Re: Big Bang demiurges (was: Re: El Aleph)

Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Mon, 4 Jan 1999 01:58:34 +0000

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

> My impression was that the problem was how to explain the
> mass-distribution discontinuities (that caused the coalescence of
> galaxies) when the whole Universe was in causal contact; that inflation
> was postulated to provide a period when rapid expansion inflated small
> variances into large discontinuities without permitting the system to
> equalize. I yield, however, to superior knowledge.
>
> Doesn't make a difference; the point is that in the standard cosmology
> the early Big Bang was in causal contact.

Inflation would enlarge the regions of causal contact by an astronomically large but still finite factor (though there are so many versions of inflation theory now that it's difficult to be sure that this is true in all of them.) But then I don't see how it would give you an infinitely large region of stuff that has been in causal contact.

Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method London School of Economics