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?
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?