So you don’t know that you live in a simple world. But, goes the obvious reply, you care much more about what happens if you do happen to live in the simple world.
You kind of seem to jump around there. Our world looks simple, that’s why we’re worrying so much about why our world looks so simple in the first place! Sure our world might not actually be simple, but we simply have no sufficient reason to distrust the copious simplicity our scientific inquiry seems to yield.
If I live in a simple world, I want to believe I live in a simple world. If I live in a complex, interventionistic world I want to believe I live in a complex, interventionistic world. The way to find out what sort of world I live in is to look at the world. It looks simple.
To summarize that part of the post: (1) The view I’m discussing there argues that the reason we find ourselves in a simple-looking world is that all possible experiences are consciously experienced, including the ones where the world looks simple, and we just happen to experience the latter. (2) If this is correct, then you cannot use the fact that you look around and see a simple-looking world to infer that you live in a simple-looking world, because there are plenty of complex interventionistic worlds that look deceptively simple. In fact, the prior probability that the particular world you see is actually simple is extremely low. (3) However, if you value the things that happen in actually simple worlds more than the things that happen in complex worlds, then it’s still correct to act as if your simple-looking world is in fact simple, despite the fact that prior probability says this is possibly wrong (or to put this differently, even though most of the equally-existing mathematically possible humans reasoning like this will be wrong).
the reason we find ourselves in a simple-looking world is that all possible experiences are consciously experienced, including the ones where the world looks simple, and we just happen to experience the latter. (2) If this is correct, then you cannot use the fact that you look around and see a simple-looking world to infer that you live in a simple-looking world, because there are plenty of complex interventionistic worlds that look deceptively simple. In fact, the prior probability that the particular world you see is actually simple is extremely low.
But most worlds aren’t “complex worlds appearing simple”, most worlds are just “complex worlds”, right? So the fact that we find ourselves in a simple world should still enormously surprise us. And any theory that causes us to “naturally” expect simple worlds would seem to have an enormous advantage.
You kind of seem to jump around there. Our world looks simple, that’s why we’re worrying so much about why our world looks so simple in the first place! Sure our world might not actually be simple, but we simply have no sufficient reason to distrust the copious simplicity our scientific inquiry seems to yield.
If I live in a simple world, I want to believe I live in a simple world. If I live in a complex, interventionistic world I want to believe I live in a complex, interventionistic world. The way to find out what sort of world I live in is to look at the world. It looks simple.
Underdetermination of theory by data. Our world looks like it could be simple, but it could be complex too.
To summarize that part of the post: (1) The view I’m discussing there argues that the reason we find ourselves in a simple-looking world is that all possible experiences are consciously experienced, including the ones where the world looks simple, and we just happen to experience the latter. (2) If this is correct, then you cannot use the fact that you look around and see a simple-looking world to infer that you live in a simple-looking world, because there are plenty of complex interventionistic worlds that look deceptively simple. In fact, the prior probability that the particular world you see is actually simple is extremely low. (3) However, if you value the things that happen in actually simple worlds more than the things that happen in complex worlds, then it’s still correct to act as if your simple-looking world is in fact simple, despite the fact that prior probability says this is possibly wrong (or to put this differently, even though most of the equally-existing mathematically possible humans reasoning like this will be wrong).
But most worlds aren’t “complex worlds appearing simple”, most worlds are just “complex worlds”, right? So the fact that we find ourselves in a simple world should still enormously surprise us. And any theory that causes us to “naturally” expect simple worlds would seem to have an enormous advantage.