

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (
Sun, 03 Jan 1999 22:44:49 -0600

Nick Bostrom wrote:
> Inflation would enlarge the regions of causal contact by an
> astronomically large but still finite factor (though there
> are so many versions of inflation theory now that
> it's difficult to be sure that this is true in all of them.) But then
> I don't see how it would give you an infinitely large region of
> stuff that has been in causal contact.

You don't need an infinitely large region of stuff. (Where would you get it? There's only so much mass in the Universe.) You need a reasonably large region of stuff, enough RAM to run a Power; a bunch of particles the mass of a football would almost certainly be enough. Then you need it to undergo an infinite amount of subjective time; that is, an infinite number of lightspeed-limited interactions between all the particles.

--         Eliezer S. Yudkowsky

Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.