On Oct 11, 4:14 pm, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote: > That is the Occam > catastrophe. Something prevents the world from being too simple. I > think that something is the Anthropic Principle, but I'm interested if > you have an alternative suggestion.
In addition to the Anthropic Principle, I offer a Law of Improbability Preservation. If a universe had only rules it would get only unknowable unconsciousness and no possibility of novel patterns. If it had only novelty, then it would get intolerable insanity. Life is a quintessential example what you get when you have a principle which counterbalances rules and novelty, since intentional reproduction of uncommon patterns would be one way of preserving them in the face of endlessly recurring common patterns. So yes, it's the Anthropic Principle, but what makes it even possible for an Antrhopic Principle to even exist is a small but significant statistical advantage that this universe gives oddball events to stick around long enough to collect into patterns. That advantage of unexpected statistical bias toward the unexpected is the seed of 'significance' itself and the motivation behind that bias is the essence of teleology and biology. Natural selection is a concrete manifestation of this law, preserving and extinguishing species as an engine of biodiversity, and sexual reproduction is an even more amplified diversity engine, providing intentionality of individual organisms to combine their dominant common genomes and nurture their desirable recessive phenomes. For those who see life as ‘simply’ a matter of Anthropic inevitability, they are partially right. To those who see life as a special, meaningful magical process, they are partially right too. Both things arise from their distinction to the other. Without probability there could be no improbability, and life, if nothing else, is literally the embodiment of improbability. A tradition of exceptional rules which preserve and promote exceptions to the rules. Life is what improbability feels like. It is the midpoint between inevitability and impossibility. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
