On 25 March 2014 16:58, chris peck <[email protected]> wrote:
> *>>I think you're missing Scott's point. The universe is obviously > isomorphic to a mathematical structure, in fact infinitely many different > mathematical structures, all of which are in Borges Library of Babel. > Almost all of them are just lists of what happens. Scott's point is that > this is not very interesting, important, or impressive. It's only some > small elegant compression of those lists that's interesting - if it > exists. Scott seems to think that it does. I think it does *only* > because we're willing to call a lot of stuff "geography" as Bruno puts it, > aka boundary conditions, symmetry breaking, randomness... * > > Hmm, I just read Scott as saying that MUH is scientifically empty in the > sense that it makes no significant predictions, the emphasis being on the > word significant. The predictions it does make are a little wishy washy. > Like, MUH predicts that science will continue to uncover mathematically > describable regularities in nature. what would a non-mathematically > describable law look like? And how is a mathematically describable > regularity in this universe evidence of the existence of another > mathematical universe? He also takes Tegmark to task on his use of > anthropic reasoning because it allows Tegmark to have his cake and to eat > it. The extent to which regularities are elegantly described by maths will > be taken as evidence for an inherently mathematical ontology. The extent to > which they are not will allow him to invoke the anthropic principle and say > well it would be absurdly lucky that the one universe that existed just > happened to have these wierd constants that supported life. > > I think in Popperian terminology Tegmark's predictions just are not risky > enough. He's guaranteed to hit one or the other every time. > > > I'll be interested in how Tegmark addresses Scott's last point concerning > the physicality of universes beyond the cosmic horizon. > > I can see both points of view. I can appreciate Tegmark's view that a > galaxy 1 light year beyond the cosmic horizon is just like Andromeda but > just a bit further away. > > On the other hand I also see Scott's point that if it is just far enough > away to prevent any causal interaction then it doesn't satisfy a reasonable > definition of physical. To be physical is to be causally relevant. There > doesn't seem to be much semantic difference between a non physical universe > and one which is so far away that it couldn't ever effect us. > An infinite universe (Tegmark type 1) implies that our consciousness flits about from one copy of us to another and that as a consequence we are immortal, so it does affect us even if there is no physical communication between its distant parts. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
