Your thought experiment of the person in the sealed torture box ignores the question of what evidence I have to believe that such a box exists and what evidence I have that the physical theory you’ve outlined is true (in the thought experiment).
The fact that a theory makes the same predictions as some other theory is irrelevant if I don’t have good reason for thinking the theory might be true in the first place. The problem with “Odin created physics” is that I have no good reasons to believe in the existence of Norse gods and that the universe was created by one of them, just like I have no good reasons to believe that a localized exception to physics will occur for some particular box.
To phrase my point a little differently, I think we have to consider the genesis of the theory. If the theory exists because somebody appended “because God made it so” to some other existing theory, then it doesn’t matter that it makes the same predictions—it fails because there are no good reasons for thinking it might be the case. We must consider why the theory makes the predictions it does. “Odin created physics” makes the particular predictions it does for no other reason than that it was specifically designed to make exactly the same predictions (and no other predictions).
I meant something closer to determining whether the process by which a theory was created was a rational process based on evidence. “Odin create physics” is clearly not in that category, and neither is the torture box hypothesis.
Your thought experiment of the person in the sealed torture box ignores the question of what evidence I have to believe that such a box exists and what evidence I have that the physical theory you’ve outlined is true (in the thought experiment).
The fact that a theory makes the same predictions as some other theory is irrelevant if I don’t have good reason for thinking the theory might be true in the first place. The problem with “Odin created physics” is that I have no good reasons to believe in the existence of Norse gods and that the universe was created by one of them, just like I have no good reasons to believe that a localized exception to physics will occur for some particular box.
To phrase my point a little differently, I think we have to consider the genesis of the theory. If the theory exists because somebody appended “because God made it so” to some other existing theory, then it doesn’t matter that it makes the same predictions—it fails because there are no good reasons for thinking it might be the case. We must consider why the theory makes the predictions it does. “Odin created physics” makes the particular predictions it does for no other reason than that it was specifically designed to make exactly the same predictions (and no other predictions).
Counting the genesis of the theory into its likelihood sounds a lot like couting the stopping condition of repeated trials.
I meant something closer to determining whether the process by which a theory was created was a rational process based on evidence. “Odin create physics” is clearly not in that category, and neither is the torture box hypothesis.