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The latest edition of John Brockman's EDGE is now online, and features two great discussions on the nature of universes with Ray Kurzweil and Marvin Minsky.
THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE: RAY KURZWEILLink Discuss
The universe has been set up in an exquisitely specific way so that evolution could produce the people that are sitting here today and we could use our intelligence to talk about the universe. We see a formidable power in the ability to use our minds and the tools we've created to gather evidence, to use our inferential abilities to develop theories, to test the theories, and to understand the universe at increasingly precise levels. Video (REAL)THE EMOTION UNIVERSE: MARVIN MINSKY
To say that the universe exists is silly, because it says that the universe is one of the things in the universe. So there's something wrong with questions like, "What caused the Universe to exist? Video (REAL)