crashfrog writes:
There's a computer scientist whose name escapes me who predicts that, given enough time, computing power will escalate to the point where it would be possible to exactly model the history of the Earth, including the conciousness of all humans who had ever lived, and reconstruct their identities inside of a massive computer simulation.
At that point, they need never die or suffer because the simulation would be programmed to be the ultimate human paradise. Whatever that is.
You're thinking of the physicist Frank Tipler, I believe, who wrote a book,
The Physics of Immortality : Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead on this topic. Regarded as a bit of a crank iirc.
More interestingly still,
Nick Bostrom, a philosopher has taken these ideas still further. Given:
i) Computing power will increase until it reaches the point where it can simulate worlds which are indistinguishable from the real thing, using vanishingly small computing times;
ii) humanity doesn't wipe itself out before then
I don't find (i) particularly contentious.
If you grant the above assumptions, then in the future there could be several billion simulations of the world running every second which are completely indistinguishable from reality.
Corollary 1: the chances are one to several gazillion against that you're not currently part of one of those simulations. You are almost certainly living in a Matrix-type simulation.
Corollary 2: Time travel is possible. In the sense that you can simulate it perfectly within a computer.
You can find the original paper here:
The Simulation Argument
And just to prove this post is on topic, I'd just like to point out that the ToE does not rule out any of the above.
PE
[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-07-2004]
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