Solomonoff’s method of induction seems like a good fit for a mechanist view of things. For instance, it could be used to assign a relative probability to the universe being generated by a universal dovetailer: 2^(-K) * m, where K is the Kolmogorov complexity of the universal dovetailer and m is the measure the dovetailer assigns to universes like ours.
This formula implies that a (more complex) non-universal dovetailer might be preferable _if_ it assigned a much higher measure to universes like ours. Such a dovetailer might, for instance, output only (or mostly) habitable worlds, instead of outputting mostly uninhabitable worlds as the standard UD does, and the higher resulting measure would offset the increased Kolmogorov complexity. If we live in a highly “atypical” universe, that might also affect how we should do Solomonoff induction. For instance if we knew that we lived in a universe with much less suffering than an “average” inhabited universe, that could imply we were generated by a dovetailer that doesn’t like suffering. If the opposite is true and we live in a “mean world”, that means we might be generated by a sadistic dovetailer, etc. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
