Hi Hal,
Hal Finney wrote:
>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.
>
>
Oh I quite agree that it is overwhelmingly likely that we're not in a
'magical' universe anyway. My point concerned trying to *demonstrate*
that we're not, which is easily done if you assume 'magical' universes
with consistent macroscopic and microscopic physics are even rarer than
'magical' universes in general.
Matt.
--
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When God plays dice with the Universe, He throws every number at once...
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Received on Wed Oct 29 2003 - 19:37:13 PST