Re: a possible paradox

From: Federico Marulli <marulli.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:44:18 +0100 (CET)

Matt King wrote:

> ...However, the laws of probability themselves are not physical but
> mathematical in origin. Even in a 'magical' universe, you would still
> have the same basic laws of probability (Gaussian distributions and the
> like) as this is just math, and math is truly universal. For
> example, if you make the assumption that a die is evenly weighted, you
> will get the same statistical models about dice throwing whichever
> universe you happen to be in. What would be different in a 'magical'
> universe is that these laws of probability would not seem to apply to
> a particular physical system - or much more rarely - to any particular
> physical system, so you could be in a 'magical' universe where
> although your statistical model predicts differently, you always throw
> double six, for instance.
>
> The fact that physical systems in our universe do obey probabilistic
> laws like thermodynamics is therefore extremely good evidence that we
> are not in such a 'magical' universe.

Tegmark and other people think that mathematical existence = physical
existence. But we are saying that there are infinite observers for whom
the physical evidence always (or almost) contradict the mathematical law
of probability. What could these other observers think? Could they think
that, by coincidence, the mathematical existence is always (or almost) in
contraddiction with physical existence? And, if so, how could they study
the universe? Maybe through other "types" of mathematics? May "our"
mathematics be not so fondamental? May we have "our" mathematics only
because we live in this part of the multiverse? Or is math truly universal
and consequently the assumption "mathematical existence = physical
existence" is not so truly universal?


James N Rose wrote:

> Dear Federico,
>
> In a mature and open 'exploring community',
> especially where people of different language
> backgrounds are concerned about coming together,
> the responsibility for extracting meaning and
> ideas falls as much on the readers as the writers.
>
> Syntax and grammer 'perfection' are secondary to
> the ideas and meanings shared, which you accomplish
> very very well.


Thanks a lot, You are very kind.


SOMEONE wrote:

> 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.

Well, perhaps I have to apologize to long-time list members, too (...this
is the usual fashion in this mailing list, isn't it? Anyway, I would'n
want to sound like a crawler...).
Then I would like to underline some basic considerations. A universe where
the only weird thing is the fact to obtain number 6 any time you throw a
die doesn't violate any "extremely possibility-constraining constraints".
A universe where, by chance, the Lutezio element always occupy 99.5679459
percent of the volume available only when it is in a Astato box, doesn't
transgress the constraints of the existence of self-organization. And so
on. There could be an infinite of other examples (...and beyond!).

Could there be only one "OBSERVABLE POSSIBLE" world?
...almost surely the multiverse teory doesn't tell us that...
Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 07:43:41 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:08 PST