Re: Are we simulated by some massive computer?

From: Kory Heath <kory.heath.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:04:11 -0400

Bruno -

Thanks very much for your clarifications. I clearly misunderstood the
intent of your point 8. I thought you were arguing that, if we analyze the
structure of all possible 1st-person histories of all possible
self-aware-subsystems in Platonia, we would find that histories that
exhibit the basic elements of what we commonly think of as our "laws of
physics" - say, light, gravity, etc. - have a greater measure than those
histories that contain (say) "srats and gilixas", and that therefore our
"local laws" are the most common ones in Platonia. I find this position
highly dubious, but I no longer think that's what you were saying.

My new interpretation of what you're saying (and correct me if I'm wrong
again) is that if you were to examine the entire ensemble of
"next-possible-states" of *me* (Kory Heath) at this moment, you would find
that (as a mathematical fact, part of the basic structure of Platonia) most
of them contain galaxies and stars, etc. Therefore, the regularities I see
around me are simply the emergent effect of my "first person indeterminacy
domain". If we imagine some other computational state that represents a SAS
with a personality, memories of growing up in a world that contains "srats
and gilixas", etc., most of that SAS's next-possible-states would contain
srats and gilixas, so a very different set of stable "local laws" would
emerge from that SAS's "first person indeterminacy domain". (We can imagine
that the resulting regularities resemble a 4+1D cellular automata, which
contains nothing like our gravity, light, etc.).

I'm still confused by some parts of your post. I don't see why the
assumption that most of my "next-possible-states" do in fact contain stars
and galaxies necessarily follows from points 1-7. Here's a very rough
sketch of what I think points 1-7 *do* imply:

Platonia contains every possible computational state that represents a
self-aware structure, and for each such state there are X number of
next-possible-states, which also exist in Platonia. The chances of one
self-aware state "jumping" (I know my terminology is dangerously loose
here) to any particular next state is 1 / X, where X is the total number of
next-possible-states for the state in question. Any regularities which
emerge out of this indeterminate traversal from state to state will be
perceived as local "laws of physics".

Now, you say: "Let us (re)define the laws of physics as the laws we can
always predict and verify consistently (if any!). Now, having accepted the
1-7 points, the occurrence of such laws must have a measure 1, so the laws
of physics must be derivable from what has measure 1 relatively to the
measure on the computational histories." I agree with this, but to me it
seems like a simple tautology - another statement of my above paragraph. It
sounds to me like you're saying that the (local) laws of physics are
whatever regularities emerge when we examine the entire ensemble of
next-possible-states from my current state (and the ensemble of all the
next-possible-states from each of those possible-states, and so on). This
is tautologically true - "whatever emerges, emerges". The real question is,
what reason do we have to believe that any regularities actually emerge? In
other words, how do we *know* that most of my "next-possible-states" do in
fact contain stars and galaxies? This idea doesn't necessarily follow from
anything in points 1-7.

Perhaps you're arguing the following: we do in fact perceive a world filled
with regularities, which we have codified into our local "laws of physics".
Therefore, *if* points 1-7 are true - that is, if "comp" is true - then it
must be the case that most of my "next-possible-states" do in fact contain
stars and galaxies and gravity and light. If I were (somehow) able to
completely mathematically analyze one of my computational states and all of
its next-possible-states, and if I then determined that the probabilities
in this ensemble of next-possible-states *didn't* match the regularities I
actually perceive, then I should conclude that comp is false. If this is
your argument, then it might be helpful to add another point - lets call it
Point 7.5 - which states that "we do in fact perceive regularities that we
codify into (local) laws of physics". Then your argument can run: if points
1-7.5 are all true, then it must be true that most of my
next-possible-states contain stars and galaxies.

This argument implies a constraint on comp - which is good, because it
means that comp is falsifiable - but it doesn't give me any clue how to
show mathematically that most of Kory Heath's next-possible-states actually
do contain stars and galaxies - i.e. that most of Kory Heath's
next-possible-states match the laws of physics, or at least exhibit some
kind of probabilistic bias that would result in perceived regularities. I
suppose that this is what you mean when you say that we need to ""modelize"
or better "identify" a platonistic observer by a sound modest
(lobian) universal church-turing-post-markov-fortran-lisp-java-whatever
machine (including quantum one)", and to "interview it about those relative
consistent extensions and its inferable platonistic geometries and what is
stable in their discourses." I have to confess that I don't have a very
clear picture of what results you've derived from all of that.

I'm also somewhat confused by the following statement:

>But "platonistically" it remains that if comp is true
>the actual physical invariant must emerge as an average
>on ALL the maximal consistent extensions relative to our
>actual states (worlds, observer-moments, whatever ...).
>Although that can be proved useless for actually predicting the
>behavior of the chalk, it is enough for deriving physics.

If this is enough for "deriving physics", why isn't it enough to predict
the behavior of falling chalk, since gravity is one of the most basic
elements of our physics? Or are you referring to something different than
the "local geographical laws" that we call physics?

-- Kory
Received on Sat Apr 24 2004 - 00:09:40 PDT