🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct6.012221.28431@access.usask.ca> choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.) writes:
>Our world seems made to order for life and happiness.

I have become increasingly puzzled with Choy's posts.  First, on
sci.math, he touted the idea of a vast computer-generated database of
theorems that mathematicians could sift through to find useful results.
The on sci.physics he asked if there was a handbook somewhere that
contained all the formulas of quantum field theory and particle physics.
The above quote somehow explains everything.  

Anyway, let me comment on a few of his cosmic scenarios:

>  + We come to understand and control nature as metaphysics and
>    observations mesh to clue us into what makes everything tick and
>    why.

We are clearly doing this to a limited extent but there is no reason
apart from irrational optimism to think that we will do this in some
kind of complete and finished fashion.

>  + We fizzle out, party's over.

This sounds quite probable.  Of course one should read Dyson's ideas on
how an infinite amount of computation (e.g., thinking) can get done even
in a universe that is running down to a heat death.  Whether we would
ever get our acts together to accomplish such a feat is another
question.  We can't even handle the budget deficit.

>  + It's an endless joyride.

The best hope for this at present seems to be the notion, currently
fashionable among some quantum gravity folks, that black holes seed new
baby universes.  Check out Hawking, Mod. Phys. Lett. A5 (1990) 145, 453
and the refs therein.  (This is Preskill's best bet as to where the
information goes - and baryons? - when a black hole forms.  Of course
it's sheer speculation but that's what we're talking about here.)

>  + The universe is a large computing device bound and run by God knows
>    what (but God knows I'm going to find out). We're here as something
>    is being computed (or the machine is idle).

This is sheer verbiage devoid of operational content; if it makes one
feel better go ahead and believe it, but one is just wasting neurons.
Getting solace for ones angst by postulating massive unobservable
computers is such a late-20th-century thing to do.