Not sure how satisfying this is, but here’s a rough sketch:
Anthropically, the meat we’re paying attention to is meat that implements an algorithm that has general cognition including the capacity of building physics theories from observations. Such meat may become more common either due to physics theories being generally useful or general cognition that does physics among other things being generally useful. The algorithm on the meat selects theories of physics that explain their observations. To explain the observations, the physics theory has to bridge between the subject matter of physics and the observational inputs to the algorithm that are used to build and apply the theory. The thing that is bridged to isn’t, according to the bridging law, identical to the subject matter of low level physics (atoms or whatever), and there also isn’t a very simple translation, although there is a complex translation. The presence of a complex but not simple load-bearing translation motivates further investigation to find a more parsimonious theory. Additionally, there are things the algorithm implemented on the meat does other than building physics theories that use similar algorithmic infrastructure to the infrastructure that builds physics theories from observations. It is therefore parsimonious to posit that there is a broader class of entity than “physical observation” that includes observations not directly used to build physical theories, due to natural category considerations. “Experience” seems a fitting name for such a class.
Not sure how satisfying this is, but here’s a rough sketch:
Anthropically, the meat we’re paying attention to is meat that implements an algorithm that has general cognition including the capacity of building physics theories from observations. Such meat may become more common either due to physics theories being generally useful or general cognition that does physics among other things being generally useful. The algorithm on the meat selects theories of physics that explain their observations. To explain the observations, the physics theory has to bridge between the subject matter of physics and the observational inputs to the algorithm that are used to build and apply the theory. The thing that is bridged to isn’t, according to the bridging law, identical to the subject matter of low level physics (atoms or whatever), and there also isn’t a very simple translation, although there is a complex translation. The presence of a complex but not simple load-bearing translation motivates further investigation to find a more parsimonious theory. Additionally, there are things the algorithm implemented on the meat does other than building physics theories that use similar algorithmic infrastructure to the infrastructure that builds physics theories from observations. It is therefore parsimonious to posit that there is a broader class of entity than “physical observation” that includes observations not directly used to build physical theories, due to natural category considerations. “Experience” seems a fitting name for such a class.