On 1/6/2025 1:38 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
It's just improbable, which is quite different from absurd. Every
hand of bridge I've been dealt was improbable, but I never
considered one absurd.
Brent
I understand your analogy with improbable bridge hands, but I think
the difference lies in the nature of "improbable" versus "absurd" when
we scale it to the entirety of existence. The improbability of any
specific bridge hand exists within a defined framework with clear
rules and outcomes—it is improbable, but not absurd because we
understand the context.
In the case of existence, a single-world theory suggests that out of
infinite possibilities, only one outcome is "realized." This is not
just improbable—it's a rejection of the inherent structure of
possibility itself. Without a multiverse or some equivalent
explanation, the realization of just one world feels like a singular,
unexplained "bridge hand" with no deck, no dealer, and no game. It's
the framework itself that becomes suspect.
With a many-worlds or "everything exists" perspective, there is a
structure that accounts for all possibilities, including the one where
"I am." It doesn't feel absurd because existence is distributed across
possibilities rather than being inexplicably concentrated into one.
The absurdity for me isn't about odds; it's about the lack of
explanatory context in a single-world view.
Does that make sense?
Quentin
Single world theory says infinitely many worlds are possible and this
one exits. MWI says all the infinitely many possible worlds exist and
this is one of them. Of the two statements the latter seems more absurd
to me, since it's postulating an infinity of worlds (each infinitely
complex) so that your experience can be reduced to just one random
selection from the infinitude. I understand the attraction since it
seems to reduce the work to be done by the random selection to just
placing you in the infinitude. In comparison the one-world case is
selecting a single world to exist from the same infinitude of possible
worlds. complexity means making many random selections. Mathematically
they are equivalent: one selection among an infinitude. But one
postulates that the infinitude actually exists and you've been selected
to be in one; while the other says one has been selected by Nature to
exist and so you're in it. Having infinities actually exist seems
absurd to me. Having one of many possibilities exist is implicit in the
concept of "possibility" as opposed to "certainty", so having one world
exist is not absurd. I think where your intuition is led astray is in
thinking of all the random choices that must have been made to realize
this particular world as compared to just one random selection from all
possible worlds...but the two actually are choices from sets of the same
size.
Brent
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