Re: Extropian gods

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
08 Jan 1998 11:52:04 +0100


Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com> writes:

> A God with unlimited resources has a responsbility to create a globally
> optimal universe for his creatures. It is conceivable that our universe is
> actually the best of all possible worlds, but it doesn't seem likely.
> If we can figure out how far away from optimum this universe is, it may
> allow us to get an estimate of the computational power of the god that
> created it.

Unless Tipler is right and that the reason for the non-optimality (the
extropian word for evil?) is that it is logically necessary: this
universe is needed together with all the other universes in superspace
(he uses the MWI) to satisfy the Omega Point boundary condition he
postulates. So there might be better or worse universes, but
Omega/God/Frank couldn't just create the nice ones, it had to create
all the others to retain mathematical consistency.

But I find the idea of evaluating God by checking the optimality of
the physical laws intriguing. The problem is of course: optimal for what?

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