Re: Everything is Just a Memory

From: Alastair Malcolm <amalcolm.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 10:00:18 -0000

----- Original Message -----
From: Fritz Griffith <fritzgriffith.domain.name.hidden>
> My answer to you is that it is simpler for the laws of physics to directly
> control what you "dream" about than for the laws of physics to control a
> universe, which feeds you inputs, which forms what you dream about.
Things
> are always simpler without a 3rd party intermediary. So, conventional
> science is definitely a productive anvenue to explore, because it explains
> the laws of our "dream". As for MWI, I am not a true solipsist because I
> believe that all possible dreams exist in the plentitude. For this
reason,
> everyone I know is a zombie in my dream, but in all of reality, they are
> not, because the dream that would correspond to their reality does exist,
> even though it does not interact with mine.

One of the problems that I have with your intriguing hypothesis (which I
also consider
briefly on my web site) is that it appears to fall foul of the White Rabbit
problem: the measure of copies of yourself having recent memories of small
but unambiguous deviations from the known physical laws should be greater
than memories of a fully physically ordered world ... unless there is some
extra factor that gives high measure to physical-law-subscribing memory
traces (obvious candidate factor: the memories relate directly to real
events governed by physical laws). Without this factor, statistically you
should be having memories of violated physical laws.

Alastair

Many Worlds discussions start at:
http://www.physica.freeserve.co.uk/p105.htm
(Note on conscious instants in Appendix 1)

PS. You might just be interested in Julian Barbour's time-free cosmology as
described in his recent book 'The End of Time' (and summarized in New
Scientist 16th Oct), though this is more '3rd person' than '1st person'.
Received on Mon Jan 17 2000 - 02:06:31 PST

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