being inside a universe

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 14:52:22 -0700

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 03:59:49PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Now, and we have discussed this before, I have no understanding of the
> expression "being inside a universe".

Being inside a universe to me means having a causal relationship with the
universe, in other words being able to affect it through decisions and
actions. That leads to the question of what causal relationships are and
how do you formalize them.

Fortunately I've now read most of _The Foundations of Causal Decision
Theory_, by James M. Joyce, and can recommend it for a discussion of
causality. This is also a great book for learning about decision theory in
general, and I highly recommend it to everyone here.
Received on Tue Jul 02 2002 - 14:55:10 PDT