Re: a possible paradox

From: Hal Finney <hal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:02:11 -0800

Matt King writes:
> I should point out that there does remain a vanishingly small
> possibility that we could be in one of the extremely 'magical' universes
> where both macroscopic and microscopic laws of physics are skewed in a
> mutually consistent way, however given the tiny probability of this
> being the case I think it is quite safe to ignore it.

That seems rather extreme, because the probablity that we are in a
"regular" "magical" universe is already vanishingly small and we would
truly be safe in ignoring it. Even the probability of observing a single
large scale violation of the laws of probability is vanishingly small.
("Magical" universes suffer from repeated large-scale violations.)

Going beyond that and asking for consistency between the physics of the
large and the small is really gilding the lily. I don't see what would
motivate you to draw the line there.

Hal Finney
Received on Wed Oct 29 2003 - 19:06:43 PST