[FRIAM] Anthropically Yours was: particles have free will

[Steve Smith]

Robert - Very wells stated.   The Anthropic Principle is very, wonderfully "self-evident" at some level... You *can* not believe in it, but those who do, well.... they DO! As for the luck of the draw in where you were born/raised/etc.  it was my first experience with the Anthropic principle.  In principle, 9 year olds just like me were sitting in their Komsomol run schools being told approximately the same thing... how lucky *they* were to have been born in the Glorious Soviet Republic and *not* in the decadent Capitalist state of the American Union.  I did not know this to be the case, but it was a very small stretch of the imagination to imagine just that.   The anthropic principle and the multiverse theories put a very strange twist on the *experience* of free-will, if not the theory...  it feels (to me) a bit like wind-surfing or snow-boarding in the deepest of powder where one's control of one's direction is unequivocal, yet the details are always up for grabs...  Carry On!  - Steve I love the Anthropic Principle. I find it fun that it does get lots of criticism – but always emotional. How could the first self-replicating molecule form? What if the smallest possible chain of amino acids that can replicate turns out to be 1000 base-pairs long? That would mean the chances of something like that happening would be at least 4 ^ 1000. In the Anthropic Multiverse, it doesn’t matter how long the shortest self-replicating molecule is. As long as it is possible, there’s a 100% chance that it exists in one of the branches of the multiverse tree – and there we are! If you don’t like that argument, then you’ll hate these more: (1) Consciousness is that which “sees” only one universe. A particle is not conscious. Therefore it sees all universes simultaneously. A Zen Master becomes “one” with the universe by meditation. The “enlightenment” is the least conscious state that one can be in without actually being unconscious. He’s trying to experience what it would be like to be a rock. It might explain “near death” experiences as well as suicide bombers. (2) The universe must exist. Proof: If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here to argue. Because we are here, “nothing” is impossible. Daddy, why does the universe exist? Because, it’s impossible for it not to exist! (3) You’ll never experience your own death. Others will experience your death, but not you. Schrodinger’s Cat never dies from its own experience. At every tick of your life’s clock, there is a chance that you will die and non-zero chance that you won’t. Therefore, according to your own experience, you will life forever. The chance of us celebrating Lazarus 2000th birthday is ridiculously small but still positive. This explains why we have no record of anyone that old. But the chance that you will experience your next birthday, no matter how old you are, is 100% (4) If you attempt to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, there’s always a small chance you will survive (botch it up, chicken out, or miracles), and that is the universe you will be conscious in. It doesn’t mean you will not be crippled for many years to come. I do not have the bravery (nor the philosophy) to step in the stream of a machine gun firing, but I suspect that if I do, the gun will jam immediately. All soldiers return alive and well from war, just in different universes. (5) Hugh Everett (who invented the “many world” theory) has a daughter named Elizabeth who committed suicide. She left a note that said she was going to another universe to be with her father. This freakishness now makes more sense than it should!   “One nation under God”. When you consider all the butterfly effects throughout history and just how improbable your existence is, you realize that everyone who is alive is astronomically lucky, regardless of any outsider’s pity. You might consider yourself luckier than someone born in a communist regime, but that’s because you only see the relative luck and ignore the common luck you both share. You both have 10e1000000… whatever chance of existing plus you alone have an additional 1 in 30 additional chance of being fortunate to live in America. You are focusing on the small number you have that your comrade lacks, but are ignoring the other far bigger number you both share.   I’d rather be tortured for 100 years than commit suicide now. Lucky, I have a third choice.   Rob   From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 1:52 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] particles have free will   But even with the (a?) multiverse theory, doesn't one have to (get to?) contemplate just how they came to be a singular identity/experiencer in a multitude of possibilities?   I find variations on multiverse cosmology quite compelling from a theoretical/symmetric/completeness point of view.  In particular I find Lee Smolin's variations quite compelling at many levels.  But if anything, it leaves me wondering (still, yet more,  not less) about the experience of identity and free will that I have.  The closest thing I have to offer is a variation of the Anthropic Principle wherein the parts of the multi-verse continuum where "object-like-phenomena" exist, and where the "object-like-patterns" have complex enough organization to include "self-organization" and "emergent organization", and where within those forms of organization there is sufficient (qualitatively as well as quantitatively?) complexity to support patterns which are in some sense recursive (patterns that have sub-patterns of themselves within them?). In these "regions" of the "multiverse continuum", there are recursive patterns which have the essential properties which I am calling self-awareness.   Other regions of the multiverse continuum don't have these patterns so there is no "pattern" akin to an "I" contemplating "itself". It is a bit resonant with my experience the day in 3rd grade when I quit mumbling the words "one nation under god" during our daily "prayer" (pledge of allegience).  The trivial amount of social studies I'd been taught (that the Soviet Union was a *bad* form of government and way of life, but the *people* were just like us) left me to wonder how *I* got so lucky to be born an Amerikun (impose image of Captain America Character) while so many were so unlucky as to have been born Pinko Commie Losers (insert a different image of your choice, preferably degrading and humiliating and easy to dismiss). I think I need another drink.  Or a nap.  Or ....  maybe I should go back to my studies of Fredkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin) Free the Particles!  Enslave the Waves! - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org