Comment by jstanley
1 day ago
People say that 2-dimensional life is impossible because it's impossible to make a 2-dimensional digestive system.
But you just need to make it work like a zip. The two halves of the body have interlocking hooks, and they move out of the way to let food pass through, and then reconnect.
I think 2-dimensional life is impossible because physical things exist in all dimensions. As spacetime is already 4 dimensions, no physical thing at all exists in 2 dimensions, thus no life either
Oh, that's just trivia about the contingent universe. You wouldn't say it was impossible for Carthage to have conquered Rome, would you? It just didn't, by chance, happen.
>You wouldn't say it was impossible for Carthage to have conquered Rome, would you?
Okay, but is space having 3 dimensions instead of 2 also an accident of history, or part of the fundamental structure of the universe?
For that matter, it's not obvious to me that history as it actually unfolded is not also part of the fundamental structure of the universe.
I assume the contingent universe is where my existence happens and thus a potential thankfulness should be placed on. I'm for example not gonna be thankful we're not in a higher-dimension universe, because my experience would likely be unfathomably different and things might look very different from there.
As history shows, Rome did win, so I wonder just how you imagine Carthage could have won? Should they just have "tried harder"? (i imagine they did what was possible) Was there another universe where the first apes that would later become Carthagians found more bananas, thus had higher population and resources and won this way? Honestly curious how you set the rules of this counterfactual history :D
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Although maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_collapse is real! I remember that Gödel may have thought so?
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Yeah, Dynomight suggested that in the article.
Oops, I missed that!