X-Message-Number: 9600 Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 21:15:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Information Conservation Ettinger () wrote: > Frank Tipler's book, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY (Doubleday, 1994), includes his > conclusion that, in the far future, computing power will be unlimited and > subjective life span also unlimited, so that we or our descendants or > successors could resurrect anyone who ever lived (and more). Computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec takes this to its logical conclusion: in the far future, machine intelligences should have the power to "replay" Earth's prior epochs (such as ours), simulating everything down to the atomic level. Indeed, we could be living in such a simulation right now. If we assume that the simulation will be run more than once, while there is only one "source" reality, the odds are heavily in favor of our current universe being a simulation. In other words, we don't have to wait to be resurrected; it has happened already. Needless to say, this knowledge is no more useful than a belief in reincarnation; and I regard speculation such as Tipler's as being tangential, at best, to our immediate concerns. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9600