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Timeline of the far future

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Re: Timeline of the far future

#91
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bible as historical non-fiction is most certainly absurd, no implications about that. Not saying so out of sensitivity to those who believe otherwise does reason a disservice, just as not calling out Bolzmann because I don't want to offend him. If this makes anyone unwelcome, they should avoid places where their fragile ego might be challenged by rational conclusions. In a place like hacker news, I see no reason…

By the same standard, "SOPA sucks. Just like PHP/Java." is appropriate. "PHP/Java sucks" may be appropriate when discussing programming languages, but dragging it into a thread about SOPA does not help.

I'm not sure I understand your point. "SOPA sucks. Just like PHP/Java" is a useless statement, since the only thing the two have in common is "sucking."

The Bible is an alternative theory of the origin and purpose of existence, and is directly analogous to the matter of this thread.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#92
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Occam's razor says that we should give more credence to the simpler theory, not the more commonsensical one Yes, and I find Occam's razor itself to be common sense, which is what my point was. If a theory seems to reflect more closely observable reality, I would bias my investigations toward that theory over one the projects something non-sensical. > I hope you don't also go around telling biologists that its absur…

> If a theory seems to reflect more closely observable reality, I would bias my investigations toward that theory over one the projects something non-sensical. I don't understand your basis for saying one theory matches observable reality more closely than the other. I mean, have you observed the heat death of the universe? And how can you say that what is being projected is non-sensical, except to the extent that pe…

The theory is based in observable reality (since there is nothing else to base a theory on,) so when it projects something that does not explain or seem compatible with observable reality, it calls itself into question.

There is being open-minded, and there is intellectual masturbation. If you observe something in the sky that is flying in quick irregular movements, you can derive all sorts of interesting, possible, perhaps even correct theories about new NSA drones, perhaps based on massive amounts of "inside information" and other evidence. There is some fun and value in this, and on rare occasions such thinking may be correct. It's not wrong to speculate wildly, but it's also not likely to yield the answer unless you constrain your answer to something with reasonable implications - such as that you are not on the Truman Show, because while that may be true, I think most of us agree it's less likely than other theories. Most of us would conclude it's probably a bird, or a plastic bag, and most of the time we'd be right.

All scientific theories are based at some level on observable reality, and an infinite number of theories could be derived from a given observable reality. Evolution and solar orbit had the benefit of providing simple explanations with observable and provable implications. Boltzmann wants us to believe that every possible reality exists simply because it is the logical result of some of the leading theories of the day. That does more for me to disprove the theories than prove their implication.

If one has two theories: theory A implies all possibilities exist in infinite time, theory B implies one reality exists in a single universe - all other things being equal, which one would you find more likely to be true?

I'd say we need a theory B.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#93
post #14

Even more "mind shivering" than this one was a linked article about Boltzman brains ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain ) which I had never heard of before.

Fascinating, wonder if this can be generalized to - for any local state that has observably occured, its subset will likely occur some where in the universe.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#94
post #55

It's estimated that by 500,000 years from now on the Earth will have likely been impacted by a meteorite of roughly 1 km in diameter. http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol204/impacts.htm Here are the results of current attempts to track the objects that can potentially impact the Earth: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

>by 500,000 years from now on the Earth will have likely been impacted by a meteorite of roughly 1 km in diameter Nah. Let's be optimistic. Within a few decades we will have developed the ability to deflect all dangerous asteroids. Also, the idea in the article that we will allow the historically priceless Californian coast to disappear 100,000 centuries from now is preposterous. Our ability to alter geography has in…

You're assuming that a future society will have the same interest as we do in conserving physical artifacts. A physical structure like a coastline takes up a lot of space and matter compared to the amount useful information it holds. If we're going to be efficient about it, you could map California down to the nearest micrometer and save the data to some form of very high density storage.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#95
post #23
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just a simple matter of probability? Given an event, however unprobable it is, it can happen given infinite time? From a purely mathematical standpoint, this is correct.

If your assumption is infinite time and complete entropy, yes it's correct. It's also why some level of common sense (e.g. Occam's razor) should be applied before such silliness is seriously proposed. I don't think Boltzmann assumes infinite time and entropy, just enough for the completely random emergence of sentient life that thinks (perhaps falsely) that it lives in a universe populated by similar beings who creat…

To use Occam's razor you need a competing simpler (less assumptions) theory.

"Common sense" might be a tool to produce such a theory but it is not a theory by itself.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#96
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what we believe the laws of physics to be, which isn't yet a fully settled question.

Sure. Quite possibly we'll just see refinements at the edges of what we have access to (because at most scales, physics is already very accurate) rather than outright revolutions.

We still know almost nothing about 80% of the matter in the visible universe. Ordinary matter is less than 5%. Physics has some explaining to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

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