Isn’t this, along with so many other problems, a candidate for our sometime friend the anthropic principle? That is: only in a conscious configuration field which has memories of perceptions of an orderly universe is the dust theory controversial or doubted?
The Anthropic Principle conditions on the fact of our existence. But you seem to be conditioning on the fact that we don’t accept dust theory. That makes no sense—you could explain absolutely any observation that way!
Maybe that’s not what you meant, but I don’t see how the A. P. is relevant here.
I suppose I am over-generalizing if not outright misusing the A.P. It seems that a similar principal does apply here though. Egan’s rejection of Dust theory is based on the fact that we observe an orderly universe. I’m arguing if we didn’t perceive an orderly universe we wouldn’t even debate if dust theory was true; maybe observers in a chaotic universe wouldn’t consider it a problem at all but a simple and obvious fact that they owe their existence to.
What you say is true. But you can’t make the leap from that to “and therefore we cannot reject Dust theory”. That’s the leap that would require the AP, and you can’t use the AP that way.
We do observe an ordered universe, and therefore we reject Dust theory. That much is a fact. Things could be different, but they’re not, so Egan is right to reject Dust theory. This is the simple, ordinary way in which we accept or reject theories based on observed facts.
The AP says we can’t do that with certain observed facts, if it would be impossible for us to observe their negation. For instance, we couldn’t observe a universe where we didn’t exist because intelligent life had not evolved; so we can’t use the fact that intelligent life did evolve, to judge theories of the a priori likelihood of such evolution.
But we could certainly observe a less-ordered universe, which would give (relatively) more support to Dust theory. So the AP does not apply.
Well, I agree we need to base theory on observable facts. Dust theory is more of a thought experiment or problem related to the nature of consciousness, which is not something we’ve been able to attack empirically. Nonetheless, Egan dismisses it with this “orderly universe” business. I’m arguing that there is a selection bias—if dust theory were true then only in an “orderly universe” do we argue about dust theory.
But I’m starting to come around to the position I think most of you are taking, which is that this is just a “pink unicorn” what-if proposition that isn’t worth contemplating—since we do in fact have an orderly universe which seems to account for things the way they are.
My problem is that once I accept the information state theory of consciousness, “dust based” conscious entities seems like an inevitable result, unless the actual universe is sufficiently bounded in time and space that the statistical likliehood of this is prohibitive.
But for anyone that adopts a many-worlds interpretation of QM or any variant of cosmology theory that yields an unbounded configuration space then I don’t see a way around this problem.
That’s just the Boltzmann’s brain problem, right? It goes away if you assume our universe started with very low entropy for some reason other than pure Boltzmann-style chance. (I believe some theories, like String theories, provide this feature?) It seems to be an open problem in physics/cosmology.
I don’t understand QM. But intuitively I would expect that even in many-worlds, with an unbounded configuration space, the sum of probability over all configurations is (should be?) constant. Is that so, and would it solve the Boltzmann problem by reducing it to another (unsolved) problem, namely the origin and meaning of the Born probabilities?
The Anthropic Principle conditions on the fact of our existence. But you seem to be conditioning on the fact that we don’t accept dust theory. That makes no sense—you could explain absolutely any observation that way!
Maybe that’s not what you meant, but I don’t see how the A. P. is relevant here.
I suppose I am over-generalizing if not outright misusing the A.P. It seems that a similar principal does apply here though. Egan’s rejection of Dust theory is based on the fact that we observe an orderly universe. I’m arguing if we didn’t perceive an orderly universe we wouldn’t even debate if dust theory was true; maybe observers in a chaotic universe wouldn’t consider it a problem at all but a simple and obvious fact that they owe their existence to.
What you say is true. But you can’t make the leap from that to “and therefore we cannot reject Dust theory”. That’s the leap that would require the AP, and you can’t use the AP that way.
We do observe an ordered universe, and therefore we reject Dust theory. That much is a fact. Things could be different, but they’re not, so Egan is right to reject Dust theory. This is the simple, ordinary way in which we accept or reject theories based on observed facts.
The AP says we can’t do that with certain observed facts, if it would be impossible for us to observe their negation. For instance, we couldn’t observe a universe where we didn’t exist because intelligent life had not evolved; so we can’t use the fact that intelligent life did evolve, to judge theories of the a priori likelihood of such evolution.
But we could certainly observe a less-ordered universe, which would give (relatively) more support to Dust theory. So the AP does not apply.
Well, I agree we need to base theory on observable facts. Dust theory is more of a thought experiment or problem related to the nature of consciousness, which is not something we’ve been able to attack empirically. Nonetheless, Egan dismisses it with this “orderly universe” business. I’m arguing that there is a selection bias—if dust theory were true then only in an “orderly universe” do we argue about dust theory.
But I’m starting to come around to the position I think most of you are taking, which is that this is just a “pink unicorn” what-if proposition that isn’t worth contemplating—since we do in fact have an orderly universe which seems to account for things the way they are.
My problem is that once I accept the information state theory of consciousness, “dust based” conscious entities seems like an inevitable result, unless the actual universe is sufficiently bounded in time and space that the statistical likliehood of this is prohibitive.
But for anyone that adopts a many-worlds interpretation of QM or any variant of cosmology theory that yields an unbounded configuration space then I don’t see a way around this problem.
That’s just the Boltzmann’s brain problem, right? It goes away if you assume our universe started with very low entropy for some reason other than pure Boltzmann-style chance. (I believe some theories, like String theories, provide this feature?) It seems to be an open problem in physics/cosmology.
I don’t understand QM. But intuitively I would expect that even in many-worlds, with an unbounded configuration space, the sum of probability over all configurations is (should be?) constant. Is that so, and would it solve the Boltzmann problem by reducing it to another (unsolved) problem, namely the origin and meaning of the Born probabilities?