The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless, and Endless by John D. Baerrow

Author:John D. Baerrow [Baerrow, John D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307428769
Barnesnoble:
Published: 2022-06-06T08:00:22+00:00

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The Infinite Book

new seedling planted means that this good is multiplied and this is an important imperative to good works. Doing more of them adds to the good that has already been done.

Johnny Appleseeds approach to good works is one that underlies the ethical systems that are contained in many religions and the codes of behaviour that guide those who claim to have no religion at all. It makes simple sense in a finite Universe. But there are curious problems if the Universe is infinite. Faced with an infinite Universe that contains an infinite number of apple trees already, Johnny’s impact is blunted.

Add another apple tree and there are still an infinite number of trees.

Nothing he can do can increase the number of apple trees. He can move them around so as to increase the local density of trees in our neighbourhood, but no amount of planting can add to the total appletree content in the Universe.

This neutralisation of apple-tree planting is superficially not so worrying, but it has more profound analogues elsewhere. If the total amount of good (or evil) in the Universe is infinite, then nothing we can do (or fail to do) can add to it: infinity plus anything is still just infinite.21 This is the first ethical dilemma of an infinite Universe. If ethical imperatives are based simply upon doing more good things, then they make no sense in an infinite Universe. To escape this problem we need to think about other imperatives for right actions.

There are deeper ethical problems waiting for many of these alternatives as well. The problems all flow from the basic paradox of infinite replication that afflicts any infinite universe: if there is a finite chance of something happening then it is happening elsewhere infinitely often at this moment. This implies that there are infinitely many copies of each of us elsewhere taking the same choices that we are taking at this moment.

But there are also infinitely many copies of each of us taking all of the other possible choices that we could have taken as well.

This pathology of infinite worlds has serious implications. Why should we act to prevent evil if there are infinitely many copies of ourselves where the evil alternatives are taken? There would seem to be

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