There's a fun intro to many-worlds theory in Slate today. No math required, just a sense of cosmological imagination. The theory goes back some decades. I'm raising it here because I'm fascinated by how information cosmology arises in our civilization just as we nudge information to the center of our economy and organizational thinking.
[one theory holds that] the existence of other universes is logically implied by the theories that best explain features of our own universe. For instance, measurements of the cosmic background radiation (the echo left over from the big bang) indicate that the space we live in is infinite and that matter is spread randomly throughout it. Therefore, all possible arrangements of matter must exist out there somewhere — including exact and inexact replicas of our own world and the beings in it. The idea is a bit like that of monkeys in front of typewriters eventually typing out all of Shakespeare: Quantum theory says that nature is discrete, so the visible universe we inhabit is characterized by a finite amount of information; if space is infinite, this informational pattern is bound to repeat at vast enough distances. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that there should be an exact copy of you around 10 to the 10 to the 28th light-years away. [emphasis added]
Hmmm: how does a metaphysics of repetition reconcile with the infinite variability, the calculus, of a monadology? Does infinite repetition at some point cancel itself out in terms of its value as information, which would seem to depend on difference?
Posted by: Jane | August 26, 2003 at 13:46
Context would change that, I suppose, where Jane2 is the same as Jane1, but branches into a different form through interaction with local spacetime.
Say more on the monad on this score?
Posted by: Bryan | August 29, 2003 at 18:32
I suspect you're right, B: context is the eternal variable. But I'm trying to press a metaphysical point here, and that just might be the point, actually: can we talk about a metaphysics of information (or repetition)? Metaphysics presupposes the traditional philosophical "head-wrap" around things, the godz-eye view, and within that, or something like that, contextual variation translates into a monadology at some point. To say more about that, as you ask: the monad, as I understand Leibnitz, is a purely ipseic iteration of all-that-is (ATI: that's the problematic concept here). The great thing about monads is that there's no end to them or to their variability from each other. In this sense, they're not really different from contextuality--in fact, they can be sufficiently understood in terms of perspective (please, any Leibnitzians out there, don't hammer me). I suppose the question for information theory is . . . well, not to put too fine a point on it, the one made by later Heidegger: it's a question of measure. What are we using to measure repetition? What's the sensitivity of the (conceptual) instrument we employ for this? To be honest, I think this is an unanswerable question and one that shows just how chiasmatically vexed the problem of metaphysics and information is.
Does this help?
Posted by: Jane | August 29, 2003 at 19:06
You head for the subatomic, grind things finely enough, add context, and repetition disappears? Perhaps, and, if so, you've nixed Nietzsche's daemon.
More classical information theory, from Shannon, grinds things more coarsely. My mp3 is your mp3, or good enough.
Posted by: Bryan | September 02, 2003 at 16:14