X-Message-Number: 20905
From: "michaelprice" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: information conservation again
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 08:15:08 -0000

Bob Ettinger mentions the "multiverse".   Making the distinction between the
Multiverse and our Universe enables us clarify the role of information and
its loss from the universe.

The multiverse (or universal wavefunction in technotalk) is the collection
of all the ways the universe could have turned out, rather than just the way
it appears to turned out in our universe.  Some physicists (who follow
Everett) believe the multiverse to actually exist; for them & me the
universe is part of a greater reality.  Others believe the multiverse is
just a theoretical construct; for them the multiverse represents the entire
range of possible universes, of which only our universe, with its unique
history, is real.

For the purposes of our discussion it doesn't matter whether we treat the
multiverse as real or not.  According to physics every time a random event
occurs information is lost from our universe into the multiverse (or simply
lost if we don't believe in the multiverse).  The laws relating to
information conservation (technobabble: unitarity) apply only to the
multiverse, not to the universe.  This is true whether or not we believe the
multiverse to be real or not.  Therefore information is not conserved in our
universe; it is diluted away every time a random event occurs.

This perspective also addresses Mike Perry's point about information loss at
black holes.  Information that falls into a black holes is eventually (by
the consensus view) spewed out again in the Hawking radiation, but across
all the range of universes that have diverged since the infalling, so that
the amount of information that re-emerges in any one universe is quite
negligible and, consequently, indistinguishable from the background thermal
spectrum emitted.

To reconstruct someone lost in the mists of history we would need access to
information that has been scattered across the multiverse.  Our universe
alone would not possess the information.  And since, according to current
physics, the information lost to other, inaccessible universes in the
multiverse is lost for ever, such reconstruction or resurrection of past
individuals is impossible.

Cheers,
Michael C Price
----------------------------------------
http://mcp.longevity-report.com
http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm

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