On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 05:46:32PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > > > On Monday, June 2, 2014 5:06:07 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > > > On 02 Jun 2014, at 01:50, Russell Standish wrote: > > > > > > > > Just the same is if we ever found the Anthropic Principle to be > > > violated (and didn't immediately wake up and realise it to be a > > > dream), then we'd have to declare the AP falsified, because it no > > > longer has any epistemological value. We could alternatively conclude > > > that we're living in a Sim (DD's argument), but that would be simply a > > > statement of faith, making the AP unfalsifiable. > > > > > Yo Russell, I was just wondering...what do you include when you reference > Anthropic Principle. Like above. I mean...I can see that if we're talking > about AP as the explanation for our universe and us here within it, then > just for that, there the inference of large number of other universes. Is > this roughly as far as things go, or are there further inferences directly > from these first two? >
FWIW, by the AP, I simply mean the principle that observed reality is consistent with our existence in that reality. We can conceive of realities (virtual or otherwise) in which the AP is violated eg Deutsch's chess reality example from FoR, or some of the dreaming argument examples Bruno gives. I'm not sure whether the AP has ever really been violated in a dream (Bruno has studied dreams more than me, so perhaps he could comment, moreso even from his Salvia experiences), and VR technology is still too primitive to do the experiment (and may, in any case, be unethical to perform). The link between the AP and many universes has to do with the strong AP, which states that the universe has to be compatible conscious life, and the rather unlikely probability of that happening by chance. You either have to accept a divine creator, that the laws of physics are just so (for inexplicable reasons), or many universes. People of an atheistic bent will tend to prefer many universes, I suppose, and theistic people will plug for the creator. Some people have attacked the idea that the AP is unlikely by chance - Victor Stenger wrote a book on that topic, for instance. I'm not exactly convinced, but at least he tried. But in any case, there are many other arguments in favour of many universes, which I outline in my book. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
