Jesse Mazer wrote:
But that's an empirical observation about our universe, it doesn't tell us anything about *why* this should be true if you take seriously the "everything that can exist, does exist" theory that this list is meant to discuss. For example, if you consider the set of all possible Turing machine programs, then for any given complexity, there are an infinite number of programs that are more complex than that but only a finite number less complex.
But here's the thing: While everything might exist, it is in a TRIVIAL sense of "exist", because most arrangements
of that everything (almost every possibility for arrangements of information/stuff/energy/whatever) is in-principle unobservable
(because those patterns are NOT CONSISTENT with the emergence of intelligent observers).
OBSERVABLE PATTERN-OF-REALITY = PATTERN THAT CAN CO-EXIST INFORMATIONALLY-CONSISTENTLY
WITH AN OBSERVER PATTERN THAT HAD A HIGH-PROBABILITY OF EMERGING (WITHIN THE LARGER
PATTERN OF A PARTICULAR UNIVERSE-CONSTRAINT-SET)
NOT OBSERVABLE = NOT ACCESSIBLE = IN-PRINCIPLE ALWAYS SPECULATIVE = UNABLE TO AFFECT
THE OBSERVABLE (BECAUSE BY DEFINITION, IF IT COULD, IT WOULD BE PART OF THE OBSERVABLE).
So the answer to *why* it is true that our universe conforms to simple regularities and produces complex yet ordered systems governed
(at some levels) by simple rules, it's because that's the only kind of universe that an emerged observer could have emerged
in, so that's the only kind of universe that an emerged observer ever will observe.
It is not the measure of an information-pattern P amongst all possible information-patterns that determines P's probability
of being observed.
It is the measure of the observable-information-pattern P amongst potentially-observable
(because appropriately form-constrained) information-patterns, that determines the probability of observation of P.
The probability of observation of any information-pattern (reality configuration) P where P does not conform to "observability
constraints" is zero.
Once again, "observability constraints" means that P AND THE OBSERVER-PATTERN Q (for any conceivable spontaneously
emergible-with-high-probability observer Q) must have high probability of co-occurring.
Eric
