Re: Constraints on "everything existing"

[Jean-Michel Veuillen]

At 08:40 PM 1/17/2003 -0800, Eric Hawthorne wrote:

John M wrote:

Eric:

do I detect in your 'circumstances' some 'anthropocentric/metric/logic' restrictions? is the multiverse exclusively built according to the system we devised on this planet as 'our physical laws'? (your 'factor' #1, although you oincluded in factor #2 the (CLASSICAL existence) modifier.)

Brings to mind Mr Square's opponents in Abbott's Flatland, with the 2-D vs 3-D joke.

It may seem that way (anthropocentric) but when I say "intelligent
observer" I mean "any kind of intelligent observer" or couched
in some more terminology "any emergent system or pattern
that functions as an intelligent observer."

So no, I'm not talking about a human-centric anthropic principle,
I'm talking about an "arbitrary intelligent observer", generically
defined. As you would expect, I would guess that there are
some pretty tight constraints on how an intelligent observer
would have to function to be considered such, but "human" is
definitely too narrow a definition of it.

I see "intelligent observer production" as being a threshold level of organization achieved by certain
constraint regimes on "all sequences of state changes".

Of course, as a thought experiment, you could set a lower threshold criterion for "fully existing worlds", such as the ability to be organized enough to produce "some interesting (non-trivial) stable emergent systems
that seem to exhibit some higher-level functions
including self-preserving functions".

Unless a world (i.e. a sequence of information state changes)
has produced intelligent observers though, there will be
no one around in it to argue whether it exists or not.

Then our universe did not exist before there were intelligent observers in it,
which is not true.

I think that is better to say that all self-consistent mathematical structures exist.
To restrict existence to universes containing SASs (self-aware structures)
is not only is very cumbersome but leads to contradictions.


On another subject, I read on the list that different universes cannot communicate.
I see at least one possibility for communication: One scientist in our universe implements a
computer simulation of an universe containing SASs. The scientist could then communicate
with them.

There is also of course the possibility that we ourselves live in a computer simulation

Which brings us around to the conclusion that after all,
the question of "classical existence or not" of some world
is only ever a concern of intelligent observers. It is
not really a concern for the non-thinking aspects of
worlds or potential worlds, precisely because those parts
are content to just be, or maybe be, as the case may be.
Those parts are just "the potential for information".
Only when something comes along that cares to conceptualize
about the various possibilities borne of different states
of information, does there arise a question of existence,
and then, it is a question of existence from the perspective
of those that can observe and care about such things.