I think it's more likely you would wind up non-intelligent carbon.

In principle, it all depends on the meaning of "in principle". If reality is a simulation, then it's just a question of resolution. Put on your Googles, pull up iTimeWarp on your SandwichPrinterPro, and enjoy the future.

Like the old joke goes.....

I asked her if she'd sleep with me if I gave her a million dollars. She thought about it for a minute and said, "well, OK.....". Then I asked her if she'd do it for ten dollars. She slapped me in the face and said, "What do you think I am, some kind of a whore?" So I said, "We already settled that; now we're just haggling over the price."

We settled on forty-seven seventy-five. But I had to buy breakfast.

NS

Dark matter, dark energy, dark… magnetism?

DM

Does this picture show the 'ghost' of a universe that existed before the Big Bang?

No.

Posted By: TrimPenrose is really, really smart.

So am I. That doesn't mean my theory of everything (which involves pushing gravity, no fields of any kind, and eleven dimensions of spacetime in a steady-state universe) is right.

"Before" the big bang is a term with no referent. Time, if you will recall, started at the big bang just like all the other dimensions. Not that I believe in a big bang, either, but it seems that if you do, you cannot believe in a "before" in any coherent sense of the term. That is.... it would seem that information could not survive whatever the bb event is. Now if there are multiple little bangs, happening in some enveloping plenum of which we cannot speak, then I can buy that what Penrose has detected might be something other than an instrumental artefact. The perfect evenlyspaced circles are reminiscent of a rainbow, which looks centered from the observer's VP but is actually somewhat of an hallucination.

Posted By: TrimWe don't really know what time is, we just make what to us are the most logical assumptions.

You may be really smart Al but if you have an IQ test with Roger he would win easily.

Let me put it this way: I'm smart enough not to want to compete with Roger. However, I wouldn't mind, or be afraid of, arguing with him, given a few minutes to skim his recent papers.
I've got several of his books here, that I paid full price for, so I figure he's buying the first round.

Posted By: Angus

Posted By: alsetalokinI've got several of his books here, that I paid full price for, so I figure he's buying the first round

Out of curiosity - did you manage to get all the way through Emperor's New Mind?

I did, actually, and I read some parts of it several times, IIRC. It was back when I was a serious student of consciousness, working in the near vicinity of David Chalmers and a bunch of pshykologers of conscioussity. All I remember about it right now, other than its location on my bookshelf, was something about some paper company ripping off his Penrose Tiling for a pattern of embossed toilet paper.
Wait... was that in there?
Oh, I also remember that there was a lot of stuff I agreed with and a lot of stuff that I didn't. It would be amusing to read it again and see how my opinions have changed over the years.

Is there an easy way to get it transferred to an ebook?

I have been trying to bully Philip to build me a device based on T rays and heated books and some computer software but he thinks it is daft so even he isn't perfect like me.