Re: a possible paradox

From: Julian Suggate <julian.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:18:23 +1300

I've not posted to this group previously, but I can't resist this one ;^)

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

According to *our* laws of probability, that is.

But how can you make recourse to our laws of probability if there are
infinitely many universes which have different laws?

Isn't Frederico's original proposition based on assuming infinite
variability and duplication of probability theory amongst all level 1
universes?

So I would think that taking the assumption onboard means you cannot
argue we are 'probably' in one of the more common universes... since
'probably' changes from universe to universe.

Correct me if I'm wrong!

Jules
Received on Thu Oct 30 2003 - 20:16:41 PST