Comment on You'll never see it coming
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 week agoThere’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!
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The Anthropic Principle. It’s a mind-bender, especially because it’s fundamentally unfalsifiable.
dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
That’s it! And yep, total mindfuck. But also sort of… Profound, I guess
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I thought it was the self observation principle?
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.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
You are correct.Notably, I don’t believe it’s unfalsifiable, its just fundamentally true. You cant observe yourself in any reality where you are incapable of onserving yourself.
By applying both that and the many worlds hypothesis, the idea of quantum immortality comes up, and thats a real mind bender. Its also a way to verifiably prove many worlds accurate(afaik the only way)
Basically (very basically), anything that can happen, does. Its simply that each possible action happens in a seperate time stream, and each new possible action results in said time streams splitting into two realities; one where the action happened, and one where it did not.
But by the anthropic principle, you will only ever find yourself in a reality where you can observe yourself.
Hence, if you set up an expirement such that if a single atom decays in a chunk of uranium you die, the odds are stacked almost infinitely in favor of you dying, and one of two things will happen.
In the case many worlds is true, despite all the odds, there will be a universe in which you survive, and due to the self observation principle, that will always be the one you find yourself in. You obviously cant observe yourself in any reality where you died.
In the case that many worlds is false, you simply die. You still cant observe yourself in that reality, so for you reality simply stops.
This means that if it is physically possible for you to survive something, from your perspective(assuming many eorkds is true) you will always survive. That is the idea behind quantum immortality.
The downside is that others are still able to observe you dying. So in the vast majority of realities, they observe you die and label the expiriment inconclusive. In the reality in which you live, it could just be a massive statistical fluke. I suppose you could run the expiriment again, but youd suffer the same issues as the first time, where in almost every case, they witness you die and deem it inconclusive. After having repeated this twice and yet you still find yourself in the reality where you survived, id say thats basically proof that many worlds is accurate, but only that reality out of the uncountably high number of realities stemming from this expiriment would have evidence. In all the others you just die.
To reiterate though, assuming many worlds is accurate, the expiriment carries no risk to you. Due to the anthropic principle, you will always find yourself in the reality in which you survive.