Okay here's a brief synopsis...Frank Tipler started out as an atheist, so his first book on this topic (The Physics of Immortality) was an attempt to show that any human, living or dead, could be virtually rendered in a computer simulation. This may have seemed far fetched when the Physics of Immortality was first published but it seems significantly less far fetched now.... especially when respected scientists and researchers like Stephen Hawking are constantly warning us about the dangers of artificial intelligence. The first artificial intelligence will most likely be the first simulated human consciousness. ( ie computers are already more "intelligent" than human...they just cant process the information in any meaningful way) When people talk about artificial intelligence they are actually talking about a computer which is conscious/ self-aware in the way that humans are... most likely reverse engineered from a human. And so once this first simulated consciousness has been developed, we just do every physically possible variation of that simulation and we will have brought back every person who has ever lived (or could possibly have lived)
Tipler points out that we will be able to simulate all possible sets of memories and interactions for these simulated personalities… meaning that you, me and everyone that we know and love, can be brought back, along with all of our shared memories and experiences…..everyone who has ever lived can be reunited in this idealized version of an afterlife…indeed, as Tipler points out, this perfect virtual reality state seems almost indistinguishable from the Judeo -Christian description of heaven.
But then comes the question of how humanity (or whatever humanity evolves into) would be able to facilitate the computational power necessary to make this virtual heaven possible...or how we could make this "heaven" last forever...since the simulation would still be taking place within a finite universe. This is where the concept of an "Omega Point" comes into the picture.
As Wikipedia notes “the supposition of a closed universe evolving towards a
future collapse state is key to Tipler’s Omega Point. Within this universe, Tipler assumes a massive processing capability. As the universe becomes smaller, the processing capability becomes larger” Tipler points out that in the final fleeting moments of universal collapse we will have access to infinite energy and infinite computational power. Within this context we will be able to simulate anything, no matter how complex....and infinite computational power will facilitate infinite subjective time within the simulation....
Yikes I'm starting to realize that this isn't such a short synopsis and I actually have to get back to work....Ill have to explain the second half of this theory at some point t tonight
holy:
