From: O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Date: Sun Jun 06 1999 - 18:08:01 MDT
> ----------
> From: hal@finney.org[SMTP:hal@finney.org]
> Reply To: extropians@extropy.com
> Sent: Saturday, 5 June 1999 1:11
> To: extropians@extropy.com
> Subject: Re: Omega Point, Singularity
>
> Rob Harris Cen-IT, <Rob.Harris@bournemouth.gov.uk>, writes:
> > Does anyone else notice the action of planets etc., viewing them as
> > organisms, which succeed (spawn life/something else), or fail (no
> geological
> > activity). Perhaps the same is true for universes. Perhaps this universe
> is
> > not as chaotic as we generally believe? Maybe this universe is an
> optimised
> > ancestor of an ancient life-spawning-by-chance universe, making
> lifeforms in
> > this universe inevitable. What do you think?
>
> Physicist Lee Smolin has a somewhat similar view. Here is a description
> of his idea from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin/smolin_p1.html:
>
> The other idea with which Smolin is associated is "natural selection"
> of universes. He's saying that in some sense the universes that
> allow complexity and evolution reproduce themselves more efficiently
> than other universes. The ensemble itself is thus evolving in some
> complicated way. When stars die, they sometimes form black holes. (This
> is something which I wear my astrophysical hat to study.) Smolin
> speculates-as others, like Alan Guth, have also done-that inside a
> black hole it's possible for a small region to, as it were, sprout
> into a new universe. We don't see it, but it inflates into some new
> dimension. Smolin takes that idea on board, but then introduces
> another conjecture, which is that the laws of nature in the new
> universe are related to those in the previous universe. This differs
> from Andrei Linde's idea of a random ensemble, because Smolin supposes
> that the new universe retains physical laws not too different from
> its parent universe. What that would mean is that universes big and
> complex enough to allow stars to form, evolve, and die, and which
> can therefore produce lots of black holes, would have more progeny,
> because each black hole can then lead to a new universe; whereas a
> universe that didn't allow stars and black holes to form would have
> no progeny. Therefore Smolin claims that the ensemble of universes
> may evolve not randomly but by some Darwinian selection, in favor of
> the potentially complex universes.
>
> Hal
>
If this mechanism of creating new universes exists, you would imagine that a
sufficiently advanced civilisation/intelligence could trigger it - create
new black holes, manipulate existing ones, whatever.
If that is the case, and it's not cataclysmically dangerous to do so
(relative to the necessary level of technology required), and given that
civilisations/intelligences who get far enough to be able to do such a thing
would probably have the drive to attempt it for the sake of doing, then you
have the result that universes which successfully develop advanced
intelligent life can spawn new universes which are copies of themselves.
A shortcut to the complex-universe with life as a by-product theory?
Emlyn
(I'm sure someone must have come up with this idea already - apologies in
advance)
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