X-Message-Number: 21104 From: Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 10:34:20 EST Subject: smartest? --part1_17c.169ecdc4.2b77cefc_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One of the smartest people in the world, anyway, is my impression. Every physicist and philosopher should be acquainted with Joy Christian, writings including "Why the quantum must yield to gravity," in the book "Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale," ed. Callender & Huggett, Cambridge, 2001. Although you will need some background in modern physics to get the most out of it, I think even a superficial reading will, at minimum, provide convincing evidence that the assumptions underlying current quantum theory are highly suspect. In particular, there is a fascinating discussion of ideas of Penrose and others concerning "objective reduction" and possible experimental tests of the idea that superposition does not apply to macroscopic systems, contrary to the current article of faith of most physicists (cf Price's elephant). Robert Ettinger --part1_17c.169ecdc4.2b77cefc_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21104