Why aren't we our own much smarter descendents?
If you see quantum measurement events as 'uncovering' or 'choosing' from
a larger set of, in some sense, pre-existing earlier possibilities, then
this problem solves itself: the future looks 'bigger' than the present, but
in terms of the real microstates, whatever they may be, it would be smaller.
So your earliest observer moments would create a history of thermal,
galactic, stellar, and biological evolution that traces back the shortest
possible route to some sort of generic early universe condition with a very
large measure. It is only the first of these evolutionary stages, explaining
the origin of matter, that we do not yet understand. But I don't think we're
to far off....
--Chris Collins
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jesse Mazer" <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: Peculiarities of our universe
> One possibility for why we do not find ourself in an old, galaxy-spanning
> civilization has already been mentioned--perhaps after a certain point all
> the individual minds in a civilization unite into a single Borg-like
> hivemind, and this reduction in the number of minds might imply that the
> self-sampling assumption would predict we'll find ourselves in a time
before
> this happens (although if the hivemind lasts for billions of years, the
> argument might not work because this individual mind would probably have
> more separate observer-moments than the total number of observer-moments
of
> the hundred billion or so individuals who lived before the mind-merging).
>
> Another possibility is suggested by a theory about how the measure on
> observer-moments could be influenced by the likelihood of future
> duplications, which I discussed a bit in this post (in response to a post
by
> Bruno Marchal discussing the same idea):
>
> http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4841.html
>
> If observer-moments which are more likely to have more copies of
themselves
> existing in the future have higher measure, then this might also suggest
why
> I find myself living before civilization has spread throughout the
> galaxy--perhaps observers who are alive right at the time when the
> "technological singularity" occurs are the ones who are most likely to
> become the earliest uploads and to have the most copies of themselves
living
> in the future galaxy-spanning civilization, thus giving the
pre-singularity
> versions of themselves a much higher measure than any post-singularity
> observer-moments.
>
> Jesse
>
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Received on Sun Jan 11 2004 - 06:54:07 PST