory in which there are infinite possibilities and how this could be all one big simulation, then in the next says that creationist are just nuts who could never be right."

      I got that too. I've never been one to get hot one way ot the other on CREVO, but the "simulated universe" postulation thing throws a huge juicy "science bone" to the creationists - because it is creationism... then he goes and disses religious creationists - even though he plainly

  • Let's suppose that all different universes exist. Then somewhere, as Rees writes, there is a universe which is simulating our own universe. So are we real, or are we living in one of those simulations?

    Well, the answer is, both. Our universe is real, because all the different universes exist and we are one of them, and our universe is also being simulated. We can't tell the difference. And from a certain philosophical sense, maybe there isn't any difference. The universe is basically a mathematical ob
  • Rick Dees?!? Ohhhhhhhh.....you said MARTIN Dees.

    For a second there I was thinking this was going to be about the Weekly Top 40 Theories of the Universe program.

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