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If a life form can become so advanced that it becomes indistinguishable from what it observes, won't we too cross that border at some point, and if so, when wil
by runeks 10y ago
If a life form can become so advanced that it becomes indistinguishable from what it observes, won't we too cross that border at some point, and if so, when will we know that we've crossed it?
If we've already crossed that border without knowing it, we could be observing our own life form in physics, and not that of "aliens".
- jsprogrammer 10y agoDoes everything that can happen, actually happen? I think, probably not.
- givinguflac 10y agoIf the universe were truly infinite then I think it may. Either way it's impossible to know.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoDo you have a proof of that? Could there be structures that are provably impossible to create after some time?
- freshhawk 10y agoBut there is no reason at all to think the universe is infinite. Plenty of evidence it isn't. The idea it is is entirely from either the religious or secular versions of "Dude, I'm going to blow your mind"
- ajkjk 10y agoThere's little good reason to think it is or isn't (there is not plenty of evidence to think it isn't). There is plenty of good reason not to claim you know one way or the other.
- freshhawk 10y agoI certainly didn't claim to know. But at this point in history, if you want to have the highest chance of making the right guess: I would strongly suggest you go with the scientific consensus that the universe began with a Big Bang and is therefore not infinite, and the consensus of physicists that the observable evidence suggests the universe is not infinite for other reasons as well. I kinda have to assume you didn't connect the facts that an infinite universe rejects the Big Bang model? Because there is definitely plenty of evidence for that model. Yes, there are epistemic limits to science, that does not mean it's not evidence. And an infinite anything is an extraordinary claim. It's practically the most extraordinary claim.
- ajkjk 10y agoMy understanding is that the Big Bang model is compatible with an infinite universe. That's still my understanding after some cursory googling to make sure I didn't totally forget something from college.
- freshhawk 10y agoFair enough, with the right distinction between universe and observable universe they are certainly compatible. Any discussion of the characteristics of the universe outside the observable universe runs into some interesting epistemic problems around what constitutes evidence. Maybe it's turtles all the way down, or teapots. Good luck trying to estimate the prior probability of an infinite number of possibilities with an ape brain that evolved to hunt and gather on the Savannah. I find a lot of pop science at the fringes of our knowledge (QM and astrophysics) relies a lot on infinities to justify cool stoner ideas that are unfalsifiable and chosen entirely based on human biases of what would be "awesome". I do have a very strong bias against these because of this obvious element of wishful thinking. The infinite-alternate-realities-of-the-gaps argument is just the god-of-the-gaps argument for the "I fucking love science" crowd.
- ajkjk 10y agoClassically, there's no particular reason that a possible configuration of the things has to be reachable from the current configuration of things, even in an infinite universe. (Extremely improbable quantum tunneling would allow it though.)
- ajkjk 10y agoI think if we were to cross that border (which is certainly necessarily going to happen even conditional on it being possible), we would be able to easily tell.
- runeks 10y agoWhat makes you think this? In dreamful sleep, we exist at a level of consciousness where what we observe is indistinguishable from ourselves. And yet we rarely notice.
- ajkjk 10y agoI expect that we would continuously be an intelligent race that performs observations and does science the entire time, even as we evolve to unrecognizable forms, so, we'd just "think about it" as it's happening. There's no analogy with dreaming.
- ajkjk 10y agotypo: "is certainly necessarily" -> "isn't necessarily?
- dghughes 10y agoWe are parasitic electrical energy observing everything as we hitch a ride in the brains of these meat creatures.