RE: 2C Mary
Bruno Marchal At 23:35 03/06/03 +1000, Colin Hales wrote: Dear Folks, Once again I find myself fossicking at the boundaries and need to ask one of those questions. My first experience with an asker of such a question was in the last couple of years at high school. I'll tell you about it because, well, the list could use a little activity and I hope the 'fabric' list doesn't mind the rather voluminous joining post. The story: Your post is not very clear to me. If you can link me (us) to a place where you elaborate a little bit, that could help ... Bruno Hi Bruno, I've enjoyed the list dialog but I'm on a mission and the dialog is off it. Selfish, but I have a timescale. I'll likely resume here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MindBrain/ I am trying to delineate and explain to myself, in way convincing enough for general consumption, what may be the only 'fundamental' aspect of a very deep physicalist model of qualia. This fundamental aspect may be related to the nature of the deep structure of spacetime that causes EPR style apparent non-locality. Things are proximal deep down that don't appear proximal to us at the macro-3-space scale we inhabit. That proximity is inherited because it makes the matter we are constructed of. What it means is that inverse phenomenology, which you experience as 'appearance' when matter is acting like it is interacting with exotic matter that doesn't even exist, may inherit nonlocality. Split a single brain apart and you still have one entity having one set of qualia. At least that's what I'm trying to work out. My clumsy first pass at this is 2C Mary. I hope I get better at it! cheers, Colin
Re: a prediction of the anthropic principle/MWT
John: "The fact that we're alive shows ..." How do you know? do you have a distinction between solipsism and realism? "Perhaps we should carefully compare how often the other planets have been hit with how often we have: They certainly look more craterful" Do other planets have similar corrosive gas and erosive water surface conditions, to erase the craters? Did Jupiter have none of those, because in its gaseous surface nothing remains? WE are looking at a snapshot and draw conclusions on millions of years, without recognizing the differences contributoing to what we see. Maybe this is a reason for the mising detailed studies (or should be). And PLEASE! do not advise governments to spend on scientific grounds! it will only increase our tax burden and more stupidity will be paid by uneducated politicians. Best John Mikes - Original Message - From: John Collins To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 7:07 AM Subject: a prediction of the anthropic principle/MWT The fact that we're alive shows that as a species we've been historically very 'lucky', the biggest 'break' being in the finely tuned initial conditions for our universe. At least a level I many-worlds theory is needed to explain this. But in a higher level MWT this good luckmight have extended further. For instance, our planet might have experienced an unusually high number of 'near misses' with other astronomical bodies. Now that we're here to watch, the universe will be forced to obey the law of averages,so there could be a significantly higher probability of a deadly asteroid collision than would be indicated by the historical frequeny of said events. Perhaps we should carefully compare how often the other planets have been hit with how often we have: They certainly look more craterful Have there been any serious studies into this? It's not justidle philosophial musings, it affects the way our governments should be spending our money (or rather your money; I'm a non-earning student).
Re: are we in a simulation?
George Levy writes: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN html head Oh, sorry, I'm supposed to ignore that, aren't I? I guess you had some neat graphics in your message that made all that HTML necessary, along with requiring two copies of the text. Unfortunately for me, I didn't see the special effects, since I am using a text-based mail system. Discreteness may be important in our world for the development of consciousness, but it is certainly not necessary across worlds. I believe therefore that the differences between the simulations is infinitesimal - not discrete - and therefore that the number of simulations is infinite like the continuum. The last part doesn't follow. It could be that the number of simulations is infinite like the rational numbers, which would still allow for the differences between simulations to be infinitesimal. In that case the number of simulations is countably infinite rather than uncountable. Personally I am uncomfortable with the infinity of the continuum, it seems to be a much more troublesome concept than is generally recognized. I would not want to invoke it unless absolutely necessary. I think the rest of your argument works just as well with a countable infinity as an uncountable one. Hal Finney
