Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> On 3/15/07, *Brent Meeker* <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden
> <mailto: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
Another observation refuting Tegmark! :-)
Seriously, even in the finite universe we observe my probability is almost zero. Almost everything and and everyone is improbable, just like my winning the lottery when I buy one a million tickets is improbable - but someone has to win. So it's a question of relative measure. Each integer has zero measure in the set of all integers - yet we are acquainted with some and not others. So why is the "acquaintance measure" of small integers so much greater than that of integers greater than 10^10^20 (i.e. almost all of them). What picks out the small integers?
Brent Meeker
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Received on Thu Mar 15 2007 - 19:18:17 PDT