"James Higgo (co.uk)" wrote:
>Jesse, nobody on this list is unaware of Carter's paper, to which I and
>others have referred in several of our papers. The point is, life is a
>high-level concept, not relevant to the more fundamental debate I thought
>we
>were having. What was the point of Anthropic Reasoning 101?
"Life" is a high-level concept, but the property of being an "observer" may
not be, and that's basically what this debate is about. And I don't think
that what I was saying was trivial--I've seen plenty of discussions about
the anthropic principle get bogged down by the fact that different people
are using subtly different definitions without realizing it, so I wanted to
define things clearly at the outset.
> > So my question for you is, when you say "the anthropic principle is
> > universally mis-applied," are you saying that you think only Carter's
> > original version of anthropic reasoning is valid, while the copernican
> > anthropic principle is not?
>
>As I thought was obvious form my posts, both assume that there is more than
>just this current thought. Both apply to 'life' in 'space' etc. Both assume
>a physical universe which is the substrate for a system which generates
>thoughts.
They can be interpreted this way, but they don't have to be. The copernican
anthropic principle can be described entirely in terms of the probability of
being one observer-moment vs. another one, which is all I'm really
assuming--I tend not to believe in the dualistic "observer-moments vs.
physical substrate" view either.
I think this is bollocks. A 'physical' universe is a massive
>assumption, which I say again: I do not share. I assert that only your
>current thought exists, as far as you know. An your current thought
>includes
>a contemplation of the anthropic principle.
Yes, but I'm assuming you're not really a solipsist, right? Even though you
can never "prove" the existence of anything other than
your current thought, I had assumed from other comments you made that you at
least believed in the existence of a large set of observer-moments, perhaps
with some kind of measure assigned to the set. Am I wrong?
> > principle but think the "reference class" can only consist of
> > observer-moments that are using anthropic reasoning? Or something else?
>
>Yes, the reference is OMs which include thoughts about the anthropic
>principle.
Why do you think the reference class should include only thoughts about the
anthropic principle? Why not all observer-moments?
> > >You ask: "Is it just amazing luck that I find myself to be one of these
> > >extremely rare complex observer-moments?" - surely you don't mean this.
> > >That
> > >is equivaent to the traditional question "Is it amazing luck that the
> > >universe supports my life", to which the traditional mis-application of
>the
> > >anthropic principle is the ripost.
> >
> > This ripost only works if you assume multiple universes/regions,
>although
>I
> > suppose you might say it doesn't work even then.
> >
>Yes, I do say that it doesn't work even then. It assumes that 'life'
>requires a suitable physical substrate. I believe that this is almost
>certainly false.
When you have an experience of interacting with another human, do you
believe you are in some sense interacting with an observer-moment separate
from your own? How about an animal, or a computer program? My own view is
that we can indeed describe reality entirely in terms of observer-moments,
but that what we call "physical" patterns may just be other observer-moments
viewed "from the outside" in some sense. This is equivalent to the
pansychist view endorsed by Chalmers, which says that even a simple physical
system like a thermostat has some consciousness associated with it...note
that in this view it doesn't make much difference whether the "physical
system" has its own independent existence, or whether a "physical system" is
just what an observer-moment looks like when viewed from the outside by
another observer-moment.
>Clearly, OMs containing thoughts about the anthropic principle can exist.
>That much we can say. We have no firm evidence to suggest that any other
>constructs exist (although, of course, my current OM does include
>'memories'
>of other thoughts).
OK, but do you believe in the existence of non-James-Higgo OMs? You can't
be sure they exist either. I think a TOE only has to be "plausible", not
"provable"...otherwise you can't go beyond solipsism.
> > You misunderstood my point. I was saying that if my "reference class"
> > includes all "self-referential thoughts", and if my definition of
> > self-referential thoughts is such that simple ones greatly outnumber
>complex
> > ones, then I can *not* use anthropic reasoning (of either sort) to
>explain
> > why I find myself to be a rare complex one rather than a simple one...so
>the
> > fact that I am a complex one would be very, very lucky in this case.
>This
> > then becomes a reason to say the original choice of reference class may
>have
> > been incorrect.
>
>See above. It is pure speculation that 'simpler' thoughts can exist. I'm
>not
>sure how you define thought complexity. It is perfectly likely that the
>thought you are having now is the simplest thought in existence - even
>though it includes speculation about what possible, 'simpler', thoughts
>_might_ exist.
As I said, anything's possible, including the fact that my current
observer-moment is the only thing in existence. But we won't get very far
designing a TOE if we aren't willing to make a few unprovable assumptions.
The reason I believe in "simple" observer-moments is that I expect a good
TOE to define OMs mathematically, in terms of computations or something
similar.
> >
> > And this is still true if you replace "self-referential thought" with
> > "thought about the anthropic principle" or something similar. I can
>write
>a
> > simple program that prints out "I am thinking about the anthropic
> > principle", and the number of physical systems that implement this
>program
> > is probably still much greater than the number of systems that implement
>the
> > complex processes going on in my brain (unless you take Hans Moravec's
>view,
> > in which any system can be seen as implementing any 'thought' under the
> > right mapping).
> >
>You don't even know that 'you' have a 'computer' - something that itself
>requires a 'physical world'. You are making dozens of unjustifiable leaps
>here.
What is your definition of "unjustifiable?" Is any belief other than
solipsism unjustifiable? Anyway, as I said, you don't need to believe in a
physical world to believe that OMs correspond to computations, or some other
mathematical structure (depending on what form your TOE takes).
> > But in that case, why do you think that
> > observer-moments of the laws of physics operating normally should be any
> > more common than observer-moments seeing crazy violations of physical
>law?
>
>Can you not understand that I don't believe in physics?
My question was about observer-moments which see the *appearance* of an
orderly physical world vs. observer-moments which see crazy disorder.
Again, it's really just a question of whether you believe in some global
measure on the set of all OMs, so that OMs which experience business as
usual are somehow more probable.
There is no proof of
>a physical world. There is no proof of a physical world. There is no proof
>of a physical world. There is no proof of a physical world. There is no
>proof of a physical world. There is no proof of a physical world. There
>are
>no laws. There is just this OM, that is all 'I' know. All 'I' know is this
>current thought.
I may not have been making myself clear, but as I've been saying, none of my
arguments ultimately depend on the assumption of a "physical world." And
again, I thought we were discussing TOE's, not some ultimate philosophical
idea of what we can "know"...if God asked you to bet on the existence or
nonexistence of other OMs besides your current one, what would you say?
Jesse Mazer
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Received on Tue Feb 13 2001 - 18:57:23 PST