Re: History-less observer moments

From: Fred Chen <flipsu5.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 19:58:57 -0700

Higgo James wrote:

> This thought -> this thought is not special -> there are many thoughts ->
> the simplest way to have many thoughts (Kolmogorov) is to have all thoughts.
>
> No excursion into a physical world, no hypothesis on the nature of reality
> required.
>

As you present your picture of reality again and again, it seems rather than being the opposite
of the mechanistic reductionist scheme, it is the reciprocal space of it. Your reality (it
appears to me) is the ensemble of all possible thoughts/concepts. So this, in principle, would
include even the all-universes ensemble as a subset. Each thought, in the mechanistic picture,
can be realized or implemented in perhaps an endless number of ways, each corresponding to a
different physical process or computation, maybe. Conversely, a mechanistic process is always
described with many concepts involved.

One remaining issue, then, is the perception of correctness, why does one idea seem right while
another seems wrong, and how do you judge? I suppose you can appeal to an objective or a
subjective standard, but even with the subjective standard, it appears a universal description
is needed.

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alastair Malcolm [SMTP:amalcolm.domain.name.hidden]
> > Sent: Wednesday, 17 May, 2000 2:44 PM
> > To: meekerdb.domain.name.hidden; everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com
> > Subject: Re: History-less observer moments
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
> > .
> > .
> > > It seems to me that these discussions are sometimes confused as
> > > to whether the argument is going to take a Cartesian direction from
> > something
> > > we perceive directly -- "there is a thought" -- to the apparent physical
> > world
> > > or instead to assume some Platonic ideal --- the ensemble of all
> > logically
> > > possible worlds -- and try to show that it makes us and our world at
> > least
> > > probable. These are both interesting approaches and need not
> > contradict;
> > but
> > > it gets muddle when one slides from one to the other.
> >
> > There is no problem for several of us in going (not on logical
> > consequence,
> > but on reasonable assumptions) from
> > (1) 'This thought' -> 'apparent physics-governed world' -> 'all logically
> > possible universes'.
> >
> > The problems can occur when instead people do things like
> > (2) 'This thought' -> 'all possible thoughts'
> > or
> > (3) 'This thought' -> 'this monad' -> 'all possible monads',
> >
> > where, if (2) and (3) do not bring in something akin to physics at some
> > stage, they will fall foul of what is effectively the white rabbit problem
> > (aka induction failure problem), unless some other factor can be invoked
> > which effectively gives priority to simpler universes / ordered thoughts.
> >
> > Alastair
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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Received on Wed May 17 2000 - 20:09:41 PDT