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[escepticos] RV: TIPLER RESPONDS TO HAWKING/SHERMER



-----Original Message-----
De: Skeptic Mag Hotline <skeptic-admin en lyris.net>
Para: Skeptics Society <skeptics en lyris.net>
Fecha: sábado 14 de marzo de 1998 2:15
Asunto: TIPLER RESPONDS TO HAWKING/SHERMER


>I thought you all might be interested in Frank Tipler's response to Stephen
>Hawking (and to me from a previous discussion about God and the soul). If
you
>have any thoughts on this exchange please feel free to pass them along.
Frank
>didn't want to give out his e-mail, but I said I would pass along any
opinions
>on this exchange.
>
>Also, another point Hawking made in his big public lecture that I found
rather
>interesting (the lecture was entitled PREDICTING THE FUTURE: From Astrology
to
>Black Holes), was that the evidence for string theory is even less than
that
>for astrology, but that he believes in string theory but not in astrology
>because it is consistent with physical laws and the equations.
>
>To reiterate, here is my question to Stephen Hawking at Caltech on
Thursday,
>March 12, and his answer:
>
>"You've been talking about the Omega Point and the Anthropic Principle.
What
>is your opinion of your cosmologist colleague Frank Tipler's book, THE
PHYSICS
>OF IMMORTALITY, and his theory that the Omega Point will reach back from
the
>far future of the universe into the past to reconstruct every human who
ever
>lived or who ever could have lived in the ultimate Holodeck?"
>
>Hawking sat their for a minute typing out his answer:
>
>"MY OPINION WOULD BE LIBELOUS."
>
>Frank Tipler writes:
>
>I have two basic problems with my colleagues about the Omega Point
>Theory.  The first is that all the knowledge that almost all of them have
>of the theory comes from people who are not technically trained in the
>physics.  For example, in your phrasing that the "Omega Point reaches back
>from the far future into the past ..."  this is not what happens in my
>theory.  The future cannot reach back into the past (except in a very
>subtle sense which is not relevant to the resurrection -- if you were a
>physicist I would simply say, "least action").  Rather, what happens is
>that intelligent life in the far future reconstructs all possibilities
>consistent with what they know about the past.  This is simply a vastly
>scaled up version of what we ourselves are now doing in trying to
>reconstruct our ultimate ancestor, the first living cell.  Chemical
>evolution laboratories all over the world are now systematically trying all
>possibilities.
>
>That there are only a finite number of possibilities today to try
>follows directly from the Bekenstein Bound, which Hawking accepts (see the
>BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME).  That life in the far future will have the
>capability to try them all, at an insignificant relative cost, follows
>directly from the mutual consistency of the known laws of physics (see
>below).  It's a pity that the question of reconstruction was not put to
>Hawking this way.  You know that David Deutsch, who has just been awarded
>the Dirac Medal for his invention of the quantum computer, writes in his
>book THE FABRIC OF REALITY, that I am quite correct that a sufficiently
>advanced civilization can reconstruct everyone in the computers of the far
>future.  Deutsch also writes in his book that he thinks my Omega Point
>Theory will one day be accepted as the correct theory of the far future.  I
>agree; for all I do in my work is accept the logical consequences of the
>known laws of physics: quantum mechanics, relativity, and the 2nd Law of
>Thermodynamics.  I'm not proposing any new laws of physics, just asking
>people to accept the logical consequences of the laws they claim to accept.
>Libelling the OPT is equivalent to libelling the known laws of physics.  I
>can assure you that the laws of physics are quite indifferent.
>
>E pour si mouve!
>
>The second problem I have with my colleagues is that almost all
>contemporary theology STILL presupposes the truth of Aristotelean physics.
>This being the case, scientists naturally suppose theology is nonsense, or
>in a separate realm from science.  With the almost unique exception of
>Pannenberg, theologians encourage them in this latter opinion.  Only if
>theology is kept separate can it retain its Aristotlean physical basis.
>
>Michael, you yourself are a good example of this resistance to
>using modern science in defining religious concepts.  You repeatedly insist
>on defining the "soul" as an "immaterial material" (Hobbs' phrase;
>"substantial form" was Aquinas' term), a sort of ghostly white stuff
>inhabiting the body.  From this ridiculous concept arise the equally silly
>ideas that ghosts could exist, and that the soul of one person could
>contact the soul of another without the assistence of normal matter
>(psychic phenomena).
>
>To your great credit, you know ghosts and ESP don't exist.  You
>yourself have provided some of the evidence that they don't by your
>exposure of psychic frauds.  But you won't give up psychic definition of
>soul!  You keep the definition, and say, "the `soul' doesn't exist"
>(correct claim, with this definition).  But words are used to help us
>understand reality.  Indeed they have no other purpose!  I claim that your
>traditional approach to religious concepts will inadvertently make you
>throw out the baby with the bath water.  The reality that the ancients were
>trying to capture in the word "soul" is expressed by defining the soul to
>be a computer program being run on the human brain.  With this
>re-definition, we can keep the religious concept, and make it consistent
>with the facts.  But most importantly, the re-definition makes the
>scientist realize that immortality is perfectly possible:  there's no
>physical reason why a PROGRAM cannot exist forever.  Some of the programs
>now coded in our DNA have been around billions of years.  Keeping the old
>definition makes Hawking want to libel a person whose book's central
>postulate is that the biosphere can go on forever.  Is postulating the
>immortality of the biosphere an evil postulate?  Shouldn't we at least TRY
>to make it so?  Should a person who tries to figure out how to use the
>known physical laws to make the biosphere immortal be ostracized from
>scientific society?
>
>Similarly for the word "God".  If He is identified with the Omega
>Point, then the key religious meanings of "God" are retained, with science
>and religion integrated.  As he wrote at length in his paper that I sent
>you, the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg (who has been called one of
>the three greatest theololgians of the 20th century), agrees that the OP is
>in all essentials the God of the Bible.  It's easier for a German
>theologian to come to this conclusion than an English speaker.  God's Name,
>given in Exodus 3:14, was translated by Martin Luther as ICH WERDE SEIN,
>DER ICH SEIN WERDE.
>
>Failing to make this change of definition, which is to say, failing
>to give up Aristotlean physics, makes it difficult to accept the
>consequences of modern physics.  These require the universe to terminate in
>its ultimate future in an Omega Point, a state of infinite knowledge, and
>infinite power.  Refusing to change your definition of "God" impells you to
>reject modern physics.  (Otherwise, who would care what is meant by "God").
>Regreatably, most people think that modern physics is not the answer, and
>that's why most of them are quite willing to believe in psychic powers.
>Which is why you have to spend your time exposing psychic frauds.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Frank Tipler
>
>APPENDIX:
>
>Why the Acceptance of the Known Laws of Physics
>REQUIRES Acceptance of the Omega Point Theory
>
>Astrophysical black holes almost certainly exist, but Hawking has shown
>that if black holes are allowed to exist for unlimited proper time, then
>they will completely evaporate, and unitarity will be violated.  Thus
>unitarity requires that the universe must cease to exist after finite
>proper time, which implies that the universe has spatial topology $S^3$.
>The Second Law of Thermodynamics says the amount of entropy in the universe
>cannot decrease, but it can be shown that the amount of entropy already in
>the CBR will eventually contradict the Bekenstein Bound near the final
>singularity unless there are no event horizons, since in the presence of
>horizons the Bekenstein Bound implies the universal entropy $S \leq
>constant\times R^2$, where $R$ is the radius of the universe, and general
>relativity requires $R \rightarrow 0$ at the final singularity.  The
>absence of event horizons by definition means that the universe's future
>c-boundary is a single point, call it the {\it Omega Point}.  MacCallum has
>shown that an $S^3$ closed universe with a single point future c-boundary
>is of measure zero in initial data space.  Barrow has shown that the
>evolution of an $S^3$ closed universe into its final singularity is
>chaotic.  Yorke has shown that a chaotic physical system is likely to
>evolve into a measure zero state if and only if its control parameters are
>intelligently manipulated.  Thus life ($\equiv$ intelligent computers)
>almost certainly must be present {\it arbitrarily close} to the final
>singularity in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually
>consistent at all times.  Misner has shown in effect that event horizon
>elimination requires an infinite number of distinct manipulations, so an
>infinite amount of information must be processed between now and the final
>singularity.  The amount of information stored at any given time diverges
>to infinity as the Omega Point is approached, since $S\rightarrow +\infty$
>there, implying divergence of the complexity of the system that must be
>understood to be controlled.
>
>\medskip
>Life transferring its information to a medium that can withstand the
>arbitrarily high temperatures near the final singularity $(T\geq
>constant/R)$ has several implications: first, $10^{-6} \leq \Omega_0 - 1
>\leq 10^{-3}$, where $\Omega_0$ is the density parameter, and second, the
>Standard Model Higgs boson mass must
>be $220 \pm 20$ GeV.  The details are in {\it The Physics of Immortality}.
>
>\vfill\eject
> \bye
>
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