there's an aspect of pattern-identity theory that I have been interested in
to see if there is any process that may be capable of auto-recording the data
that t Kind of like Santa's book on which little kiddies have been naughty
and which have been nice. (Groan) anyway, there was this SciAm article by a
few years ago that provoked me into looking for any info on this weird
conjecture.
I am wondering if there was a possible info storage substrate already built
into the universe? The article dealt with a mythological court case in which
one physicist's recipe for Hungarian goulash was cruelly, tossed into a black
hole. The judge in the case eventually ruled that the recipe was not lost
eternally, but could be theoretically recovered by extraordinary, but
"normal" means. Totally weird and bogus, I realize ,and yet it seems like
something worth learning about. Pursuing mirages, I know, but maybe we'd find
that missing book of yours, as well as my socks that go missing from the
clothes dryer. Also are you going to get this book published, stateside?
In a message dated 11/17/2000 11:52:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:
<< Inside the computer I'm writing this on, there's a book I'm currently
finishing. (There are also some identical copies on disks and other
machines, but let's pretend they don't exist because I was too stupid to
back the files up.)
Someone comes into my house and trashes the hard drive, folds, spindles and
mutilates it, fubars the fucker.
Why should I care? To some extent the patterns in the book can be found all
around us. The words are in the dictionary. Many of the phrases have been
uttered before, and who knows, might be uttered again. The universe goes
on, and life
continues, although mine is totally down the toilet for a while. The book
is the only thing that has vanished. And after all, who cares about a book
or the months of effort frozen into it?
Damien Broderick >>
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