Dear Eric, ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Hawthorne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 3:02 AM Subject: Re: are we in a simulation?
> Stephen Paul King wrote: > > > > >[SPK] > > > > Oh, ok. I have my own version of the anthropic principle: > > > > The content of a first person "reality" of an observer is the minimum > >that is necessary and sufficient for the existence of that observer. > > > > I am trying to include observer selection ideas in my definition of > >"anthropy". ;-) I conjecture that the "third-person" aspect could be defined > >in terms of a so-called "communication" principle: > > > > An arbitrary pair of observers and only communicate within the "overlap" > >or set theoretic intersection of their first person "realities". > > > > > To me, that is too complicated a theory. > [SPK] "Too", no. "Complicated" yes. Occam's Razon cuts both ways. We can not fall back on naive realism to save us. > I think "reality" is a structure/system that is a > set of paths through the plenitude, where those paths exhibit > properties like self-consistency, coherence, locality, > stability, energy etc. > > That structure can contain observers that can observe the > very structure they are part of, precisely because of those > properties of self-consistency, coherence, locality, stability > etc that the structure (i.e. those paths through a state-space > plenitude) exhibits. > [SPK] I have considered this possibility but it leads nowhere. :_( We must explain within out model exactly how observation can occur such that the properties that we associate with the words "self-consistency", "coherence", "locality", "stability", "etc.", have meaning. > Every observer will see the structure from their own limited > point of view (from their place and time within it) so there > will be disagreements about it, but fundamentally, the > observers (those who can observe and communicate with each > other) are within the same structure > and are viewing parts of the same thing. > [SPK] The problem is Eric, that we can not merely hypostatiate the definiteness of properties absent the specification of observers - the "to whom it has meaning and definiteness" -. How is it that we are sure that we are "viewing parts of the same thing"? Popper and other philosophers have considered this question. > If that is "physicalist" I don't know. It still seems purely > mathematico-logical to me. But I'm just positing a larger > structure that is a commons that is observed by parts of itself. > I think this is "Tegmarkian" anthropy. > [SPK] I agree with that part, I just balk at naive realism. > Look at it this way. The content of "reality" of an observer > is (their limited perspective on) the minimum (self-consistent > structure) that is necessary for themselves, and all the other > observers they observe, and for the whole sustaining environment > for them and the physics that produced it, to exist. > [SPK] Ok. I agree, but would like to point out that this "content" is not "pre-specifiable" - like Turing Machine is by definition pre-specifiable. > I wrote this just before much better and my email client > flipped out and killed it. So sorry for the sleepy, angry, > more muddled version you got. > [SPK] Ah, don't feel bad. I have had many a message tossed into oblivion by a Blue Screen of Death! ;-) Kindest regards, Stephen > Eric > > > -- > "We are all in the gutter, > but some of us are looking at the stars." > - Oscar Wilde >