Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

From: Eric Hawthorne <egh.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:10:54 -0800

My opinion (weakly supported at this stage, just an intuition) is that
an observer is
constrained to only be able to observe those aspects of their multiverse
which conform to the same
fundamental physical laws as themselves.

The proof (which I admit is really weak) is done by showing the contrary
to be unlikely, as follows:

1. If all programs are "running" at once, generating all possible
information-patterns (i.e. an informational
multiverse), then clearly the measure of disordered, random or
near-random noise universes, as well as
universes with white rabbits (i.e. those that pop-up spontaneous order
out of nothing, not following
"universally valid physical rules") must be
much much greater than the measure of our own
currently-partially-ordered and simple-law-bound universe or universes like
it.

2. We do not observe fully disordered (or fully ordered for that matter)
or pop-up (white rabbit) universes (i.e. their
phenomena do not impinge on our universe.)

3. Therefore observers LIKE US (law-bound, partially-ordered universe
resident observers) do not and cannot
observe the other kinds of universes. Those "weirdo" or "maximally
boring" universes are inaccessible.
Some would say that those universes are therefore irrelevant, too, but I
think the notion of them may help us
come up with an answer eventually to how and why there is "something"
rather than "nothing" and why what
we observe is as we observe it, and why our physical laws are as they
are etc.

I'm saying: "We haven't seen them (except on really bad drugs),
therefore (most likely) we can't see them, but I don't
exactly know why."

My guess as to why is that our perceptual systems and minds are
fundamentally "consistent order" detectors
(classifiers, significant difference detectors, call it what you will)
and that that's all that we can notice. This part
is way too vague though.


Jesse Mazer wrote:

> Eric Hawthorne wrote:
>
>> So the answer to *why* it is true that our universe conforms to
>> simple regularities and produces complex yet ordered systems governed
>> (at some levels) by simple rules, it's because that's the only kind
>> of universe that an emerged observer could have emerged
>> in, so that's the only kind of universe that an emerged observer ever
>> will observe.
>
>
> That's not true--you're ignoring the essence of the white rabbit
> problem! A universe which follows simple rules compatible with the
> existence of observers in some places, but violates them in ways that
> won't be harmful to observers (like my seeing the wrong distribution
> of photons in the double-slit experiment, but the particles in my body
> still obeying the 'correct' laws of quantum mechanics) is by
> definition just as compatible with the existence of observers as our
> universe is. So you can't just use the anthropic principle to explain
> why we don't find ourselves in such a universe, assuming you believe
> such universes "exist" somewhere out there in the multiverse.
>
> Jesse
>
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Received on Sun Jan 11 2004 - 01:18:33 PST

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