X-Message-Number: 9247
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 07:43:28 -0800
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Angels and Pins

Mike Perry writes,

I should apologise that I've so far not examined Thomas's super-Turing
reference, but I think Mike's quick summary is very useful. The idea of
making finite specifications of (transfinite) Cantor sets is quite 
credible to me. I only wonder whether there are implicit assumptions
made about the ability to search those sets in finite time. Ah well, 
when time allows.

>Basically, the "digital business" amounts to a claim that all 
>significant events happen in discrete jumps, and events involving finite 
>constructs such as you and me have finite descriptions and form a 
>denumerable set, rather than being like the real numbers which occupy 
>a larger, nondenumerable set. (It leads to the conclusion that a 
>universal resurrection ought to be possible in principle, in a 
>universe that supports the immortality of some sentient beings.)

This raises the same question in my mind that Tipler's stuff does. If,
as we've experimentally verified, there are non-local correlations
binding together all the parts of the universe, then how can we have
a finite description of some finite part?

Peter Merel.

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