Hi Dr. Klingman--
Thank you for taking the time to read my essay and to provide comments.
I am glad we can agree that cosmological creation implies a Universe arising out of "nothingness". Right there, I believe that we are in a distinct minority (Wheeler notwithstanding)!
As to whether One or Many or Infinite arose, I am not sure. You say one. Parfit says "maybe infinite". Nozick says "nothingness plus maybe infinite". I'm probably in the Nozick school. This is obviously a philosophical question, until such time that physics enables us to verify the existence of the multiverse (which, of course, may never happen).
As to the issue of "fine-tuning" and other aspects of the "Anthropic debate", I confess to being utterly disinterested. My interest in the multiverse stems purely from the fact that so many of our current leading-edge theories seem to point to some sort of multiverse.
As to whether "our own real universe" is infinitely rich, I think that's actually a tricky issue. First, there's the issue of terminology. I take our real Universe to be spatially flat and simply-connected, i.e., it goes on to "infinity". Obviously, then, we can't see the whole thing. Some may say that whatever we can't see isn't real. However, if our Universe is spatially infinite, then it's possible that it is infinitely rich, if you allow the parts that we can't see to be "real". Second, nonetheless, some believe that it is impossible "to get to infinity". This is the view taken by Ellis et al. I disagree with them, but it is certainly open to debate. Third, even with spatial (and bosonic, etc.) infinity, you can't get to infinite richness without a stochastic or ergodic effect. Many people take this as a given, but I think it is an unwarranted assumption. I actually considered doing my essay on that very point (and probably should have, given the lackluster response to the essay I submitted!).
BTW, I read and certainly enjoyed your essay on the wave function. It was very well written and reasoned. Loved the illustrations! It was pretty heavy going, though. I was overwhelmed by the number of posts to it. One quick question, if I may: What do you think about the very negative comments that folks like S. Vongehr have made about J. Christian's work?
Best regards,
Bill.
