tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post1240898548647867975..comments2024-01-02T04:49:16.658-05:00Comments on He Lives: Science Denialism: Pot. Kettle. Black.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08688240424047203541noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-390298893700049832016-10-01T06:48:42.650-04:002016-10-01T06:48:42.650-04:00Jeffrey,
There is no answer to a question that is ...Jeffrey,<br />There is no answer to a question that is pure speculation. You are permitted to speculate on universes that consisting of "florbs." As I stated upstream--and it wasn't sarcasm, I am staying mainstream and considering universes of the same species as ours: something like quantum foam -> big bang -> inflation -> universe where slightly different i.c. lands you in a very different minimum with different (likely very different) physical constants. Whether atoms or nuclei appear depends on those constants. And, it appears to some, that whether or not stars even appear depends on the precise values of the matter density and expansion rate. <br /><br />So we can stipulate that there may be universes with "florbs" operating along the lines of the Game of Life. I have nothing to say about that. I am saying, in my lack of imagination, that it seems plausible that there will be many universes of our of our variety the majority of which are sterile.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08688240424047203541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-40684000702235909062016-10-01T05:30:41.906-04:002016-10-01T05:30:41.906-04:00To repeat, what I'm looking for is some justif...To repeat, what I'm looking for is some justification that all universes even have to have a "cosmological" constant. Why does there *have* to be a weak force in all universes with life? Indeed, why do there even *have* to be atoms like ours in all universes with life? Why can't there be something, call it "florbs", that behave as in Conway's game of Life? <br /><br />You're obviously a really bright physicist, so why not explain it like I'm a prospective undergraduate you're trying to recruit, instead of avoiding the issue using sarcasm?Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-11047591013449895862016-10-01T05:22:19.329-04:002016-10-01T05:22:19.329-04:00You have no answers, only sarcasm. I sure hope Lu...You have no answers, only sarcasm. I sure hope Luke Barnes' forthcoming book is a little more candid in addressing this issue.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-77025743248491476482016-09-30T17:40:57.938-04:002016-09-30T17:40:57.938-04:00Interesting. Thanks.Interesting. Thanks.Martin LaBarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14629053725732957599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-68778199188313793202016-09-30T17:16:51.770-04:002016-09-30T17:16:51.770-04:00Jeffrey,
"You have confirmed that physicists...Jeffrey,<br /><br />"<i>You have confirmed that physicists really *do* have a paucity of imagination. If they seriously propose that every universe arises just by taking the known fundamental constants and changing them slightly, then it's no wonder at all that their conclusions can be safely ignored."</i><br /><br />Ignoring the fact that I never said the constants of other universes only vary slightly (indeed, I would expect that most universes have a cosmological constant that is ~100 orders of magnitude different from ours) I have to say that you have nailed us. You have demonstrated that "physicists really *do* have a paucity of imagination" and that "their conclusions can be safely ignored." I mean, I'm like totally convinced.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08688240424047203541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-53433315516417714012016-09-30T17:10:37.299-04:002016-09-30T17:10:37.299-04:00Well, I'm glad to see that you have no answer....Well, I'm glad to see that you have no answer. Indeed, it seems like you don't even understand the question. <br /><br />Your "reasonable" multiverse theory presupposes a universe that's just a tweak of the one we see. Yet you have no reason to believe that this represents all possible universes.<br /><br />I am not proposing "computer programs". I am proposing some sort of completely foreign chemistry and physics in which the rules that we implement Conway's game of life actually take place in the foreign chemistry and physics. There are new sorts of particles that interact exactly the way Conway's rules specify. How can you say such a universe couldn't exist?<br /><br />You have confirmed that physicists really *do* have a paucity of imagination. If they seriously propose that every universe arises just by taking the known fundamental constants and changing them slightly, then it's no wonder at all that their conclusions can be safely ignored.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-25826836524710447102016-09-30T06:34:59.204-04:002016-09-30T06:34:59.204-04:00Jeffrey, your comment is so bizarre that I don'...Jeffrey, your comment is so bizarre that I don't know if it is tongue in cheek. Are you seriously proposing computer life as anything more than interesting in its own right? You realize, I'm sure, that computer programs presuppose a real universe with complex chemistry and physics upon which the hardware can be constructed.<br /><br />Still, if you want me to "narrow" my claim, I'll oblige. I'll limit it universes like ours. The kind proposed by any reasonable multiverse theory. The kind that start with something like the big bang of expanding space, but with a different set of constants. Among those universes it appears to many that habitability, merely based on the relatively non-controversial assumption that any kind of life will require complicated chemistry and physics to produce large structures to store information (e.g., DNA) may be, by far, the exception rather than the rule, based on the single observation that the habitability our universe appears to be highly sensitive to our particular values of the constants.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08688240424047203541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500036.post-4979979846598278822016-09-29T18:23:53.259-04:002016-09-29T18:23:53.259-04:00Sorry: edited for clarity and reposted.
What evi...Sorry: edited for clarity and reposted.<br /><br />What evidence is there that universes can only be built by tweaking the fundamental constants? It seems to suggest an extreme paucity of the imagination on the part of physicists, so probably I am missing something. <br /><br />Then again statements like "any life, using a non-controversial assertion, needs large molecules to store information" seems to suggest that the only way you can think of for universes to contain life is that those universes must necessarily contain molecules much like our universe's molecules. But why must this be the case? Why couldn't they contain self-reproducing florbs with completely different chemical and physical properties?<br /><br />For example, Conway's game of life seems like a toy universe in which self-reproducing life is possible. Where can we see this in the physicists's distribution of possible universes?<br /><br />Software experiments suggest that extremely simple universes can generate self-reproducing configurations with relatively high probability, such as Koza's paper "Artificial life: spontaneous emergence of self-replicating<br />and evolutionary self-improving computer programs". Where is Koza's model in your distribution?Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.com