Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Telmo Menezes]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 2:57 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 8:48:49 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Pierz  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 5:27:04 AM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>>


 On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:



 On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:

 So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane
 crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
 injury
 which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure
 without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He
 doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and 
 that he
 was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate 
 survival
 needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own
 origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have 
 given
 rise to him and the island he finds himself on.

 Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he
 is struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds 
 himself in
 seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he
 reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of 
 dryness
 (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is 
 some
 abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, 
 relieves
 that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital
 appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or
 making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?

 Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he
 reasons that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he 
 sees
 that appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact 
 infinite.
 And scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He 
 can
 see at least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite 
 there
 would end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an
 infinite number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of 
 matter
 will eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something 
 conscious
 - and conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that 
 conscious
 being will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to 
 the
 stuff around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to 
 form
 such deep thoughts.


 Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in
 their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion 
 of the
 universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the
 Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are
 any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.


 OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where
 did the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line
 *somewhere*. He is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of
 infinite regress and skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and 
 settles
 back to eat another coconut, convinced he has found a coherent 
 explanation
 of his own existence...

 The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it
 misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn 
 to
 stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the
 hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his
 experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and
 birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a 
 little
 hasty in his invocation of infinite permutation as an explanatory
 principle. With sufficient exposure to time and diverse biology, he 
 might
 start to wonder about the role of an *evolutionary* process.

 It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because,
 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Pierz]

On Friday, November 6, 2015 at 10:06:48 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 2:57 AM, Pierz  
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 8:48:49 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Pierz  wrote:
>>>


 On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 5:27:04 AM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>>


 On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>
> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane 
> crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
> injury 
> which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the 
> sure 
> without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He 
> doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and 
> that he 
> was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate 
> survival 
> needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own 
> origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have 
> given 
> rise to him and the island he finds himself on.  
>
> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he 
> is struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds 
> himself in 
> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of 
> dryness 
> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is 
> some 
> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, 
> relieves 
> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous 
> digital 
> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or 
> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>
> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he 
> reasons that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that 
> he sees 
> that appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact 
> infinite. 
> And scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He 
> can 
> see at least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite 
> there 
> would end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an 
> infinite number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of 
> matter 
> will eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something 
> conscious 
> - and conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that 
> conscious 
> being will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough 
> to the 
> stuff around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to 
> form 
> such deep thoughts.
>
>
> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in 
> their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion 
> of the 
> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within 
> the 
> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there 
> are 
> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>
>
> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where 
> did the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line 
> *somewhere*. He is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of 
> infinite regress and skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and 
> settles 
> back to eat another coconut, convinced he has found a coherent 
> explanation 
> of his own existence...
>
> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it 
> misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn 
> to 
> stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the 
> hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his 
> experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating 
> and 
> birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a 
> little 
> hasty in his invocation of 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Telmo Menezes]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 5:27:04 AM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:



 On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>>
>> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane
>> crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
>> injury
>> which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure
>> without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He
>> doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and that 
>> he
>> was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival
>> needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own
>> origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have 
>> given
>> rise to him and the island he finds himself on.
>>
>> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is
>> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in
>> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he
>> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness
>> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is 
>> some
>> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves
>> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital
>> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or
>> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>>
>> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons
>> that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that
>> appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And
>> scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see 
>> at
>> least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would
>> end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite
>> number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will
>> eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - 
>> and
>> conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being
>> will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the 
>> stuff
>> around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such
>> deep thoughts.
>>
>>
>> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in
>> their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of 
>> the
>> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the
>> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are
>> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>>
>>
>> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did
>> the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He
>> is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and
>> skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat 
>> another
>> coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own
>> existence...
>>
>> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it
>> misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to
>> stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the
>> hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his
>> experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and
>> birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little
>> hasty in his invocation of infinite permutation as an explanatory
>> principle. With sufficient exposure to time and diverse biology, he might
>> start to wonder about the role of an *evolutionary* process.
>>
>> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because,
>> armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to
>> foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for
>> dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor
>> wound, he might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, 
>> with
>> the "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. 
>> Though
>> it offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Pierz]

On Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 8:48:49 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Pierz  
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 5:27:04 AM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>>


 On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes 
 wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>>>
>>> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane 
>>> crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
>>> injury 
>>> which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure 
>>> without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He 
>>> doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and that 
>>> he 
>>> was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate 
>>> survival 
>>> needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own 
>>> origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have 
>>> given 
>>> rise to him and the island he finds himself on.  
>>>
>>> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is 
>>> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself 
>>> in 
>>> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
>>> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of 
>>> dryness 
>>> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is 
>>> some 
>>> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, 
>>> relieves 
>>> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital 
>>> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or 
>>> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>>>
>>> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he 
>>> reasons that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he 
>>> sees 
>>> that appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact 
>>> infinite. 
>>> And scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He 
>>> can 
>>> see at least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite 
>>> there 
>>> would end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an 
>>> infinite number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of 
>>> matter 
>>> will eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something 
>>> conscious 
>>> - and conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that 
>>> conscious 
>>> being will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to 
>>> the 
>>> stuff around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to 
>>> form 
>>> such deep thoughts.
>>>
>>>
>>> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in 
>>> their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of 
>>> the 
>>> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the 
>>> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are 
>>> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where 
>>> did the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. 
>>> He is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress 
>>> and 
>>> skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat 
>>> another 
>>> coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own 
>>> existence...
>>>
>>> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it 
>>> misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn 
>>> to 
>>> stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the 
>>> hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his 
>>> experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and 
>>> birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a 
>>> little 
>>> hasty in his invocation of infinite permutation as an explanatory 
>>> principle. With sufficient exposure to time and diverse biology, he 
>>> might 
>>> start to wonder about the role of an *evolutionary* process.
>>>
>>> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, 
>>> armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able 
>>> to 
>>> foresee, for instance, that his body 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Pierz]

On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 5:27:04 AM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>>


 On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>
> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane 
> crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
> injury 
> which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure 
> without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He 
> doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and that 
> he 
> was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival 
> needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own 
> origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have 
> given 
> rise to him and the island he finds himself on.  
>
> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is 
> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in 
> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness 
> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is 
> some 
> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves 
> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital 
> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or 
> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>
> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons 
> that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that 
> appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And 
> scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see 
> at 
> least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would 
> end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite 
> number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will 
> eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - 
> and 
> conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being 
> will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the 
> stuff 
> around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such 
> deep thoughts.
>
>
> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in 
> their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of 
> the 
> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the 
> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are 
> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>
>
> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did 
> the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He 
> is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and 
> skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat 
> another 
> coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own 
> existence...
>
> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it 
> misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to 
> stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the 
> hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his 
> experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and 
> birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little 
> hasty in his invocation of infinite permutation as an explanatory 
> principle. With sufficient exposure to time and diverse biology, he might 
> start to wonder about the role of an *evolutionary* process.
>
> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, 
> armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to 
> foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for 
> dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor 
> wound, he might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, 
> with 
> the "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. 
> Though 
> it offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any 
> predictive power whatsoever.
>
> You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Oct 2015, at 13:39, Pierz wrote:

So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane  
crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic  
injury which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up  
on the sure without the faintest clue about who he is or where he  
comes from. He doesn't even remember that there are other people in  
the world and that he was born of a mother and father. After sorting  
out his immediate survival needs, being a philosophical type, he  
begins to wonder about his own origins. He begins to speculate about  
the what conditions might have given rise to him and the island he  
finds himself on.


Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is  
struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds  
himself in seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it  
marvellous, he reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant  
sensation of dryness (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it  
happens that there is some abundant substance I can locate that, if  
conveyed into my mouth, relieves that sensation? Isn't it  
astonishing that I have these dextrous digital appendages that seem  
so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or making and throwing  
a spear? How to explain it?


Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he  
reasons that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that  
he sees that appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in  
fact infinite. And scattered across that infinite ocean there are  
other islands. He can see at least a couple from where he is, so if  
the ocean is infinite there would end up being an infinity of such  
islands. And if there are an infinite number of such islands, then  
all possible arrangements of matter will eventually form by chance.  
If they happen to form something conscious - and conscious enough to  
reason about its origins - then that conscious being will be  
required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff  
around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form  
such deep thoughts.


OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where  
did the ocean come from?)



Oh!

Just imagine that the guy was lucky enough to save one thing in the  
plane which crashed: an elementary introduction to arithmetic.


That will be enough. (If he has enough water of course).

The explanation is in the head of all universal universal machine. He  
might be amnesic but also lost his entry senses. Again, first assuming  
he still get the way to survive in some ways, then even without that  
assumption.


The theory is not trivial, because the concept of Turing universality  
is not trivial. Indeed incompleteness entails the machine to confuse  
and then de-confuse truth, proof, knowledge, observable and sensible.


Once he will bet that he is no more than a modest universal numbers he  
can understand that he is either in a dream of a normal dreamer, or a  
normal dreamer, which means with the statistics given by all  
computation imitating his current computation at the relevant level.  
Thanks to the book, he win a lot of time to develop the higher  
mathematics needs to solve the solution, and test it.






but a man has to draw the line somewhere.


The content of the elementary arithmetic book.





He is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite  
regress and skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles  
back to eat another coconut, convinced he has found a coherent  
explanation of his own existence...


The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it  
misses a vast amount of structure in the world.


Here the elementary book provides a tremendous help, like galileo  
understood.


But to get where the ocean come from, the universal machine must look  
deep inside, up to the point of understanding that the observable is  
non boolean and quantized.





The line he has drawn to stave off infinite explanatory regress is  
clearly far too high in the hierarchy of complexity, but because of  
the limited range of his experience, he is unlikely to see that. If  
he could witness mating and birth, for instance, he might start to  
wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation of  
infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient  
exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about  
the role of an evolutionary process.


It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because,  
armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be  
able to foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust  
mechanisms for dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes.  
Suffering his first minor wound, he might predict that the injury  
would heal. On the other hand, with the "infinite permutations  
theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though it 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Telmo Menezes]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:



 On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:

 So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane
 crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic injury
 which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure
 without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He
 doesn't even remember that there are other people in the world and that he
 was born of a mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival
 needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own
 origins. He begins to speculate about the what conditions might have given
 rise to him and the island he finds himself on.

 Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is
 struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in
 seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he
 reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness
 (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is some
 abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves
 that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital
 appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or
 making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?

 Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons
 that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that
 appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And
 scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see at
 least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would
 end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite
 number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will
 eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - and
 conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being
 will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff
 around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such
 deep thoughts.


 Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in
 their popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of the
 universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the
 Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are
 any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.


 OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did
 the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He
 is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and
 skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat another
 coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own
 existence...

 The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it misses
 a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to stave off
 infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the hierarchy of
 complexity, but because of the limited range of his experience, he is
 unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and birth, for instance,
 he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation
 of infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient
 exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about the
 role of an *evolutionary* process.

 It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because,
 armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to
 foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for
 dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor
 wound, he might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, with
 the "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though
 it offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any
 predictive power whatsoever.

 You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe in
 a multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of
 fine-tunedness *per se*, the combination of a multiverse with the
 anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I
 believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Brent Meeker]

On 10/31/2015 7:14 PM, Pierz wrote:


Interesting, but you may be running afoul of some fuzziness in the 
notion of "information content". What you seem to be referring to is 
complexity rather than information, which is typically equated with 
entropy. If you want to reproduce a system by storing information 
about it, then a disordered system like the state of the rings of 
Saturn can typically not be compressed at all, whereas an ordered 
system contains regularities which allow it to be described by some 
simplifying rules which can be used to compress the information about 
the system. A jpg compression of a field of pure colour "noise" will 
be the same size as the uncompressed file. But we need to be careful 
even here, because I have my doubts that reality can actually be 
compressed "losslessly" at all. Even empty space is a froth of virtual 
particles which contribute to the quantum state of the universe as a 
whole. You might be able to write off huge tracts of the universe as 
"uninteresting" (for example you could reduce it to x quadrillion 
cubic light years of emptiness) but the universe may beg to differ.


In a sense, when we appeal to decoherence to explain our definite 
experience in a world of quantum uncertainty we are ignoring enormous 
amounts of information.  Our conscious perception of the world is 
roughly classical and has only a tiny fraction of the information that 
QM says is needed to describe the state of world.


Brent

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Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Telmo Menezes]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  wrote:

>
>
> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>>
>> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane crash.
>> Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic injury which
>> caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure without
>> the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He doesn't even
>> remember that there are other people in the world and that he was born of a
>> mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival needs, being a
>> philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own origins. He begins to
>> speculate about the what conditions might have given rise to him and the
>> island he finds himself on.
>>
>> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is
>> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in
>> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he
>> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness
>> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is some
>> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves
>> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital
>> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or
>> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>>
>> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons
>> that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that
>> appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And
>> scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see at
>> least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would
>> end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite
>> number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will
>> eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - and
>> conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being
>> will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff
>> around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such
>> deep thoughts.
>>
>>
>> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in their
>> popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of the
>> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the
>> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are
>> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>>
>>
>> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did the
>> ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He is
>> smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and skirt
>> around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat another
>> coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own
>> existence...
>>
>> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it misses a
>> vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to stave off
>> infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the hierarchy of
>> complexity, but because of the limited range of his experience, he is
>> unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and birth, for instance,
>> he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation
>> of infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient
>> exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about the
>> role of an *evolutionary* process.
>>
>> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, armed
>> with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to foresee,
>> for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for dealing with
>> normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor wound, he
>> might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, with the
>> "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though it
>> offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any
>> predictive power whatsoever.
>>
>> You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe in a
>> multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of
>> fine-tunedness *per se*, the combination of a multiverse with the
>> anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I
>> believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the breadth of
>> observation that we would need in order to see the correct picture of how
>> fine tuning arises in our local environment. Lee Smolin's theory of an
>> evolutionary universe gets closer, but suffers from the serious flaw that
>> he sees universes evolving towards black-hole production, which is only
>> 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Pierz]

On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:20:32 PM UTC+11, telmo_menezes wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Pierz  
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>>>
>>> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane crash. 
>>> Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic injury which 
>>> caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure without 
>>> the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He doesn't even 
>>> remember that there are other people in the world and that he was born of a 
>>> mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival needs, being a 
>>> philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own origins. He begins to 
>>> speculate about the what conditions might have given rise to him and the 
>>> island he finds himself on.  
>>>
>>> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is 
>>> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in 
>>> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
>>> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness 
>>> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is some 
>>> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves 
>>> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital 
>>> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or 
>>> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>>>
>>> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons 
>>> that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that 
>>> appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And 
>>> scattered across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see at 
>>> least a couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would 
>>> end up being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite 
>>> number of such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will 
>>> eventually form by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - and 
>>> conscious enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being 
>>> will be required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff 
>>> around it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such 
>>> deep thoughts.
>>>
>>>
>>> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in their 
>>> popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of the 
>>> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the 
>>> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are 
>>> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did 
>>> the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He is 
>>> smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and skirt 
>>> around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat another 
>>> coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own 
>>> existence...
>>>
>>> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it misses 
>>> a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to stave off 
>>> infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the hierarchy of 
>>> complexity, but because of the limited range of his experience, he is 
>>> unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and birth, for instance, 
>>> he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation 
>>> of infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient 
>>> exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about the 
>>> role of an *evolutionary* process.
>>>
>>> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, 
>>> armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to 
>>> foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for 
>>> dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor 
>>> wound, he might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, with 
>>> the "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though 
>>> it offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any 
>>> predictive power whatsoever.
>>>
>>> You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe in 
>>> a multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of 
>>> fine-tunedness *per se*, the combination of a multiverse with the 
>>> anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I 
>>> believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the breadth of 
>>> observation that we would need in order to see the correct picture of how 
>>> 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Pierz]

On Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 1:01:08 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
>
> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane crash. 
> Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic injury which 
> caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure without 
> the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He doesn't even 
> remember that there are other people in the world and that he was born of a 
> mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival needs, being a 
> philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own origins. He begins to 
> speculate about the what conditions might have given rise to him and the 
> island he finds himself on.  
>
> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is 
> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in 
> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness 
> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is some 
> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves 
> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital 
> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or 
> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>
> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons that 
> perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that appears 
> to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And scattered 
> across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see at least a 
> couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would end up 
> being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite number of 
> such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will eventually form 
> by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - and conscious 
> enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being will be 
> required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff around 
> it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such deep 
> thoughts.
>
>
> Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in their 
> popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of the 
> universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the 
> Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are 
> any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.
>
>
> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did the 
> ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He is smart 
> enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and skirt around 
> it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat another coconut, 
> convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own existence...
>
> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it misses a 
> vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to stave off 
> infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the hierarchy of 
> complexity, but because of the limited range of his experience, he is 
> unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and birth, for instance, 
> he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation 
> of infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient 
> exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about the 
> role of an *evolutionary* process.
>
> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, armed 
> with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to foresee, 
> for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for dealing with 
> normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor wound, he 
> might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, with the 
> "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though it 
> offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any 
> predictive power whatsoever.
>
> You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe in a 
> multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of 
> fine-tunedness *per se*, the combination of a multiverse with the 
> anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I 
> believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the breadth of 
> observation that we would need in order to see the correct picture of how 
> fine tuning arises in our local environment. Lee Smolin's theory of an 
> evolutionary universe gets closer, but suffers from the serious flaw that 
> he sees universes evolving towards black-hole production, which is only 
> incidentally or co-incidentally related to life-friendliness.  
>
> My hunch is that the true 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[Brent Meeker]

On 10/30/2015 5:39 AM, Pierz wrote:
So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane 
crash. Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic 
injury which caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on 
the sure without the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes 
from. He doesn't even remember that there are other people in the 
world and that he was born of a mother and father. After sorting out 
his immediate survival needs, being a philosophical type, he begins to 
wonder about his own origins. He begins to speculate about the what 
conditions might have given rise to him and the island he finds 
himself on.


Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is 
struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself 
in seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he 
reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of 
dryness (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that 
there is some abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into 
my mouth, relieves that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have 
these dextrous digital appendages that seem so perfectly made for 
constructing a shelter, or making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?


Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons 
that perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees 
that appears to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact 
infinite. And scattered across that infinite ocean there are other 
islands. He can see at least a couple from where he is, so if the 
ocean is infinite there would end up being an infinity of such 
islands. And if there are an infinite number of such islands, then all 
possible arrangements of matter will eventually form by chance. If 
they happen to form something conscious - and conscious enough to 
reason about its origins - then that conscious being will be required 
to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff around it 
that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such deep 
thoughts.


Interestingly, as Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll both mention in their 
popular lectures, in the far future the accelerating expansion of the 
universe will leave the Milkyway alone with no other galaxy within the 
Hubble sphere.  The universe will appear to our sucessors, if there are 
any, completely empty with a lone island of stars and matter.




OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did 
the ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line /somewhere/. He 
is smart enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and 
skirt around it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat 
another coconut, convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his 
own existence...


The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it 
misses a vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn 
to stave off infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in 
the hierarchy of complexity, but because of the limited range of his 
experience, he is unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and 
birth, for instance, he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a 
little hasty in his invocation of infinite permutation as an 
explanatory principle. With sufficient exposure to time and diverse 
biology, he might start to wonder about the role of an /evolutionary/ 
process.


It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, 
armed with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able 
to foresee, for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms 
for dealing with normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his 
first minor wound, he might predict that the injury would heal. On the 
other hand, with the "infinite permutations theory", he could predict 
nothing at all. Though it offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual 
neatness, it also lacks any predictive power whatsoever.


You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe 
in a multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of 
fine-tunedness /per se/, the combination of a multiverse with the 
anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I 
believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the breadth 
of observation that we would need in order to see the correct picture 
of how fine tuning arises in our local environment. Lee Smolin's 
theory of an evolutionary universe gets closer, but suffers from the 
serious flaw that he sees universes evolving towards black-hole 
production, which is only incidentally or co-incidentally related to 
life-friendliness.


My hunch is that the true explanation of fine-tuning (and hence of the 
physical laws we observe) is one that involves our universe being 
embedded in much larger multiversal structures and processes which we 
probably can't even guess at 

Re: The desert island amnesiac - a multiverse parable

[John Mikes]

Beautiful!
Not very flattering to acceptors of the Theory of Everything though:
you have to forget EVERYTHING to begin with. Then make up the
WORLD from that fraction you experienced and format it into a Total.
The hack with the rest...
JM

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:39 AM, Pierz  wrote:

> So imagine a guy washed up on a small desert island after a plane crash.
> Unfortunately during the plane crash he suffered a traumatic injury which
> caused him to completely lose his memory. He wakes up on the sure without
> the faintest clue about who he is or where he comes from. He doesn't even
> remember that there are other people in the world and that he was born of a
> mother and father. After sorting out his immediate survival needs, being a
> philosophical type, he begins to wonder about his own origins. He begins to
> speculate about the what conditions might have given rise to him and the
> island he finds himself on.
>
> Without the benefit of the memory of any scientific knowledge, he is
> struck by the strangeness of the fact that the world he finds himself in
> seems so well-adapted to him - or he to it. Isn't it marvellous, he
> reasons, that when I feel this particular unpleasant sensation of dryness
> (which we, but not he, would call "thirst"), it happens that there is some
> abundant substance I can locate that, if conveyed into my mouth, relieves
> that sensation? Isn't it astonishing that I have these dextrous digital
> appendages that seem so perfectly made for constructing a shelter, or
> making and throwing a spear? How to explain it?
>
> Being more of a mathematician than a naturalist by nature, he reasons that
> perhaps the explanation is simply this: the ocean that he sees that appears
> to extend indefinitely in all directions is in fact infinite. And scattered
> across that infinite ocean there are other islands. He can see at least a
> couple from where he is, so if the ocean is infinite there would end up
> being an infinity of such islands. And if there are an infinite number of
> such islands, then all possible arrangements of matter will eventually form
> by chance. If they happen to form something conscious - and conscious
> enough to reason about its origins - then that conscious being will be
> required to be complex enough and well adapted enough to the stuff around
> it that it can maintain its own integrity long enough to form such deep
> thoughts.
>
> OK, there are still some holes in his Theory of Everything (where did the
> ocean come from?) but a man has to draw the line *somewhere*. He is smart
> enough to see the lurking possibility of infinite regress and skirt around
> it. With this he is satisfied and settles back to eat another coconut,
> convinced he has found a coherent explanation of his own existence...
>
> The problem with his impoverished account, of course, is that it misses a
> vast amount of structure in the world. The line he has drawn to stave off
> infinite explanatory regress is clearly far too high in the hierarchy of
> complexity, but because of the limited range of his experience, he is
> unlikely to see that. If he could witness mating and birth, for instance,
> he might start to wonder if he hadn't been a little hasty in his invocation
> of infinite permutation as an explanatory principle. With sufficient
> exposure to time and diverse biology, he might start to wonder about the
> role of an *evolutionary* process.
>
> It's clear how much better the evolutionary explanation is because, armed
> with it, he might be able to make predictions. He might be able to foresee,
> for instance, that his body should have robust mechanisms for dealing with
> normal environmental vicissitudes. Suffering his first minor wound, he
> might predict that the injury would heal. On the other hand, with the
> "infinite permutations theory", he could predict nothing at all. Though it
> offers a somewhat satisfying conceptual neatness, it also lacks any
> predictive power whatsoever.
>
> You can see perhaps see where I'm going with this. I tend to believe in a
> multiverse. But I also tend to believe that as an explanation of
> fine-tunedness *per se*, the combination of a multiverse with the
> anthropic principle is scientifically and philosophically bankrupt. I
> believe that we are like desert island amnesiacs, lacking the breadth of
> observation that we would need in order to see the correct picture of how
> fine tuning arises in our local environment. Lee Smolin's theory of an
> evolutionary universe gets closer, but suffers from the serious flaw that
> he sees universes evolving towards black-hole production, which is only
> incidentally or co-incidentally related to life-friendliness.
>
> My hunch is that the true explanation of fine-tuning (and hence of the
> physical laws we observe) is one that involves our universe being embedded
> in much larger multiversal structures and processes which we probably can't
> even guess at with our current