Roger, that, Jason. Deiter Zeh (Dr. Zaius from POTA) is kind of a light from the past, and Bruno's dreamers may indeed be true and seems to be trivially true, along with Hawking's many minds, & Bostrom's many sims. Which was backed up recently from a paper displayed on Discover- https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/this-equation-calculates-the-chances-we-live-in-a-computer-simulation for me, since whatever we can prove or merely just surmise, is that we all seem to be, like Captain Ahab, strapped to the back of the white whale, Moby, and if reality is just the Standard Model or a revised flavor of the Standard model, here we are-for a wee bit. For the psychological-physics mcGuffin, as in your Afterlife essay, the above paper you could add to your sim section perhaps, because going at 10^16 bits per restored mind. would according to the paper, provide enough computing space/power to restore everyone whose come a cropper, to be rebuilt. This was my thought on it, rather than the 'brain-gut in a jar' cartoon(s) that Bostrom and his friends claim could be now. Which begs the question, if this is just a sim of many sims' why not make me taller, or make me somebody, important, like an actor?
-----Original Message----- From: Jason Resch <[email protected]> To: Everything List <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Oct 24, 2020 8:35 am Subject: Re: Evidence for, and implications of, fine-tuning On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 10:21 PM <[email protected]> wrote: The only issue I ever had (and I love good sci fi) is Everett's position (and Bryce DeWitt's, John Wheeler) that universes spawn on the pop of a decision. I prefer the view that they're all already there. We just differentiate ourselves when our brains take in new information from the environment (which is the infinite set of all the possible states that all exist in the wave function). This is expressed well in this tech talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc He calls it the zero universe interpretation which is similar to Zeh's Many-Minds and Bruno's many-dreams/dreamers (Everett in arithmetic). Jason Perhaps, I was wondering if it was something more cosmological, such as a supernova or a black hole, being both the initiator and modifier of such events? A conscious observer (defined as sensorially self aware) could be the only thing that matters, so, a machine intel, which has part of it's network imitating spindle cells found in the brains higher mammals may suffice? Despite this, biologists have for some years been surprised at the intelligence of birds such as crows. In this case a crow might suffice for cosmos splitting, and we could thus, conclude, that, indeed, bird is the word. LOL -----Original Message----- From: Jason Resch <[email protected]> To: Everything List <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, Oct 23, 2020 11:21 am Subject: Re: Evidence for, and implications of, fine-tuning On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 4:46 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: On 10/20/2020 1:27 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 1:26 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: On 10/20/2020 5:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 15 Oct 2020, at 22:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: On 10/15/2020 12:46 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 1:56 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: You should have read Vic Stenger's "The Fallacy of Fine Tuning". Vic points out how many examples of fine tuning are mis-conceived...including Hoyle's prediction of an excited state of carbon. Vic also points out the fallacy of just considering one parameter when the parameter space is high dimensional. Hi Brent, Thanks for the suggestions. I did read Barnes's critique of TFOFT ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4647 ) and I just now read Stenger's reply: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.4359.pdf I think they both make some valid points. It may be that many parameters we believe are fine tuned will turn out to have other explanations. But I also think in domains where we do have understandings, such as in computational models (such as algorithmic information thery: what is the shortest program that produces X), or in the set of all possible cellular automata that only consider the states of adjacent cells, the number that are interesting (neither too simple nor too chaotic) is a small fraction of the total. So there is probably fine tuning, but it is, as you mention, extremely hard to quantify. But my general criticism of fine-tuning is two-fold. First, the concept is not well defined. There is no apriori probability distribution over possible values. If the possible values are infinite, then any realized value is improbable. Fine tuning is all in the intuition. Charts are drawn showing little "we are here" zones to prove the fine tuning. But the scales are sometimes linear, sometimes logarithmic. And why those parameters and not the square?...or the square root? Bayesian inference is not invariant under change of parameters. At least for the cosmological constant, there seems to be some understanding of its probability distribution, and it is relatively independent of the other parameters in that it is unrelated to nucleosynthesis, chemistry, etc. Therefore it is our best candidate to consider in isolation from the other parameters in the high-dimensional space. Second, calling it "fine-tuning" implies some kind of process of "tuning" or "selection". But that's gratuitous. Absent supernatural miracles, we must find ourselves in a universe in which we are nomologically possible. And that is true whether there is one universe or infinitely many. So it cannot be evidence one way or the other for the number of universes. Let's say we did have an understanding of the distribution of possible universes and the fraction of which supported conscious life. If we discover the fraction to be 1 in 1,000,000 would this not motivate a belief in there being more than one universe? No, because it is equally evidence that one universe (this one) was realized out of the ensemble. You are relying on an intuition that it is easier to explain why all 1,000,000 exist than to explain why this one exists. But that's an intuition about explaining things, not about any objective probability. Every day things happen that are more improbable than a million-to-one. You need to take all the histories, which we know exists in arithmetic, I don't know what "exists in arithmetic" has to do with existence. then consciousness will differentiate on those histories which seems to be fine tuned. Like you say, we have to eliminate the selector, except for consciousness. Until Everett no one thought it necessary to suppose all the counterfactuals happened "somewhere else”. Well, there was Borgess of course, and the idea is present in the whole neoplatonism, arguably. Then, for any one who believes that 777 is odd independently of him/herself, all computations are run independently of anyone. That's a non-sequitur. One can try dividing 777 by 2. One can't verify all computations are independently or dependently of anyone. If you accept the independent truth of the equation "Y = 2X+1" in the case of "Y=777" and an integer X, then you should likewise also accept the existence of all computations, How can you be so casual about leaping from "This statement is true." to "The relation it expresses entails that the relata exist." "True" and "exist" are even different words. We've argued this countless times before, so I don't want to repeat it again. The truth that 777 is odd implies the existence of an integer X, which is 1 more than 777 divided by 2. Truth has ontological implications and consequences when they relate to the existence or non-existence of other entities. "Watson is the companion of Holmes" is true in many logics (just note that it's negation is false) yet nobody thinks it makes Sherlock Holmes into a person who existed. What reality are you applying the word "exists" within? You never specified it, which makes any answer regarding the existence or non-existence of Watson ambiguous. In mathematics, "exists" means has a value that satifies (makes true) and expression. It says nothing about whether you can kick it and whether it kicks back. Kicking back occurs from the perspective of entities existing who live within long computational histories which occur in platonically existing computational threads, which exist if you assume arithmetical truth. Jason Brent as a consequence of the equation defined here: ftp://ftp.math.ethz.ch/hg/EMIS/journals/AMI/2003/jones.pdf Jason -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhQXt6v60%2Bdqw0e%2BjjwKZLJG%2BTR-%2BY-7w96r6kK%3DABZnw%40mail.gmail.com. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/3614d16d-3478-95a5-0da9-b93c8fb40aa4%40verizon.net. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUiMqmTzqg9RgAnTnpyWfaPj0q9fk31G6rpycAH6TXfj4Q%40mail.gmail.com. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUhUrAU9XaRY7uJjne450G%2BMwb7QdfRHBX6_Q7EmPUoxXQ%40mail.gmail.com. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1750784262.2448244.1603583709090%40mail.yahoo.com.
