On 15/07/2017 9:48 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 15 July 2017 at 03:22, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 15/07/2017 10:34 am, David Nyman wrote:On 15 July 2017 at 00:46, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Well yes, that is what the singlet state means -- there are no physical circumstances in which the branches that form could violate QM. But that is a statement of the fact, not an explanation of that fact. Well, it's at least pointing in the direction of a mode of explanation in terms of a tight constraint on what could count as viably physical. Others have noted that physics (at least a physics adequate to support our kind of observer-hood) is suspiciously replete with such tight constraints. As I said, this would be a mystery if regarded merely as a brute given (i.e. it could simply have been otherwise) and hence it tends to point in the direction of a constraint on observational selection from a more general basis. And if so, it would of course then be the case that only appropriately-constrained phenomena, arising from such states of affairs as were physically capable of supporting observation, would thereby be observable.I think that this is looking at it in the wrong way. Things can look very constrained and unnatural if you reverse the direction of explanation. If you take the physical world, with all its complexity, as the starting point, and then understand human consciousness as having evolved in this environment, then there is no real mystery to be explained.I'm not sure I follow your logic here. The point I was making is that "the physical world, with all its complexity" looks highly constrained, something that is indeed widely noted - a put up job, to quote Fred Hoyle. It has further been noted that such tightness of constraint might point to its being a prerequisite for sentient life and hence for the conditions of observation itself. Consequently, far from looking "very constrained and unnatural if you reverse the direction of explanation", it's the opposite that seems increasingly possible. IOW, things look less constrained and unnatural if you take the view that the observed conditions are observationally selected from a more generalised basis.
In so far as I can understand this, it seems that you are simply talking about the (pseudo-)problem of fine tuning -- the universe appears remarkably fine-tuned for the emergence of life-as-we-know-it (LAWKI). Whether or not this is a real problem is a matter of debate: it seems remarkably anthropocentric to assume that LAWKI is the only possible form of life. It is entirely open that life could evolve in a wide range of universes, and from within each such universe, the physics would appear tightly constrained to that particular form of life. But that is not in the least mysterious -- it is exactly what one would expect from evolution: life in any particular universe evolves to take best advantage of the prevailing conditions/physics.
As to mysteries, take your pick. The one to which I was referring was treating the complex physical world to which observation gives access as a brute given. Of course this is a viable metaphysical position at which to stop further enquiry. However, there remain motivations to look for a more general basis from which such complexity might be derived, such as those we are presently discussing. Such efforts cannot ultimately resolve the mystery, of course, but they can perhaps simplify it.
Taking the world as we observe it as a brute fact does not put a stop to further enquiry. Rather, that is the starting point for all science -- as Brent points out, all scientific progress comes from studying the shadows on the wall.......
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