The Omega Point

[Chesterton]

Thanks for that. I'd never heard of Fr. Florensky. Like to read more.

Weird, wild, wacky stuff, as Johnny Carson might say.

 

[James Redford]

Urgh, I was hoping the same Omega Point fanboy wasn't spamming things up in this thread also, but I guess I'll ask my question anyway -

Can someone explain to me how the universe has "computational power"? My main problems with this are:

1. What is the medium for storing information?
2. Wouldn't the organisation of said medium require something external to the universe (much like how a hard drive has to be prepared by an external organiser)?
3. Wouldn't the increase of information storage by the entire universe violate the second law of thermodynamics?

The universe obviously has computational power, because computations are performed in it. Obviously you posted the above with a computer.

Regarding your second question, No. Again, the computer you used in order to post your above response exists within this universe.

Regarding your third question, entropy diverging to infinity is precisely what is required--at least in part--in order to have literal immortality, as entropy is informational complexity. In other words, in order to have infinite hard drive space requires infinite entropy. And infinite memory space is required in order to have immortality, for the reason that any finite state will eventually undergo the Poincaré cycle per the Poincaré recurrence theorem. This is very easy to see by considering the simple example of two bits, which have only four possible states (i.e., 2^2): hence, once these four states have been exhausted, states will have to recur. What that means is that any finite state can only have a finite number of experiences (i.e., different states), because any finite state will eventually start to repeat.

And given an infinite amount of computational resources, per the Bekenstein Bound, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the multiverse in its entirety up to this point in universal history). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.

 

[Christos Anesti]

I found another good article on Teilhard De Chardin. This one is by Phillip Sherrard (one of the fellows who translated the Philocalia).

Teilhard De Chardin and the Christian Vision, Philip Sherrard, Studies in Comparative Religion, religion and science, Scriptures, tradition, Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, Plato,