What’s the usefulness of “I think that everything exists, by the way: there’s an ensemble universe”? How does it constrain your expectations?
I don’t see how having specific beliefs either way about stuff outside the observable universe is useful.
Now, if you can show that whether the universe beyond the observable is infinite or non-infinite but much larger than the Hubble Volume constrains expectations about the contents of the observable universe, then it might be useful.
Off the top of my head: If the world is very big then there are more agents to trade with or be simulated by. Also I’m not sure what counts as the observable universe—we can’t see beyond the Hubble volume with our telescopes, but we can probabilistically model what different parts of the universe or different universes look like nonetheless. We also do not know what is ultimately observable. We currently lack the ability to observe mental phenomena but I still have specific beliefs about roughly what we’ll observe when we really understand consciousness.
It is useful to be curious about mysteries to which you believe there to be no answer; beliefs like that often turn out to be wrong.
What’s the usefulness of “I think that everything exists, by the way: there’s an ensemble universe”? How does it constrain your expectations?
I don’t see how having specific beliefs either way about stuff outside the observable universe is useful.
Now, if you can show that whether the universe beyond the observable is infinite or non-infinite but much larger than the Hubble Volume constrains expectations about the contents of the observable universe, then it might be useful.
Off the top of my head: If the world is very big then there are more agents to trade with or be simulated by. Also I’m not sure what counts as the observable universe—we can’t see beyond the Hubble volume with our telescopes, but we can probabilistically model what different parts of the universe or different universes look like nonetheless. We also do not know what is ultimately observable. We currently lack the ability to observe mental phenomena but I still have specific beliefs about roughly what we’ll observe when we really understand consciousness.
It is useful to be curious about mysteries to which you believe there to be no answer; beliefs like that often turn out to be wrong.