RE: Does MWI mean a silly putty multiverse?

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 09:52:58 -0000

No. The structure and regularity do not somehow come into existence by
virtue of there being a beholder, as the good Bishop argued. The regularity
is there all along. But it is like looking at a grid, e.g.:

000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000

and saying "Gosh! I can see a diagonal line of four 0's." (highlighted
below):

000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000

That diagonal line is there but someone must take the trouble to define a
diagonal line, find it interesting, and comment on it. From a perspective
outside the grid, that is a fatuous enterprise.

Because MWI contains everything, all possible relationships exist, so to
single out some for special comment is arbitrary from the Archimedian
perspective. It can only be done by someone inside the grid, who will, by
virtue of his limited field of vision, find some proximate things more
interesting than others. In MWI you could perhaps view one grid as one
universe, and imagine that each locus is mapped to another in a grid above
it, which is what we would (from our subjective viewpoint) call one
Planck-time later. In fact, in MWI, each locus is mapped to an arbitrary
number of locuses one Planck-time away from it, so one grid maps on to
infinitely many grids just one step (Planck time) away.

If you choose to see a certain set of relationships as representing a time
axis, and others as being space, you can view the whole from the outside in
such a way that you can see ass sorts of weird and wonderful things, like
you or I. This is similar, as Tegmark has pointed out, to zooming in on a
fractal picture and saying 'wow! look what's in there!'

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John H. Mazetier, Jr. [SMTP:maze.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Saturday, March 20, 1999 8:36 AM
> To: Avoid-l.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: Does MWI mean a silly putty multiverse?
>
> James H.,
>
> OK, lets go with MWI. As I have admitted, I can as yet claim too little
> knowledge about the full scope of the proposal. So, one response will
> likely be, go read the book, dummy! Until then, I still have a few
> questions.
>
> To avoid proposing a silly putty universe (or multiverse), where things
> are whatever you make them, can we be clear about what kind of
> regularities shall obtain? Lets start here:
>
> > >In an infinite multiverse universes
> > >which appear to have any relation you like do in fact exist.
> > > We appear to
> > >exist in those sets of universes which can be strung
> > > together so that the
> > >laws of physics appear to emerge (weak anthropic principle, my dear
> > > friend).
> >
> > I agree so much that I believe a big part of the laws of physics can
> and
> > must be derived from
> > "a theory of consciousness" which itself can and must be derived, with
>
> > comp,
> > from theoretical computer science in the form of what machines can
> tell
> > (AND NOT TELL) correctly about themselves including their most
> "probable"
> > computationnal history.
> >
> > You can take "theory of consciousness" just in the sense of a theory
> > of what you call "subjective feature".
> > And I hope you agree that a subjective feature, is a feature relative
> to
> > a subject (alias a person, an observer, a point of view, an
> "angle"...).
> >
> > Bruno.
> >
>
> If I scan this at all, it is saying that structure/regularity is in the
> eye of the beholder ("relative to a subject"). In order support this,
> are you presuming the existence of some version of cosmic consciousness
> via MWI? Pace Berkelely's God always watching the tree in the squad?
>
> More after you answer.
>
> John
Received on Mon Mar 22 1999 - 01:58:09 PST