TED recently made the David Deutsch's talk entitled "What is our place in the cosmos?" available on their site. Here is the link to it. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/47
David Deutsch is a physicist at the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computers, and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. My notes from the talk: 1) Contrary to the popular belief, human beings are not the hub of existence. 2) Stephen Hawking is famous for saying: "We are just a chemical scum on the surface of typical planet, which orbits typical star, which is on the outskirts of a typical galaxy" 3) Is earth a typical place? Not really. Stars and galaxies are not typical objects in the universe. To get to typical place in the universe you have to go out 100 million lights years into the intergalactic space. 4) What does a typical place in the universe looks like? Intergalactic space is completely dark. So dark that that nearest super nova (star explosion) will not even register in your eyes. That is how big and dark the intergalactic space is. It is also very cold out there. It is less then 3 degrees above absolute zero (i.e. < -270 degrees). It is very empty. The vacuum there is 1 million times less dense then the vacuum produced by the best technology on earth. 5) So this is how different a typical place is from earth, and how untypical earth is from the intergalactic space. 6) So how do we know about an environment that is so far away and alien to us? 7) The earth in the form of human beings is creating knowledge. 8) The physical system "the brain" contains the accurate working model of the other physical system i.e. the quasars. Not just a superficial image but also an explanatory model embodying the same mathematical relationship and causal structure - Now that is Knowledge. 9) The faithfulness with which the one structure resembles the other is increasing with time. That is the growth of knowledge. 10) We are a chemical scum that is different from everything else. Its structure contains the knowledge of the structure of everything else, with ever increasing precision. 11) What is needed to create a open-ended stream of knowledge? Matter (for knowledge processing and computation), energy (for information storage), and evidence. The evidence to discover the fundamental truth of all the science is right here on earth. Our location is saturated with evidence, matter and energy. 12) Is this unique to earth? Not really. Can this be done in a "typical" place in the intergalactic space? Why not? In a comprehensible universe if something isn't prohibited by the laws of physics then what could possibly prevent us from doing it other then knowing how? In other words it is a matter of knowledge not resources. In fact the intergalactic space does contain all the pre-requisites of the open ended creation of knowledge, only if the knowledge of how to do so was present there. 13) We are NOT in a uniquely hospitable place. 14) The overwhelmingly majority of species, and civilization that have ever existed are now extinct. And if we want to be exception to that, then our only hope is to make use of the one feature that distinguishes us from rest of the civilizations and species - namely our special relationship with the law of physics, our ability to create new explanations, and new knowledge. 15) Ending thoughts: Problems are Soluble. Problems are inevitable _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
