Re: multiverse paradox of a number of posts back

From: Eric Hawthorne <egh.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:51:12 -0800

Someone wrote:

  The paradox consists of the fact that the theory of multiverses tells us
  that there must be infinite observers who experiment other physical laws.
  There is not only the possibility of being wrong, it is the model itself
  which proves to be wrong. In fact it tells us that there are infinite
  places and times in this multiverse where, if any people observe the world
  around them in the same way we are doing hic et nunc, they necessarly find
  another model to describe the universe. So the outcome of the model is
  that it must be wrong in infinite places and times, and the paradox is
  that we have proved that it is wrong, but we have been able to draw this
  conclusion because we have considered the hypothesis of applying the
  physical system itself. But if it was wrong, the conclusions would be
  wrong, too.

Apologies to long-time list members for re-iterating like a broken record...

I think when people speculate about other universes in the multiverse,
they continually fail to
grasp the likely extremely constrained nature of OBSERVABLE universes.
An observable
universe MUST be structured/defined so as to be capable of evolving
self-aware substructures
(SAS's) such as ourselves, in order for it to be in-principle
observable. I posit that these constraints
are EXTREMELY ONEROUS. No, this is not some naive anthropocentrism. I'm
working from
intuitions about emergent systems theory, and notions of the highly
constrained energy regimes
in which self-organization of systems can occur (At least,
self-organization of systems that have
properties likely to lead to coherent observer-systems.)

IT COULD BE that all alternative "people" MUST be seeing a universe very
similar to ours, or indeed
possibly EXACTLY ours, simply because otherwise their self-organization
would NECESSARILY
break down in their universe, and they couldn't observe.

In other words, it COULD be that there is only one OBSERVABLE POSSIBLE
world. Now that's
an extreme, I admit, but I think it's closer to the truth than imagining
infinite numbers of really weird, unimaginable
observers in really weird, unimaginable alternative universes. The main
point is that the constraints required
to produce EMERGENT SYSTEMS that can be classified as what we think of
as OBSERVERS may
be, again EXTREMELY onerous, extremely possibility-constraining
constraints.

There may be, in the imagination, other weirdo observers coming up with
a weirdo model of the universe, but maybe
some inconsistency in the notion of their existence (as complex, stable
systems in a complex yet stable habitat)
in their world means that they simply CAN'T exist.

Eric
Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 01:54:59 PST