Is Tipler's Theory of Immortality Worth Considering Without Religious Bias?

[James William Hall]

TL;DR Summary

Had the universe been found closed instead of open would Tipler's physics have some merit?

In 1994 Frank J. Tipler wrote a book titled: "The Physics of Immortality" which appeared to suggest that physics and religion could be united. Absent religious or anti-religious prisms, if the universe were found to be closed (I know, it's not), is Tipler's physics worthy of serious consideration?

 

[phinds]

I don't understand your question. Tipler's "physics" does not seem to exist without the religious component, so what exactly are you asking? In any case, from what little I've read, he seems to be a nut case.

 

[PeterDonis]

is Tipler's physics worthy of serious consideration?

While there are some published papers on Tipler's "Omega Point Cosmology", which you can find in the references of this section of the Wikipedia article on Tipler, the general opinion of physicists is that no, his proposed cosmology is not worthy of serious consideration. George Ellis's review in Nature of Tipler's book (references 3 and 24 in the Wikipedia article) is a good representative example of the general opinion among physicists.

 

[PeterDonis]

Tipler's "physics" does not seem to exist without the religious component

This isn't quite true. The "Omega Point Cosmology" was certainly inspired by religion, but it can be defined and described without reference to any religious claims. That doesn't make it accepted physics, of course.

 

[mitchell porter]

Ellis's review is not actually that useful, if one wants to judge Tipler's theory on physical grounds alone. Mostly he voices objections to Tipler's reductionist definitions of concepts like life, mind, and God.

But here is an example of a poor physics argument from Tipler. He has decided to seek a cosmology in which information processing goes on forever. For some reason I forget (but it might have been to avoid "information loss"), he decided it was important that black holes should not ever actually form. That part is a little less nonsensical than it might sound to an expert (and Tipler is an expert in general relativity), since the standard definition of a black hole is "global", there have to be regions inside the black hole which never become visible to any future observer. From this he jumps to the conclusion that the evolution of all potential black holes are managed by future advanced civilizations in order to prevent the formation of event horizons, and this is part of his argument that life doesn't die out in the universe.

Then there's his description of how information processing continues for a subjective eternity during the collapse towards the Big Crunch (since it's a closed universe). It's a finite "proper time" to the Big Crunch, so to get a subjective eternity, the rate of information processing has to keep increasing, supra-exponentially (e.g. hyperbolically). His starting point here is a kind of chaotic oscillation in which the metric is alternately squeezed and stretched in different directions, which I think was originally proposed as a model of space-time emerging from the Big Bang. In any case, I believe Tipler's proposal is that as the universe collapses towards the Big Crunch, these oscillations are induced and/or managed by the final civilizations, in the form of flows of energy in the final plasma (because the universe becomes so hot and dense, that it passes through the stages of the early universe in reverse).

Independently of Tipler's physical theology, this is an interesting proposal for cosmic engineering. You could compare it with Freeman Dyson's "Dyson spheres", or Dyson's own proposal for how information processing could go on forever in an expanding universe, just slower and slower. (Unfortunately that proposal doesn't work in a universe whose expansion is accelerating, although the string theorist Ashoke Sen wrote a paper on surviving in that kind of universe for as long as possible.)

Tipler turns this engineering proposal into a theology by proposing that the asymptotic state of his collapsing universe has the attributes of God (e.g. it's all-knowing). One may debate the metaphysical legitimacy of reifying the asymptotic state, and giving it these attributes. But if we focus just on the path to the final state, there's a lot of details that are omitted too. In the final epochs, there are no solid structures, space is filled with a dense plasma of elementary particles. So how is "information processing" happening? It must somehow be in the flows of the plasma. The spacetime is chaotically oscillating, the plasma flows in one direction and then another, and the flows must be information processing events, thoughts squeezed out like musical notes from an accordion. Well, if we think that electrical currents in the brain can carry information, then why not flows in an ultimate plasma too? Nonetheless, as I recall he's completely vague about how this final incarnation of the universe, as an oscillating plasma accordion managing its own descent into infinite density, works in any physical sense. He just has the bare idea of chaotic oscillations during the approach to the final singularity.

 

[PeterDonis]

His starting point here is a kind of chaotic oscillation in which the metric is alternately squeezed and stretched in different directions, which I think was originally proposed as a model of space-time emerging from the Big Bang.

No, it was originally proposed as a physically realistic geometry close to the singularity inside a black hole--"physically realistic" in the sense of "stable against small perturbations". But the black hole singularity is a final singularity, not an initial one. At an initial singularity such as the Big Bang, "stable against small perturbations" isn't a physical requirement in the same way, because there isn't any time for perturbations to develop. AFAIK nobody has proposed a BKL-type geometry for the Big Bang.

However, the BKL singularity is also not the same as the "Omega Point" spacetime that Tipler proposes here. The BKL singularity still ends in a spacelike line, which means that timelike curves ending at different points on the spacelike like still become causally disconnected. In the "Omega Point" spacetime, the "final singularity" is literally a single point--all timelike curves end in the same point, so they don't become causally disconnected. (This, btw, is an even stronger condition than the condition that no true black holes form.) As I understand it, the manipulations that the final civilization would have to do are to ensure that the "Omega Point" spacetime is realized instead of something like a BKL singularity; the latter is what would be expected to happen in the absence of any interference from intelligent beings.

 

[James William Hall]

My takeaway is that an accomplished physicist and mathematician presented a detailed scientific theory and over the next thirty years of discovery and greater understanding, his peers showed the theory to be wrong. I see this as an example of the scientific method, progress, and the bravery of theorists risking their reputations in publishing. Thank you all for your considered replies to my post

 

[PeterDonis]

My takeaway is that an accomplished physicist and mathematician presented a detailed scientific theory

No, he presented a sketchy, hand-waving model.

over the next thirty years of discovery and greater understanding, his peers showed the theory to be wrong.

No, other physicists found his model to be sketchy, hand-waving, and not worth serious consideration as soon as it came out, and nothing that has happened since has changed their opinion.

 

[gmax137]

This kind of got me going, as way back when, I used an intro to modern physics book by Tipler. Turns out, that was Paul Tipler, not Frank. Anyone know if they're kin?

Sorry for the tangent.

 

[Vanadium 50]

They are not brothers - Paul Tipler is 14 years older and they were raised hundreds of miles from each other. He was born and raised in Wisconsin, and Frank Tipler is clearly a Southerner,

Of course, we're all related at some level.

 

[berkeman]

and Frank Tipler s clearly a Southerner,

Was it the accent that tipped you off?

 

[Ken G]

I'm not an expert on (Frank) Tipler's theory, but the main thing I recall about it is some kind of principle that says the laws of the universe have to be constructed such that the universe processes the maximum possible information (which I believe he held to be an infinite amount). That was his core "cosmological principle." I don't recall the business about final beings manipulating things to bring this about, that seems way stronger of a principle than required by saying the laws will be selected by the principle I mentioned. But that simple principle always seemed to make a certain degree of sense, at least if you hold to a general kind of "multiverse" view (i.e., if that is your favored way to resolve all types of fine tuning, possibly as a kind of personal philosophy or religion).

One could say that Tipler's maximal information principle is an example of a fine tuning principle, but it is also one that sits well with the Anthropic Principle, something that is often cited in the context of multiverse thinking. Because if there is a multiverse of possible universes that have different laws and/or physical parameters within those laws (the distinction there is always sketchy in multiverse theories), then intelligent beings will only find themselves in some tiny subset of those possible universes, and what's more, they will more likely find themselves in a universe that processes more information (since we are processing information right now, and we might regard that information processing as being in some sense randomly sampled from all the processing going on everywhere in the multiverse). Hence the probability will be infinitely higher that any randomly sampled intelligent being will find themself in a universe that processes an infinite amount of information, ergo Tipler's core fine tuning principle. I've seen very similar arguments used by people like Weinberg, and taken quite seriously, for explaining why there is the amount of dark energy that we perceive in our universe.

 

[PeterDonis]

some kind of principle that says the laws of the universe have to be constructed such that the universe processes the maximum possible information (which I believe he held to be an infinite amount)

That was the principle he claimed, yes. But AFAIK he never actually showed that his "Omega Point cosmology" was a solution of the Einstein Field Equation at all, much less that it was a solution that satisfied this principle.

I don't recall the business about final beings manipulating things to bring this about

I believe the reason for this was that Tipler thought he had shown that his Omega Point spacetime would not come into being spontaneously; it would take very precise manipulations of spacetime curvature to make it happen. So he postulated that superintelligent beings in the far future would make those manipulations in order to ensure that they would be able to process an infinite amount of information.

But, as I've said, AFAIK he never actually showed mathematically that all this was consistent.

 

[Ken G]

That was the principle he claimed, yes. But AFAIK he never actually showed that his "Omega Point cosmology" was a solution of the Einstein Field Equation at all, much less that it was a solution that satisfied this principle.

Yeah, I don't know the GR of it, only what Tipler was attempting to do.

I believe the reason for this was that Tipler thought he had shown that his Omega Point spacetime would not come into being spontaneously; it would take very precise manipulations of spacetime curvature to make it happen. So he postulated that superintelligent beings in the far future would make those manipulations in order to ensure that they would be able to process an infinite amount of information.

That seems kind of impossible to me, very "Maxwell Demon"esque. It made more sense for the laws of the universe to do it for you, Einstein himself had notable success trying to divine the nature of the universe based on essentially philosophical principles.

But, as I've said, AFAIK he never actually showed mathematically that all this was consistent.

Perhaps an idea on the level of Penrose's Conformal Cyclic cosmology, or even Edgar Allan Poe's version of a Big Bang cosmology, a template for a theory moreso than a demonstration that such a theory can actually be made consistent with laws that have been established as valid. It might serve to inspire progress, but can't be counted as progress in and of itself.

 

[gmax137]

Edgar Allan Poe's version of a Big Bang cosmology

I don't think I've heard of this before; maybe I will give it ("Eureka") a read. Wiki has a link to an online version of the book:

http://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/eurekac.htm

 

[Ken G]

I think it will blow your mind that Poe had so much foresight. Apparently the book had a lot more influence in Europe than in the US, since the latter saw him as a horror story writer out of his element, while the former saw him as a visionary (and Poe himself regarded "Eureka" as his magnum opus). I believe it is unknown if Lemaitre was directly influenced by Poe, but he was aware of Poe's work so it does seem likely. Poe (based on remarkable intuition) thought all matter in the universe came from a single origin, which he called the "Particle", and Lemaitre (based on scientific measurements) proposed that it all came from a single origin, which he called the "Primeval atom." Most of the rest of their pictures are also remarkably close, which is notable given that Hubble himself did not even think of the universe as expanding from a single origin. Maybe Hubble wasn't a Poe reader?