Maybe I’m misunderstanding something. I’ve always supposed that we do live in a multi-tiered causal universe. It seems to me that the “laws of physics” are a first tier which affect everything in the second tier (the tier with all of the matter including us), but that there’s nothing we can do here in the matter tier to affect the laws of physics. I’ve also always assumed that this was how practically everyone who uses the phrase ‘laws of physics’ uses it.
So you mean we live in a multitier universe with no bridging laws and the higher tiers are predictable fully from the lower tiers? Why not just call it a single tier universe then? Especially because your hypothesis is not distinguishable from the single-tier, which is simpler, so you have no good reason to ever have encountered it. “Such and such is true, but that has no causal consequences, but it’s truth is still somehow correllated with my belief”. (note that that statement violates the markov-whatsit assumption and breaks causality).
You’re right. My hypothesis is not really distinguishable from the single tier. I’m pretty sure the division I made was a vestigial from the insanely complicated hacked-up version of reality I constructed to believe in back when I devised a version of simulationism that was meant to allow me to accept the findings of modern science without abandoning my religious beliefs (back before I’d ever heard of rationalism or Baye’s theorem when I was still asking the question “Does the evidence permit me to believe, and, if not, how can I re-construe it so that it does?” because that once made sense to me.)
When I posted my question, the distinction between ‘laws of physics’ and ‘everything else’ was obvious to me. But obvious or not, the distinction is meaningless. Thanks for pointing that out.
Sometimes I feel like there should be separate tagvote buttons instead of linear up/down, for things like “+Insightful”, “+Well Worded”, and “+INSANELY FUNNY”.
This is not one of those times. The parent qualifies for all three.
It seems sensible to have something like the permittivity of free space as a node in your map of the universe, which causes various relationships in electromagnetism (which then cause behavior of individual entities), but whose value is invariant, and thus does not have any inputs. (Your estimate of that node, of course, has inputs- but it doesn’t seem reasonable to claim your estimate has any causal influence on the actual value.)
This becomes especially meaningful when you consider something like the fine structure constant, which we’re not quite certain is a constant! If it’s a node, then you can easily have arrows going into it or not, depending on what the experiments show.
EDIT:
Why not just call it a single tier universe then? Especially because your hypothesis is not distinguishable from the single-tier, which is simpler, so you have no good reason to ever have encountered it.
The tiers are a topological property of the graph- you can find a subset of nodes where the causal influences only flow out. The a priori statement that you expect to find that topological property does require special knowledge- but once you have a graph, noticing that the subset exists and identifying it as special doesn’t require special knowledge.
Note also that this interpretation plays a big part in the question of “does something outside of my future selves’ past light cones exist?”, since the argument that conservation of energy applies everywhere rests on the premise that conservation of energy doesn’t have any pertinent incoming causal links. It could be the case that there’s an arrow from “is it in my future selves’ past light cones?” to “conservation of energy,” but we think that’s implausible because “conservation of energy” is in this special subset of nodes that don’t appear to take inputs from the physical universe where I and my future selves reside.
I realized the grandparent was not quite on target, and so edited in a more relevant bit.
You mean physical maybe-constants like the FSC should go into the map as nodes, but the rest of physics shouldn’t?
I think that having laws physics in as nodes could work- with those nodes then pointing to basically every physical node. Another way to view it would be the laws of physics as a program you could use to generate causal graphs, or as a set of checks that a causal graph must pass to be considered ‘reasonable.’ The latter view is probably closer to how humans behave, but I haven’t thought about it enough to endorse it.
As I mentioned here, if you want the property that correlated things have a common cause to hold, you need to add nodes for the laws of physics, and for mathematics.
So you mean we live in a multitier universe with no bridging laws and the higher tiers are predictable fully from the lower tiers? Why not just call it a single tier universe then? Especially because your hypothesis is not distinguishable from the single-tier, which is simpler, so you have no good reason to ever have encountered it. “Such and such is true, but that has no causal consequences, but it’s truth is still somehow correllated with my belief”. (note that that statement violates the markov-whatsit assumption and breaks causality).
Forgive me if I misunderstood.
You’re right. My hypothesis is not really distinguishable from the single tier. I’m pretty sure the division I made was a vestigial from the insanely complicated hacked-up version of reality I constructed to believe in back when I devised a version of simulationism that was meant to allow me to accept the findings of modern science without abandoning my religious beliefs (back before I’d ever heard of rationalism or Baye’s theorem when I was still asking the question “Does the evidence permit me to believe, and, if not, how can I re-construe it so that it does?” because that once made sense to me.)
When I posted my question, the distinction between ‘laws of physics’ and ‘everything else’ was obvious to me. But obvious or not, the distinction is meaningless. Thanks for pointing that out.
His name was Bayes, not Baye. FYI
Congradulations on throwing out bad religious beliefs.
Muphry’s law strikes again!
Sometimes I feel like there should be separate tagvote buttons instead of linear up/down, for things like “+Insightful”, “+Well Worded”, and “+INSANELY FUNNY”.
This is not one of those times. The parent qualifies for all three.
It seems sensible to have something like the permittivity of free space as a node in your map of the universe, which causes various relationships in electromagnetism (which then cause behavior of individual entities), but whose value is invariant, and thus does not have any inputs. (Your estimate of that node, of course, has inputs- but it doesn’t seem reasonable to claim your estimate has any causal influence on the actual value.)
This becomes especially meaningful when you consider something like the fine structure constant, which we’re not quite certain is a constant! If it’s a node, then you can easily have arrows going into it or not, depending on what the experiments show.
EDIT:
The tiers are a topological property of the graph- you can find a subset of nodes where the causal influences only flow out. The a priori statement that you expect to find that topological property does require special knowledge- but once you have a graph, noticing that the subset exists and identifying it as special doesn’t require special knowledge.
Note also that this interpretation plays a big part in the question of “does something outside of my future selves’ past light cones exist?”, since the argument that conservation of energy applies everywhere rests on the premise that conservation of energy doesn’t have any pertinent incoming causal links. It could be the case that there’s an arrow from “is it in my future selves’ past light cones?” to “conservation of energy,” but we think that’s implausible because “conservation of energy” is in this special subset of nodes that don’t appear to take inputs from the physical universe where I and my future selves reside.
You mean physical maybe-constants like the FSC should go into the map as nodes, but the rest of physics shouldn’t?
I don’t understand this causality business enough to know how physics factors in or out.
I’m confused about the relevence of this.
I realized the grandparent was not quite on target, and so edited in a more relevant bit.
I think that having laws physics in as nodes could work- with those nodes then pointing to basically every physical node. Another way to view it would be the laws of physics as a program you could use to generate causal graphs, or as a set of checks that a causal graph must pass to be considered ‘reasonable.’ The latter view is probably closer to how humans behave, but I haven’t thought about it enough to endorse it.
As I mentioned here, if you want the property that correlated things have a common cause to hold, you need to add nodes for the laws of physics, and for mathematics.
Good point. Simply stated. That clears that up.