My meaning of life hypothesis

[bascule]

Okay, here it goes, the universe is like a giant video game, when you (as a representative of conscioussness in the struggle against that-which-is-not-consciousness-or-controlled-by-consciousness) get to the end and beat it it just starts over again.

 

Essentially, the universe is made out of two things: evolution and chaos. Chaos represents a set of unsolved problems in the universe, and evolution represents the universal problem solver algorithm which appears out of nowhere yet is somehow intrinsic! Yikes, how do you rationalize that? I guess you just say it's a spontaneous emergence of self-replicating order given the natural chaotic movement of the chaos, which through being chaos long enough is bound to eventually produce some self-replicating order, and slowly the replicators consume the chaos and replace it with order.

 

Here's basically how evolution works as a universal problem solver: It's stochastic. When evolution "encounters" a problem, it "tries" over and over again to solve it, by making more replicators and having them be a little bit different each time. Well, asexual reproduction didn't do that, which was part of the problem. Asexual reproduction would try the same thing over and over until something messed up the record it kept so it actually tried something different. Evolution "solved" this problem by "creating" sexual reproduction and thus the gene pool. Or rather, after umteen gazillion iterations based on asexual reproduction alone, something new and different came along which increased the evolvability of the system.

 

So through "arms races" of sexually reproducing organisms evolution builds up more and more solutions to problems. Given most of these problems are going to be caused by your partner in the arms race, either because you're a predator and your damn prey are getting too quick and cagey for you and thus you starve to death, or you're prey and your predators inch closer to your heels every day. If they get you before you can reproduce your genes are toast!

 

Then evolution got stuck on a bigger problem: the Earth gets screwed up from time to time. A supervolcano erupts! An asteroid or other heavenly body collides with earth. Major climatological change occurs for some other reason. The energy chain breaks down: no sunlight means plants wither and die, no plants means herbavores starve, or freeze, and no herbavores means carnivores starve, etc. So clearly what's needed is some way of anticipating and avoiding mass extinction events. And given enough tries, isn't evolution bound to come up with the solution to this problem?

 

It came up with the solution: us! And we increased the evolvability of the system. That's not to say that we've actually averted a mass extinction event, but I certainly think that man as a species is up to the challenge. We can knock potentially dangerous heavenly objects off a collision course with earth. We could build shelters and stockpile supplies to survive a supervolcano eruption, and hey, even pull a little Noah's Ark and keep all (or at least, the ones we like of) the creatures which have evolved since the last mass extinction event with us when otherwise they would die.

 

We're constantly evolving to become a better and better problem solving machine. We now have point-to-point solution exchange between a majority of the members of our society via the Internet. Furthermore, we're getting better at organizing all the solutions into a global shared record via tools like WikiPedia, the Semantic Web, etc. The trend is towards every member of our species having instantaneous access to the sum total of human knowledge, and being able to contribute solutions to global problems through viral spread of ideas. And so we're about to increase the evolvability of the system yet again, by consciously freeing consciousness of all the limitations imposed upon it by the legacy of natural selection. There's all sorts of bottlenecks in the way consciousness operates now, and we're going to slowly go through and eliminate them one by one.

 

This is eventually going to lead to a group consciousness of our entire species, with lots of AI mixed in, controlling everything. Eventually this group consciousness is going to create the Von Neumann Universal Constructor, and so the problem of transforming anything into anything else will be solved. And so you end up with an omnipotent superconsciousness which spreads throughout the universe and solves all the problems it encounters, and keeps on doing that until it gets to the final ultimate problem.

 

When the last problem is solved, the combination of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and the Halting Problem, evolution, having now consumed all of the chaos to the universe and found the solution to the final ultimate problem, reverts to chaos.

 

* poof *

 

Game over man. Reset.

 

This makes no sense. How does chaos relate to problems?

 

Well, isn't chaos just the universe doing something that consciousness doesn't want or understand? When consciousness takes over the entire universe, won't the entire universe be doing what consciousness wants? Then the only problems left to solve will be internal to consciousness itself.

 

Aren't we creating problems all the time? Wouldn't this mean there's an infinite number of problems?

 

This all presupposes a finite number of problems that evolution must solve for the universe to be "complete", and that they are all solvable. Or rather, the universe becomes a "complete" system when consciousness decides to "halt" the universe and revert it back to chaos. Maybe the universe plays out the same way every time, or maybe it plays out differently each time but inevitably does the same thing over and over again.

 

I don't want or understand your bullshit "hypothesis"! Does that mean it's chaos?

 

No, I'm talking about the union of collective want and understanding between all members of our species, at least until we merge into a group consciousness and our desires become the same.

 

Well what if I want chaos!

 

I guess I should say "want because you understand," representing a solution to a problem, as opposed to an irrational desire for chaos.

 

You've just confused the hell out of me. None of this make sense. How the hell do you substantiate any of this? I don't see any evidence.

 

I leave it to the reader to look inwardly and see if they contain within their own observations any evidence which corroborates this thesis.

 

Smells like bullshit to me

 

Yup. More of a thought experiment than anything else.

[ecoli]

and hey, even pull a little Noah's Ark and keep all (or at least, the ones we like of) the creatures which have evolved since the last mass extinction event with us when otherwise they would die.

 

Or at least save the genetic information of the animals.

 

Anyway, interesting ideas, bascule

[ashennell]

I can't believe that you didn't find a way to fit the word 'singularity' in there somehow bascule. Very disappointed.

[bascule]

I can't believe that you didn't find a way to fit the word 'singularity' in there somehow bascule. Very disappointed.

 

Singularity

[ashennell]

Singularity

 

Ah ha, now it is perfect.

 

Interesting ideas bascule, I can follow the reasoning all the way throught but at the end you say that everything will revert to chaos. This dosn't seem to come from the principles that you have used for all that came previously - So why this final step?

[bascule]

Ah ha' date=' now it is perfect.

 

Interesting ideas bascule, I can follow the reasoning all the way throught but at the end you say that everything will revert to chaos. This dosn't seem to come from the principles that you have used for all that came previously - So why this final step?[/quote']

 

The system completes when the superintelligence halts the universe (at which point the universe reverts to nothing and starts over ex nihilo again)

 

How does something come from the absence of anything? Hell if I know. "Nothing" is a very hard concept to actually imagine.

[padren]

Isn't there a race condition in there? For life to make order out of chaos, it takes energy over time, and with entropy, there is only so much time.

 

Given the heights of the evolutionary goals, and the amount of time for permutations to continue before entropy is a universal issue, you'd need something like the Drake equation on crack to determine the odds some intelligence will be able to achieve the level needed to overcome the cool down issues in time.

But even without the numbers its worth taking the shot.

 

 

It somewhat overlaps one of my sentiments about life, which for me is, that life today is still very much an early phase, much like the dinosaurs existed in a stage of evolution were even the concept of cosmology could never be concieved, there are equally massive leaps down the road we can't possibly concieve.

But, even if we are not alive to see it, we can work towards that by (to use a term you use) keep trying to add memes into the mix we suspect will compete well and bring us a little closer to that eventuality of an unknown greater state.

 

I like the hypothesis though.

[bascule]

Isn't there a race condition in there? For life to make order out of chaos, it takes energy over time, and with entropy, there is only so much time.

 

Yeah, some of the ideas I had there were... off.

 

I guess what I should say is that evolution is "reaching" for a teleological attractor, eschahon, a single last penultimate configuration prior to the destruction and subsequent rebirth of the universe.

 

Evolution is reaching for a solution to the halting problem which is needed in order for the universe to be self-completing.

[starbug1]

Here's one take on 'superintelligence.' I thought this was very interesting. It is prove of man's limited senses, and I thought it might help with the meaning of life hypothesis.

 

...In accepting a mathematical description of nature' date=' physicists have been forced to abandon the ordinary world of our experience, the world of sense perceptions[...']

 

The English philosopher John Locke tried to penetrate to the "real essence of substances" by drawing a distinction between what he termed the primary and secondary qualities of matter. Thus he considered that shape, motion, solidity, and all geometrical properties were real or primary qualities, inherent in the object itself; while secondary qualities, like colors, sounds, tastes, were simpy projections upon the organs of sense...

 

"I am able to prove," wrote the great German mathematician, Leibnitz, "that not only light, color, heat, and the like, but motion, shape, and extension too are mere apparent qualities." Just as our visual sense, for example, tells us that a golf ball is white, so vision abetted by our sense, of touch tells us that it is also round, smooth, and small--qualities that have no more reality, independent of our senses, than the quality which we difne by convention as white.

 

Thus gradually philosophers and scientists arrived at the startling conclusion that since every object is simply the sum of its qualities, and since qualities exist only in the mind, the whole objective universe of matter and energy, atoms and stars, does not exist except as a construction of the consciousness, and edifice of conventioonal symbols shaped by the senses of man. As Berkeley, the archenemy of materialism, phrased it: "All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any substance without the mind...So long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do no exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit." Einstein carried this train of logic to its ultimate limits by showing that even space and time are forms of intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of color, shape, or size. Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangement of the objects we perceive in it, and time has no independent existence apart from ther order of events by which we measure it.

 

Realization that our whole knowledge of the universe is simply a residue of impressions clouded by our imperfect senses makes the quest for reality seem hopeless. If nothing has existence save in its being perceived, the world should dissolve into anarchy of indivdual perceptions. But a curious order runs through our perceptions, as if indeed there might be an underlayer of objective reality which our senses translate. Although no man can ever know whether his sensation of red or of Middle C is the same as another man's, it is nevertheless possible to act on the assumption that everyone sees colors and hears tones more or less alike.

 

This functional harmony of nature Berkeley, Descartes, and Spinoza attributed to God. Modern physicists who prefer to solve their problems without recourse to God (although this seems to become more difficult all the time) emphasize that nature mysteriously operates on mathematical principles. It is the mathematical orthodoxy of the universe that enable theorists like Einstein to predict and discover natural laws simply by the solution of equations. But the paradox of physics today is what with every improvement in its mathematical apparatus the gulf between man the obsever and the objective world of scientific description becomes more profound.

 

I wrote it all out because it's easier to grasp this way. This adequately compares man's relation with everyone elses perceptions; that is, man's existence in space/time. Chaos works in here somewhere, too.

[starbug1]

For all Brian Greene fans:

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1770003

 

Another great "meaning of life" scenario.

[bascule]

This story is so close to my own personal view of eschaton and universal rebirth in a cyclical/oscillating cosmology it's uncanny.

 

The Last Question

By Isaac Asimov

 

This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written.

 

* * After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won't tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you.

 

* * It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should.

 

---

 

* * The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

 

* * Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

 

* * Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac's.

 

* * For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

 

* * But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

 

* * The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

 

* * Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public functions, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

 

* * They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

 

* * "It's amazing when you think of it," said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. "All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."

 

* * Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.

 

* * "Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."

 

* * "That's not forever."

 

* * "All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Ten billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"

 

* * Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink. "Ten billion years isn't forever."

 

* * "Well, it will last our time, won't it?"

 

* * "So would the coal and uranium."

 

* * "All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can't do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me.

 

* * "I don't have to ask Multivac. I know that."

 

* * "Then stop running down what Multivac's done for us," said Adell, blazing up, "It did all right."

 

* * "Who says it didn't? What I say is that a sun won't last forever. That's all I'm saying. We're safe for ten billion years, but then what?" Lupow pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. "And don't say we'll switch to another sun."

 

* * There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov's eyes slowly closed. They rested.

 

* * Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

 

* * "I'm not thinking."

 

* * "Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

 

* * "I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

 

* * "Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last ten billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last two hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

 

* * "I know all about entropy," said Adell, standing on his dignity.

 

* * "The hell you do."

 

* * "I know as much as you do."

 

* * "Then you know everything's got to run down someday."

 

* * "All right. Who says they won't?"

 

* * "You did, you poor sap. You said we had all the energy we needed, forever. You said 'forever.'

 

* * It was Adell's turn to be contrary. "Maybe we can build things up again someday," he said.

 

* * "Never."

 

* * "Why not? Someday."

 

* * "Never."

 

* * "Ask Multivac."

 

* * "You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can't be done."

 

* * Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: Will mankind one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age?

 

* * Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?

 

* * Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.

 

* * Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

 

* * "No bet," whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.

 

* * By next morning, the two, plagued with throbbing head and cottony mouth, had forgotten the incident.

 

---

 

* * Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way to the predominance of a single bright shining disk, the size of a marble, centered on the viewing-screen.

 

* * "That's X-23," said Jerrodd confidently. His thin hands clamped tightly behind his back and the knuckles whitened.

 

* * The little Jerrodettes, both girls, had experienced the hyperspace passage for the first time in their lives and were self-conscious over the momentary sensation of insideoutness. They buried their giggles and chased one another wildly about their mother, screaming, "We've reached X-23 -- we've reached X-23 -- we've --"

 

* * "Quiet, children." said Jerrodine sharply. "Are you sure, Jerrodd?"

 

* * "What is there to be but sure?" asked Jerrodd, glancing up at the bulge of featureless metal just under the ceiling. It ran the length of the room, disappearing through the wall at either end. It was as long as the ship.

 

* * Jerrodd scarcely knew a thing about the thick rod of metal except that it was called a Microvac, that one asked it questions if one wished; that if one did not it still had its task of guiding the ship to a preordered destination; of feeding on energies from the various Sub-galactic Power Stations; of computing the equations for the hyperspatial jumps.

 

* * Jerrodd and his family had only to wait and live in the comfortable residence quarters of the ship. Someone had once told Jerrodd that the "ac" at the end of "Microvac" stood for ''automatic computer" in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.

 

* * Jerrodine's eyes were moist as she watched the visiplate. "I can't help it. I feel funny about leaving Earth."

 

* * "Why, for Pete's sake?" demanded Jerrodd. "We had nothing there. We'll have everything on X-23. You won't be alone. You won't be a pioneer. There are over a million people on the planet already. Good Lord, our great-grandchildren will be looking for new worlds because X-23 will be overcrowded." Then, after a reflective pause, "I tell you, it's a lucky thing the computers worked out interstellar travel the way the race is growing."

 

* * "I know, I know," said Jerrodine miserably.

 

* * Jerrodette I said promptly, "Our Microvac is the best Microvac in the world."

 

* * "I think so, too," said Jerrodd, tousling her hair.

 

* * It was a nice feeling to have a Microvac of your own and Jerrodd was glad he was part of his generation and no other. In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called. They had been growing in size steadily for a thousand years and then, all at once, came refinement. In place of transistors, had come molecular valves so that even the largest Planetary AC could be put into a space only half the volume of a spaceship.

 

* * Jerrodd felt uplifted, as he always did when he thought that his own personal Microvac was many times more complicated than the ancient and primitive Multivac that had first tamed the Sun, and almost as complicated as Earth's Planetarv AC (the largest) that had first solved the problem of hyperspatial travel and had made trips to the stars possible.

 

* * "So many stars, so many planets," sighed Jerrodine, busy with her own thoughts. "I suppose families will be going out to new planets forever, the way we are now."

 

* * "Not forever," said Jerrodd, with a smile. "It will all stop someday, but not for billions of years. Many billions. Even the stars run down, you know. Entropy must increase.

 

* * "What's entropy, daddy?" shrilled Jerrodette II.

 

* * "Entropy, little sweet, is just a word which means the amount of running-down of the universe. Everything runs down, you know, like your little walkie-talkie robot, remember?"

 

* * "Can't you just put in a new power-unit, like with my robot?"

 

* * "The stars are the power-units. dear. Once they're gone, there are no more power-units."

 

* * Jerrodette I at once set up a howl. "Don't let them, daddy. Don't let the stars run down."

 

* * "Now look what you've done," whispered Jerrodine, exasperated.

 

* * "How was I to know it would frighten them?" Jerrodd whispered back,

 

* * "Ask the Microvac," wailed Jerrodette I. "Ask him how to turn the stars on again."

 

* * "Go ahead," said Jerrodine. "It will quiet them down." (Jerrodette II was beginning to cry, also.)

 

* * Jerrodd shrugged. "Now, now, honeys. I'll ask Microvac. Don't worry, he'll tell us."

 

* * He asked the Microvac, adding quickly, "Print the answer."

 

* * Jerrodd cupped the strip or thin cellufilm and said cheerfully, "See now, the Microvac says it will take care of everything when the time comes so don't worry."

 

* * Jerrodine said, "And now, children, it's time for bed. We'll be in our new home soon."

 

* * Jerrodd read the words on the cellufilm again before destroying it: INSUFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

 

* * He shrugged and looked at the visiplate. X-23 was just ahead.

 

---

 

* * VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous, I wonder in being so concerned about the matter?"

 

* * MQ-17J of Nicron shook his head. "I think not. You know the Galaxy will be filled in five years at the present rate of expansion."

 

* * Both seemed in their early twenties, both were tall and perfectly formed.

 

* * "Still," said VJ-23X, "I hesitate to submit a pessimistic report to the Galactic Council."

 

* * "I wouldn't consider any other kind of report. Stir them up a bit. We've got to stir them up."

 

* * VJ-23X sighed. "Space is infinite. A hundred billion Galaxies are there for the taking. More."

 

* * "A hundred billion is not infinite and it's getting less infinite all the time. Consider! Twenty thousand years ago, mankind first solved the problem of utilizing stellar energy, and a few centuries later, interstellar travel became possible. It took mankind a million years to fill one small world and then only fifteen thousand years to fill the rest of the Galaxy. Now the population doubles every ten years --

 

* * VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."

 

* * "Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problem of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."

 

* * "Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."

 

* * "Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"

 

* * "Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"

 

* * "I'm still under two hundred. --But to get back to my point. Population doubles every ten years. Once this GaIaxy is filled, we'll have filled another in ten years. Another ten years and we'll have filled two more. Another decade, four more. In a hundred years, we'll have filled a thousand Galaxies. In a thousand years, a million Galaxies. In ten thousand years, the entire known universe. Then what?"

 

* * VJ-23X said, "As a side issue, there's a problem of transportation. I wonder how many sunpower units it will take to move Galaxies of individuals from one Galaxy to the next."

 

* * "A very good point. Already, mankind consumes two sunpower units per year."

 

* * "Most of it's wasted. After all, our own Galaxy alone pours out a thousand sunpower units a year and we only use two of those."

 

* * "Granted, but even with a hundred per cent efficiency, we only stave off the end. Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population. We'll run out of energy even sooner than we run out of Galaxies. A good point. A very good point."

 

* * "We'll just have to build new stars out of interstellar gas."

 

* * "Or out of dissipated heat?" asked MQ-17J, sarcastically.

 

* * "There may be some way to reverse entropy. We ought to ask the Galactic AC."

 

* * VJ-23X was not really serious, but MQ-17J pulled out his AC-contact from his pocket and placed it on the table before him.

 

* * "I've half a mind to," he said. "It's something the human race will have to face someday."

 

* * He stared somberly at his small AC-contact. It was only two inches cubed and nothing in itself, but it was connected through hyperspace with the great Galactic AC that served all mankind. Hyperspace considered, it was an integral part of the Galactic AC.

 

* * MQ-17J paused to wonder if someday in his immortal life he would get to see the Galactic AC. It was on a little world of its own, a spider webbing of force-beams holding the matter within which surges of submesons took the place of the old clumsy molecular valves. Yet despite its sub-etheric workings, the Galactic AC was known to be a full thousand feet across.

 

* * MQ-17J asked suddenly of his AC-contact, "Can entropy ever be reversed?"

 

* * VJ-23X looked startled and said at once, "Oh, say, I didn't really mean to have you ask that."

 

* * "Why not?"

 

* * "We both know entropy can't be reversed. You can't turn smoke and ash back into a tree."

 

* * "Do you have trees on your world?" asked MQ-17J.

 

* * The sound of the Galactic AC startled them into silence. Its voice came thin and beautiful out of the small AC-contact on the desk. It said: THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

 

* * VJ-23X said, "See!"

 

* * The two men thereupon returned to the question of the report they were to make to the Galactic Council.

 

---

 

* * Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real essence of men was to be found out here, in space.

 

* * Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.

 

* * Zee Prime was roused out of his reverie upon coming across the wispy tendrils of another mind.

 

* * "I am Zee Prime," said Zee Prime. "And you?"

 

* * "I am Dee Sub Wun. Your Galaxy?"

 

* * "We call it only the Galaxy. And you?"

 

* * "We call ours the same. All men call their Galaxy their Galaxy and nothing more. Why not?"

 

* * "True. Since all Galaxies are the same."

 

* * "Not all Galaxies. On one particular Galaxy the race of man must have originated. That makes it different."

 

* * Zee Prime said, "On which one?"

 

* * "I cannot say. The Universal AC would know."

 

* * "Shall we ask him? I am suddenly curious."

 

* * Zee Prime's perceptions broadened until the Galaxies themselves shrank and became a new, more diffuse powdering on a much larger background. So many hundreds of billions of them, all with their immortal beings, all carrying their load of intelligences with minds that drifted freely through space. And yet one of them was unique among them all in being the original Galaxy. One of them had, in its vague and distant past, a period when it was the only Galaxy populated by man.

 

* * Zee Prime was consumed with curiosity to see this Galaxy and he called out: "Universal AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?"

 

* * The Universal AC heard, for on every world and throughout space, it had its receptors ready, and each receptor led through hyperspace to some unknown point where the Universal AC kept itself aloof.

 

* * Zee Prime knew of only one man whose thoughts had penetrated within sensing distance of Universal AC, and he reported only a shining globe, two feet across, difficult to see.

 

* * "But how can that be all of Universal AC?" Zee Prime had asked.

 

* * "Most of it," had been the answer, "is in hyperspace. In what form it is there I cannot imagine."

 

* * Nor could anyone, for the day had long since passed, Zee Prime knew, when any man had any part of the making of a Universal AC. Each Universal AC designed and constructed its successor. Each, during its existence of a million years or more accumulated the necessary data to build a better and more intricate, more capable successor in which its own store of data and individuality would be submerged.

 

* * The Universal AC interrupted Zee Prime's wandering thoughts, not with words, but with guidance. Zee Prime's mentality was guided into the dim sea of Galaxies and one in particular enlarged into stars.

 

* * A thought came, infinitely distant, but infinitely clear. "THIS IS THE ORIGINAL GALAXY OF MAN."

 

* * But it was the same after all, the same as any other, and Lee Prime stifled his disappointment.

 

* * Dee Sub Wun, whose mind had accompanied the other, said suddenly, "And is one of these stars the original star of Man?"

 

* * The Universal AC said, "MAN'S ORIGINAL STAR HAS GONE NOVA. IT IS A WHITE DWARF"

 

* * "Did the men upon it die?" asked Lee Prime, startled and without thinking.

 

* * The Universal AC said, "A NEW WORLD, AS IN SUCH CASES WAS CONSTRUCTED FOR THEIR PHYSICAL BODIES IN TlME."

 

* * "Yes, of course," said Zee Prime, but a sense of loss overwhelmed him even so. His mind released its hold on the original Galaxy of Man, let it spring back and lose itself among the blurred pin points. He never wanted to see it again.

 

* * Dee Sub Wun said, "What is wrong?"

 

* * "The stars are dying. The original star is dead."

 

* * "They must all die. Why not?"

 

* * "But when all energy is gone, our bodies will finally die, and you and I with them."

 

* * "It will take billions of years."

 

* * "I do not wish it to happen even after billions of years. Universal AC! How may stars be kept from dying?"

 

* * Dee Sub Wun said in amusement, "You're asking how entropy might be reversed in direction."

 

* * And the Universal AC answered: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

 

* * Zee Prime's thoughts fled back to his own Galaxy. He gave no further thought to Dee Sub Wun, whose body might be waiting on a Galaxy a trillion light-years away, or on the star next to Zee Prime's own. It didn't matter.

 

* * Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

 

---

 

* * Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.

 

* * Man said, "The Universe is dying."

 

* * Man looked about at the dimming Galaxies. The giant stars, spendthrifts, were gone long ago, back in the dimmest of the dim far past. Almost all stars were white dwarfs, fading to the end.

 

* * New stars had been built of the dust between the stars, some by natural processes, some by Man himself, and those were going, too. White dwarfs might yet be crashed together and of the mighty forces so released, new stars built, but only one star for every thousand white dwarfs destroyed, and those would come to an end, too.

 

* * Man said, "Carefully husbanded, as directed by the Cosmic AC, the energy that is even yet left in all the Universe will last for billions of years."

 

* * "But even so," said Man, "eventually it will all come to an end. However it may be husbanded, however stretched out, the energy once expended is gone and cannot be restored. Entropy must increase forever to the maximum."

 

* * Man said, "Can entropy not be reversed? Let us ask the Cosmic AC."

 

* * The Cosmic AC surrounded them but not in space. Not a fragment of it was in space. It was in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy. The question of its size and nature no longer had meaning in any terms that Man could comprehend.

 

* * "Cosmic AC," said Man, "how may entropy be reversed?"

 

* * The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

 

* * Man said, "Collect additional data."

 

* * The Cosmic AC said, 'I WILL DO S0. I HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR A HUNDRED BILLION YEARS. MY PREDECESORS AND I HAVE BEEN ASKED THIS QUESTION MANY TlMES. ALL THE DATA I HAVE REMAINS INSUFFICIENT.

 

* * "Will there come a time," said Man, 'when data will be sufficient or is the problem insoluble in all conceivable circumstances?"

 

* * The Cosmic AC said, "NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."

 

* * Man said, "When will you have enough data to answer the question?"

 

* * The Cosmic AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

 

* * "Will you keep working on it?" asked Man.

 

* * The Cosmic AC said, "I WILL."

 

* * Man said, "We shall wait."

 

---

 

* * The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.

 

* * One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

 

* * Man's last mind paused before fusion, looking over a space that included nothing but the dregs of one last dark star and nothing besides but incredibly thin matter, agitated randomly by the tag ends of heat wearing out, asymptotically, to the absolute zero.

 

* * Man said, "AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?"

 

* * AC said, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

 

* * Man's last mind fused and only AC existed -- and that in hyperspace.

 

---

 

* * Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

 

* * All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.

 

* * All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.

 

* * But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

 

* * A timeless interval was spent in doing that.

 

* * And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.

 

* * But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.

 

* * For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

 

* * The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

 

* * And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

 

* * And there was light --

[memenaut_06]

I see three 'phases' leading up to the 'universal rebirth'.

 

1. Humanity is united under 'Technocracy'. Government is controlled by congress of scientists, engineers, and other experts. Humans have harnessed all the power of the sun, the Earth, the biosystem, and their own economies. Nano-sized robot 'colonies' assemble everything atom by atom. Robots design next generation of robots. Technology advances so fast that the race cannot keep track of it. Money does not exist anymore because there's no need for it. Economy is so advanced that scarcity does not exist anymore, and only limits are ability to consume, time, and space.

 

2. Technological advances create 'Borgism': society with hive mind... sort of like Star Trek, sort of termite colony, sort of techno-communism... People have started replicating themselves, implanting, augmenting, virtual reality, etc. People are no longer confined to their physical bodies, they all live in a virtual collective 'hive' mind. At any instant, they can create any kind of physical being and inhabit it in the real world. People can make copies of themselves fight to the death just for entertainment. Now, the individual is just an appendage of a greater organism. There is no longer any difference between living or machine. The means of production are now 'evolved' to fit their needs. Instead of micro-competition between individuals, there is macro-competition of individuals as one entity against the forces that conflict with its configuration.

 

3. Growth and one-ness with the universe create 'One-One': the hive mind 'feels' every part of every world it spans. Every planet is a gear in its galaxy-spanning clockwork. The hive mind has unlocked all the secrets about the universe it inhabits. Its model of reality becomes reality itself. There is nothing special, nothing to be curious about, and no values. It only lives to grow, assimilate more matter into its internal structure, to end the tendency to chaos, and bring order to the universe.

 

And, once it reaches this final state... kaputski!

 

So it all seems kind of pointless in the end. I guess the trip matters more than the destination.

[aguy2]

Okay, here it goes, the universe is like a giant video game, when you (as a representative of conscioussness in the struggle against that-which-is-not-consciousness-or-controlled-by-consciousness) get to the end and beat it it just starts over again.

 

(1) I would contend that it does not 'just' start over because the 'problems' have been solved. Wouldn't it be more logical that the 'starting over' is the solution to "the last problem which is also the first problem". see (3).

 

evolution represents the universal problem solver algorithm which appears out of nowhere yet is somehow intrinsic! Yikes, how do you rationalize that? I guess you just say it's a spontaneous emergence of self-replicating order

 

(2) Isn't the term 'emergence' a rework of the concept of 'gestalt'; with 'gestalt' being the recognition that complex systems seem to be more than the sum of their parts? Either way wouldn't these concepts tend to invalidate 'Determinism'?

 

When the last problem is solved' date=' the combination of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and the Halting Problem, evolution, having now consumed all of the chaos to the universe and found the solution to the final ultimate problem, reverts to chaos.

[/quote']

 

(3) Wouldn't it be at least be more poetic to assume that the 'last cause' provides a solution to the 'first cause'?

 

aguy2

[bascule]

Robots design next generation of robots. Technology advances so fast that the race cannot keep track of it.

 

Technological advances create 'Borgism': society with hive mind... sort of like Star Trek, sort of termite colony, sort of techno-communism... People have started replicating themselves, implanting, augmenting, virtual reality, etc. People are no longer confined to their physical bodies, they all live in a virtual collective 'hive' mind. At any instant, they can create any kind of physical being and inhabit it in the real world. People can make copies of themselves fight to the death just for entertainment. Now, the individual is just an appendage of a greater organism. There is no longer any difference between living or machine. The means of production are now 'evolved' to fit their needs. Instead of micro-competition between individuals, there is macro-competition of individuals as one entity against the forces that conflict with its configuration.

 

You're describing Singularity

 

And, once it reaches this final state... kaputski!

 

So it all seems kind of pointless in the end. I guess the trip matters more than the destination.

 

"Everyone's searching for something they say... but I get my kicks on the way"

 

-- Pink Floyd / The Gold It's In The...

[aguy2]

Bascule,

 

You seem to readily respond to 'trolling' but seem ignore legitimate questions like the ones I asked in post #13.

 

What's up? Are you pretending that if you ignore such questions they will somehow go away?

 

aguy2

[bascule]

Isn't the term 'emergence' a rework of the concept of 'gestalt'

 

No? The idea of emergence is that collective behavior of a system creates new properties which are not present in the individual parts.

 

with 'gestalt' being the recognition that complex systems seem to be more than the sum of their parts?

 

You're just definition mincing. The terms are somewhat synonymous but "emergence" is an explanation for new properties (e.g. property dualism)

 

Either way wouldn't these concepts tend to invalidate 'Determinism'?

 

No, why would they, any more than the virtual world of a video game which emerges from digital computations within a computer?

 

What's up? Are you pretending that if you ignore such questions they will somehow go away?

 

My apologies for not responding to everything people say to me...

[starbug1]

we're getting better at organizing all the solutions into a global shared record via tools like WikiPedia

 

This link on fecund universes is very similar to your ideas about 'rebirth' in the universe.

 

If this theory is correct, the odds strongly favor this universe being not the first to ever exist, but a descendant of many that have existed through time.

...which would use entropy as a motivator for the expiration and posible rebirths of new universes.

 

Each universe therefore gives rise to as many new universes as it has black holes. (Thus the theory contains the evolutionary ideas of "reproduction" and "mutation" of universes, but has no analogue of natural selection.)

 

This is where it differs. Giving rise to many new universes. This works on a more prolific multiverse theory, but basically runs with your original idea.

 

Louis Crane has proposed a meduso-anthropic principle, which suggests that universes could be fine-tuned for life by intelligent beings themselves manufacturing new universes

 

Also agreeing with evolution's trial and error and the creation of humans (and other intelligent life). And, as so masterfully pronounced, Asimov's story incorporates humans interactions and the 'manufacturing of new universes' essentially.

 

By the way, I strongly agree with your theory. It makes a lot of sense even if, like the radical parallel universe, multiverse, and fecund universe theories, it can't be considered solvable.

[bascule]

This link[/url'] on fecund universes is very similar to your ideas about 'rebirth' in the universe.

 

Yeah, I posted a thread on it not too long ago. Lee Smolin is awesome and I have to thank Martin for pointing me at him, but Martin hasn't seemed to be around very much lately.

[aguy2]

bascule,

Thank you for addressing my 2nd question in post #13, but what about the question I raised in question 1 plus 3?

 

Okay' date=' here it goes, the universe is like a giant video game, when you get to the end and beat it it just starts over again.

 

Essentially, the universe is made out of two things: evolution and chaos.

 

we increased the [i']evolvability[/i] of the system.

 

We're constantly evolving to become a better and better problem solving machine.

 

Game over man. Reset.

 

Maybe the universe plays out the same way every time, or maybe it plays out differently each time but inevitably does the same thing over and over again.

 

Yup. More of a thought experiment than anything else.

 

I realize that this is only a thought experiment on your part, but without addressing the 'problem' of the origin of the oscillating/cyclic universe isn't the 'game' rather pointless?

 

aguy2