On 3/25/2014 4:12 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 25 March 2014 16:58, chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com
<mailto:chris_peck...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
*/>>I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously
isomorphic to a
mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different mathematical
structures,
all of which are in Borges Library of Babel. Almost all of them are just
lists of
what happens. Scott's point is that this is not very interesting,
important, or
impressive. It's only some small elegant compression of those lists that's
interesting - if it exists. Scott seems to think that it does. I think it
does
*only* because we're willing to call a lot of stuff "geography" as Bruno
puts it,
aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking, randomness... /*
Hmm, I just read Scott as saying that MUH is scientifically empty in the
sense that
it makes no significant predictions, the emphasis being on the word
significant. The
predictions it does make are a little wishy washy. Like, MUH predicts that
science
will continue to uncover mathematically describable regularities in nature.
what
would a non-mathematically describable law look like? And how is a
mathematically
describable regularity in this universe evidence of the existence of another
mathematical universe? He also takes Tegmark to task on his use of anthropic
reasoning because it allows Tegmark to have his cake and to eat it. The
extent to
which regularities are elegantly described by maths will be taken as
evidence for an
inherently mathematical ontology. The extent to which they are not will
allow him to
invoke the anthropic principle and say well it would be absurdly lucky that
the one
universe that existed just happened to have these wierd constants that
supported life.
I think in Popperian terminology Tegmark's predictions just are not risky
enough.
He's guaranteed to hit one or the other every time.
I'll be interested in how Tegmark addresses Scott's last point concerning
the
physicality of universes beyond the cosmic horizon.
I can see both points of view. I can appreciate Tegmark's view that a
galaxy 1 light
year beyond the cosmic horizon is just like Andromeda but just a bit
further away.
On the other hand I also see Scott's point that if it is just far enough
away to
prevent any causal interaction then it doesn't satisfy a reasonable
definition of
physical. To be physical is to be causally relevant. There doesn't seem to
be much
semantic difference between a non physical universe and one which is so far
away
that it couldn't ever effect us.
An infinite universe (Tegmark type 1) implies that our consciousness flits about from
one copy of us to another and that as a consequence we are immortal, so it does affect
us even if there is no physical communication between its distant parts.
That seems to imply that one's consciousness is unique and moves around like a soul. I
think the idea is that the "stream of consciousness" is unified so long as all the copies
are being realized identically, in fact they are not "multiple" per Leibniz's identity of
indiscernibles. When there is some quantum event amplified enough to make a difference in
the stream of consciousness then the stream divides and there are two (or more) streams.
Brent
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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