> ----------
> 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.
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)