This is a fascinating discussion list, full of stimulating ideas and
theories, but I would be interested to know what people *actually* believe
on the subject of many/all worlds - what one would bet one's house or life
on, given that one were forced to choose some such bet.
For my own part, I give strong credibility (>50%) to the existence of many
worlds in some guise or other, and in particular to the existence of all
logically possible(*) worlds (alpw). For me the existence of one world
(ours) so conveniently life-suited - sufficiently spatio-temporally extended
and quiescent but with particular properties enabling wide diversity in
chemistry etc - demands a specific explanation, and the only other candidate
final explanation - a Creator (say a God, or a 'higher' civilisation) -
suffers (at least) the problem of requiring an explanation for *it*. (For
the supposedly main problem of alpw - why we are not in one of the
apparently far greater number of worlds where physical laws are clearly
violated from now on, if alpw were to exist - solutions have already been
posted - see for example
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m1909.html or
http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3348.html .)
More fundamentally, if we even consider the question 'how is it that we
exist?' to be a reasonable *question*, then we have to concede the
possibility that things could have been different (different physics, or
nothingness, for examples). Any constraining mechanism (eg the laws of
physics) on the full range of logical possibilities must itself have an
explanation: the scope of all logical possibilities can never seem to be
tamed at the end of the day, and always appears to emerge as an almost
inevitable final explanation.
One must always consider that there could be explanations for our existence
totally beyond our comprehension, but given that we already have a
satisfactory explanation (existence of alpw), we have no need to give these
a high credibility.
(*) logically possible: that which does not entail any violation of
deductive logic.
Alastair
Received on Sun Jan 09 2005 - 05:39:05 PST