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" "[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."
(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 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 time machine) and for the , 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.
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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 factors <math>f_lf_if_c</math> 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, 10<sup>11</sup>. Thus <math>p \leqslant 10^{-11}</math>. If we accept the usual values of <math>f_p=0.1</math> to 1 and <math>n_e = 1</math> found in most discussions... then <math>f_lf_if_c \leqslant 10^{-10}</math>. The number of communicating civilizations now existing in our Galaxy is less than or equal to <math>p</math> x (number of stars in galaxy) = 1; that is to say, us.
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... .