The Physics of Immortality.

Has anyone read Frank Tiplers 'The Physics of Immortality'?

Tipler is a respected academic with post grad qualifications in cosmology, quantum physics and computing science.

His book aims to prove, using ideas in physics/computing/cosmology that at the end of time we will all be ressurected to an eternal afterlife i.e. that the judeo/christian view is essentially correct.

Here's a very consise summary of the essentials of his theory: -

Human Consciousness is essentially a program running on hardware (the brain being the hardware) and, as such, could be run on a silicon equivalent i.e. artificial intelligence.

It is impractical for humanity to explore/populate the cosmos by sending people into space, limitations imposed by being restricted to sub light velocity, transporting masses of the order of human body weight over cosmological distances and maintaining human life etc; mean that the only viable solution is that small computerised craft with artificial intelligence consciousness' go instead.

The systems will be self replicating i.e. can travel to a different system, collect matter and reproduce themselves; the copies can then travel on and do the same.

Such craft, traveling close to the speed of light, will be able to populate the galaxy, then cross the vast inter galaxial distances and ultimately populate the entire universe.

By the time this has happened the universe will have reached maximum expansion, and have commenced it's contraction (the theory does rest on the view that the expanding universe is 'closed' and will collapse, rather than being 'open' and expanding for eternity- Tipler explains why the universe must be closed in the scientific appedix at the back of the book).

As the universe gets closer to its doom, radiation levels will be too high for matter as we know it to exist, and the conscious units that populate will have to be embodied on subatomic particle systems.

An important thing to note here is that the percieved time flow of an 'artificial intelligence' based consciousness need bear no relation to time flow in the external world i.e. it could experience ten seconds of life whilst in the real world a year passes.

Conversly, given sufficent computing power (processor speed/memory capacity) a thousand lives could be lived in the passing of ten seconds of 'real' time.

This is important because the computer system in place in the last few minutes of the universes existance will make use of the ever increasing heat to enable greater processing speed.

In these last few minutes its computing power will become so great that it will have enough resources to systematically simulate the consciousness of every one who has ever lived.

As the simulation of a consciousness is effectivly identical to the original consciousness, the result is that we long dead individuals will be ressurected at the end of time.

I expect that the more astute amongst you will be thinking 'that seems to make sense, but, given that the universe and all it contains is mere seconds away from total destruction, where does the eternal life part come into it?'

This is where it gets clever, at a certain point the rising heat level of the collapsing universe enables the increase in processing power to outstrip the diminishing size of the universe.

i.e. the processing power will more than double for each halving of the size of the world giving rise to the following situation: -

Size of the universe- 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16 1/32..........0
Processing power 1 2 4 8 16 32..........infinite

Thus, as the universe proceeds to zero size (it's end), the processing power increases without limit.

Bearing in mind that the percieved time flow of the simulated consciousnesses is independant of real time, and is a function of the processing speed of the system it is held on; this means that an unlimited no. of individuals can be ressurected, and will have the option of an unlimited amount of apparent time to exist in i.e. eternal life.

It all sounds a bit crazy on first hearing, but Frank Tipler is well respected in the various disciplines he works in.

I have seen a few references to his theory in academic works on cosmology, and the general view seems to be that, while his conclusion is a little wild, the physics and maths used in his arguments are valid. He is certainly not considered to be a crank.

His book is split into two parts, the main section being an accessible overview of the theory which can be understood by anyone who has a laymans grasp of quantum physics.

The second section is a set of appendices which contain the detailed proofs and equation; this is totally beyond me as it uses very advanced maths and physics.

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