Caledonian2 comments on Collapse Postulates - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 May 2008 07:49AM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 10 May 2008 01:56:38PM -1 points [-]

The Koan of Master Foo

It is recorded that once, when Master Foo was iterating along a beach, he came upon two of his disciples arguing by a computer processor. "It is subtracting positive 1", declared the first. "No; it is adding negative 1", asserted the other. Master Foo answered them thus: "Not incrementing, not decrementing — Equalizing!" whereupon both were enlightened.

Ben Jones, the spaceship DOES disappear once it leaves our light cone. What do you imagine dis-appear means, that you think it's not what the spaceship does?

Our universe has an edge. Throw something over that edge, and it ceases to be. You might as well say that it doesn't disappear if we break the First Law of Thermodynamics and utterly unmake it - which is what we're doing, as it happens.