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                                   |