On 3/15/07, Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > But these ideas illustrate a problem with
> > "everything-exists". Everything conceivable, i.e. not
> > self-contradictory is so ill defined it seems impossible to assign
> > any measure to it, and without a measure, something to pick out this
> > rather than that, the theory is empty. It just says what is
> > possible is possible. But if there a measure, something picks out
> > this rather than that, we can ask why THAT measure?
> >
> >
> > Isn't that like arguing that there can be no number 17 because there is
> > no way to assign it a measure and it would get lost among all the other
> > objects in Platonia?
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> I think it's more like asking why are we aware of 17 and other small
> numbers but no integers greater that say 10^10^20 - i.e. almost all of
> them. A theory that just says "all integers exist" doesn't help answer
> that. But if the integers are something we "make up" (or are hardwired by
> evolution) then it makes sense that we are only acquainted with small ones.
OK, but there are other questions that defy such an explanation. Suppose the
universe were infinite, as per Tegmark Level 1, and contained an infinite
number of observers. Wouldn't that make your measure effectively zero? And
yet here you are.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Thu Mar 15 2007 - 18:51:56 PDT