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#617554
Over the years some of my doors have become super intelligent having absorbed information from such door stops !
Seriously though a good conversation has been struck up here with a range of topics which I have often sat down and tried to follow with some self learning.
I’ve gathered a lot of Susskind’s lectures etc. I’m aiming for taking one of the MIT’s open courses at PG level.Eric
Hi Ken,
You have probably read it, but if not, may I recommend Julian Barbour’s ‘The Janus Point’. Some of your ideas may resonate with what you read in his book.
It’s a fascinating read.
Personally, I rather like the concept of String Theory, more as a concept than because I actually understand it. I’m still working through trying to understand the maths of Relativity and Quantum Theory which will probably take me another decade or so. I think we will always arrive back at the ‘something from nothing’ scenario and for me that will always be answered by my faith in God as Creator. The great Owen Gingerich who has just recently died (1930 – 2023)
, came to the conclusion that “a common sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence… ” (Owen Gingerich, “Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?” in Evidence of Purpose, ed. by John Marks Templeton (New York: Continuum, 1994), 25, 28, 32).I have many books including MTW, if only the knowledge contained could be fed directly into the brain as in the Matrix movies! Thanks for the suggestions, I have a few more questions to ask but will start new topics as I think this one has got as far as it can.
Regarding a “superintelligence” I think everyone must make up their own mind but the quote that has most impressed me went something like “If a god created the universe for mankind then it’s an awful waste of space”. So I’m adopting a wait and see approach and hopefully I’ll be waiting for a long time yet!Ken
It might come in handy to remember Bertrand Russell’s response when asked what he would say if, despite his atheism, he one day found himself outside the Pearly Gates:”Lord, thou did not give us enough evidence.”
AlanI know I posted that I thought this topic had most probably gone as far as it could but, I have another point to make to support the idea that the universe might resemble a converging numerical simulation:-
In the Copenhagan interpretation of Quantum Mechanics the act of observation by an external observer causes the wavefunction of the system being observed to collapse to one of the allowed states with a probability that is calculable. The problem is that when applying QM to the universe as a whole there are no extermal “observers” so we are forced to the multiverse where everything that can happen does (but why am I not in that universe where I won the lottery the one time that I actually did buy a ticket?). In the paradigm I am suggesting, the observer and the system evolve together to the tick of the external clock so one universe one result with order evolving out of chaos like a growing snowflake.
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