God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler's below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):
F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005," Reports on Progress in Physics. http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.highlights/0034-4885 ) Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists.
Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.)
See also the below resources for further information on the Omega Point Theory:
Theophysics http://geocities.com/theophysics/
"Omega Point (Tipler)," Wikipedia, April 16, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omega_Point_%28Tipler%29&oldid=206077125
"Frank J. Tipler," Wikipedia, April 16, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_J._Tipler&oldid=205920802
Tipler is Professor of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point Theory has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world's leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters B, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc.
Prof. John A. Wheeler (the father of most relativity research in the U.S.) wrote that "Frank Tipler is widely known for important concepts and theorems in general relativity and gravitation physics" on pg. viii in the "Foreword" to The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by cosmologist Prof. John D. Barrow and Tipler, which was the first book wherein Tipler's Omega Point Theory was described. On pg. ix of said book, Prof. Wheeler wrote that Chapter 10 of the book, which concerns the Omega Point Theory, "rivals in thought-provoking power any of the [other chapters]."
The leading quantum physicist in the world, Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics' 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work), endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory in his book The Fabric of Reality (1997). For that, see:
David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe" of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997), ISBN: 0713990619; with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. http://geocities.com/theophysics/deutsch-ends-of-the-universe.html
The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to invent tenuous physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, "Information loss in black holes," Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171
That is, Prof. Hawking's paper is based upon proposed, unconfirmed physics. It's an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory's correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he's forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.
Some have suggested that the universe's current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in "Geometry and Destiny" (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999 http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904020 ), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.
There's a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe's collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as B - L is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.
Prof. Tipler's above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn't realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). As Tipler notes in his 2007 book The Physics of Christianity (pp. 49 and 279), "It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. ... This is somewhat analogous to Liouville's theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity."
When combined with the Standard Model, the result is the Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
"Jesus Is an Anarchist," June 1, 2006 http://praxeology.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf
James, a couple questions...
1. Why are you posting this here? It doesn't appear to be relevant to Austrian Economics at all.
2. Why are you cramming all of these links in here?
Also, your signature doesn't meet the community guidelines for links. You should clean it up.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Fascinating. I am now a believer!
To darkness I condemn you...
IIRC, he posted something like this before, perhaps he just wanted to revive the discussion.
And this is the General board.
Maybe it's just me. Stuff like this reads like self promotional link spam.
I deal with spam all day. When someone signs up on a bunch of sites, and posts the exact same thing, they are spamming, not creating a genuine discussion.
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=ab-physics&tid=2999
http://www.spacebanter.com/showthread.php?t=129011&mode=linear
I've got a nose for this stuff.
liberty student:James, a couple questions... 1. Why are you posting this here? It doesn't appear to be relevant to Austrian Economics at all. 2. Why are you cramming all of these links in here? Also, your signature doesn't meet the community guidelines for links. You should clean it up.
It is utterly relevant to veridical economics, i.e., to Austrian economics, particularly to the Austrian school concept of lengthening the structure of production, which predicts the formation of the Omega Point.
The known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) also demonstrate that existence has an unavoidable morality built into it.
The good news is that libertarianism is true. It is true in the most fundamental sense imaginable: i.e., existence itself would not be possible without it. That is not hyperbole in the slightest, but rather is a quite veridical statement.
It seems hard for most to imagine how existence itself could be predicated upon a "mere" political theory (even a veridical political theory, namely, libertarianism). But nevertheless, reality violates almost everyone's "common sense" understanding of the world. Reality is quite unforgiving in this regard, and it shows respect to no title or institution, unless of course they already happen to be in comformance with it, which is utterly rare.
But what physics demonstrates is that there is an ultimate speed-limit, i.e., the speed of light. Hence, if colonization of the universe is to occur (and it must occur if life is to continue), then this necessarily ensures that decentralization in control of resources cannot be avoided.
That is to say, there cannot even in theory be a centralized "universal governament." Indeed, each relativistic spacecraft (massing no more than a kilogram) will be its own automomous unit with its own society. It will not be possible, even in theory, for any member of the originating society to catch up with it. Only during the collapse phase of the universe, trillions upon trillons of years hence, will all points in the universe proceed to converge.
Thus, each autonomous society (and there will be trillions upon trillions of them) will have trillions upon trillions of years of autonomous existence in which to develop their own societies. Those societies which are the most efficient at taking over resources will be the ones which take control over the universe's resources (and veridical economics demonstrates that this will be the freest of economies).
How that relates to libertarianism being inherently required by existence itself is thus: the end-state of the universe causally brings about the beginning state, i.e., the Big Bang singularity--since in physics it's just as accurate to say that causation goes from future to past events: viz., the principle of least action; and unitarity.
For more on what I spoke of in the foregoing, see my original post in this thread.
One may protest that colonial occupiers have had great success in taking over a great deal of the Earth's landmass. That is true. But that ignores the physics of interstellar colonization. The colonial invaders upon the Earth were able to keep in contact with their home base (even given what we presently regard as great distances). Such cannot be possible with relativistic spacecraft--or indeed any colonizing interstellar spacecraft (in the sense of an enforcement mechanism, i.e., actual physical contact, as opposed to mere communication).
It may be protested further that the interstellar colonizers maintain their expansion at a rate in which to allow physical contact with each other. But then there exists no enforcement mechanism for this, for those spacecraft which choose to travel faster would be impune. No member of the originating society would be able to catch up with it.
One may object by positing that said spacecraft are intentionally built to have an upper speed limit enough to allow non-crippled spacecraft to catch up with them. But if such spacecraft are to actually colonize, then they must have on board universal constructors, i.e., they must be von Neumann machines, capable of assembling whatever is capable of being assebled (i.e., given that point in universal history).
(Humans, by the way, are universal constructors. That is to say, we are able to construct anything which is capable of being constructed. More accurately: we are able to construct machines which are able to contruct what we desire, of which machines are in turn able to construct the machines in which to construct what we desire even more, and so on, literally ad infinitum. In Austrian economics [i.e., veridical economics], this is called lengthening the structure of production.)
Hence, any such spacecraft must already have the means in which to build a better spacecraft (up to the point of what is physically possible), otherwise they could not be actual colonizers, and hence would be useless for interstellar colonization.
Prof. Frank J. Tipler himself has also made the connection between veridical economics and the Omega Point Theory in, for one example, his below paper:
Frank J. Tipler, "There Are No Limits To The Open Society," Critical Rationalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (September 23, 1998). http://www.geocities.com/theophysics/tipler-there-are-no-limits-to-the-open-society.html http://elm.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/tcr/volume-03/index.html
Regarding your second question, in asking that you are committing the logical fallacy of the loaded question, since you constructed the question in order to paint my original post in this thread in a bad light, when in fact there is nothing wrong and everything right in providing the links that I did in my original post in this thread. Furthermore, this question of yours doesn't make much sense unless it is to be taken rhetorically, as I find it hard to believe that you are actually unaware of what the purpose is of providing web links to further information regarding the topics discussed and for citation. If the indicated number of posts which you made on this forum is correct and they were indeed made by you, then you apparently are not a neophyte to the internet.
James Redford:The good news is that libertarianism is true.
Holy cow! That just made my day.
James Redford:when in fact there is nothing wrong and everything right in providing the links that I did in my original post in this thread.
Not when this post is not posted to this forum for discussion, but as your own personal advertisement, used over and over on the web.
What you are doing on various discussion forums and mailing lists is spamming. It's dishonest, and it makes libertarians look bad.
James Redford:If the indicated number of posts which you made on this forum is correct and they were indeed made by you, then you apparently are not a neophyte to the internet.
You would be correct. I am not a neophyte.
You should remove the remainder of the links in your signature, you're still not in compliance with the forum rules.
And I thought I would bring up, those rules are great. The incentive to post here is not to treat Mises.org like a link dump. It's to discuss ideas and gain knowledge.
Re-posting the same thing you have posted elsewhere isn't in the spirit of this community.
Banned,
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/2301/30998.aspx#30998
This forum "sucks" (to use the colloquialism) beyond all imagining. About the only way for it to be worse is for it to sprout arms and legs and proceed upon aggressing against people (which technically makes my previous sentence hyperbole, for indeed it is possible to imagine it being worse).
I have attempted to post information which is vital to the libertarian community (and hence, humanity as a whole) and to this thread, but the forum software keeps holding up my posts for approval. I thought the main idea behind forum registration is to allow forum moderators to delete spam or troll accounts. This forum has serious problems besides that, not least being the formatting which posts require, of which no informative resources are provided explaining such (at least as viewed in the Opera 9.25 web-browser).
Yeah, the forum sucks because his posts get moderated for having too many links. Why would someone restrict posters from posts with a half dozen or more links? Because that's typical spammer behaviour. Most blogs moderate on 2 or more links in a comment.
And yes, here
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/2346.aspx
He posted pretty much the same thing. It's link spam. He could have carried on the new discussion, but he's just spamming.
Maybe he has something to say, I don't believe in God, physics or chocolate milk, but there are the right ways to say it, and if he feels his message is important, he will take the time to articulate it honestly and effectively.
This one makes my point.
liberty student:Maybe it's just me. Stuff like this reads like self promotional link spam. I deal with spam all day. When someone signs up on a bunch of sites, and posts the exact same thing, they are spamming, not creating a genuine discussion. http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=ab-physics&tid=2999 http://www.spacebanter.com/showthread.php?t=129011&mode=linear I've got a nose for this stuff.
Liberty Student, you are the one who committed a logical fallacy within this thread by asking a loaded rhetorical question, not I. And here you're using a post in this thread to jejunely boast about your alleged prowess concerning your understanding of spam. I say jejunely so, because your claims in this regard are unintentionally quite ironic, since you thereby demonstrate that your characterization of spam is quite defective.
Rather, what you actually mean is that you dislike the subject I raised and wish that my post here didn't exist, but you reserve forthrightly stating what you actually mean because you don't want to be gauche.
Jimmy,
I could care less about the subject of your post. I do care about this community becoming a playground for link dumpers.
You can cry bias and ostracism, but I think your posts on other boards and here make my case quite soundly.
And, your signature is still not compliant.
Liberty Student, you are being quite the vindictive cad by making what is now four nihil ad rem posts in this thread. Anyone who has an I.Q. high enough to tie their own shoes could already comprehend from your first post that you dislike my post. We all get it already. There's no need for you to so loutishly carry on in this manner. You've now made four off-topic non sequitur posts in this thread to jejunely rant about spam. I say jejunely so, because your claims in this regard are unintentionally quite ironic, since you thereby demonstrate that your characterization of spam is quite defective.
Rather, what you actually mean is that you dislike the subject I raised and wish that my post here didn't exist, but you reserve forthrightly stating what you actually mean because you don't want to come off as a gauche philistine.
James Redford:You've now made four off-topic non sequitur posts in this thread to jejunely rant about spam.
And your signature is still not compliant.
Ad homs aside, my definition of spam is quite accurate. There is nothing unique about how you post the exact same thing to multiple sites, apparently repeatedly (see here) and cram as many links into your signature as you did last night.
The smoking gun, is the same posts made over and over. Apparently you don't even value this community enough to post something original.
I'm done. Best of luck with promoting Frank Tipler.
Nothing personal, but Omega Point doesn't prove God of the Bible. It proves that maybe if the laws of physics pan out in specific areas of quantum mechanics and field theory then at the point of a Big Crunch the Universe will become a consciousness of consciousnesses that have/are/will exist. The problem isn't in the physics so much, but the evidence. The evidence does not point to any Big Crunch ever happening. If anything it'll be a Big Freeze or Big Rip. Also, I'll have to caution the OP in his exuberance for these sorts of ideas as physicists have become more Cartesian (or Platonic, I can't tell the difference) in their thoughts on physics in as much as they figure out the math first and try to find the evidence later. Such a practice in a physical science is bad methodologically and ethically.
"The power of liberty going forward is in decentralization. Not in leaders, but in decentralized activism. In a market process." -- liberty student
liberty student: James Redford:You've now made four off-topic non sequitur posts in this thread to jejunely rant about spam. And your signature is still not compliant. Ad homs aside, my definition of spam is quite accurate. There is nothing unique about how you post the exact same thing to multiple sites, apparently repeatedly (see here) and cram as many links into your signature as you did last night. The smoking gun, is the same posts made over and over. Apparently you don't even value this community enough to post something original. I'm done. Best of luck with promoting Frank Tipler.
Wikipedia currently defines spam thus: "Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages." The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines spam as "unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses." Obviously neither definition applies to my posts.
Rather, Liberty Student, you're using the word "spam" to mean that you dislike the subject I raised and wish that my post here didn't exist, but you reserve forthrightly stating what you actually mean because you don't want to come off as gauche.
Regarding your statement that "you don't even value this community enough to post something original," that sounds rather pathological, almost as if I took your virginity and then didn't bother to cuddle with you afterwards. Regarding originality, the statement "2+2 = 4" is hardly original either. I wrote the article in order to provide the main points of information regarding its subject while providing people informational resources as to where they can learn more about said matter. The only thing that would be achieved were I to rewrite the article every time I wanted to tell people the same thing is that I could then sidestep nihil ad rem cavils regarding originality. But other than that dubious benefit, such an exercise would be a highly irrational expenditure of time and effort.
The disingenuousness, hypocrisy and irony of these bellyaches of yours is truly glaring: you have now made six off-topic non sequitur posts in this thread. That's a display of a high degree of disrespect to this community.
ladyattis:Nothing personal, but Omega Point doesn't prove God of the Bible. It proves that maybe if the laws of physics pan out in specific areas of quantum mechanics and field theory then at the point of a Big Crunch the Universe will become a consciousness of consciousnesses that have/are/will exist. The problem isn't in the physics so much, but the evidence. The evidence does not point to any Big Crunch ever happening. If anything it'll be a Big Freeze or Big Rip. Also, I'll have to caution the OP in his exuberance for these sorts of ideas as physicists have become more Cartesian (or Platonic, I can't tell the difference) in their thoughts on physics in as much as they figure out the math first and try to find the evidence later. Such a practice in a physical science is bad methodologically and ethically.
The Omega Point necessarily exists if the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) are true. The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics--of which have been confirmed by every experiment to date (and so there exists no rational reason for thinking that the known laws of physics are incorrect)--and hence to reject empirical science.
Christian theology is preferentially selected by the known laws of physics due to the fundamentally triune structure of the Omega Point cosmology and due to existence having come into being a finite time in the past (i.e., creatio ex nihilo from the Big Bang singularity).
The Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists. As well, as Stephen Hawking proved, the singularity is not in spacetime, but rather is the boundary of space and time. So the Omega Point is transcendent to, yet immanent in, space and time.
Additionally, the cosmological singularity consists of a three-part structure: the final singularity (i.e., the Omega Point), the all-presents singularity (which exists at all times at the edge of the multiverse), and the initial singularity (i.e., the beginning of the Big Bang). These three distinct parts which perform different physical functions in bringing about and sustaining existence are actually one singularity which connects the entirety of the multiverse.
Those are all the physical properties that have been claimed for God in traditional Christian theology. As well, Christian theology has maintained that there is only one achieved (actually existing) infinity, and that infinity is God. The cosmological singularity of the Omega Point is an achieved infinity.
And given an infinite amount of computational resources, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the multiverse in its entirety up to this point in universal history). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.
James Redford: ladyattis: Nothing personal, but Omega Point doesn't prove God of the Bible. It proves that maybe if the laws of physics pan out in specific areas of quantum mechanics and field theory then at the point of a Big Crunch the Universe will become a consciousness of consciousnesses that have/are/will exist. The problem isn't in the physics so much, but the evidence. The evidence does not point to any Big Crunch ever happening. If anything it'll be a Big Freeze or Big Rip. Also, I'll have to caution the OP in his exuberance for these sorts of ideas as physicists have become more Cartesian (or Platonic, I can't tell the difference) in their thoughts on physics in as much as they figure out the math first and try to find the evidence later. Such a practice in a physical science is bad methodologically and ethically. The Omega Point necessarily exists if the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) are true. The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics--of which have been confirmed by every experiment to date (and so there exists no rational reason for thinking that the known laws of physics are incorrect)--and hence to reject empirical science. Christian theology is preferentially selected by the known laws of physics due to the fundamentally triune structure of the Omega Point cosmology and due to existence having come into being a finite time in the past (i.e., creatio ex nihilo from the Big Bang singularity). The Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists. As well, as Stephen Hawking proved, the singularity is not in spacetime, but rather is the boundary of space and time. So the Omega Point is transcendent to, yet immanent in, space and time. Additionally, the cosmological singularity consists of a three-part structure: the final singularity (i.e., the Omega Point), the all-presents singularity (which exists at all times at the edge of the multiverse), and the initial singularity (i.e., the beginning of the Big Bang). These three distinct parts which perform different physical functions in bringing about and sustaining existence are actually one singularity which connects the entirety of the multiverse. Those are all the physical properties that have been claimed for God in traditional Christian theology. As well, Christian theology has maintained that there is only one achieved (actually existing) infinity, and that infinity is God. The cosmological singularity of the Omega Point is an achieved infinity. And given an infinite amount of computational resources, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the multiverse in its entirety up to this point in universal history). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.
ladyattis: Nothing personal, but Omega Point doesn't prove God of the Bible. It proves that maybe if the laws of physics pan out in specific areas of quantum mechanics and field theory then at the point of a Big Crunch the Universe will become a consciousness of consciousnesses that have/are/will exist. The problem isn't in the physics so much, but the evidence. The evidence does not point to any Big Crunch ever happening. If anything it'll be a Big Freeze or Big Rip. Also, I'll have to caution the OP in his exuberance for these sorts of ideas as physicists have become more Cartesian (or Platonic, I can't tell the difference) in their thoughts on physics in as much as they figure out the math first and try to find the evidence later. Such a practice in a physical science is bad methodologically and ethically.
Presumptive, neo-subjectivist, pseudo-scientiftic nonsense; but interesting nonsense, nontheless. And this is coming from someone who thinks The Singularity might actually happen, assuming of course, we do not blow ourselves up, starve ourselves to death, die slow painful, post-nuclear winter deaths, or eventually become infertile & die off.
WARNING: This signature violates Rule 5. Stay classy!
Nitroadict: Presumptive, neo-subjectivist, pseudo-scientiftic nonsense; but interesting nonsense, nontheless. And this is coming from someone who thinks The Singularity might actually happen, assuming of course, we do not blow ourselves up, starve ourselves to death, die slow painful, post-nuclear winter deaths, or eventually become infertile & die off.
The Omega Point Theory is objectively true if the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) are true. The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics--of which have been confirmed by every experiment to date (and so there exists no rational reason for thinking that the known laws of physics are incorrect)--and hence to reject empirical science.
You're not even using the word "subjectivist" in a grammatically correct manner, as it is a noun that refers to a person who ascribes to subjectivism. "Subjectivistic" is the adjective form to use in order to be grammatically correct in your above statement.
Below is the Merriam-Webster dictionary's definitions of subjectivism:
"" 1 a: a theory that limits knowledge to subjective experience b: a theory that stresses the subjective elements in experience 2 a: a doctrine that the supreme good is the realization of a subjective experience or feeling (as pleasure) b: a doctrine that individual feeling or apprehension is the ultimate criterion of the good and the right ""
So indeed the Omega Point Theory is not subjectivistic, since it is based upon the known laws of physics, which themselves are confirmed by repeatable objective empirical experiments.
In economics, subjectivism has a different meaning, referring to the subjective theory of value, of which the theory itself is objectively true, but the name of the theory refers to the fact that value is subjective to each individual (e.g., some people may pay $3 to eat a particular type of candy bar, whereas some people wouldn't eat it if they were offered $3 to do so).
And calling the Omega Point Theory "pseudo-scientiftic" (sic; I assume you meant pseudoscientific) is equivalent to calling the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) pseudoscientific, since the Omega Point is a direct and unavoidable consequence if those physical laws are true. Again, the only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics--of which have been confirmed by every experiment to date (and so there exists no rational reason for thinking that the known laws of physics are incorrect)--and hence to reject empirical science.
Moreover, I'll here again point out that Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory has been approved for publication in a number of the most prestigious peer-reviewed physics journals. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that is anti-reality and non-physical (such as string theory, which violates the known laws of physics and has no experimental support whatsoever), the reason such things are allowed to pass the peer-review process is because the paradigm of assumptions which such papers are speaking to has been declared, and within their declared paradigm none of the referees could find anything wrong with said papers. That is, the paradigm itself may have nothing to do with reality, but the peer-reviewers could find nothing wrong with such papers within the operating assumptions of that paradigm. Whereas, e.g., the operating paradigm of Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper is the known laws of physics, i.e., our actual physical reality which has been repeatedly confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. So the professional physicists charged with refereeing this paper could find nothing wrong with it within its operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics.
Bear in mind that Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, England's main professional body for physicists. Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers.
For much more on all of this, see my original post in this thread and the resources provided therein.
Nitroadict:Presumptive, neo-subjectivist, pseudo-scientiftic nonsense; but interesting nonsense, nontheless. And this is coming from someone who thinks The Singularity might actually happen, assuming of course, we do not blow ourselves up, starve ourselves to death, die slow painful, post-nuclear winter deaths, or eventually become infertile & die off.
The Omega Point itself is a valid theory, although it is pretty far "out there", and not at all mainstream, as Redford would like us to think. It also relies on there being a "Big Crunch", something which scientists are still unsure about. If I recall correctly, Tipler thought that this problem could be overcome by using "baryon tunneling" for FTL travel, but that sounds a bit fishy to me. Indentifying the Christain Trinity with the Omega Point is laughable.
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
wombatron: Nitroadict:Presumptive, neo-subjectivist, pseudo-scientiftic nonsense; but interesting nonsense, nontheless. And this is coming from someone who thinks The Singularity might actually happen, assuming of course, we do not blow ourselves up, starve ourselves to death, die slow painful, post-nuclear winter deaths, or eventually become infertile & die off. The Omega Point itself is a valid theory, although it is pretty far "out there", and not at all mainstream, as Redford would like us to think. It also relies on there being a "Big Crunch", something which scientists are still unsure about. If I recall correctly, Tipler thought that this problem could be overcome by using "baryon tunneling" for FTL travel, but that sounds a bit fishy to me. Indentifying the Christain Trinity with the Omega Point is laughable.
I meant Redford's conflation of the omega point & christian trinity, not the omega point itself. As a concept, it relies on current knowledge that is not necessarily conclusive (the big crunch etc.), so I view it as valid as another given scientific theory that is either before it's time or hasn't been proven/disproven just yet (such as the recent E8 theory of everything made by the surfer/scientist guy, who is currently trying to hammer out the equations necessary to prove or disprove it, pending what the LHC finds when it's up & running, of course).
Mainline physics is the known laws of physics: i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics. These physical laws have been repeatedly confirmed by every experiment conducted to date.
Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they're uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion. It's the antagonism for religion on the part of the scientific community which greatly held up the acceptance of the Big Bang (for some 40 years), due to said scientific community regarding it as lending credence to the traditional theological position of creatio ex nihilo, and also because no laws of physics can apply to a singularity itself. The originator of the Big Bang theory, circa 1930, was Roman Catholic priest and physicist Prof. Georges Lemaître; and it was enthusiastically endorsed by Pope Pius XII in 1951, long before the scientific community finally came to accept it. As regards physicists abandoning physical law due to their theological discomfort with the Big Bang, in an article by Prof. Frank J. Tipler he gives the following example involving no less than physicist Prof. Steven Weinberg:
"" The most radical ideas are those that are perceived to support religion, specifically Judaism and Christianity. When I was a student at MIT in the late 1960s, I audited a course in cosmology from the physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg. He told his class that of the theories of cosmology, he preferred the Steady State Theory because "it *least* resembled the account in Genesis" (my emphasis). In his book *The First Three Minutes* (chapter 6), Weinberg explains his earlier rejection of the Big Bang Theory: "Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort." [My emphasis--J. R.]
... But as [Weinberg] himself points out in his book, the Big Bang Theory was an automatic consequence of standard thermodynamics, standard gravity theory, and standard nuclear physics. All of the basic physics one needs for the Big Bang Theory was well established in the 1930s, some two decades before the theory was worked out. Weinberg rejected this standard physics not because he didn't take the equations of physics seriously, but because he did not like the religious implications of the laws of physics. ... ""
For that and a number of other such examples, see:
Frank J. Tipler, "Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?," Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID), Vols. 2.1 and 2.2 (January-June 2003). http://www.iscid.org/papers/Tipler_PeerReview_070103.pdf Also published as Chapter 7 in Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William A. Dembski, "Foreword" by John Wilson (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2004).
Prof. Stephen Hawking reinforces what Weinberg and Tipler wrote about concerning the antagonism of the scientific community for religion, resulting in them abandoning good physics. In his book The Illustrated A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), pg. 62, Hawking wrote:
"" Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible). There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang. ""
On pg. 179 of the same book, Hawking wrote "In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to spacetime and at which the laws of science break down."
Agnostic and physicist Dr. Robert Jastrow, founding director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in his book God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), pg. 113:
"" This religious faith of the scientist [that there is no First Cause] is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. ""
For more quotes by Robert Jastrow on this, see:
John Ross Schroeder and Bill Bradford, "Science and Discomfiting Discoveries" in Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist? (United Church of God, 2000) http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/GE/discomfitingdiscoveries.htm http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/GE/GE.pdf
For more quotes by scientists along the above lines, see the below article:
Mariano, "In the Beginning ... Cosmology, Part I," Atheism's Assertions, February 20, 2007 http://lifeanddoctrineatheism.blogspot.com/2007/02/in-beginning-cosmology-part-i-see.html
The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, "Information loss in black holes," Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171
That is, Prof. Hawking's paper is based upon anti-physical-law and non-empirical physics, in this case string theory. It's an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory's correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he's forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.
Contrast that ad libitum approach to doing physics with that of Prof. Frank J. Tipler, who bases his Omega Point Theory and the Feynman-Weinberg quantum gravity/extended Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) strictly on the known laws of physics, and that of Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics' 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work). They both believe we have to take the known laws of physics seriously as true explanations of how the world works, unless said physics are experimentally, or otherwise, refuted.
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