In a message dated 05/18/2000 10:15:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
R.Standish.domain.name.hidden writes:
at
> http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks/pubs.html
>What, then, determines which organisms we see today, given that a priori,
>any possible history, and hence any mix of organisms may correspond to
>our own? Is natural selection completely meaningless?
>The first principle we need to apply is the anthropic principle, i.e. only
those
>histories leading to complex, self-aware substructures will be selected. We
also
>need to apply the self sampling assumption, namely that we expect to find
>ourselves in an anthropic principle consistent history that is nearly
maximal in its
>measure. This, then, gives an alternative interpretation of natural
selection as
>being the process that differentiates the measure attributed to each
variant.
>Complexity Growth in Evolution
>As I argued elsewhere[12], lawful universes with simple initial states
by far dominate the set consistent with the AP. This implies that the AP
fixes the end
>point of our evolutionary history (existence of complex, self-aware
organisms), and
>the SSA fixes the beginning (evolutionary history is most likely started
with
>the simplest organisms). We should expect to see an increase in complexity
>through time in a system governed by these two principles.
>What about systems not governed by the anthropic principle?
>Examples include extra terrestrial life (within our own universe, if it
exists)
>and artificial life >systems. Proponents of SETI (the Search for
>Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) believe in an inevitability of the
>evolution of intelligent life, given the laws of physics.
>Evolutionary Physics?
>...when a particular aspect of the universe is not constrained by the AP,
>its value must be decided by chance (according to the SSA) the first time
>it is ``measured'' by self-aware beings (this measurement may well be
indirect
>-- properties of the microscopic or cosmic worlds will need to be consistent
>with our everyday observations at the macroscopic level, so may well be
>determined prior to the first direct measurements).
>Evolution is also described as a mixture of contingency and necessity.
>When understood in terms of the AP supplying the necessary, and the SSA
>supplying the rationale for resolving chance, the connection between
>the selection of phyical laws and the selection of organisms in evolution
>is made clear. It is as though the laws of physics and chemistry have
>themselves evolved. Perhaps applying evolutionary principles to the
>underlying physico-chemical laws of an alife system will result in an
>alife system that can pass through these hard transitions.
This concept requires
1) the existence of an absolute objective world that all observers share and
perceive identically and
2) the magical ability on the part of any one sentient being in that universe
to "collapse" so to speak any "undecided" parameter the first time this
parameter is ever observed by a sentient being in that universe. This
collapse does not happen just for that one observer, but, since you assume an
objective reality, it happens for all beings in that universe, whether they
have observed that parameter or not.
Both ideas are anathema to me.
As I have mentioned before, absolute objective reality cannot be proven. The
only incontrovertible fact that we can rely on is the observation of the
self, of our thought process and of our senses: "I Think." Everything else is
extrapolation and deduction. Everything else is in relation to the self.
I am not sure if it is necessary to use the self sampling assumption (SSA). I
believe that the statement "I think" can provide one boundary condition to
the logical/computational/causal chain. This is the one form of the AP that I
favor. The rest of the causal chain is unbounded and can be represented in
all its alleles in the plenitude as long as it is also constrained in the
logical/computational/causal sense. This logical/computational/causal
constraint excludes wabbits (I like this term coined by Jacques).
George
Received on Sat May 20 2000 - 21:45:17 PDT