Hi Russell,
From: Russell Standish
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2011 3:40 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Against the Doomsday hypothesis
On Mon, May 09, 2011 at 01:22:23AM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> My point is that “the whole human history timeline” assumes the Newtonian
> (Laplacean Demon) idea that all events are observable by some hypothetical
> entity that is exterior to the universe (aka God). Do I need to knock that
> rubbish pile over for you?
>
> Onward!
>
> Stephen
> .
It does assume a linear human history. But the argument can be
extended to be applied to any history, so transfers naturally to many
histories (worlds) interpretations, where different observers can observe
different histories. It can also be relativised - consider living in a
galactic-wide civilisation. Then one's birth rank is rather dependent
on the place and time of the ranker. But you can choose yourself as a
ranker, and expect yourself to be in the middle 90% (or whatever your
favourite confidence interval is) of consious entities born in that
civilisation.
--
[SPK]
But surely you can see that this “linear human history” is one that can
only be defined from the assumption that “all human history” can be determined.
That’s the rub, it assumes the ability to know something that requires the
existence of an external (to the multiverse) observer! That is cheating! We
have to only consider information that is available from measurements that obey
the laws of physics otherwise we are no better than the Scholastics and their
debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin! If our philosophy
is not based on empirical falsifiability we are merely amusing ourselves with
“who is the smartest guy in the room”. I, would not win that contest and do not
wish to even participate in the contest. I am just a guy trying to figure
things out.
It seems to me that people will try to always reason as if they are in the
right hand side of the bell curve, it’s just vanity.
Onward!
Stephen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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