Isn’t that “hint” just an observer selection effect?
Is it surprising that the correlation between “universes that are absolutely/highly causal” and “universes in which things as complex as conscious observers can be assembled by evolution and come to contemplate the causal nature of their universe” is very high? (The fitness value of intelligence must be at least somewhat proportional to how predictable reality is...)
I worry about this “what sort of thingies can be real” expression. It might be more useful to ask “what sort of thingies can we observe”. The word “real”, except as an indexical, seems vacuous.
It’s true that intelligence wouldn’t do very well in a completely unpredictable universe; but I see no reason why it doesn’t work in something like HPMoR, and there are plenty of such “almost-sane” possibilities.
A totally causal universe has the potential to have an initial state (including the rules of its time-evolution) that is extremely simple (low Shannon entropy), as compared to a causal-but-with-some-exceptions universe. As Eliezer points out, it also requires vastly less computing power to ‘run’.
It therefore seems perfectly reasonable that universe-simulators working with non-infinite resources would have a strong preference for simulating absolutely causal universes—and that we should therefore not be terribly surprised to find ourselves in one.
It’s true that out of the conceivable indeterministic universes, most do not allow for evolvable high-level intelligence anything like ours. But it’s also true that out of the conceivable universes that do allow for evolvable high-level intelligence like ours, most are not perfectly deterministic. So although the existence of intelligence may be explicable anthropically, I’m not sure the non-existence of Time Turners (and other causality-breaking mechanisms) is. Perfect determinism and complete chaos are not the only two options.
Isn’t that “hint” just an observer selection effect?
Is it surprising that the correlation between “universes that are absolutely/highly causal” and “universes in which things as complex as conscious observers can be assembled by evolution and come to contemplate the causal nature of their universe” is very high? (The fitness value of intelligence must be at least somewhat proportional to how predictable reality is...)
I worry about this “what sort of thingies can be real” expression. It might be more useful to ask “what sort of thingies can we observe”. The word “real”, except as an indexical, seems vacuous.
It’s true that intelligence wouldn’t do very well in a completely unpredictable universe; but I see no reason why it doesn’t work in something like HPMoR, and there are plenty of such “almost-sane” possibilities.
Woudn’t HPMoR count as “highly, but not completely, causal”?
Further, somewhat more speculative thought:
A totally causal universe has the potential to have an initial state (including the rules of its time-evolution) that is extremely simple (low Shannon entropy), as compared to a causal-but-with-some-exceptions universe. As Eliezer points out, it also requires vastly less computing power to ‘run’.
It therefore seems perfectly reasonable that universe-simulators working with non-infinite resources would have a strong preference for simulating absolutely causal universes—and that we should therefore not be terribly surprised to find ourselves in one.
It’s true that out of the conceivable indeterministic universes, most do not allow for evolvable high-level intelligence anything like ours. But it’s also true that out of the conceivable universes that do allow for evolvable high-level intelligence like ours, most are not perfectly deterministic. So although the existence of intelligence may be explicable anthropically, I’m not sure the non-existence of Time Turners (and other causality-breaking mechanisms) is. Perfect determinism and complete chaos are not the only two options.