I think a decent candidate for what a sufficiently great mind would do, in the absence of priors other than its own existence and the data fed to it… is to enumerate universes with different numbers of dimensions and different fundamental forces and values of physical constants and initial conditions, and see which of them are likely to produce it and the data fed to it. Which, at least in our case, means “a universe in which intelligent life spontaneously developed and made computers”.
How do you know your world is 3D, not actually 2D?
There was a book, Flatland, describing a fictional 2D world. One of the issues is… you can’t have things like digestive tracts that pass all the way through you, unless you consist of multiple non-connected pieces. I’m not sure I can rule it out entirely—after all, 2D cellular automata can be Turing-complete, and can therefore simulate anything you like—but it seems possible that a sufficiently great mind could say that no 2D universe with laws of physics resembling our own could support life.
Is it actually the case that Occam’s razor would prefer “A universe, such as a 3-space 1-time dimensional universe with the following physical constants within certain ranges and a Big Bang that looked like this, developed intelligent life and made me and this data” over “The universe is one big 2D cellular automaton that simulates me and this data, and contains nothing else”? I dunno. Kolmogorov complexity of a machine simulating the universe, I guess? That seems like the right question even if I don’t know the answer.
I think a decent candidate for what a sufficiently great mind would do, in the absence of priors other than its own existence and the data fed to it… is to enumerate universes with different numbers of dimensions and different fundamental forces and values of physical constants and initial conditions, and see which of them are likely to produce it and the data fed to it. Which, at least in our case, means “a universe in which intelligent life spontaneously developed and made computers”.
There was a book, Flatland, describing a fictional 2D world. One of the issues is… you can’t have things like digestive tracts that pass all the way through you, unless you consist of multiple non-connected pieces. I’m not sure I can rule it out entirely—after all, 2D cellular automata can be Turing-complete, and can therefore simulate anything you like—but it seems possible that a sufficiently great mind could say that no 2D universe with laws of physics resembling our own could support life.
Is it actually the case that Occam’s razor would prefer “A universe, such as a 3-space 1-time dimensional universe with the following physical constants within certain ranges and a Big Bang that looked like this, developed intelligent life and made me and this data” over “The universe is one big 2D cellular automaton that simulates me and this data, and contains nothing else”? I dunno. Kolmogorov complexity of a machine simulating the universe, I guess? That seems like the right question even if I don’t know the answer.