Re: Great Filter, Low Profile, Cryptocosmology

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Thu, 17 Oct 96 10:54:14 PDT


Anders Sandberg writes:
>>We know which systems are exchanging bits with each other, and how
>>fast, and where this arrangement changes, etc. ...
>
>What about the quantum level? Might the "random" fluctuations on the
>near-Planckian level be the real level of activity? We, and most of the
>matter around us, is just high-level side-effects of low-level processing
>in the vacuum state. Are there any special reasons this might or might
>not hold?

If we have quantum mechanics right, so there are not unknown hidden
variables and systems behind it all, then there just aren't any
Plank-scale bits which can be varied to encode stuff. If we have this
wrong, then we are just completely wrong about the most stable part of
physics we know (thermodynamics and statistical mechanics), and the
correspondence of theory with observation is just some massive
coincidence. A tough sell.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/