>
> Alastair,
>
> I will try to make my post more explicit.
>
> > Under AUH, unfortunately it is neither *necessary* for a SAS to perceive
> > totally law-like behaviour, nor try to fit all observed behaviour to laws.
> > Firstly, there will be a relatively few unlucky SAS's who *do* perceive
> > dragon/WR events in any AUH (some will have more than can be explained away
> > as hallucinations etc); secondly, it is the case that the majority of SAS's
> > on this planet would ascribe at least some paranormal events that they see
> > or think they see (like miracles, angels, or nde's) to divine, rather than
> > law-based, explanations - this doesn't disqualify them from being SAS's.
> >
>
> An SAS will do its best to fit its universe to some set of laws. However, like
> fitting a simple curve to data, this will not be perfect. What happens if there
> is an outlier data point (corresponding to a witnessed dragon event)? Choices
> are, you can discard it (the hallucination response), or, if you can, you can
> fit a better fitting curve (update/posit lawlike explanation). A divine
> explanation still refers to a set of principles unknown to yet accepted by the
> believer, but this is probably no better than just simply assuming there is a
> non-divine law-based explanation, which is unknown.
>
> >
> > I agree that a minimal number of dragon events could in practice be
> > dismissed as a mass-hallucination or something like that, but one cannot use
> > this fact to *explain* the lack of established dragon events, not least
> > because the main counter to the AUH is that there should be *maximal*
> > law-less behaviour, consistent with the existence of a SAS (so perhaps
> > events on Earth would be straightforward, but elsewhere (except for the
> > life-supporting Sun) they would be chaotic). To refute this we need more
> > careful analysis, such as that in Russell's paper, or my web site. (For MWI
> > instead of AUH it's a whole different ball-game.)
> >
>
> What I am driving at is the SAS will do its best to minimize its perception of
> lawlessness in its universe, by doing the curve-fitting, so to speak. With
> complete or too much lawlessness, it will cease to be aware of itself, or
> practically of anything, because there is no stable environment and no
> principles it can use to learn and predict. An awareness of self requires a
> stable enough, predictable enough background provided by laws. Knowledge of
> these laws is another matter.
It is unclear that a SAS embedded into such an extremely complex - ie
chaotic, or random universe would cease to be aware of itself. You
will need to justify that statement. What is true, is that the SAS
itself would have high information content relative to being embedded
in a universe where the physical laws give a good likelihood of a SAS
arising, and thus having much smaller measure than the lawlike
universe.
Now the White Rabbit aka Dragon universe problem is a shade of grey in
between completely lawlike and lawless behaviour. Since these
universes at least have some law abiding behaviour, they have rather
large measure compared with the completely lawlike universe. The
result of Alistair and my argument is to show that the vast bulk of
these dragon universes are in fact indistinguishable from the
completely law-like universe (according to the SAS - an omniscient
being, if such a thing exists is a competely different kettle of
fish), and the ones that are distinguishable will have relatively
small measure compared to the indistinguishable ones.
>
> Rather than taking the dragon event to be an example of lawlessness, it is
> probably more helpful to treat it as a very complex event, requiring complex
> laws or complex corresponding algorithms. So, your justification that dragons
> are very improbable is the same as justifying that (overly) complex universes
> are very improbable.
>
> >
> >
> > I don't agree that the range of fine-tuning is subjective, given a
> > reasonable physics framework. We may have problems assessing it, or there
> > may be other types of SAS that we are not aware of, but that is a different
> > matter.
> >
>
> What I mean here is best posed as a question: what is the difference between the
> number of possible values for the fine structure constant, alpha, in the
> following interval:
>
> (1/137.0359895-10^-25,1/137.0359895+10^-25)
>
> assuming this interval is anthropically allowed, i.e., it allows humans to
> evolve. (Note: I am using the central value 1/137.0359895 from Max Tegmark's
> paper,"Is 'the theory of everything' merely the ultimate ensemble theory?"
> published in Annals of Physics, vol. 270, pp.1-51 (1998).) The point is, you
> already have an infinite number of universes corresponding to each real number
> contained in this anthropically allowed interval. If you make this interval
> larger or smaller while preserving the SAP, how much larger or smaller an
> infinite set would be enough to say there is or is no fine-tuning? There may be
> a question of precision in determining alpha, but then the question is really
> where do you draw the line, why, and does it matter if you already have an
> infinite number of universes? To me, it seems kind of subjective.
>
No fine tuning means that any value of \alpha is allowed (at least
physically consistent values). So the above range you quote is
extremely fine-tuned. In reality, the level of fine-tuning is likely
to considerably less (I'm not sure what Tegmark quoted, but I thought
the allowable range was a few percent of \alpha - which is still fine-tuned).
> Fred
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
Sydney 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
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Received on Thu Dec 02 1999 - 18:09:30 PST