Why aren't we our own much smarter descendents? If you see quantum measurement events as 'uncovering' or 'choosing' from a larger set of, in some sense, pre-existing earlier possibilities, then this problem solves itself: the future looks 'bigger' than the present, but in terms of the real microstates, whatever they may be, it would be smaller. So your earliest observer moments would create a history of thermal, galactic, stellar, and biological evolution that traces back the shortest possible route to some sort of generic early universe condition with a very large measure. It is only the first of these evolutionary stages, explaining the origin of matter, that we do not yet understand. But I don't think we're to far off....
--Chris Collins ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jesse Mazer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 9:41 PM Subject: Re: Peculiarities of our universe > One possibility for why we do not find ourself in an old, galaxy-spanning > civilization has already been mentioned--perhaps after a certain point all > the individual minds in a civilization unite into a single Borg-like > hivemind, and this reduction in the number of minds might imply that the > self-sampling assumption would predict we'll find ourselves in a time before > this happens (although if the hivemind lasts for billions of years, the > argument might not work because this individual mind would probably have > more separate observer-moments than the total number of observer-moments of > the hundred billion or so individuals who lived before the mind-merging). > > Another possibility is suggested by a theory about how the measure on > observer-moments could be influenced by the likelihood of future > duplications, which I discussed a bit in this post (in response to a post by > Bruno Marchal discussing the same idea): > > http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4841.html > > If observer-moments which are more likely to have more copies of themselves > existing in the future have higher measure, then this might also suggest why > I find myself living before civilization has spread throughout the > galaxy--perhaps observers who are alive right at the time when the > "technological singularity" occurs are the ones who are most likely to > become the earliest uploads and to have the most copies of themselves living > in the future galaxy-spanning civilization, thus giving the pre-singularity > versions of themselves a much higher measure than any post-singularity > observer-moments. > > Jesse > > _________________________________________________________________ > Learn how to choose, serve, and enjoy wine at Wine @ MSN. > http://wine.msn.com/ >