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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Probability argument (Re: Vacuum Genesis (Try II))
Message-ID: <2241@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Jul-87 22:26:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.2241
Posted: Wed Jul  1 22:26:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 13:24:37 EDT
References: <4148@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <8706281022.AA18649@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 23

In article <4188@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) writes:
>	For an infinite series to work, the link between successive states
>	of the series must be sure, otherwise some point along the line a
>	link will fail and the series will stop.  The link between successive
>	states of vacuum genesis is an extremely unlikely event, thus
>	an infinite series of vacuum genesis events just isn't a 
>	satisfactory explanation.

This assumes there is at most one such event per universe; this is an
unreasonable assumption.  If the average number of events per universe is
greater than one, then with finite probability, from any given starting
point, there is a chain of universes infinitely far down.  It is not obvious
how this relates to there being a chain infinitely far *up*; but it is at
least possible.

(I am, of course, ignoring many important questions here, including but not
limited to: time, size of universes and correlations between such, open vs
closed universes, etc.  It is not clear how many of these questions make
sense.)
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108