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Frank J. Tipler

American physicist noted for his book The Physics of Immortality

Frank J. Tipler (born February 1, 1947) is an American mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University. Tipler has written books and papers on the Omega Point based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's religious ideas, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead. He is also known for his theories on the Tipler cylinder (Tipler time machine) and for the Hart–Tipler conjecture, an argument that no intelligent life exists outside of the Solar System. His work has attracted criticism, notably from systems theorist George F. R. Ellis who has argued that his theories are largely pseudoscience.

Frank J. Tipler July 21, 2017

Quotes

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Extraterrestrial intelligent beings do not exist (Sept. 1980)

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Frank J. Tipler, Royal Astronomical Society, Quarterly Journal, Vol. 21, Sept. 1980, p. 267-281. Source. Received Nov 15, 1979 from Frank J. Tipler, Dept of Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley. Research supported by the National Science Foundation under grants number MCS-76-21525 and PHY-77-15191.
  • It is argued that if extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then their spaceships must already be present in our solar system.
  • The biologists argue that the number of evolutionary pathways leading from one-celled organisms to intelligent beings is minuscule when compared with the total number of evolutionary pathways, and thus even if we grant the existence of life on 109 to 1010 planets in our Galaxy, the probability that intelligence has arisen... [there] on any planet but our own is still very small. I agree...
  • [T]he probability of the evolution of creatures with the technological capability of interstellar communication within five billion years after the development of life on an Earth-like planet is less than 10-10, and thus we are the only intelligent species now existing in this Galaxy.
  • The basic idea... is straightforward and... has led other authors, such as Fermi... Dyson... Hart... Simpson... and Kuiper & Morris... to conclude that extraterrestrial beings do not exist: if they did exist and possessed the technology for interstellar communication, they would also have developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system.
  • [A]n intelligent species with the technology for interstellar communication would necessarily develop the technology for interstellar travel, and this would automatically lead to the exploration and/or colonization of the Galaxy in less than 300 million years.
  • [T]hat any intelligent species which develops... interstellar communication will also have... rocketry... is... a consequence of the principle of mediocrity... (that our own evolution is typical)... [T]he human species developed rockets 600 years before... radio waves...
  • [I]t seems likely that a species engaging in interstellar communication would possess a fairly sophisticated computer technology. ...Sagan has asserted that 'Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence... will require... computer actuated machines with abilities approaching... intelligence'.
  • I shall assume that such a species will... develop a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the human level—such a machine should be developed within a century, according to the experts...—and... combined with present-day rocket technology would make it possible to explore and/or colonize the Galaxy in less than 300 million years, for an initial investment less than the cost of operating a 10 MW microwave beacon for several hundred years, as proposed by SETI...
  • It is a deficiency in computer technology, which prevents us from beginning the exploration of the Galaxy tomorrow.
  • What one needs is a self-reproducing universal constructor... a machine capable of making any device... capable of making a copy of itself. Von Neumann has shown... that such... is theoretically possible, and... a human being is a universal constructor specialized to perform on the surface of the Earth.
  • The payload of a probe to another stellar system would be a self-reproducing universal constructor with human level intelligence (...a von Neumann machine) together with an engine... travelling... within the stellar target system—[the engine] could be an electric propulsion system... or a solar sail...
  • [M]aterials [to reproduce the von Neumann machine] should be available in virtually any stellar system—including binary star systems—in the form of meteors, asteroids, comets, and other debris from the formation of the stellar system. ...[M]aterial in asteroids are highly differentiatied; many... are largely nickel-iron, while others contain large amounts of hydrocarbons.
  • As the copies of the space probe were made, they would be launched at the stars nearest the target star. When these probes reached these stars, the process would be repeated... until the probes covered all the stars of the Galaxy.
  • [T]he von Neumann machine would be programmed to explore the stellar system... and relay information... back to the original solar system...
  • Even if there were no planets in the stellar system... the... machine could be programmed to turn some of the material into an O'Neill colony...
  • [T]he information to manufacture a human being is contained in the genes of a single human cell. Thus if an extraterrestrial intelligent species possessed the knowledge to synthesize a living cell—and... experts assert... the human race could develop such knowledge within 30 years—they could program a von Neumann machine to synthesize a fertilized egg cell of their species. If they possessed artificial womb technology—and such... is in the beginning stages... on Earth... they could... synthesize members of their species... As suggested by Eiseley... these beings could be raised... by the robots... free to develop their own civilization...
    • Ref: Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid: A Naturalist Analyses the Rocket Century (1971) pp. 78-80.
  • [T]he problem of interstellar travel has been reduced to... transporting a von Neumann machine to another stellar system. This can be done even with present-day rocket technology.
  • Hunter has pointed out that by using a Jupiter swingby to approach the Sun and then giving a velocity boost at perihelion, a solar system escape velocity... is possible with present-day chemical rockets... [M]ost other stars should have planets (or companion stars) with characteristics sufficiently close to... the Jupiter-Sun system to use this launch strategy in reverse to slow down in the other solar system.
  • [T]hus... any intelligent species would develop at least the rocket technology capable of... a travel velocity ves of 3 x 10-4c. At this velocity the travel time to the nearest stars would be between 104 and 105 years. This... would necessitate... self-repair capacity... Nuclear power-souces would supply the power... If power utilization during the free-fall period was... low, even chemical reactions could supply the power.
  • As ves is of the same order as the stellar random motion velocities, very sensitive guidance would be required... not... an insuperable problem with the assumed level of computer technology.
  • [A] von Neumann cannot become obsolete... instructed by radio to make the latest devices...
  • Once the exploration and/or colonization of the Galaxy has begun, it can be modeled... by the mathematical theory of island colonization... developed... by MacArthur & Wilson... since... islands... are closely analogous to stars in the heaven, and von Neumann machines are even more closely analogous to biological species.
  • The probability that intelligent life which eventually attempts interstellar communication will evolve in a star system is usually expressed by the Drake equation:
     
    where   is the probability that a given star system will have planets,   is the number of habitable planets in a solar system,   is the probability that life evolves on a habitable planet,   is the probability that intelligent life evolves on a planet with life, and   is the probability that an intelligent species will attempt interstellar communication within 5 billion years after the formation of the planet...
  • The problem with the Drake equation is that only  —and to a lesser degree  — is subject to experimental determination... [O]ne must have a fairly large sample; for  ,  , and   we have only... the Earth. However, if... any intelligent species... will begin... galactic exploration within 100 years after developing... interstellar communication... the sample size is enlarged... Since  —and   can... be determined by direct astrophysical measurement, the fact that extraterrestrial intelligent beings are not present in our solar system permits us to obtain a direct astrophysical measurement of an upper bound to...  , which depends only on biological and sociological factors.
  • This argument assumes that the five probabilities... do not vary rapidly with galactic age. The available astrophysical evidence and most theories of the formation of solar systems indicate... this... is valid.
  • The factors   should not depend strongly on the evolution of the Galaxy... and so can be regarded as constants. Since the Galaxy is between 11 and 18 billion years old, the number N of stars older than 5.3 billion years is about twice the number of stars formed after the Sun, and thus approximately equal to the number of stars in the Galaxy, 1011. Thus  . If we accept the usual values of   to 1 and   found in most discussions... then  . The number of communicating civilizations now existing in our Galaxy is less than or equal to   x (number of stars in galaxy) = 1; that is to say, us.

The Physics of Immortality (1994)

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  • I shall provide a physical foundation for eschatology—the study of the ultimate future—by making the physical assumption that the universe must be capable of sustaining life indefinitely... for infinite time... [W]e have to have some theory for the future of the physical universe—since it unquestionably exists— and this is the most beautiful postulate: that total death is not inevitable. All other theories of the future necessarily postulate the ultimate extinction of everything... there is nothing uglier than extermination. We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one. Why not adopt the Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis?
  • Paul Dirac was the first physicist to argue for the Postulate of Eternal Life: "With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for dediding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation.
    • Ref: Paul Dirac, Untitled, Nature (1961) Vol. 192, p. 441.
  • [T]he eternal life assumption... implies... there must exist in this future (but in two precise mathematical senses, also in the present and the past) a Person Who is simultaneously transcendent to yet immanent in the physical universe of space, time, and matter. In the Person's immanent temporal aspect... changing (forever growing in knowledge and power), but in the... transcendent eternal aspect, forever complete and unchanging. How this comes about as a matter of physics will be described...
  • [I]s the Omega Point God (...Person ...) the God? ...the uncreated Creator of the ...universe ...Who exists necessarily ... i.e., the Person's nonexistence would be a logical contradiction.
  • Only if God is not in any sense contingent can one avoid regress posed in the query, who created God?
  • The Omega Point is in essence the Tillich-Pannenberg God: Being itself, but the mode of Being is futurity. This establishes the Omega Point as the God... there cannot be more being than all Being...
  • One avoids... contradiction between contingency and necessity by avoiding... sharp distinction between God and... reality. This... distinction... leads to gnostic heresy: ...a wholly other God... divorced from our ...world. It also leads... to the Problem of Evil... naturally resolved in the Omega Point Theory.
  • Wolfhart Pannenberg... suggested... there may exist a... universal physical field (analogous to Teilhard's "radial energy")... as the source of all life, and... identified with the Holy Spirit. ...[T]he universal wave function... is a... field with the essential features of Pannenberg's... "energy" field. ...If this identification is made ...as a matter of physics ...God is in the world, everywhere... with us... at all times.
  • The Omega Point in its immanence counts as a person because, at any time in our future, the collective information processing system will have generated, or will be able to generate, subprograms which will be able to pass the Turing Test; high intelligence will be required at least collectively in order to survive in the increasingly complex environment near the final state.
  • [T]he human-type mind is a manifestation of an extremely low level of information processing... Nevertheless, the Omega Point is still a Person... because a Being with Its level of computer capacity could easily create a Turing-Test-passing subprogram to speak for it. ...[O]ur resurrected selves probably will interact with such a program... For lack of a better term, I shall refer to the total universal information processing system in existence at any given global time as the "universal mind."
  • There is an interesting connection between my claim that the Omega Point is a Person because it contains a Turing-Test-passing subprogram, and the Christian notion of Person, as this word is applied to God. In classical Greek, the word prosopon (πρόσωπον)—persona is the Latin equivalent—primarily meant "face" or "countenance," but the word also meant a mask that an actor wore to indicate the character... By the fourth century A.D. ...this word had come to refer to those innate aspects of the human mentality which differentiate one human being from another. Today the word... refers to the total individual human mind, including the innate and learned aspects... [T]o interact with us human beings as a Person... the Omega Point would be revealing only a miniscule portion... a Person in the original sense and in the fourth century sense... persona.
  • It would... not be... inaccurate to regard one of the subprograms of the universal mind in the far future, one with a Turing Test-passing subprogram, as an "angel."
  • [I]nclusion of the whole past, present, and future universal history in the Omega Point is more than a mere mathematical artifact. ...[T]he Omega Point "experiences" the whole of universal history "all at once."
  • [W]e cannot "see" a person who lived a few centuries before, because the light rays... have... left the solar system. Conversely, we cannot "see" the Andromeda galaxy as it now is, but... as it was 2 million years ago. So we experience as "simultaneous" the events on the boundary of our past light cone... But all timelike and lightlike curves converge upon the Omega Point. ...[L]ight rays from all people who died... from all... people now... from all [future] people... intersect there. The light rays... from people... are not lost forever... [T]hese rays will be intercepted and intercepted again, by the living beings who... engulfed the physical universe near the Omega Point. All the information which can be extracted from those rays will be extracted at the instant of the Omega Point.
  • [T]he claim that the central concern of religion is nonsense. Throughout human history, the central concern of religion has been human self-interest. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, all morality has been obtained from declarative sentences of the form "Thou shalt not kill—because you'll go to Hell if you do!" In the Hindu-Buddhist tradition... "...—because you'll be born as a cockroach if you do!" ...In both cases, the appeal is to physics, not to fundamental moral postulates.
  • The essential difficulty with divorcing morality from facts is that... there would be no way to resolve moral disputes. Morality would... be... a matter of taste... [I]n... so-called disputes over morality there is... no disagreement over fundamental moral principles, only... over facts. ...[C]onsider ...the abortion issue. There is no dispute over "Thou shall not kill,"... only... whether a fetus is a "person."
  • It is often said that the central concern of religion is an attempt to answer... "What is the relationship between humanity and the universe (and/or God). I agree... the factual answers... led to the ethical norms of... religions. The sharp distinction between fact and value which is common in twentieth-century philosophy and in the West was not present in the traditional religions. ...[T]his sharp distinction is ...contrary to the continued existence of science ...The growth and existence of science require certain ethical norms: for example, THOU SHALT NOT IMPOSE YOUR THEORIES ON OTHERS BY FORCE. Only persuasion, based on rational argument and experimental results, is allowed.
  • [T]o really test the Omega Point Theory, we will need the Tevatron upgrade and either the SSC—the Texas Supercollider—or the European LHC. ...[P]erhaps it would be worth several billion dollars to establish that God exists, and that one day we will all be resurrected to live forever with Him/Her.

Quotes about Tipler

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"Tipler's Physics of Immortality" (October 26, 1994) Rant/Review

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by John Walker. Source @Fourmilab.ch (Except for a few clearly-marked exceptions, material @Fourmilab.ch is in the public domain)
  • ouch—what a disappointment! Nothing prepared me for just how B-A-D it is.
  • I really admired Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Cosmic Principle, and now... it's clear how much of the actual wordcraft... was the work of Barrow.
  • I don't have any trouble... imagining nanotechnology, von Neumann probes, AI exceeding human intelligence within 50 years, or the biosphere expanding to fill... the universe. But none of that is new, and Tipler tells it less clearly than others...
  • [U]nless I'm missing something, the wheels fall off Starship Eternity.
  • I noted many apparent gaping holes in his arguments or assumptions of facts contrary to the best available knowledge... [V]irtually all... dismissed with the all-purpose argument: "...ruled out by the Omega Point Boundary Condition."
  • [W]hy worry about a big rock hitting the Earth, destruction of the biosphere by inadvertent human action, accidental nuclear war..? Surely the Boundary Condition rules out those much smaller worries... Don't worry; be happy.
  • [H]ow... information will be reconstituted that will allow... resurrection of the dead. ...[N]o information has been lost (the black holes having been popped by a semi-mystical process...) ...admitting that opacity and thermalisation of information may present a bit of a problem ...we'll just ...conjure up a computer with a storage capacity of 101070 bits ...and to Hell with the lost information...
  • Ok, the visible universe has around 1080 particles in it. The universe at Tipler's point of maximum expansion is, say, 10,000 times bigger... But... we're not using mere matter to store bits anymore. We're using (drumroll) the Higgs field... And when will this happen? ..."between 10−1010 and 10−10123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached". Whew, saved by the Gong of Doom.
  • And how are we going to use the Higgs field to compute, organise information systems out of free quarks and pure energy... the Boundary Condition Postulate... that says that on Easter Day, 2001, Jesus Christ will return, raise the dead, etc. ...inevitable.
  • I take the last existing copy of the complete works of Tipler and heave it across the event horizon of my TidyTrash™ home black hole.
  • Tipler's Taub universe event horizon can opener makes the black hole horizon go away. What about the singularity? ...[Y]ou now have a very large number of naked singularities... converging toward the Omega Point, which should make things even more interesting for the universal brain emerging there.
  • Suppose there were a computer... which could run a completely faithful simulation of me—even a simulation at the quantum level so good the Pauli Exclusion Principle wouldn't let us in the same room. Would it be me? Would my consciousness somehow be shared...
  • [H]ow would this work if the brain and computer were separated by several light years? And if not, then what difference does it make if 1032 years of death intervene before the simulation begins to run? ...continuity of consciousness?
  • What a pile of crap.
  • The review in Nature called POI a "masterpiece of pseudoscience". ...I don't think it's that good.

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

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: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications by David Deutsch
  • The mechanics of 'steering' the universe to the omega point require actions to be taken throughout space. ...[I]ntelligences will have to spread all over the universe in time to make the first necessary adjustments. This is one of a series of deadlines that Tipler has shown that we would have to meet—and he has shown that meeting... them is, to the best of our... knowledge, physically possible.
  • Tipler makes the point that the science of cosmology has tended to study the past... of spacetime. But most of spacetime lies to the future... Existing cosmology does address the issue of whether the universe will or will not recollapse, but... there has been very little theoretical investigation of the greater part of spacetime. ...[T]he lead-up to the Big Crunch has received far less study than the aftermath of the Big Bang. Tipler sees the omega-point theory as filling that gap. ...[It] deserves to become the prevailing theory of the future of spacetime until and unless it is experimentally (or otherwise) refuted. (Experimental refutation is possible because the existence of an omega point in our future places certain constraints on the condition of the universe today.)
  • Tipler makes... additional assumptions—some plausible, others less so—which enable him to fill in more details of future history. ...[His] quasi-religious interpretation... and his failure to distinguish that... from the underlying scientific theory, that have prevented the latter from being taken seriously.
  • Tipler notes that an infinite amount of knowledge will have been created by the time of the omega point. He... assumes... the [far future] intelligences will, like us, want (or... need)... knowledge other than... necessary for... survival. ...[T]hey have the potential to discover all [physically knowable] knowledge, and Tipler assumes that they will do so.
    So in a sense, the omega point will be omniscient.
  • Tipler makes use of a handy linguistic device... common in mathematical physics... misleading if taken too literally. ...[T]o identify a limiting point of a sequence with the sequence itself. ...What he does not mean is that there is that there is a knowing entity literally at the end point of gravitational collapse... there is no physical entity there at all. Thus... the omega point knows nothing, and can... exist only because some... explanations... refer to the limiting properties of physical events...
  • Tipler uses the theological term 'omniscient'... but... The omega point will not know everything. The overwhelming majority of abstract truths... will be inaccessible to it as they are to us.
  • Since the intelligences in the computer will be creative thinkers, they must be classified as "people". ...And so he claims... at the omega-point limit... an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent society of people. This society, Tipler identifies as God.
  • [P]eople near the omega point could not... communicate their wishes to us, or work miracles (today). They did not create the universe... [nor] invent the laws of physics—nor could they violate those laws... They may listen to prayers... (perhaps by detecting very faint signals), but they cannot answer them. They are... opposed to religious faith, and have no wish to be worshipped. ...But Tipler ...argues that most of the core features of the God of the Judeo-Christian religions, are... properties of the omega point. Most religious people will... disagree...
  • In his enthusiasm... Tipler has neglected part of the Popperian lesson about what the growth of knowledge must look like. If the omega point exists, and if... created in the way... Tipler... set out... the late universe will... consist of embodied thoughts of inconceivable wisdom, creativity and sheer numbers. But... problem solving means rival conjectures, errors, criticism, refutation and backtracking. Admittedly, in the limit (which no one experiences), at the instant the universe ends, everything that is comprehensible may have been understood. But at every finite point our descendants' knowledge will be riddled with errors. Their knowledge will be greater, deeper and broader than we can imagine, but they will make mistakes on a correspondingly titanic scale too.
    Like us, they will never know certainty or physical security, for their survival, like ours, will depend on... creating a continuous stream of new knowledge. If they... fail, even once... to increase... computing speed and memory capacity... the sky will fall in on them and they will die. Their culture... will be split by passionate controversies. ...[I]t seems unlikely that it could... be regarded as a 'person'. Rather... a vast number of people interacting... disagreeing. ...often ...mistaken, and many mistakes ...uncorrected for... long periods (subjectively). Nor... ever... morally homogeneous...Nothing will be sacred... and... people will continually be questioning assumptions that other[s]... consider... fundamental moral truths. ...[B]y the methods of reason, every... controversy will be resolved. But... replaced by... more... fundamental controversies. Such... is very different from... God... But... some subculture within it... will be resurrecting us if Tipler is right.

Interview with Frank. J. Tipler (Nov. 2002)

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by Giulio Prisco, Transhumanity Magazine (November 2002) World Transhumanist Association. Source @WayBack Machine or @Prisco's personal blog
  • [I]f the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Omega Point Theory would be refuted. But the expansion of life to engulf the universe is EXACTLY what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. the Dark Energy)...
  • The Omega Point Theory suggests that the particle physics Standard Model (SM) is sufficient to explain both [dark matter and dark energy]: the Dark Energy is just the currently uncancelled part of the positive cosmological constant, and the Dark Matter is just the Standard Model SU(2)_{left} field, coupled to the SM Higgs field. I was very worried when I wrote PHYSICS OF IMMORTALTIY that the entropy in the CMBR would make an acceleration in the collapsing phase of universal history impossible. I propose to solve this problem by claiming the temperature of the CMBR — currently "measured"... 2.2726 degrees Kelvin — is actually... absolute zero! I show in a paper I put on the lanl data base (xxx.lanl.gov) last November that such an apparently ridiculous claim is possible, because any quantized gauge field in a homogeneous and isotropic universe would NECESSARILY have a Planckian spectrum, even at zero temperature! What the measurements of CMBR showing that it is Planckian... are really measuring... not the temperature, but the size of the universe. In my paper, I show how to convert the... "temperature" of 2.2726 into the size of the universe.

Review of The Physics of Christianity (2008)

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Giulio Prisco's personal blog (Dec 26, 2008). Source.
  • I relate deeply to Tipler’s... concept that future technology may... resurrect the dead... by... "copying them to the future" and... allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they want to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party by copying them to the future. ...[T]his soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept ...will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and engineers.
  • Tipler has been criticized... for mixing religion with science. ...also ...for making wrong scientific assumptions. ...[I]t appears that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and ...left to itself, will never enter the gravitational collapse phase ...a prerequisite for the Omega Point scenario ...Tipler is certainly wrong on many points that will be corrected by future scientists. But dismissing him as a crank is... like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his aircraft sketches wouldn’t fly...
  • The Physics of Christianity... received... bad reviews from very smart people like John Walker.

See also

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