This system does not pay rent, first of all. In fact, if anything, it’s several years behind in its mortgage payments. If the universe is completely non-deterministic with infinite random events happening, shouldn’t the odds of my living in the specific sub-universe that appears fully deterministic be almost indistinguishable from zero? This can’t even cheat with the anthropic principle, since there should be a greater proportion (to the extent that proportions are intelligible in this context) of universes where the laws of causality do not appear to hold.
Perhaps most significantly, we don’t know enough about how the universe works to say that it is in any sense possible for billiard balls to turn into pink elephants; we can’t rule it out, but we can’t say with any certainty that such a universe could actually exist.
Second of all, Hume’s paradox (if I understand you correctly) is the fundamental problem of predicting the past from the future. If I did something a hundred times and the exact same thing happened, then I anticipate the same thing to happen on the hundred and first time. This does not appear logically necessary; the only reason we have to expect the future to conform to the past is because the future has always conformed to the past, which is circular. This is a sort of attack on the concept of evidence itself, and I haven’t seen a good knock-down counterargument.
Indeed, we cannot be certain that the future will in fact conform to the laws of the past—our Simulation’s causality algorithm gets corrupted, perhaps, or something else far “weirder” happens. As Hume says (paraphrasing), it’s not like we can stop believing in causality, as the results aren’t pretty, so even if we don’t understand precisely why, we should probably go on believing that. It seems a bit presumptuous to say we will never understand causality, as other responders have indicated.
If the universe is completely non-deterministic with infinite random events happening, shouldn’t the odds of my living in the specific sub-universe that appears fully deterministic be almost indistinguishable from zero?
As I said, I want to argue that the sizes of ordered and chaotic regions are of the same cardinality.
I’m not quite sure what it means that you “want to argue … the same cardinality.” Argue it or don’t. As near as I can tell, you didn’t, or at least you didn’t argue how this prevents our universe from being overwhelmingly strong evidence against this theory.
Still, identical cardinality wouldn’t get you out of this one. >0, , < infinity. This does not mean that if I pick a number at random out of the latter, I am just as likely to pick in the 0-1 range as I am to pick outside of it. Please correct me if this analogy is somehow inappropriate.
If I understand the gyst of the theory, saying that our universe is acausal is saying that any random causally unexplainable event could occur at any time. If this theory is true, I should expect with extraordinarily high probability to see at least one acausal event (and, for that matter, I should expect with high probability for the universe to spontaneously convert to “static,” which would unmake me). Since an acausal event wouldn’t necessarily destroy me, this theory can’t even cheat by using the anthropic principle.
Events that are predicted with overwhelming probability never happening is about the most damning evidence against a theory that exists. Events that are predicted with unbelievably low probability happening not only often but invariably is also about the most damning evidence against a theory that exists.
The theory is admittedly undisprovable, so you can take some comfort in never being proven wrong, but you really, really shouldn’t. Non-disprovability is generally a very undesirable attribute, at least if you care about finding the truth.
Ok, it seems that if you’re right to choose density over cardinality then it’s a blow to my proposal.
I’m still trying to figure it out. Suppose the universe is an infinite Hume world. So is it true that even though there are just as many ordered regions, the likelihood that I live in one is almost zero?
That’s what happens with decision-making under uncertainty: you aren’t sure of something, yet you have to lawfully choose your actions. You don’t choose your actions based on what you know is certain, you choose your actions depending on the specific state of uncertainty you’re in. If you saw that X happened 100 times, you choose action P, and if you say Y happen 100 times, you choose action Q, even though your state of uncertainty permits the future to go identically in both cases, so that choosing different actions won’t do any good. And maybe even the possibilities open for the future are exactly the same, but the fact that the past was different weights on the decisions just as well. That is what we are, cogs in the engine of possibilities, determining what happens even if we don’t know what it is.
This system does not pay rent, first of all. In fact, if anything, it’s several years behind in its mortgage payments. If the universe is completely non-deterministic with infinite random events happening, shouldn’t the odds of my living in the specific sub-universe that appears fully deterministic be almost indistinguishable from zero? This can’t even cheat with the anthropic principle, since there should be a greater proportion (to the extent that proportions are intelligible in this context) of universes where the laws of causality do not appear to hold.
Perhaps most significantly, we don’t know enough about how the universe works to say that it is in any sense possible for billiard balls to turn into pink elephants; we can’t rule it out, but we can’t say with any certainty that such a universe could actually exist.
Second of all, Hume’s paradox (if I understand you correctly) is the fundamental problem of predicting the past from the future. If I did something a hundred times and the exact same thing happened, then I anticipate the same thing to happen on the hundred and first time. This does not appear logically necessary; the only reason we have to expect the future to conform to the past is because the future has always conformed to the past, which is circular. This is a sort of attack on the concept of evidence itself, and I haven’t seen a good knock-down counterargument.
Indeed, we cannot be certain that the future will in fact conform to the laws of the past—our Simulation’s causality algorithm gets corrupted, perhaps, or something else far “weirder” happens. As Hume says (paraphrasing), it’s not like we can stop believing in causality, as the results aren’t pretty, so even if we don’t understand precisely why, we should probably go on believing that. It seems a bit presumptuous to say we will never understand causality, as other responders have indicated.
As I said, I want to argue that the sizes of ordered and chaotic regions are of the same cardinality.
I’m not quite sure what it means that you “want to argue … the same cardinality.” Argue it or don’t. As near as I can tell, you didn’t, or at least you didn’t argue how this prevents our universe from being overwhelmingly strong evidence against this theory.
Still, identical cardinality wouldn’t get you out of this one. >0, , < infinity. This does not mean that if I pick a number at random out of the latter, I am just as likely to pick in the 0-1 range as I am to pick outside of it. Please correct me if this analogy is somehow inappropriate.
If I understand the gyst of the theory, saying that our universe is acausal is saying that any random causally unexplainable event could occur at any time. If this theory is true, I should expect with extraordinarily high probability to see at least one acausal event (and, for that matter, I should expect with high probability for the universe to spontaneously convert to “static,” which would unmake me). Since an acausal event wouldn’t necessarily destroy me, this theory can’t even cheat by using the anthropic principle.
Events that are predicted with overwhelming probability never happening is about the most damning evidence against a theory that exists. Events that are predicted with unbelievably low probability happening not only often but invariably is also about the most damning evidence against a theory that exists.
The theory is admittedly undisprovable, so you can take some comfort in never being proven wrong, but you really, really shouldn’t. Non-disprovability is generally a very undesirable attribute, at least if you care about finding the truth.
Ok, it seems that if you’re right to choose density over cardinality then it’s a blow to my proposal. I’m still trying to figure it out. Suppose the universe is an infinite Hume world. So is it true that even though there are just as many ordered regions, the likelihood that I live in one is almost zero?
That’s irrelevant. The density of ordered points within the region of possibilities is what is relevant, and that density is almost zero.
That’s what happens with decision-making under uncertainty: you aren’t sure of something, yet you have to lawfully choose your actions. You don’t choose your actions based on what you know is certain, you choose your actions depending on the specific state of uncertainty you’re in. If you saw that X happened 100 times, you choose action P, and if you say Y happen 100 times, you choose action Q, even though your state of uncertainty permits the future to go identically in both cases, so that choosing different actions won’t do any good. And maybe even the possibilities open for the future are exactly the same, but the fact that the past was different weights on the decisions just as well. That is what we are, cogs in the engine of possibilities, determining what happens even if we don’t know what it is.