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From: rdh@sun.uucp (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A virtue of Vacuum Genesis
Message-ID: <22236@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 26-Jun-87 22:48:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.22236
Posted: Fri Jun 26 22:48:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 13:50:47 EDT
References: <4080@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <8706261209.AA04305@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: rdh@sun.UUCP (Robert Hartman)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 27

In article <8706261209.AA04305@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes:
>In article <4080@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, lagache@violet (Edouard Lagache)
>>				        However, the uncertainty
>>               principle is only known to be true of our universe (and
>>               space-time).  For Vacuum Genesis to work, that other
>>               universe would also have to support the uncertainty
>>               principle - why should it?
>
>Guth and co-workers have suggested an alternative origin for vacuum
>genesis, by a process of continuous creation of disjoint universes.
>
>Indeed it does.  So what's wrong with an infinite regress?  I think I
>asked that question before, and I don't recall any answers, let alone
>a satisfactory one.

It seems to me that when you have several theories, each of which admits
of infinite regress (why should a proto-universe produce only one like ours,
or perhaps a number of different types?), Occam's razor is the preferred
arbiter.  I don't think that physics theories are meant to explain how the
universe ACTUALLY DID originate, so much as to explain how it COULD HAVE
originated in accordance with known theory and observations.  So, in an
immediate sense, since vacuum genesis offers such an explanation, I'm willing
to accept it as the best theory going so far.

In an ultimate sense, I doubt that any cosmological explanation can avoid
infinite regress.  And so, I can either accept them all as equally plausible,
or reject them all as equally meaningless.  -bob.