Re: on simply being an SAS

From: Alastair Malcolm <amalcolm.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 11:48:48 -0000

Fred,

The main concern of my earlier reply was to dissuade you from the idea
implied in your first post that hallucinating-ascribing and law-fitting
tendencies of SAS's could account for the WR/dragon problem. Your second
post is much less controversial for me and so I have only a few brief
comments.

> > 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 think believers would generally be horrified to consider that their god
might be constrained by a set of laws (so SAS's don't *necessarily* look for
law-based explanations - my objection to your first post).

> > 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.

I don't have a problem with this - but you should understand that in the
example I cited (only Earth+Sun law-like) SAS's would not be precluded.
(Dragons replacing stars, in a sense.)

> 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.

Very much so.

Alastair
Received on Sat Dec 04 1999 - 04:06:09 PST