Re: The misanthropic universe

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue May 06 2003 - 11:34:40 MDT

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    On Tue, May 06, 2003 at 12:41:13PM -0400, Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:

    > Are we viewing the universe as massively eternal
    > (like Bondi) with domains separated by mere distance?

    The misanthropic universe seems to be like that, with domains
    separated by *vast* distances - not just cosmic bubbles from
    inflation, but also the distances induced by accelerating
    expansion during the vast periods of heat death. It is an awfully
    huge place, even for an universe.

    > Can humans
    > or their successors, potentially alter the constants of the
    > cosmos (ignoring that the constants may change) via particle
    > accelerators or other gizmos, thus demonstrating and thereby
    > falsifying or conforming the Copernican hypothesis (Principle)?

    I think the model would allow this, since it is based on inflation
    occuring. Hence the "simple" way is just to wait until a random
    fluctuation happens (ignoring horizons) and modify the symmetry
    breaking. Piece of cake, but takes exp(10^100) time... "Everyday"
    induction of inflation ought to be possible and could create
    custom domains in the model, but I guess they would have measure
    very close to zero.

    Unless they were very likely to cause the expansion of more
    domains like that... hey! Quite possibly a good way out of the
    conundrum of the essay is that such cascades of baby universes are
    very common, manageing to crowd out the natural expansion-creation
    cycle that makes most domains miraculous. If the likeliehood of an
    inhabited domain inducing inflation was higher than the
    spontaneous fluctuations and the resulting domain also shared this
    property, then these would rapidly come to dominate the set of
    worlds. And that would make most worlds non-miraculous!

    Anybody feeling for writing a paper analysing this?

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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