Re: Introduction (Digital Physics)

From: Joel Dobrzelewski <dobrzele.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 06:37:27 -0400

George:
 
> My position, is that there are no separations between worlds.
> There is only one single huge world, the plenitude and we live in
> it. The plenitude is choke full of white rabbits. In fact most of
> it is white rabbit stuff.

I very much agree.

> The reason we don't see them is that our consciousness
> anthropically constrains what we can observe and filters out the
> white rabbits just like inhabitants of Flat Land can only see
> objects in two dimentions.

What do you mean by consciousness here? If you mean simply "beliefs"
then I might agree. But if you mean consciousness in general, then I
think I disagree.

The reason we haven't seen any is simply because we haven't seen
any. (yet) Necessarily, there will be some worlds where white
flying rabbits aren't seen for trillions of years.

By the way... I'm curious why we are using the example of "white"
rabbits. White rabbits are quite common in the laboratory. Is that
why we use them as an example? Because they are uncommon in nature?

> Greek philosophers would have called "White Rabbits" devices like
> cars, TVs and flashlights. Of course, after an expossure to
> twentieth century science, their beliefs would be modified and
> what used to be White Rabbits would become hackneyed household
> hare. So the perception of white rabbits is definitely in the
> eyes of the beholder. A very relativistic attitude.

Now this is a good example. So maybe white rabbits are just around
the corner.

> You raise a good question regarding the probability of infinite
> sets. It has been the subject of infinite discussions on this
> list.... dismissing it as meaningless does not solve the problem
> of why event A may be more proable than event B even though both
> may have infinite measure in the plenitude.

I still have a problem with this concept. If I have a bag with an
infinite number of apples and oranges, and I keep pulling out an
orange for a billion years... what use is the information that both
apple and orange are equally likely? Maybe all the oranges are on
top!

That's what I mean by meaningless.

Joel
Received on Thu Jun 21 2001 - 03:34:40 PDT