Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-10 Thread Jesse Mazer
Eric Hawthorne wrote: So the answer to *why* it is true that our universe conforms to simple regularities and produces complex yet ordered systems governed (at some levels) by simple rules, it's because that's the only kind of universe that an emerged observer could have emerged in, so that's

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-10 Thread Jesse Mazer
Hal Finney wrote: Jesse Mazer writes: Hal Finney wrote: However, I prefer a model in which what we consider equally likely is not patterns of matter, but the laws of physics and initial conditions which generate a given universe. In this model, universes with simple laws are far more likely

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-09 Thread Eric Hawthorne
Hal Finney wrote: What about a universe whose space-time was subject to all the same physical laws as ours in all regions - except in the vicinity of rabbits? And in those other regions some other laws applied which allow rabbits to behave magically? While this may be possible, we seem to have

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-09 Thread Hal Finney
John Collins writes: I described a special case of this in a posting on this list a while ago, suggesting that we're almost certainly not in a simulated, 'second order' universe: Basically, for every arrangement of matter you could append to our universe that would look like some creature

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-09 Thread Jesse Mazer
Chris Collins wrote: This paradox has its origin in perception rather than fundamental physics: If I fill a huge jar with sugar and proteins and minerals and shake it, there is no reason why I can't produce a talking rabbit, or even a unicorn with two tails. Yet out out of the vast menagerie of

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-09 Thread Jesse Mazer
Hal Finney wrote: I think the problem with your argument is that you are assuming that all physical arrangements of matter appended to the universe are equally likely. And in that case, you are right that some random arrangement would be far more likely than one which looks like an observer who

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-09 Thread George Levy
Jesse Mazer wrote: Why, out of all possible experiences compatible with my existence, do I only observe the ones that don't violate the assumption that the laws of physics work the same way in all places and at all times? There are two kinds of white rabbits: microscopic and macroscopic.

Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-08 Thread Eric Hawthorne
Jesse Mazer wrote: Why, out of all possible experiences compatible with my existence, do I only observe the ones that don't violate the assumption that the laws of physics work the same way in all places and at all times? Because a universe whose space-time was subject to different physical

Re: Why no white talking rabbits?

2004-01-08 Thread Hal Finney
Jesse Mazer wrote: Why, out of all possible experiences compatible with my existence, do I only observe the ones that don't violate the assumption that the laws of physics work the same way in all places and at all times? Eric Hawthorne replied: Because a universe whose space-time was