Juergen Schmidhuber wrote: > > Bill Jefferys wrote: > > > > >At 2:25 PM +0100 3/26/02, Juergen Schmidhuber wrote: > > > > >But unfortunately the anthropic principle does not have any > > >predictive power. It does NOT predict there won't be any flying > > >rabbits tomorrow. > > > > But Hoyle did use the AP to predict specific facts about nuclear > > energy levels, which were subsequently found to be true. So your > > first statement isn't correct, IMO. > > > > Bill > > > The anthropic principle only says that the conditional probability > of finding yourself in a universe compatible with your existence > equals 1. So all the AP predicts is that our universe will remain > compatible with our existence. This is trivial. > > You are claiming the AP necessarily implies a specific fact about > nuclear energy levels? I greatly doubt that - can you give a proof?
This example is very well known (tought to all honours astrophysics students), and is described in Barrow & Tipler's book for example. I think Tegmark talks about it in his paper as well. There are a host of other examples as well, described in the above works, but the Hoyle example is the best known. > > Even if you could: there are many possible continuations of our > universe that do allow for our continued existence and in which the > energy levels are as they are now and in which flying rabbits do > occur. My point is that the AP cannot explain at all why they > should not occur (as long as they don't kill us). > The AP alone doesn't do it, but necessary constraints on observer properties do. It is not necessary for us to live in a virtual reality (ie algorithmically generated reality) in order to see higher probability given to algorithmic descriptions of observed reality. > But the theory of universal inductive inference can: > http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/unilearn.html > > > > Juergen Schmidhuber http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 (") Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
