Yes, your second paragraph gets at what I was thinking (and you are right that it is not exactly the Boltzmann Brain problem). But I don’t think it is the same as the general problem of induction, either.
On your model, if I understand correctly, there are microscopic, time symmetric laws that hold everywhere. (That they hold everywhere and not just on our experience we take for granted—we are not allowing Humean worries about induction while doing physics, and that’s fine.) But on top of that, there is a macroscopic law that we observe, the Second Law, and you are proposing (I think—maybe I misunderstand you) that its explanation lies in that we are agents and observers, and that the immediate environment of a system that is an agent and observer must exhibit this kind of time asymmetry. But then, we should not expect this macroscopic regularity to hold beyond our immediate environment. I think this is ordinary scientific reasoning, not Humean skepticism.
Do you have a similar concern about Tegmark’s anthropic argument for the microscopic laws? It only establishes that we must be in a universe where our immediate environment follows those laws, not that those laws hold everywhere in the universe.
Yes, your second paragraph gets at what I was thinking (and you are right that it is not exactly the Boltzmann Brain problem). But I don’t think it is the same as the general problem of induction, either.
On your model, if I understand correctly, there are microscopic, time symmetric laws that hold everywhere. (That they hold everywhere and not just on our experience we take for granted—we are not allowing Humean worries about induction while doing physics, and that’s fine.) But on top of that, there is a macroscopic law that we observe, the Second Law, and you are proposing (I think—maybe I misunderstand you) that its explanation lies in that we are agents and observers, and that the immediate environment of a system that is an agent and observer must exhibit this kind of time asymmetry. But then, we should not expect this macroscopic regularity to hold beyond our immediate environment. I think this is ordinary scientific reasoning, not Humean skepticism.
Do you have a similar concern about Tegmark’s anthropic argument for the microscopic laws? It only establishes that we must be in a universe where our immediate environment follows those laws, not that those laws hold everywhere in the universe.
I am not really familiar with the details of Tegmark’s proposal. If your two-sentece summary is accurate, then yes, I would have concerns.
Hmmm… I’m not yet sure how bothered I should be about your worry. Possibly a lot. I’ll have to think about it.