This sounds a lot like dust theory, although it’s an angle on it I hadn’t seen sketched:
You, as a specific self-preserving macrostate partition, pick out similar macrostate partitions (that share information with you). And this is always possible, no matter which macrostate partition you are (even if the resulting partitions look, to our partition-laden eyes, more chaotic).
This sounds a bit like Wolfram’s grander ‘ruliad’ multiverse, although I’m not sure if he claims that every ruliad must have observers, no matter how random-seeming… It seems like a stretch to say that. After all, while you could always create a mapping between random sequences of states and an observer, by a giant lookup table if nothing else, this mapping might exceed the size of the universe and be impossible, or something like that. I wonder if one could make a Ramsey-theory-style argument for more modest claims?
One part that I don’t see as sufficiently emphasized is the “as a time-persistent pattern” part. It seems to me that that part is bringing with it a lot of constraints on what partition languages yield time-persistent patterns.
I think a central point here is that “what counts as an observer (an agent)” is observer-dependent (more here) (even if under our particular laws of physics there are some pressures towards agents having a certain shape, etc., more here). And then it’s immediate each ruliad has an agent (for the right observer) (or similarly, for a certain decryption of it).
I’m not yet convinced “the mapping function/decryption might be so complex it doesn’t fit our universe” is relevant. If you want to philosophically defend “functionalism with functions up to complexity C” instead of “functionalism”, you can, but C starts seeming arbitrary?
Also, a Ramsey-theory argument would be very cool.
This sounds a bit like Wolfram’s grander ‘ruliad’ multiverse, although I’m not sure if he claims that every ruliad must have observers, no matter how random-seeming… It seems like a stretch to say that. After all, while you could always create a mapping between random sequences of states and an observer, by a giant lookup table if nothing else, this mapping might exceed the size of the universe and be impossible, or something like that. I wonder if one could make a Ramsey-theory-style argument for more modest claims?
Of course yes, since there’s only one ruliad by definition, and we’re observers living inside it.
In Wolfram terms I think the question would more be like : “does every slice in rulial space (or every rulial reference frame) has an observer ?”
Possibly of interest : https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/12/observer-theory/
One part that I don’t see as sufficiently emphasized is the “as a time-persistent pattern” part. It seems to me that that part is bringing with it a lot of constraints on what partition languages yield time-persistent patterns.
Didn’t know about ruliad, thanks!
I think a central point here is that “what counts as an observer (an agent)” is observer-dependent (more here) (even if under our particular laws of physics there are some pressures towards agents having a certain shape, etc., more here). And then it’s immediate each ruliad has an agent (for the right observer) (or similarly, for a certain decryption of it).
I’m not yet convinced “the mapping function/decryption might be so complex it doesn’t fit our universe” is relevant. If you want to philosophically defend “functionalism with functions up to complexity C” instead of “functionalism”, you can, but C starts seeming arbitrary?
Also, a Ramsey-theory argument would be very cool.