On 1/7/2025 3:30 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Le mar. 7 janv. 2025, 00:39, Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> a
écrit :
On 1/6/2025 1:38 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
It's just improbable, which is quite different from absurd.
Every hand of bridge I've been dealt was improbable, but I
never considered one absurd.
Brent
I understand your analogy with improbable bridge hands, but I
think the difference lies in the nature of "improbable" versus
"absurd" when we scale it to the entirety of existence. The
improbability of any specific bridge hand exists within a defined
framework with clear rules and outcomes—it is improbable, but not
absurd because we understand the context.
In the case of existence, a single-world theory suggests that out
of infinite possibilities, only one outcome is "realized." This
is not just improbable—it's a rejection of the inherent structure
of possibility itself. Without a multiverse or some equivalent
explanation, the realization of just one world feels like a
singular, unexplained "bridge hand" with no deck, no dealer, and
no game. It's the framework itself that becomes suspect.
With a many-worlds or "everything exists" perspective, there is a
structure that accounts for all possibilities, including the one
where "I am." It doesn't feel absurd because existence is
distributed across possibilities rather than being inexplicably
concentrated into one. The absurdity for me isn't about odds;
it's about the lack of explanatory context in a single-world view.
Does that make sense?
Quentin
Single world theory says infinitely many worlds are possible and
this one exits. MWI says all the infinitely many possible worlds
exist and this is one of them. Of the two statements the latter
seems more absurd to me, since it's postulating an infinity of
worlds (each infinitely complex) so that your experience can be
reduced to just one random selection from the infinitude. I
understand the attraction since it seems to reduce the work to be
done by the random selection to just placing you in the
infinitude. In comparison the one-world case is selecting a
single world to exist from the same infinitude of possible worlds.
complexity means making many random selections. Mathematically
they are equivalent: one selection among an infinitude. But one
postulates that the infinitude actually exists and you've been
selected to be in one; while the other says one has been selected
by Nature to exist and so you're in it. Having infinities
actually exist seems absurd to me. Having one of many
possibilities exist is implicit in the concept of "possibility" as
opposed to "certainty", so having one world exist is not absurd.
I think where your intuition is led astray is in thinking of all
the random choices that must have been made to realize this
particular world as compared to just one random selection from all
possible worlds...but the two actually are choices from sets of
the same size.
Brent
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Brent. I understand your
point, but I think the core of my issue with the single-world theory
lies in the fact that in such a framework, there is only one realized
history, one singular possibility that exists, while all others remain
unrealized and effectively non-existent. This makes the concept of
"possibilities" irrelevant in practice, as they have no role or
reality in the framework.
In contrast, a theory of information where consciousness emerges from
the structure of all possibilities, and where all possibilities are
realized (albeit perhaps with varying proportions, like with a
dovetailing running algorithm), provides a coherent explanation for my
"here and now." My current experience is not singled out in an
unexplained and arbitrary way; it is one among the totality of
possibilities.
From my perspective, the absurdity of a single-world theory is that it
assumes this one realized world exists without any explanatory context
for why this one, while dismissing the entirety of unrealized
possibilities as irrelevant. It’s not the infinity of worlds in a
many-worlds framework that I find difficult; it’s the absence of a
logical framework in the single-world theory that makes it feel
inconsistent or incomplete.
Does this help clarify my view?
Yes, basically you dislike the idea of randomness, that one thing
happens and all other possibilities do not. It is "without any
explanatory context for why this one" which is the essence of true
randomness...if it had an explanation it wouldn't be truly random. In
other words you only accept randomness as a corollary of ignorance, as
in classical physics. You feel better saying everything possible has
happened than saying */this/* has happened at random.
Brent
Quentin
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