Metaphysical experiments probe our hidden assumptions about reality
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Presumably, if we have AGI that advanced, why not just ask it to solve the open problems involving quantum gravity, measurement, consciousness, etc. and explain the solutions in a clear and simple way. I would think that’s a much more likely outcome.
I’m not even sure we need AGI for that—advanced ML combined with automated theorem proving applied to the space of physically relevant no-go theorems might lead to substantial progress on a lot of these metaphysical mysteries.
You assume quite a lot here. Even if AGI is possible (I think it is) it's not clear how far above human intelligence it will actually go. Then it's not clear that problems you outline are even solvable with intelligence, not all problems are. Some are just computationally hard (and we're heavily limited by mass and energy available in the solar system) others can be unsolvable at all -- e.g. you can build a universe in a way that makes it impossible to fully study from within, and maybe ours is of that kind.
While I think living in simulation, or living in a universe built by someone, is a very plausible possibility, it kind of just pushes the question of the origin of universe just a bit further. If WE live in a simulation, how did the universe of those who built our simulation come about?
If there was no harm to me, I would probably volunteer to put myself into superposition.
I guess my idea is just a rehash of the 100th monkey effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81
Emptiness refers to the absence of inherent, independent existence in all phenomena. Everything is empty of an intrinsic nature because everything exists in dependence on causes and conditions. No object, thought, or being exists independently or permanently. Emptiness is the foundation that allows for the interconnection and impermanence of all things. :)
Free pdf: http://www.nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf
Do you believe that all humans share a human nature?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
It says basically that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. If it's false, this would allow moonshot bets to escape this universe's limiting ending, its heat death - because we might be able to do things that are impossible here, but are possible in a different region of space, with different laws.
Reposting some of my previous comments about this:
For example, if we eventually have multiple star systems' worth of resources at our disposal, then I hope we put at least a trillion dollars per topic into long-shot research topics such as time travel, the multiverse, FTL travel, methods of creating new universes via an artificial Big Bang, applied theology (trying to find evidence of a God so that we can communicate with them), methods of achieving infinitely positive states of qualia such as something like nirvāṇa, and so on.
Each bet might be 1 in a million - but I'd much rather that we try every possible chance at escaping what we currently see as the inevitable, and not go gentle into that heat death night.
This goal, to break through the wall at the end of the universe, was what Asimov called for in his inspiring short story The Last Question.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Keep in mind that anything is possible if the Cosmological Principle turns out to be false, and if we can travel far enough to escape our local zone.
For example, there might turn out to be particle types which don't exist at all in our zone, but which are force carriers for forces that enable time travel or other violations of causality. We might have evolved in a zone with zero of these particles simply because it's hard for life to evolve in a zone without causality. Our zone might be a life-friendly little bubble beyond which things get truly strange, but where with appropriately designed nanotechnology, we might achieve incredible things we've never before observed, including changing the past or even stepping entirely outside of the fabric of spacetime into someplace with more or fewer spatial dimensions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
So, 1 in a million is my approximate a priori estimate of the odds of the Cosmological Principle being false in a useful way.
For a fun example of fiction that takes place in a setting where the Cosmological Principle is false, check out A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. The zone where Earth is situated, and where the laws of physics are the same as in our observed reality, is called the Slow Zone. There are three other types of zones with other laws, called the Beyond, the Transcend, and the Unthinking Depths.
I suppose that to approach a topic like this, we can reason in the classical-logic manner of the ancient Greeks and others who sought to understand their universe without yet having the instruments to make necessary observations. What I mean is, without our civilization having seen evidence either way yet, the question of what is a good prior probability is only able to be informed through non-empirical means, such as the philosophy of science (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem ), philosophy of knowledge (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle ), and theology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds ).
Originally I posted these here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38217412
This is... overly optimistic. To say the least, it depends on exactly which laws change with location, and how far. That is to say, we could conceivably know for a fact that the Cosmological Principle is false, but still know that there is nowhere in the universe that time travel is possible, or that it's impossible to prevent the end of the universe. The only way "everything is possible" is in the conditional sense that we don't know what's possible yet, but you don't need to invoke the CP for that at all.
P.S.: Even if we could... Don't cross the seams. It would be bad. Try to imagine all life as you it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Total protonic reversal.
The rule-set would essentially be a field, I guess?
More like physical constants vary imperceptibly over vast distances. And, given this continuity if you built an instrument to measure stuff and took it to another zone it would show the same readings as everything else would adjust to allow it to exist and be observed.
cool thread
You don't even need to assume it is spreading. You just need to assume that it is locally true in our spacetime neighbourhood. Make that neighbourhood big enough – e.g. a googolplex parsecs by a googolplex years – and it is implausible we'd ever be able to escape it, even if its boundaries were completely static.
It is already being tested
I wasn't disappointed.
You need an additional assumption that collapse actually occurs to get rid of the world being in a massive superposition we can't observe, if you don't want Many Worlds Interpretation.
Also, physical reality is made up of quantum systems, so there is a real question as to whether the classical is actually quantum. MWI and some other realist interpretations like Bohmian Mechanics would say yes. The Copenhagen Interpretation would say the math is just a predictive tool and we don't know what's actually going on when not making measurements.
We're really attached to classical physics because we're macroscopic objects. Any observation we make will inherently be an aggregate that cannot support the delicate equilibria that characterize quantum superpositions.
We actually do have a pretty good understanding of how that works. The implications of it are hard to stomach, but the mathematics of it is well understood and experimentally confirmed to a dozen decimal places. Where it contradicts our classical intuition, it is always quantum physics that wins out.
What does that mean?
Interpretations of quantum mechanics try to shove that inaccessible part of the wave function into a place where we can feel comfortable about it. But they are all a serious blow to what we think of as reality.
This is the sort of statement I expect from philosophers and not scientists.
That may be your expectation, but it's not mine. I believe (with a high degree of confidence) that the best we ever have is a Bayesian confidence in any hypothesis.
> The idea of an untestable truth is upsetting.
I think there's a big leap between "We can't test it" and "It's untestable".
I am not confident that humans 1000 years from now will still be bound by quantum indeterminacy. What we now model as probability fields may be in fact the result of a deterministic process which we do not yet understand.
May I ask why? If it is true, why do you need to test it? Is your problem unknowable truths? Or something else?