X-Message-Number: 4789
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:24:23 -0400
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Re: Moravec and Determinism

John K Clark <> writes:
> 3) Even ignoring  #1 and #2,  the universe could be deterministic and
> it could still be impossible to deduce it's history. Chance is not
> involved in Chess but if I gave you a picture of a chess board halfway
> through a game you could still not determine all the moves that led up
> to it, because there are many different ways it could happen.

As far as anyone knows, in physics, unlike in chess, information is
never destroyed.  This is called the law of conservation of phase space.

However, this isn't particularly useful, since information can easily
dissipate at the speed of light in all directions.  A technology which
can somehow absorb and analyze all of this information is inconveivable
to me, even if it were somehow possible to outrace these photons so at
to have detectors in place to absorb them.
--
Keith Lynch, 
http://www.access.digex.net/~kfl/


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