Less Antman (antboy@pobox.com)

... Oh, yes, I have not forgotten entropy, but in our totally materialistic assumption it is not a problem, my dear fellow!
First of all, the clock is not bound to run down: there is NO heat death implied by the law of entropy, only less and less temperature differential. Of course, HUMAN life as we know it may not be the form, but it is as silly to believe that the forms will be human a billion years into the future as it would be to think that life was in human form a billion years into the past. As long as there is even the slightest temperature differential, there is activity, and there will never be an absolute zero because the universe will never expand to the size of infinity. We will simply exist in more and more spiritual and subtle forms, which seems comfortingly consistent with the theory of evolution.
Second of all, we cannot postulate a universe having been expanding forever since there is a point of miniscule size from which it first exploded and from which everything is moving away. We could make an argument that a regression into the past simply means that the farther back we go, the smaller the point and the greater the density and temperature, without limit. Now, quantum physics doesn't allow this, since no point between one quantum and zero can exist, but quantum physics may break down and allow this to occur. In that event, we have already proven that the world will continue to exist in livable form for Eternity, for the time since the timeless beginning that this implies has ALREADY been Eternal, and we are here at the moment!
Thirdly, as you mentioned, there must have been a way to wind up the clock in the first place (unless the point I suggested above is correct). Not knowing the mechanism (yes, I realize it is the timeless Eternal, but we are pretending there is an alternative explanation!), the only self-contained explanation is that the universe is in some manner cyclical. This would require it to be a "closed" universe, meaning that there is enough matter within it to cause the expansion that is presently occurring to slow eventually to zero speed, and the moment that happens, the force of gravity will start to contract the universe. After quite a long time period (precisely the same length of time it took to stop expanding), it will have returned to the point from which it began. AND SINCE IT BANGED ONCE FROM THIS POINT, IT MUST, IN THE INFINITY OF TIME AVAILABLE, BANG AGAIN. Now the question is whether each bang is identical or, as seems more plausible, that like a kaleidoscope that is turned, all the material is still there but the picture is always different. But since the quantity of matter in the universe is finite (enormous, but finite), all of the alternatives as far as arrangement of molecules will eventually be exhausted and we will once again live EXACTLY the same history!
And in this case, it won't really matter if there are certain circumstances under which conscious life doesn't exist (though I think consciousness and energy are as identical as energy and matter per Einstein E=MC^2), because it WILL exist when the identical circumstances repeat, as they must in the cyclical picture, which is ultimately the only plausible self-contained scenario. And any intervals during which we aren't conscious will be irrelevant, since during those times we will not conceive of any passage of time (not being conscious and all!). A quadrillion years of unconsciousness will seem to us not even a fraction of a second.
There is however, one serious downside to this scenario: in the infinity of time, we will all one day, under this theory, have to live the EXACT same lives, though it will feel as fresh as this one, which is, in fact, already a repeat of having done it before. This gives reality to the sense of deja vu, and makes prophecy of the future actually memory of the past!

...I was forced to consider this issue a long time ago when I tried to explain to a cynical friend my actual belief that a single Consciousness is actually playing all the roles in the world in order to while away Eternity! He asked how one Consciousness could experience itself as millions of different sentient beings at the same time, and after being stuck for a long time, I came up with the idea that, if I could just explain how One could experience itself as Two, the trip from Two to millions was a snap! So here was my idea of how a single Consciousness that I'll call the great Programmer might have made it happen (granting it may not be the actual mechanism, it is one that would work):
The whole reason we experience ourselves as individuals with finite lives is because of memory: without memory of the past, the feeling of being a continuous single person is lost. The reason we think we were born is because we can't remember anything before birth (actually, most of us can't remember anything before the age of 4, but we take our parents' word that we actually existed for a few years before that!). THE REASON WE THINK WE ARE EACH ONE PERSON IS THAT WE CAN'T REMEMBER ANY EXPERIENCES AS OTHER PEOPLE. Soooooooo . . . .
The Programmer creates two separate hard drives known as brains, and names them Less and Piers (we'll stick to two people, as I indicated above). The consciousness has a thought in the CPU for a single moment (probably a tiny fraction of a second) as Less that is saved as a byte on drive L, then it has a thought for a single moment as Piers that is saved on drive P. It then has another thought as Less, saving it right next to the first byte on drive L. And so on. During recall, the file on drive L will have NO GAPS, even though only half of the activity in the CPU is stored there. So the single consciousness is living two lives consecutively, but during half the operating time it is interacting with one drive and during half the other, never noticing the gaps between thoughts. Disk failures (death) occur every 70 years or so, and upgrading of the system (evolution) occurs periodically (unfortunately, Less 95 freezes and has to be rebooted repeatedly!). Cosmic Consciousness occurs when one becomes aware of the gap between thoughts, experiencing the thoughts of every other sentient being between consecutive personal thoughts! So we aren't all thinking together: it is simply one CPU that is multi-tasking and creating the appearance of different programs running simultaneously! As for where the Programmer got the material to make hard drives when no actual material existed, that was all thanks to God the Mathematician, who made it all from nothing by trial and error. First, the Mathematician added nothing and nothing and still got nothing, then tried nothing minus nothing without success, then nothing multiplied by nothing with equal failure. But nothing divided by nothing worked, for 0 / 0 includes the same number in the numerator and denominator, and that produces 1, and having made 1 from 0, the Mathematician turned it over to the Programmer who, with only 1 and 0, could build the most elaborate supercomputer possible!

16-18 July 1997

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