Re: poly: Fermi Paradox and Smolin's selected universes

Damien Broderick writes:

> > [ life doesn't tweak parameters of new universes ]
> I couldn't find any explanation in Smolin (although I haven't read his
> technical papers) for why the gosh numbers are inherited with only minor

Can anybody give me a pointer toward's Smolin's papers on the web?

> variation, which seemed to me the greatest weaknesss in his hypothesis.
> I'd expect the fundamental values in new universes to be set
> stochastically. If they are indeed random (unless they're tampered with
> deliberately), Smolin's model might *only* work if carbon-originated life
> *forces* new universes to adopt a narrow range of gosh values.
 
I apologize if I misunderstand the discussion, having not been there
from the beginning, but aren't the two key assumptions of universe gardening?

1) life can create new universes, and a whole lot more than natural
   processes can
2) while not exact clones in all properties, the parameters of baby
   universes are far from being random
 
If only a tiny region from the vast space of all possible universes codes
for those supporting life, only a small error rate could be tolerated,
as sterile universes don't propagate. Obviously, proliferation of
fertile universes is an exponential process (though it is probably
meaningless talking about processes in the context of tangled
spacetimes).

<ducking, and running>
ciao,
'gene
Received on Tue Nov 10 18:48:59 1998