Re: Let There Be Something

From: Quentin Anciaux <quentin.anciaux.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:23:47 +0100

Hi,

I don't think the super-intelligent worm is a good analogy... first because
you made to much assumption of his way of thinking, second I don't see the
relevance of a super-intelligent worm in an apple compared to the myth of the
man in the cavern who just see shadow...

The point I think you really want to made is you don't think human
consciousness is able to grab the reality as whole... which I think is true,
except being the Kwisatz Haderach which see all past/present and future path
of the universe ;)

I could'nt imagine what would it be for a human to knows the why and being
able to prove it...

Quentin

Le Mercredi 02 Novembre 2005 21:06, daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
> I should make another point, that it seems very likely that the worm
> has no way of developing the in-apple technology to find out about
> quantum mechanics or DNA. This emphasizes the fact that we, with our
> quantum theories, M-theories, and loop gravity etc. could be just as
> far away from explaining the universe as the worm is.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden
> To: hal.domain.name.hidden; everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com
> Sent: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:58:30 -0500
> Subject: Re: Let There Be Something
>
> Hal, 
>  
> I disagree. How can the worm apply a probability distribution over
> things that he knows nothing of, such as trees, people, and evolution?
> Using the Wormopic Principle, when the worm proclaims that, "The
> universe is just complex enough to produce and sustain such a worm as
> I, and the inside of an apple," how can he be meaning anything (in his
> own mind, mind you, since explanatory power refers to being able to
> explain the universe to him) that even remotely resembles our universe?
>  (As an aside, as much as we know about our universe, we totally cannot
> rule out the possibility that a worm that understands "sufficient
> mathematics" actually exists in our universe!) Instead, even if he
> developed the in-apple technology to explore quantum mechanics and DNA,
> he might come up with a quantum theory similar to ours (but who knows
> the probability of that?!!), but he would likely come up with a very
> weird theory of how his DNA was formed, having nothing to do with how
> it actually was formed (according to our theories). 
>  
> You make a good point about the complexity of living things. If you ask
> biologists and other non-physics scientists about the Theories of
> Everything, a lot of them would say that we're a long way from it.
> Roger Trigg, University of Warwick, in his book, Rationality and
> Science: Can Science Explain Everything?, makes this point. Also, for
> instance, the premier biologist Carl Woese, in his recent article, A
> New Biology For A New Century, calls for biologists to get out of their
> myopic pursuit of genetically breaking things down into the smallest
> biological quantum, and to step back and look at the big picture,
> saying that there are whole levels of complexity that we will totally
> miss if we don't, resulting in being totally disabled in being able to
> explain everything in biology (to our satisfaction). 
>  
> Tom 
>  
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Hal Finney <hal.domain.name.hidden> 
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden 
> Sent: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:13:09 -0800 (PST) 
> Subject: Re: Let There Be Something 
>  
> Tom Caylor writes: 
>
> > To look at this from a different perspective, suppose there was a
>
> worm that 
>
> > lived in an apple, and the worm was super-intelligent to the point of
>
> being 
>
> > able to grasp all of our mathematical concepts that Tegmark claims
>
> are 
>
> > sufficient to describe all of reality. Then the worm asks, "Why is it
>
> that 
> I'm in 
>
> > this apple?" Actually the apple is the whole of observed reality for
>
> the 
>
> > worm, so it is equivalent to our observed universe. However the
>
> observABLE 
>
> > universe for the worm is the same as our observable universe. Then
>
> the worm 
> comes 
>
> > up with a multiverse theory along with a Wormopic Principle, saying
>
> that the 
>
> > whole observable universe is just complex enough to sustain the
>
> inside of an 
>
> > apple. Surely this must be true, since the worm can grasp all of 
> > mathematics? 
>
>  
> The worm would come up with a multiverse theory that says that
> everything 
> exists, including universes like ours with people, apple trees, apples
> and 
> worms, and also including other universes which consist of just a
> single 
> apple, possibly with a worm in it, and every other possibility besides. 
>  
> Among these possible universes there are a certain fraction which
> contain 
> worms-in-apples consistent with the experiences, observations and
> memories 
> that the worm has experienced in his own apple. 
>  
> He knows that he is one of those worms. 
>  
> He applies some kind of measure, such as the Universal Distribution,
> over 
> all of these worms-in-apples and is able to come up with a probability 
> distribution for which one he is. This results in first-person 
> indeterminacy and uncertainty. 
>  
> It may well be that the simplest and most likely case is not a universe 
> containing a single apple, but a universe like ours. The reason is that 
> apples and worms are actually very complex objects at the cellular
> level, 
> even more complex at the atomic level, and enormously complex at the 
> sub-atomic Planck scale. The physics going on in the apple is every 
> bit as complex as the physics of our own universe. 
>  
> Our universe has the advantage in that its initial condition was very 
> simple - some say it was completely smooth and uniform in the initial 
> instances of the Big Bang. Then we went along in a very natural and 
> simple way and developed planets, where life evolved into apples and 
> worms. 
>  
> The apple-only universe must create all this by fiat. It must be 
> hard-wired into the initial conditions: everything about the apple, 
> about the worm, and about the physics. 
>  
> It's very plausibly would take a more complex program to run a universe 
> consisting of just an apple and a worm, than our whole universe where 
> apples and worms evolve out of much simpler initial conditions. 
>  
> Hence the worm might well conclude that he is likely to be in a giant 
> universe with billions of other apples and worms, as well as many other 
> forms of life. Even though he has not yet observed any of these things, 
> not yet having come to the surface of the apple, he can deduce it. 
>  
> But perhaps not. Suppose that this super-intelligent worm deduces 
> that universes like ours are actually less likely than ones which 
> are all apple. In that case, assuming that his reasoning is sound, 
> then he is probably right. From the first-person perspective, when he 
> chews up to the surface, he will probably find that he is indeed in 
> an apple-only universe. The multiverse has many kinds of universes 
> with worms in apples, and it may be that our own universe has only a 
> small fraction of all the worms in apples, that most worms do in fact 
> find themselves in other kinds of universes. That would be a possible 
> conclusion of multiverse theory, and it might well be right. 
>  
> In short, there is no reason to expect a super-intelligent worm in an 
> apple to come up with a different multiverse than the one we would, if 
> we were also super-intelligent. We might be in different components of 
> the multiverse than the typical worm, but that is not evidence against 
> the theory or an example of a flaw in its explanatory power. 
>  
> Hal Finney 
>  
Received on Wed Nov 02 2005 - 15:29:44 PST