RE: Peculiarities of our universe

From: David Barrett-Lennard <dbl.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:52:51 +0800

Let X be some predicate condition on the universes in the multiverse. I
think Hal is assuming that if all the following are true

1. X can be described in a compact form (ie it doesn't fill up a
book with detailed data)
2. X is true for our universe
3. AUH => P(X)=0

then we deduce that AUH is (probably) false.

Are you saying Wei, that there is a flaw in this logic?

- David


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wei Dai [mailto:weidai.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Tuesday, 13 January 2004 9:22 AM
> To: Hal Finney
> Cc: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: Re: Peculiarities of our universe
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 09:57:18AM -0800, Hal Finney wrote:
> > [...] That is
> > (turning to the Schmidhuber interpretation) it must be much simpler
> > to write a program that just barely allows for the possibility of
life
> > than to write one which makes it easy. This is a prediction of the
AUH,
> > and evidence against it would be evidence against the AUH.
>
> "evidence against it would be evidence against the AUH" is similar to
the
> Doomsday Argument. Let's assume that in fact universes with lots of
> intelligent life don't all have much lower measure than our own. Then
AUH
> implies the typical observer should see many nearby intelligent life.
Your
> argument is that since we don't see many nearby intelligent life, AUH
is
> probably false. In the Doomsday Argument, the non-doomsday hypothesis
> implies the typical observer should have a high birth rank, and the
> argument is that since we have a low birth rank, the non-doomsday
> hypothesis is probably false.
>
> I want to point this out because many people do not think the DA is
valid
> and some have produced counterarguments. Some of those
counterarugments
> may work against Hal's argument as well.
Received on Mon Jan 12 2004 - 21:55:32 PST