From: haradon@acsu.buffalo.edu Date sent: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 03:41:41 -0700 To: extropians@extropy.com Subject: Re: Interesting Article Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> --On Wednesday, September 23, 1998, 1:43 AM -0500 "Joe E. Dees"
> <jdees0@students.uwf.edu> wrote:
>
> > 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-
> > alive-nor-dead 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 observer-
> > participant 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.
> >
> >
>
> I had a lot of trouble with deciding what to believe about Schrodinger's
> cat, and found myself most supportive of the ideas that involve
> consciousness (the cat really is neither dead or alive, and looking at it
> really makes it one or the other because of the power of being conscious of
> a fact). Then last year I came across an explanation called "the
> transactional approach", which completely resolved it for me. The most
> mysterious thing it involves is waves travelling backward in time - which is
> a feature of QED anyway. I don't know if you can find a good web page about
> the transactional approach, the book I read which argued it very
> convincingly though was "Schrodinger's kittens", by John Gribbin.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> my web page:
> http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~haradon
Thanks;I'll check it out.