Hacker News Reader

Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

I like this:

“ In the ancient mythologies you will not find the idea of a physical universe continuing, in its independent vastness, after the annihilation of humans. “

If humans are the observers that collapse the wave function, then it’s possible nothing exists after humans are gone ;)

View on HN

I like to imagine that our bodies/brains are merely suitable hardware with which to tune into consciousness. We then are quickly “enculturated” into associating one very narrow band of consciousness with the idea of “me” which immediately and necessarily creates “you”

Thats why I always like the anthropic principal; that its necessary for life to be possible, because if it wasn't then the universe would pass with no entity there to observe it.

If the universe has a beginning and an end, then why hasn't it ended already? Why does it keep existing?

Well, this particular instance of the Universe popped into existence last Thursday[1] and will run until Tuesday at around 16:33:02. (internal time, that is) After which it's expected another 10^4943332110093! instances will run before the first Universe with (mostly) the exact same configuration as Tuesday 16:33:02 will appear, though that one will only exist for a few hours. After that, it's quite a few iterations before we get to Wednesday.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism

The universe might be better off without wave function collapse.This is the premise of the Greg Egan novel Quarantine. Totally recommended.

what about (intelligent) machines?

What about robot dogs?

Or just regular dogs?

Isn’t this the premise of WALL-E?

The optical tables join entanglement until we measure them. Those are quite intelligent?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com