“I expect that agents evolved in a purely deterministic but similarly complex world would be no less likely to (eventually) construct counterfactuals and probabilities than those in a quantum sort of universe”
I’m actually trying to make a slightly unusual argument. My argument isn’t that we wouldn’t construct counterfactuals in a purely deterministic world operating similar to ours. My argument is involves:
a) Claiming that counterfactuals are at least partly constructed by humans (if you don’t understand why this might be reasonable, then it’ll be more of a challenge to understand the overall argument) b) Claiming that it would be a massive coincidence if something partly constructed by humans happened to correspond with fundamental structures in such a way unrelated to the fundamental structures c) Concluding that its likely that there is some as yet unspecified relation
To me the correspondence seems smaller, and therefore the coincidence less unlikely.
Many-world hypothesis assumes parallel worlds that obey exactly the same laws of physics. Anything can happen with astronomically tiny probability, but the vast majority of parallel worlds is just as boring as our world. The counterfactuals we imagine are not limited by the laws of physics.
Construction of counterfactuals is useful for reasoning with uncertainty. Quantum physics is a source of uncertainty, but there are also enough macroscopic sources of uncertainty (limited brain size, second law of thermodynamics). If an intelligent life evolved in a deterministic universe, I imagine it would also find counterfactual reasoning useful.
Not hugely. Quantum mechanics doesn’t have any counterfactuals in some interpretations. It has deterministic evolution of state (including entanglement), and then we interpret incomplete information about it as being probabilistic in nature. Just as we interpret incomplete information about everything else.
“I expect that agents evolved in a purely deterministic but similarly complex world would be no less likely to (eventually) construct counterfactuals and probabilities than those in a quantum sort of universe”
I’m actually trying to make a slightly unusual argument. My argument isn’t that we wouldn’t construct counterfactuals in a purely deterministic world operating similar to ours. My argument is involves:
a) Claiming that counterfactuals are at least partly constructed by humans (if you don’t understand why this might be reasonable, then it’ll be more of a challenge to understand the overall argument)
b) Claiming that it would be a massive coincidence if something partly constructed by humans happened to correspond with fundamental structures in such a way unrelated to the fundamental structures
c) Concluding that its likely that there is some as yet unspecified relation
Does this make sense?
To me the correspondence seems smaller, and therefore the coincidence less unlikely.
Many-world hypothesis assumes parallel worlds that obey exactly the same laws of physics. Anything can happen with astronomically tiny probability, but the vast majority of parallel worlds is just as boring as our world. The counterfactuals we imagine are not limited by the laws of physics.
Construction of counterfactuals is useful for reasoning with uncertainty. Quantum physics is a source of uncertainty, but there are also enough macroscopic sources of uncertainty (limited brain size, second law of thermodynamics). If an intelligent life evolved in a deterministic universe, I imagine it would also find counterfactual reasoning useful.
Yeah, that’s a reasonable position to take.
Not hugely. Quantum mechanics doesn’t have any counterfactuals in some interpretations. It has deterministic evolution of state (including entanglement), and then we interpret incomplete information about it as being probabilistic in nature. Just as we interpret incomplete information about everything else.
Hopefully one day I get a chance to look further into quantum mechanics