Prof. Frank J. Tipler's "A Liberal Utopia"

Frank J. Tipler, "A Liberal Utopia", *Humane Studies Review*, Vol. 6,
No. 2 (Winter 1988-1989), pp. 4-5. Part of "*The Fatal Conceit* by F.
A. Hayek: A Special Symposium" by the Institute for Humane Studies.
PDF, 7835507 bytes, MD5: b97778a738938ccc6c051908d09e8529.
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20030.../issues/37.pdf
, http://webcitation.org/6J33c7Or3 ,
http://pdf-archive.com/2013/08/22/ti...ral-utopia.pdf
, http://mirrorcreator.com/files/QB4SZIC0/ ,
http://rghost.net/48295424

----------

A Liberal Utopia

by Frank J. Tipler

Department of Mathematics and Department of Physics
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana USA

*The Fatal Conceit*, the first of a projected 22 volume set of
Friedrich A. Hayek's collected works, is a magnificent summary of the
fundamental ideas underlying his lifelong opposition to the errors of
socialism, to the ridiculously conceited idea that a social order
intentionally planned in a single human mind (or in at most a few
minds) can be superior to the spontaneously evolved market order, an
order that integrates in the only possible way the knowledge contained
in the minds of the entire human race. Chapters 2 and 3 contain the
best available short history of the development of the market order,
showing how free trade and the production of goods unhindered by the
state were responsible for the birth and growth not merely of western
civilization, but also of every civilization--for example, ancient
Egyptian, Meso-American, Chinese, Greek--of which we have knowledge.
Further, the growth was stopped in all known civilizations, and
replaced by stasis or collapse, not by processes inherent in the free
market, but rather by government intervention preventing by one means
or another the voluntary exchange of goods and ideas. So why is
classical liberalism not universally accepted? Why has there instead
been throughout most of this century a reactionary movement toward
socialism, that most primitive of social orders?

There are several reasons, which Hayek discusses at length in *The
Fatal Conceit*, but let me here concentrate on one, emphasized by
Hayek and possibly the most important: the static world-view of the
overwhelming majority of intellectuals now and throughout history.
Change is not seen as a basic explanatory category, but rather
pictured as an illusion. Aristotle and most of the later Greek
philosophers championed a static cosmos, in which all time was cyclic.
As a consequence, they could not imagine a biological organism or a
civilization arising by evolution. Any order in their view simply had
to be eternally present. Modern intellectuals are forced by an
enormous amount of empirical evidence to accept the fact of evolution
as the mechanism that generated the order found in biological
organisms, but they revert to stasis whenever possible. This is seen
even in physics: the cosmology invented by the socialist Albert
Einstein was a forever unchanging (in the large) *static* universe,
and the cosmology defended by the socialist Fred Hoyle (invented after
the evidence for the expansion of the universe became overwhelming)
was a steady state universe, a cosmology as close to unchanging as the
evidence would permit. Socialist economists base their work on
equilibrium analysis in which the essential temporal aspects of the
market order are eliminated. The equations upon which the entire
argument for the possibility of a planned society are based are
*static* algebraic equations for the products in terms of the factors
of production. The very possibility of new products, and new ways of
producing them, is left out of the mathematics. Even the socialist
utopias, the ideal socialist societies, are static perfections, as was
Plato's *Republic*. Once Marx's classless society is reached, no
further evolution is possible or necessary.

A liberal utopia--something Hayek has repeatedly urged us to
develop--must in contrast be an evolving society, a society in which
continuous change (in the economy; in the peaceful relationships
between people; and even in the nature of people, liberalism being
non-racist by definition) is fundamental. The *only* constant in a
liberal utopia is liberty: the unchanging right of all individuals to
exercise sole dominion over their own lives, living in whatever manner
they choose, provided only that they do not forcibly interfere with
the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
Since a liberal utopia makes use of enormously more knowledge than can
be coded in a single human brain, or in a single supercomputer, it is
utterly impossible to describe in detail how such a society would
evolve.

But all real societies are constrained by the laws of physics. These
laws, and only these laws, limit a liberal utopia. Much nonsense has
been written on the physical limits to economic growth by physicists
who are ignorant of economics. A correct analysis of the physical
limits to growth is possible only if one appreciates Hayek's insight
that what the economic system produces is not material things, but
immaterial knowledge:

""
traders and merchants ... [are] engaged in something like the
transformation of the non-material in altering the value of goods. How
could the power of things to satisfy human needs change without a
change in their quantity? It remains hard for many to accept that
quantitative increases of available supplies of physical means of
subsistence and enjoyment should depend less on the visible
transformation of physical substances into other physical substances
than on the shifting about of objects which thereby change their
relevant magnitudes and values. (pp. 90,92)
""

So the only ultimate physical limits to economic growth are the limits
imposed by physics on the growth of knowledge. What is "knowledge"? We
don't know how to frame a precise definition, but roughly speaking,
"knowledge" is "information"--in the sense a physicist or computer
scientist uses that word--that has been "tested" by experience. We
don't know how to define "tested" (this is why we can't give a precise
definition of "knowledge"), but we don't need to know what "tested"
means in order to derive the limits to the growth of knowledge: since
knowledge is a form of information, the physical limits on information
processing are also limits to knowledge growth.

Information processing is constrained by the first and second laws of
thermodynamics. These laws imply that the maximum amount of
information that can be processed at a given temperature T is I =
E/(k*T*ln[2]) where E is the energy available for processing, (ln[2])
is the natural logarithm of 2, and k is Boltzmann's constant. Now any
temperature T we can use is greater than the temperature of the
background radiation, which is 3 degrees on the Kelvin scale, and if
we limit ourselves to operations on Earth, the greatest available
energy is E = M*c^2, where M is the mass of the Earth. Thus an
absolute upper bound to knowledge and hence economic growth on Earth
in the present epoch is 10^64 bits. By comparison, an upper bound to
the information coded in the present economic system is 10^25 bits.
One can derive a number of upper bounds on the total amount of
knowledge and on the rate of growth of knowledge (see sections 3.7 and
10.6 of my book with John D. Barrow, *The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle* [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], hereafter *ACP*,
for details). The importance of these limits is that they are
enormously greater than the limits to growth incorrectly obtained by
the physicists ignorant of economics. Since only the free market can
establish money values, and since the free market has not given us an
average money equivalent of knowledge in bits (such a quantity is
probably as meaningful as the Marxist average labor cost), it is
impossible to convert the above estimates into ultimate limits of
wealth measured in dollars. However, if it is possible to increase our
wealth on Earth by the same percentage that it is possible to increase
the energy efficiency of our computers--not unreasonable, considering
that the computer industry will generate a greater and greater
percentage of the total wealth in the future--then it is possible to
increase the total wealth of the earth-bound human race by a factor of
*one hundred billion* before running into the limits to growth imposed
by physics. These numbers show that, contrary to the claims of the
limits-to-growth statists, there are no immediate physical barriers to
a liberal utopia, in which change is marked by ever-increasing wealth.
These numbers also support the conclusion of chapter 8 of *The Fatal
Conceit*: "... there is no danger whatever that, in any foreseeable
future with which we can be concerned, the population of the world as
a whole will outgrow its raw material resources ... (p. 125)".

But a true utopia is concerned with the ultimate future, not merely
with the immediate future. A liberal utopia must picture not just
progress over the next hundred or thousand years, but unlimited
progress until the end of time itself! I thus disagree with Hayek's
view that market forces will stop population growth before the human
population can run out of raw materials. Market forces could and would
stop population growth if it became necessary; but I don't think it
will ever be necessary (except regionally, which as Hayek points out,
may be necessary even now). Rather, I think one must also apply to the
long-term development of civilization Hayek's brilliant insight: "*It
is not the present number of lives that evolution will tend to
maximise but the prospective stream of future lives*". (Hayek's
italics; *The Fatal Conceit*, p. 132.) Thus, provided that the laws of
physics permit it, evolution will tend, in the long run, to increase
the number of lives without limit. Since, if life remains on this
single planet for all future time, the number of lives must be
limited, and worse, in the very far future life must inevitably die
out (since information processing has an upper finite bound; see
section 3.7 of *ACP* for details), it follows from Hayek's own
evolution principle that it is highly likely our civilization will
expand beyond our planet at some point in the future. A liberal utopia
simply cannot be forever restricted to a single planet. A single
planet is finite, whereas a liberal utopia must envisage total
knowledge and wealth increasing without limit. It can be shown (see
section 10.6 of *ACP* for details) that it is physically possible for
a space-based civilization to expand its knowledge, total wealth, and
number of lives without limit, literally to infinity at the end of
time. A true liberal utopia is physically possible, and a consequence
of Hayek's melioristic world-view.

####################

For much fuller details on what physicist and mathematician Prof.
Frank J. Tipler wrote about in his foregoing paper regarding how
physics allows unlimited progress by civilizations--to literally
infinite intelligence and power--see my following article on Tipler's
Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem)
of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law
of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the
Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of
Everything (TOE), which is also required by said known physical laws.
The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively
peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of
Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012
(orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708; PDF,
1741424 bytes, MD5: 8f7b21ee1e236fc2fbb22b4ee4bbd4cb.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 ,
http://archive.org/details/ThePhysic...OfEveryth ing
, http://theophysics.host56.com/Redfor...ics-of-God.pdf ,
http://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpre...ics-of-god.pdf
,
http://sites.google.com/site/physico...ics-of-God.pdf

Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain
very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point
cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard
Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of
Tipler.

A number of these videos are not otherwise online. I also provide some
helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.

James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's
Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?",
alt.sci.astro, Message-ID:
, 30 Jul 2013 00:51:55 -0400.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...ro/KQWt4KcpMVo ,
http://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS The plain
text of this post is available at: TXT, 42423 bytes, MD5:
b199e867e42d54b2b8bf6adcb4127761.
http://mirrorcreator.com/files/JCFTZSS8/ ,
http://ziddu.com/download/22782349/ ,
http://freakshare.com/files/i2ehznsj...ideos.txt.html

----------------------------------------

James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), Dec. 4, 2011 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2001),
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1337761, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 ,
http://theophysics.host56.com/anarchist-jesus.pdf ,
http://webcitation.org/66AIz2rJw

Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website with information
on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theorem and the quantum gravity
Theory of Everything [TOE]) http://theophysics.host56.com ,
http://theophysics.ifastnet.com