For example, I can see humanity not yet detecting that spontaneous fission isn’t random but decided by a really good random number generator.
There are infinitely many possible realities that look simple to program but aren’t, but most complicated realities don’t look nearly this simple. The Copenhagen interpretation looks the same as Many Worlds, but that’s because it was discovered while trying to figure out this reality, not because most possibilities do.
But using Occam’s razor would be circular in this particular thread.
But no alternative has been put forward where this is more likely, let alone one that gives nearly the probability of a reality that looks like this than Occam’s razor does.
But no alternative has been put forward where this is more likely, let alone one that gives nearly the probability of a reality that looks like this than Occam’s razor does.
Well, yeah (I mean, there might have been, I just don’t know of any). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against Occam’s razor.
I just meant that you seem to have given the assertion “the probability that even just the parts we know [about physics] are so simple by coincidence is vanishingly small” as a not-quite-but-kind-of justification for Occam’s razor—even though just in the previous paragraph you said there’s no reason to think not-yet-known laws of physics aren’t complicated, the “that being said” seems to kind of contradict it—but to judge that the probability of a coincidence is small, or to say “most complicated realities don’t look this simple”, would need either Occam’s razor (simpler is likelier) or some kind of uniform prior (all possible realities are as likely, and there are more of the complicated-looking ones), or another alternative that hasn’t been put forward yet, as you say. Thus, the circularity.
If for some reason we thought that extremely complicated realities that simulate very simple rules at some scales are extremely more likely to observe than all others, then “the probability that even just the parts we know are so simple” would be large. I could see some anthropic argument for this kind of thing. Suppose we discover that conscious observers cannot exist in environments with too complicated behavior; then we’d expect to only see environments with simple behavior; but (with a “uniform prior”) there are vastly more complex systems that simulate simple behaviors within than simple ones. (For any simple behavior, there is an infinity of much more complicated systems that simulate it in a part of themselves.) Thus, under the “limit complexity for observers” hypothesis we should expect a few layers of simple rules and then an incomprehensibly complicated system they arise out of “by accident”.
There are infinitely many possible realities that look simple to program but aren’t, but most complicated realities don’t look nearly this simple. The Copenhagen interpretation looks the same as Many Worlds, but that’s because it was discovered while trying to figure out this reality, not because most possibilities do.
But no alternative has been put forward where this is more likely, let alone one that gives nearly the probability of a reality that looks like this than Occam’s razor does.
Well, yeah (I mean, there might have been, I just don’t know of any). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against Occam’s razor.
I just meant that you seem to have given the assertion “the probability that even just the parts we know [about physics] are so simple by coincidence is vanishingly small” as a not-quite-but-kind-of justification for Occam’s razor—even though just in the previous paragraph you said there’s no reason to think not-yet-known laws of physics aren’t complicated, the “that being said” seems to kind of contradict it—but to judge that the probability of a coincidence is small, or to say “most complicated realities don’t look this simple”, would need either Occam’s razor (simpler is likelier) or some kind of uniform prior (all possible realities are as likely, and there are more of the complicated-looking ones), or another alternative that hasn’t been put forward yet, as you say. Thus, the circularity.
If for some reason we thought that extremely complicated realities that simulate very simple rules at some scales are extremely more likely to observe than all others, then “the probability that even just the parts we know are so simple” would be large. I could see some anthropic argument for this kind of thing. Suppose we discover that conscious observers cannot exist in environments with too complicated behavior; then we’d expect to only see environments with simple behavior; but (with a “uniform prior”) there are vastly more complex systems that simulate simple behaviors within than simple ones. (For any simple behavior, there is an infinity of much more complicated systems that simulate it in a part of themselves.) Thus, under the “limit complexity for observers” hypothesis we should expect a few layers of simple rules and then an incomprehensibly complicated system they arise out of “by accident”.