> For what it's worth, I've always been rooting for a closed universe.
> I have more (dirty word) faith in being able to survive a singularity
> than a flat energy gradient.
Both are hard. You have more time to plan for the flat energy
gradient, and can deal with physics at the same general low-energy
scale all the time, in an open universe. A Big Crunch is more
exciting, would occur sooner and has a certain apocalyptic flavor, but
it requires us to adapt to higher energy regimes all the time which
may all be different; if there is a finite chance for one of these
energy regimes to be untenable for complex systems, then we are
(literally) fried.
The universe of course doesn't care the least what scenarios we like.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y