On 6/2/2014 7:00 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 05:46:32PM -0700, ghib...@gmail.com 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),
But that only works if the creator is constrained to create using a physics consistent
with conscious life. As Ikeda and Jefferys point out a supernatural creator could create
conscious life in a universe physically incompatible with conscious life (that's what
*super*natural means). So then observing that your universe is physically compatible with
your existence cannot count as evidence for a supernatural creator.
Brent
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.
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