Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!ctrsol!IDA.ORG!rwex From: rwex@IDA.ORG (Richard Wexelblat) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: intelligence and the initial conditions of the universe (BANG!!!) Message-ID: <1989Aug11.113830.400@IDA.ORG> Date: 11 Aug 89 11:38:30 GMT References: <2182@hub.UUCP> <6744@cognos.UUCP> Reply-To: rwex@csed-42.UUCP (Richard Wexelblat) Organization: IDA, Alexandria, VA Lines: 14 In article <2182@hub.UUCP> silber@voodoo.ucsb.edu writes: >Intelligence and its instantiation as reasoning must be conditioned by >the initial conditions of the universe; if the universe had started as >a continuous distribution of matter, there would have been no discrete >sets (?), hence no numbers. if the initial conditions had decreed a different >set of discrete elementary particles, there would have been a different >number theory, different primes, or perhaps no primes at all (?) Reminds me of the line from a recent SF novel: If the TV News were on and no one was watching, would anything have happened? -- --Dick Wexelblat |I must create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's; | (rwex@ida.org) |I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.| 703 824 5511 | -Blake, Jerusalem |