From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: That "Vision Thing"!/Teleology in Modern Physics
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 01:02:52 GMT



THAT VISION THING
excerpts from international computer conference run by Whole Earth

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
By: Richard Lubbock (rcl) on Wed, Aug 12, '92
        8 responses so far

 "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and
 last things."

 Is it philosophy? Is it science? Is it comic strip or
 acid trip? The world and all the people in it was created by a
 Being, called Omega, who (or which) lives and acts in the
 uttermost future of our universe, at the far, far end of time.
 That's the hypothesis of theoretical physicist Jack Sarfatti,
 who's evangelizing it over in the Science conference. What's more
 he says he can confront it with a knockdown experimental test.

 This Being--or Force, or Civilization, or Supermind, whatever you
 will--has emerged by evolution from the deeds of the human race
 today, and from the exploits of our future generations.

 Here's how John Barrow and Frank Tipler describe the Omega point
 in their vade-mecum of teleology, The Anthropic Cosmological
 Principle:

 "At the instant the Omega Point is reached, life will have gained
 control of all matter and forces not only in a single universe,
 but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life
 will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which
 could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of
 information, including all bits of knowledge which it is logically
 possible to know. And this is the end."

 The notion of Omega raises some fun philosphical questions. The
 very idea encourages unbridled speculation, irrepressible
 hypothesizing and the overmultiplication of hypotheses beyond any
 thought of necessity, reason and decency.

 So let's do it: Let's talk Omega. Remember, we're philosophers,
 not scientists, so we can jettison the millstone of Occam's Razor,
 and hotly embrace science's taboo topic, teleology.

8 responses total.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  1: Richard Lubbock (rcl)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (09:52)      26 lines

 Is this Omega thing, down there at the end of time, a boon or a
 nuisance? According to Sarfatti the tangled forward time-loops are
 enough to explain human inspiration, so that our Mozarts and
 Leonardos got their ideas not by their own efforts, but from the
 future.

 The mathematicians have a saying that when one of their number
 cooks up a particularly good theorem, "God has allowed him a peek
 into his infinite book of theorems." Yes, and I have a feeling,
 when I make a successful joke, that God has allowed me a peek into
 his infinite joke book. So all jokes and theorems are already
 foreordained somewhere out there in the future.

 If that's true then the existence of Mr.Omega denies us little
 mannikins all credit for what we achieve. I don't like that. My
 jokes are *mine* and mine alone, and my name goes on them.
 Sarfatti's conjecture plays merry hob with our laws and customs of
 copyright.

 Oh, and another thing: it's not only the Mozarts and Chaucers who
 receive injections of inspiration from Omega country; madmen and
 megalomaniacs do too. So Mr. Omega inspired Hitler and Stalin and
 Allen Funt as well as George Washington and Winston Churchill.

 Is Mr. Omega really our friend? It all looks murky, dark and
 ambiguous.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  2: Richard Lubbock (rcl)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (09:53)      13 lines

 Sarfatti claims we can in principle build machines to gather data
 from the future. He sketches a vision of huge profits for
 speculators. Really?

 Lotteries, for example. Even the $$$millions available on the
 occasional lottery ticket count as small change in today's world.
 Who wants to be a millionaire? Millionaires are paupers nowadays.

 The stock market. There might be a few big wins at first, but
 nothing spectacular; and then smart money, even without quantum
 precognition, would find a way to discount the precognitive
 effect. It would act as computerised trading does today: no more
 than a catalyst that volatilizes and speeds things up.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  3: Jeff Dooley (dooley)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (11:39)      15 lines

I'm tangled up in the confusion of determining the extent to which we
take time seriously in talk of Omega.  We, the unwashed, who
occasionally peek into the Omega treasure chest and pluck out a trinket
of "truth", labor, as dissipative systems, under the shadow of time's
arrow.  Time exsits for us--at least for me; regardless that my
experience of it appears to me a constructed category.

So, when we speak of Omega resonating "down there at the end of time"
what is it we are saying about "time?"  Is there "time" for Omega?  My
impulse is to say, "no, Omega is out of time."  But there is "time" for
me.  So, is the confluence of all possible futures at Omega an event
which reverberates dynamically back through the "ages" only because our
perception is that there are "ages" linked in a temporal flow?  Are all
the problems scientists have had with "teleology" simply problems that
exist because of the way we organize our experience of the world--to
unfold with the temporal parade?

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  4: Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (19:49)       3
lines

 This is great! Right now I'm in the heat of battle with physicist Mike
 Gallis of U Penn on whether the precognition machine will work. I will
 post it on sci274 Future Physics - back anon.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  5: Richard Lubbock (rcl)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (19:50)      28 lines

 Jeff: In my reading I've encountered at least four kinds of time:

 1) The 'normal' time of our experience
 2) Hawking's 'imaginary' time nearby the Alpha point
 3) The 'quantum vacuum' time outside Alpha and Omega. I think
 Sarfatti refers to this.
 4) Barrow and Tipler designate a local time for our ensemble of
 universes. As the universes close in on Omega, time ticks faster
 and faster but seems to go slower and slower. Thus, subjective
 time inside a universe will feel 'normal' to our successors near
 Omega, although it is rapidly coming to an end from the point of
 view of the vacuum.

 Inside the universe local time goes on forever. We never reach
 Omega. It's like Achilles and the tortoise. But seen from outside
 the universe does come to an end. That's how I understand it.

I read Whitehead as implying that time is created by the decisions
of the single occasions of experience--that is unit events, mental
and physical. Universal Time is decided by 'the consequent nature
of God,' which I take to be Omega.

 It's a sorting-out process: an arbitrary decision in matters of
 relative doubt that the order was indeed thus-and-so.

 I know a physicist here in Toronto who published a paper last year,
 in a reputable journal, in which he derived special relativity
 without the time dimension. It beats me.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  6: Richard Lubbock (rcl)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (21:14)      12 lines

 I suspect Bacon's, and his successors', problem with teleology was
 the moral one. Teleological arguments make explanations too easy.
 When in trouble you can say "It's God's will and what's more, if
 you disagree with me, God will have you burned at the stake."

 Teleological explanation can open the way to tyranny, the Soviet
 commissars and the Ayatollahs. And a lot of sloppy thinking.

 The anti-teleological bias of science, I believe, resembles the
 rigid way some programming languages decree that you have to
 respect the proper data types. Very practical and healthy, but
 sometimes you have to bend.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  7: Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti)      Wed, Aug 12, '92  (21:45)       1
line

 The article by David Gladstone in Mondo 112 is relevant to this topic.

Topic  56:  The Omega Point? A likely story
#  8: Gerald Boyack (gaboy)      Thu, Aug 13, '92  (07:34)       4 lines

 I come nearest to believing in an Omega from hearing Mozart--as
 represented by the old saw:  Beethoven, et al., wrote heavenly
 music, but Mozart heard the music of the heavens and wrote it
 down.

Sarfatti

I second that.