[extropy-chat] Role of Observer is not Relevant

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 4/8/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

Stathis writes
>
> > Extreme difficulty despite purposeful effort is a different
> > situation to extreme improbability given random processes.
> > An example of the latter would be a Turing-equivalent
> > machine implementing my brain being realised by cosmic
> > dust clouds.
>
> You're often very good about giving proper lip service even
> to theories you disagree with, but I cannot help reminding
> readers that dust clouds are static arrangements of particles,
> no dust cloud being causally related to any other, and no
> information flow between them being performed in real time.


I used this as an example of a system in random motion. There is a non-zero
probability that a dust cloud (which is not be *perfectly* static) will
spontaneously implement a doggy, a ducky and an analogue of my brain.
I used to think that as long as the probability remains non-zero, given
infinite time the desired event becomes a certainty. That's not actually
true if the probability progressively decreases per unit time period. For
example, if the probability of an event occurring in the first year is 1/2,
in the second year 1/4, in the nth year 1/(2^n), the probability that the
event will never occur is given by the infinite product of (1 - 1/(2^n)),
which is not zero but converges to approximately 0.288788 (perhaps someone
could check this or work it out exactly). So depending on the cosmological
model, some things may never happen, which is a disappointment; but under
other models, such as most multiverse models, everything that can happen,
does happen.

Stathis Papaioannou
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