I think your theory predicts a single self-consistent universe—the one we’re in. (What do you think?)
a multiverse of all internally-consistent mathematical structures, thereby allegedly explaining our own universe — it’s mathematically possible, so it exists along with every other possible structure.
Instead, first consider only all internally-consistent mathematical structures. That is, consider the set of all mathematically true statements. Our intuition is that they ‘exist’ in some way independently. These exist, and nothing else. (Everything ‘else’ is higher-order and, via reduction, can be expressed in terms of these.)
Then all the fundamental particles—they exist since we observe them—are somehow mapped from the initial set of mathematical truths. I would reword this as, “the set of internally-consistent mathematical structures map to a set of things perceived as fundamental particles”. This is hand-waving of course, but supported by arguments I’ve heard that fundamental particles don’t need to have any special properties of material existence, they could simply be interacting mathematical relationships and still result in the universe that we experience. The fundamental particles do interact—it turns out dynamically and causally—resulting in the universe we experience.
So our universe could be the single self-consistent structure that results from all true mathematical relationships.
Another way of putting it is that suppose there are multiple mathematical structures possible, resulting in the multi-verse originally postulated. Don’t these mathematical structures have to be self-consistent? So why not expand the definition of universe to include them? I believe particle physics already postulates extra dimensions, etc., that could be causally independent from the subset of the universe we are causally entangled with.
Are you saying that our universe’s laws of physics may turn out to be the only self-consistent set of laws defining a universe-like structure, or that we should expand the definition of “the universe” to encompass all such structures? It looks like you may be saying both, but I’m not sure they’re the same thing.
I meant the former, that it would be interesting to consider the possibility that there might be only a single set of self-consistent laws that self-generate from a void, and that these result in our (single) universe.
Alternatively, there might be a few or infinitely many independent sets of self-consistent laws resulting in a multiverse of entirely independent universes.
My point is that we need to consider the question, because it’s a completely different question to ask, ‘how many independent sets of truth self-generate from a void?’ and, ‘how many models satisfy a set of limited observations?’.
When we remark that something different could have happened (I could have chosen a different major in college), we mean this in a limited logical sense. If everything is entangled with everything else, and especially if the universe is deterministic, things possible in this logical sense might not really be possible. That is, that they’re not actually the case in any universe.
I think your theory predicts a single self-consistent universe—the one we’re in. (What do you think?)
Instead, first consider only all internally-consistent mathematical structures. That is, consider the set of all mathematically true statements. Our intuition is that they ‘exist’ in some way independently. These exist, and nothing else. (Everything ‘else’ is higher-order and, via reduction, can be expressed in terms of these.)
Then all the fundamental particles—they exist since we observe them—are somehow mapped from the initial set of mathematical truths. I would reword this as, “the set of internally-consistent mathematical structures map to a set of things perceived as fundamental particles”. This is hand-waving of course, but supported by arguments I’ve heard that fundamental particles don’t need to have any special properties of material existence, they could simply be interacting mathematical relationships and still result in the universe that we experience. The fundamental particles do interact—it turns out dynamically and causally—resulting in the universe we experience.
So our universe could be the single self-consistent structure that results from all true mathematical relationships.
Another way of putting it is that suppose there are multiple mathematical structures possible, resulting in the multi-verse originally postulated. Don’t these mathematical structures have to be self-consistent? So why not expand the definition of universe to include them? I believe particle physics already postulates extra dimensions, etc., that could be causally independent from the subset of the universe we are causally entangled with.
Are you saying that our universe’s laws of physics may turn out to be the only self-consistent set of laws defining a universe-like structure, or that we should expand the definition of “the universe” to encompass all such structures? It looks like you may be saying both, but I’m not sure they’re the same thing.
I meant the former, that it would be interesting to consider the possibility that there might be only a single set of self-consistent laws that self-generate from a void, and that these result in our (single) universe.
Alternatively, there might be a few or infinitely many independent sets of self-consistent laws resulting in a multiverse of entirely independent universes.
My point is that we need to consider the question, because it’s a completely different question to ask, ‘how many independent sets of truth self-generate from a void?’ and, ‘how many models satisfy a set of limited observations?’.
When we remark that something different could have happened (I could have chosen a different major in college), we mean this in a limited logical sense. If everything is entangled with everything else, and especially if the universe is deterministic, things possible in this logical sense might not really be possible. That is, that they’re not actually the case in any universe.