Born to do Math 57 – Hows, then Whys (Part 1)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03
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Rick Rosner: You wanted to talk about the whys of informational cosmology. We have covered the hows. We have covered the whys to some extent. We can try to cover them more systematically. This will be pretty hand wavey and flailly. We can start with the principle that things exist. The principle that things exist. The obvious—if you start with the statement, “things exist.” It is because we experience things exist.
Things may not exist in the way we think they exist, which is kind of the Matrix Principle. That what we’re experiencing is not necessarily reality. There is no permanent existence. That is, when we die, our experience of the world goes away and everything may eventually wink out of existence, but within the frame of existence that we seem to exist in a world that exists. We can talk about that apparent existence as something.
Whether it is true or not rather than pure nothingness because we don’t experience pure nothingness, we experience the world and ourselves, regardless of the deep reality of that experience of existence. Then you can get into existences of “Why can it exist?” versus “Why must it exist?” Those questions you’d hope would boil down to the same question. That when you have the things that can exist, that leads to further questions.
“Why this world among all of the possible worlds that exist?” That leads to things like the Many Worlds Theory. It says, “Any world that can exist does exist. We only see the world that we’re in. Why can we see this world and not other worlds?” Because we’re made of an informational relationship between this world. We have a history of interaction with this world. This is the world we’re in and interacting with.
It has a tautological stink to it. But if we were in another of these possible worlds, we’d be other people who would exist within the context of having a history with those other worlds. So it goes back to the question that kids ask, “Why am I me and not somebody else?” It is because you are defined by your memories, tendencies that have been set up in your brain for how you process information.
Your history as yourself. All of which constitute your identity. If you were somebody else, you’d be that other person because all of your information pertains to you, which has the stink of tautology. So trying to sort out why this world must be our world versus other possible worlds, there are arguments to be made that the other possible worlds are not possible for various reasons such as that we have a history with this world that precludes a bunch of other worlds.
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