Wednesday, September 24, 2003
If you go to the BBC - Radio 4 - Science Index: and click on "Brief History of the End of Everything", you'll find a very interesting programme about the social context of theories of the end of the world and/or the universe... plus some interesting new theories abiout e.g. quantum fluctuations...
Earlier in the week the Guardian had a good piece on multiverse theories; a websearch hasnt yielded it up, though "multiverse" gets some fun sites. The article had a good point - either nothing exists or everything exists that can exists - or there has toi be some rule deciding what exists, which begs the question of what gives rise to such a rule. So maybe everything exists....that can (but even this might inviolve a rule??). It went on to some stuff about Matrix simulations and the like that is another story altogether. Of which the single best source is Stanislaw Lem's short fiction (not a story) on Personetics, the Cruellest Science, in A PERFECT VACUUM. The fiction is called Non serviam, here's an extract:
"Non-Serviam
1971
(an extract)
(Personetics): A “world” for personoid “inhabitants” can be prepared in a couple of hours... A specific personoid activity serves as a triggering mechanism, setting in motion a production process that will gradually augment and define itself; in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocalness only in accordance with their own behavior... From four to seven personoids are optimal, at least for the development of speech and typical exploratory activity, and also for 'culturization’... It is possible to 'accommodate' up to one thousand personoids... Many different philosophies (ontologies and epistemologies) have arisen among them... I can enlarge their world or reduce it, speed up its time or slow it down, alter the mode and means of their perception; I can liquidate them, divide them, multiply them, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence... "
that I Got from
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/gessler/topics/lem.htm
Earlier in the week the Guardian had a good piece on multiverse theories; a websearch hasnt yielded it up, though "multiverse" gets some fun sites. The article had a good point - either nothing exists or everything exists that can exists - or there has toi be some rule deciding what exists, which begs the question of what gives rise to such a rule. So maybe everything exists....that can (but even this might inviolve a rule??). It went on to some stuff about Matrix simulations and the like that is another story altogether. Of which the single best source is Stanislaw Lem's short fiction (not a story) on Personetics, the Cruellest Science, in A PERFECT VACUUM. The fiction is called Non serviam, here's an extract:
"Non-Serviam
1971
(an extract)
(Personetics): A “world” for personoid “inhabitants” can be prepared in a couple of hours... A specific personoid activity serves as a triggering mechanism, setting in motion a production process that will gradually augment and define itself; in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocalness only in accordance with their own behavior... From four to seven personoids are optimal, at least for the development of speech and typical exploratory activity, and also for 'culturization’... It is possible to 'accommodate' up to one thousand personoids... Many different philosophies (ontologies and epistemologies) have arisen among them... I can enlarge their world or reduce it, speed up its time or slow it down, alter the mode and means of their perception; I can liquidate them, divide them, multiply them, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence... "
that I Got from
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/gessler/topics/lem.htm
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