Comment on You'll never see it coming

• dharmacurious@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  There’s a principle, I can’t remember the name of it, but basically it goes that the universe exists in such a way as to support life, because if it didn’t, there would be no one around to discuss the ways in which the universe might have formed. Which is to say, while it’s all good to contemplate a different set of physical laws in which we could not exist, we cannot use the condition of our existing as proof that the universe must allow us to exist. Any universe in which an observer exists is necessarily a universe in which an observercould exist. We will only ever get to observe that which allows our existence.

  It’s mainly used, to my knowledge, to attempt to dissuade the religious of ideas of a creator deity.

  But I think here it has another application. If false vacuum decay happens, and all of everything just goes poof, that’s not interesting. There will be no observer, no one to mark it, no one to study it. On top of that, no one to even know there was once someone. Who knows, maybe it’s happened hundreds of trillions of times, maybe infinite times, maybe once, maybe never. Either way, we, and anyone else out there, will have no way of knowing, or remembering, or anything else. So it’s not interesting. There’s nothing of value to be learned, because there’s no way to use the knowledge to do anything.

  But contemplating the ways in which it could happen and we could survive? Suddenly a new set of physical laws govern us? Different, but just similar enough that we don’t explode, implode, or just dissipate into component atoms (if atoms still exist!)? That’s interesting! That’s worth contemplation and thought! At the very least it’s worth a damn fine dime store paperback sci Fi novel!

  Let’s do something interesting here! What’s your wish list for a change in our physical laws that still allows our existence? I went utopian, ftl space flight, nothing else changes. But maybe it’s some mad max universe now? Maybe it changes our physical structure enough that we’re all cronenberg monsters limping our way through the universe in tiny, slapped together vessels that we put together as we saw what was approaching on the horizon of the observable universe, and in the new laws planets can’t form? Searching, seeking, viciously lonely abominations, wandering a void unlike anything we’ve ever experienced?

  Maybe the only change is that idiots stop voting and wealth disparity disappears somewhere. Be adventurous! Be the change you hope the decay will bring!

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  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    There’s a principle, I can’t remember the name of it, but basically it goes that the universe exists in such a way as to support life, because if it didn’t, there would be no one around to discuss the ways in which the universe might have formed.

    The Anthropic Principle. It’s a mind-bender, especially because it’s fundamentally unfalsifiable.

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    • dharmacurious@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      That’s it! And yep, total mindfuck. But also sort of… Profound, I guess

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    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I thought it was the self observation principle?

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      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I’ve never heard of that name for it, though the “observation selection” principle might be what you’re thinking of. They’re synonyms.

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