Re: Interesting Article

Joe E. Dees (jdees0@students.uwf.edu)
Wed, 23 Sep 1998 01:43:52 -0500 

Date sent:      	Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:49:09 +0000
From:           	Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject:        	Re: Interesting Article
To:             	extropians@extropy.com
Send reply to:  	extropians@extropy.com

> At 04:57 PM 9/22/98 -0700, Kathryn wrote:
>
> >I was thinking of such theories as Alexei Starobinsky/Alan Guth's 'daughter
> >universe' theory, in which a false vacuum spot creates a wormhole with a
> >bubble wall on the end of it that pops off to create another universe. Or
> >Alexander Vilenkin's 'eternal inflation' theory, which posits repeat 'big
> >bangs' that duplicate our own. Or Andrei Linde's 'self-reproducing' theory
> >that involves additional universes in other dimensions.
>
> The connection with string or M theory strikes me as tenuous. Re-entrant
> wormholes at the particle level, maybe - but that's within a single universe.
>
> As for the budded cosmoses - Smolin's is a nice current version, and David
> Deutsch told me that his QT multiverse theory (the Cat is definitely both
> alive and dead) is not inconsistent with Smolin's, although they seem
> disjunct on an analytical level - both might be true, or one, or neither.
>
> Damien Broderick

Okay, so the definitely dead cat model (and likewise the definitely alive cat model - one and the same) is out. This leaves the neither- ead model and the both-alive-and-dead model, and the strong probability that within the Standard (or any presently feasible nonstandard) Model and given both practical and theoretical measuring constraints, which one is correct may be Godelianly undecideable without involving us in Heisenbergian observerparticipant tainting. This reminds me of the argument whether God is hermaphroditic or asexual; what difference could it make to anything else, since we can't use differences in anything else to decide it? The absence (or presence) of the invisible is difficult to detect; the location of the omnipresent is difficult to isolate.