the Anthropic Principle: extreme speculations

Concepts from the novel 'Infinite Thunder'
link: http://www.lulu.com/content/429825

Beyond the limits of ignorance
Anyone who hopes that science will provide a final 'theory of everything' is going to be disappointed.
Perhaps it can't happen. The universe is infinitely complex. The more we learn, the less we know we know.
While humans can only understand a negligible fraction of reality, it may be possible to rule out most current speculations.
The closest approximation to the ultimate truth would be the most alien thought humans could have. Good or bad, it might seem fundamentally random.
Alternatively, all the unknowns might balance out: existence could turn out to be completely meaningless in every way.

It's still a mystery how humans become aware of their own existence, let alone of the universe as a whole.
It's not a logical process. Even the smartest people won't ask the most important questions listed below, perhaps because they're too disturbing.
Anthropic philosophy is about anomalies so obvious that almost no one notices them directly, though they influence all hidden biases. They also have major ethical implications.
For instance, is humanity a representative sample of intelligence, or are we vastly different from almost all other minds that exist? If so is it possible to escape our limited subset of reality?
We're undeniably special: of all possible intelligent minds, ours are just about the smallest.

Information theory: 'It From Bit'
Ideally, a 'universal theory' should be as simple as possible, with the minimum number of required elements.
It's easy to create complex structures using very simple rules. All we need are one and zero systematically combined in every possible way, to create all the natural numbers. In a sense they're already 'out there'. Only the rules have to be defined.
If reality is math, existence may be equivalent to the set of all numbers. Ultimately nothing exists except the logical rules that created the numbers and the patterns they form; which of course include the rules themselves.
Existence evolved in stages like a computer program, as explained in the philosophical works of the 'high-IQ bouncer' Christopher Michael Langan. Large numbers have enough internal complexity to be interpreted as instructions.
Perhaps this method can't create all possible entities (like transfinite numbers), but it could create more advanced logical systems that would begin to do the job.
Numbers barely exist, if at all. If minds are merely the outcome of imaginary equations, why do we feel so 'real'?
The universe is the ultimate illusion, the only thing that can exist.

Creation Equations
The laws of physics are software. None of the particles and forces are fundamentally real. They're merely large numbers interpreted as objects.
Many huge numbers (virtually all of them in fact) describe the content and evolution of entire universes by themselves.
Others could be read as open-ended equations capable of generating new numbers, that could in turn be interpreted as universes. With enough patience, consistently applied instructions could generate all of space and time.
Not all equations are equal. The more interesting ones are self-referential, or can generate new equations. The superstring manifolds that may define space/time are too complicated for humans to solve, even at the simplest levels, but can only be approximated.
After just a few levels, the logic transcends all human understanding.
Related universe equations may have many solutions in common. Those with the most in common (not necessarily the simplest ones) may interfere to generate even more universes.
Since almost all numbers are completely random (being their own shortest descriptions), most universes may be the result of second-order (or higher) processes, the outcomes of different equations interacting on a higher, even more virtual level.

Five dimensional time:
A higher-level derivative of many ordinary parallel timelines. The number of consistent 5D 'slices' through parallel universes could be much larger than the number of ordinary 4D timelines. If we live in 5D-time, the laws of physics could change unpredictably.

Parallel universes
One thing is clear: our universe is not representative of existence in general. There are an unlimited number of possible universes different than ours, almost all of them much stranger. Average may not even exist.
The most easily created and perhaps most common universes are much smaller and simpler than ours, but they also contain far fewer observers.
At our level, there are many possible arrangements of physical laws, some more elaborate than others. Our local solution is probably a relatively simple compromise, with an infinitely complex future.

Unity Speculation
Repeated endlessly throughout reality, there exist unlimited copies of everyone who has ever lived, in all imaginable and implausible circumstances. Near-copies of everyone alive have already made every mistake.
They're vastly outnumbered by other beings whom we could never imagine or understand.
The differences increase in all possible ways, until nothing recognizable remains.

With the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett popularized a strange notion: minds can be in infinitely many places at once, yet still remain one mind.
Consciousness can be shared by very different brains in very different locations, provided their mind patterns are identical.
Spanning time and space, our awareness is the sum of all our mind-copies in all realities, merged into one single perception.

How many ways could an amount of matter with the mass of a human brain be arranged?
Imagine a small checkerboard with only four fields, which can be either black or white. There are 16 possible board color arrangements (two to the fourth power). An arrangement of all possible checkerboards with ten fields to a side (two to the hundredth power) would already cover the Solar System! And the number of possible states increases rapidly from there.
The number of possible human thoughts is too vast to begin to imagine, but compared to infinity it might as well be zero.

Randomly searching all chaotic systems, we could expect to find an infinite number of patterns representing our minds, in part or in full, created purely by chance.
Since each human mind would be part of any random pattern of sufficient size (including almost all Real numbers), each mind can be regarded as a finite fraction of reality, since it's regularly repeated almost everywhere.
(Its percentage, roughly speaking, is one divided by x, where x = two raised to the relevant mind size in bits (x is also the number of theoretically possible brain states), or: 1 / 2^10^18, or less.) Since there are trillions of mental states in each lifetime, and some simple thoughts require far fewer bits, your actual percentage of reality may be even higher.

Each of us is very important, or at least highly relevant in the grand scheme of things, but only because we are so simple.
Compared to any random infinite number, each finite mind forms a very large fraction of reality, effectively approaching unity (though still a vastly smaller fraction than any human can imagine).
As internally organized natural numbers, our minds may be more likely to appear in calculations used by higher minds. For most calculations, we're probably too simple.

If our minds are a common but highly biased sample of reality, what has 'selected' us from all there is and could be? It can't be any finite statistical process.
Simply by existing, we can know something about the highest level of reality, the sum of all truths, including facts that could never be proven by finite math or logic. The great philosopher Alan Turing called this Oracular knowledge.
Based on our own existence, we already 'know' there are infinitely more smaller, simpler minds than larger ones. Most minds also live in rational universes.
Additional statistical laws may be empirically derived for all reality. This will be the closest thing to magic imaginable.

The Four Paradoxes: Why are we here?

Paradox 1)
- Why does the world appear to be consistent, when there are many more ways it could appear random?
If anything, there's too much order around us, both in our minds and in the universe they perceive. Do we really need all the laws of physics? Particles of the same type (and the forces controlling them) are completely identical down to the tenth decimal place. The best guess I could find is that the different force ratios (like the relative strengths of gravity and the weak nuclear force) are ordinary rational numbers hidden by relativistic processes.
Arguably, our universe should have no laws whatsoever.
There should be many more 'surreal' perception streams, in which events happen for no reason, than our highly predictable reality. Our perceptions should be like mental static, self-organizing into meaningless insights.
This tireless consistency suggests we inhabit a fully realized, 'authentic' universe existing outside ourselves. Not every mind is necessarily a part of a larger system, but most are.
It may be easier for an equation to create entire universes than to precisely describe one mind, but the former can create many of the latter.
Consistent universes are easier to generate from simple mathematical rules, so there are many more of them.

Paradox 2)
- Why do we live near the beginning of time, if the future is going to be infinite?
If human descendants are going to survive for another hundred billion years or more, why are we 'lucky' enough to live this close to the dawn of civilization? Any average observer should be the end result of many eons of history, long after mankind has spread through the observable universe.
One response is called 'Doom Soon': humanity is likely to commit mass suicide in the near future. There simply is no long-term future.
Another possibility is that new universes are constantly being generated from existing ones by natural methods we can't begin to measure or calculate, both physical and philosophical. These new universes then generate universes of their own in a never-ending multiplication.
For each universe that has attained a certain age, there will be many more younger ones, so most observers are likely to exist near the dawn of their universe.

Paradox 3)
- Why are human minds so small, when a randomly selected memory size should most likely be infinite?
Many numbers also describe minds. Each mind is equivalent to many numbers.
Any random mind (selected from all possible minds) has a corresponding random number (selected from all possible numbers), which statistically should be infinite.
Human minds, however, could hardly be much smaller and still continue to function. Even a 50% reduction would collapse civilization as we know it. We're just barely intelligent enough to realize this fact.
The fact that apparently we are NOT infinite, again suggests that the smallest minds are easily copied throughout reality, greatly outnumbering the larger ones.
Alternatively, reality itself may be limited, and there actually is a 'highest' number, beyond which nothing exists. Our universe could be an inexplicable exception in an endless void, nothing emerging from nothing.
Most infinite minds, if they exist, should be very poorly organized. Beyond a certain mind size, they may not be unified in any meaningful way, but only very loosely integrated.
Nonetheless, portions of these minds would still be mathematically perfect. Omniscient but not omnipotent, they would understand all finite systems perfectly, and know each of us as well as any finite number. If they exist, we all have 'virtual fan clubs' that we can't begin to imagine, or unfortunately interact with.

Paradox 4)
The Greatest Mystery
- Why is our highly predictable, understandable universe still vastly more complicated than necessary to generate human minds?
Some things are too obvious to notice. Einstein said the strangest thing about the universe is that we can understand it at all. The laws of physics are indeed comprehensible, but the universe they create is needlessly elaborate.
It would be an understatement to say the details of all physical systems are incredibly complex. An insane number of unnecessary interactions happen while no one is watching.
Minutely detailed superstrings (or something even stranger) form virtual particles that fill the cores of stars and empty space. From a tiny string's perspective, a human and a galaxy are basically the same size. There's 'wasted space' between galaxies and inside ordinary particles: Moving randomly at close to the speed of light, it could take a centillion centillion years for the quarks trapped inside an ordinary proton to approach each other closely enough to form a small black hole that would immediately evaporate, but virtual particles can instantly find each other by taking all possible paths at once. That's also how a photon maintains a perfectly straight path across any distance.
The information content of all human minds fades into insignificance compared to non-living matter. Neutrons are vastly smaller than neurons, but unlike the latter, they can't be accurately simulated by any supercomputer. Each fundamental particle may be as complex as the whole universe.
At the atomic scale, it would be harder to precisely describe a speck of dust than the thoughts of all the human beings who ever lived. Electrons orbit a nucleus more times per second than the age of the universe in seconds, buffeted by a storm of virtual and real interactions. Constant molecular action is required to hold all objects together. We can't sense them, but these interactions are as real as our own thoughts - more so in fact.
The classical complexities are further multiplied by quantum mechanics. No one can calculate the virtual gravitons surrounding a single virtual graviton for even a picosecond. Every particle exists in many simultaneous states. In quantum computing, the superimposed states of a single superstring can be more complex than an atomic-level map of the observable universe.
Our universe could be much simpler, yet still allow our type of intelligent life to flourish without any measurable difference. Shouldn't simple universes, barely complex enough to generate human minds, be in the majority, since they are computationally easier to generate?
Not necessarily.

~The Greatest Mystery: theory one
Since the universe doesn't necessarily depend on its inhabitants to exist, it can be however strange it wants to be. If something has to exist, why shouldn't it be almost infinite in some ways, almost empty in others? This universe's complexity might be a middle ground between possible extremes.
The apparent complexity could also be an illusion caused by flawed understanding. Maybe there's a much simpler description waiting to be discovered. Chaos theory, fluid dynamics, and statistical equations describing entire stars could eliminate some of the intricacies.
Simple equations can rapidly lead to unlimited complexity. A well known example is the decimal expansion of Pi. Fractals are also an inexhaustible source of patterns, with recurring forms at all scales. Most of our universe's complexity probably derives from simple algorithms. An equation generating all possible patterns would make an interesting diagram when zooming out from the origin. Whether it would visually repeat itself depends on the ultimate nature of reality.
While elaborate, our universe has explored only a negligible fraction of possible states. Maybe it's trying to generate as many patterns as possible.
The abundant interactions might also end when no one is looking, like in the non-active portions of a videogame. In that case, the interior of the sun and the earth would have a much simplified quantum state. The atoms wouldn't even have separate identities, but would be represented as a group. Crystals brought up from the earth's mantle should be more regular than expected (this however does not appear to be the case. Even the interiors of Mars rocks scanned by robot probes are just as elaborate as Earth rocks). Our weather could turn out to be unexpectedly predictable, with hidden regularities. Old photos may even reveal identical clouds. This solution becomes less likely the more we learn about nature.

~The Greatest Mystery: theory two
Perhaps the excessive complexity is shared with other universes.
According to a popular quantum interpretation, the universe is constantly splitting into slightly different versions of itself, the changes rippling outward from each subatomic interaction. Many possibilities are realized in parallel timestreams, and sometimes allowed to interfere. As random information is created inside each new universe, its past is steadily erased to make room.
What we see is only a tiny portion of a much larger process. A single particle can be part of many different universes at once.
Unlike the purely theoretical universes described earlier, there is indirect evidence for this theory, but it remains controversial, and just as unprovable as the other speculations on this page.
Most diverging time/space streams never cross paths again, but those regions that remain identical, or become identical again, could be shared by many universes, thereby easing the computational workload.
In that case, the complexity isn't wasted, but maximally compressed. It only needs to be calculated once, and can be reused as often as needed. Each electron (and every other elementary particle) is merely a link to the first (and only) electron created in the Big Bang. Or the first Calabi-Yau manifold, if such a thing exists.
-Mathematically, quantum physics may be the most effective method. Complex equations often have many solutions. They could also create many universes.
-Reality creates uncountable copies of every mind. By their very nature, quantum universes create more copies than classical universes. In the latter, the laws of physics are indeed somewhat simpler, but the payoff is vastly smaller.

~The Greatest Mystery: theory three
All the 'wasted' detail inside our reality could further multiply our mind patterns. Though it isn't apparent, our thoughts may change and organize the surrounding chaos in all directions.
A coarse grid (brain cells) made of many fine grids (atoms), the ever-changing structures of our brains are constantly rearranging the configurations of all the particles around them, which may 'mirror' and vastly multiply our brain patterns. If a pattern can be aware merely by existing, that pattern accidentally duplicated on a vast scale will create even more awareness. Chaotically imprinting itself upon the surrounding collisions and interactions will dramatically increase the pattern's frequency, and thus the probability of its existence. Our most ephemeral brain patterns are precisely imprinted in the atmosphere, the Earth itself, and most of all Earth's undetectable gravity waves, rippling outward at the speed of light.
This may be the main reason we find ourselves in a complex quantum universe.

The anthropic principle: experimental evidence

Is there a way to test these theories? Could the laws of physics be predicted from first principles?
If many universes exist, our universe isn't necessarily special. Aspects of reality should be arbitrary instead of meaningful, but our patterns are far more common than most other minds' patterns.

Test one: The principle of abundance
The laws of physics should maximize the number of self-aware patterns.
-It should be easy for intelligent life to evolve in our universe.
-The complexity of the universe should amplify top-level patterns (human brain configurations).
There should be no hidden levels that only occasionally interact with macroscopic objects. Neutrinos, gravitons, dark matter and dark energy, and background radiation passing through and near Earth should all have a more complex pattern after the encounter. In theory it should be possible and perhaps even straightforward to reconstruct the exact state of our planet as it was in the past, down to the last atom, by measuring neutrinos that passed near it ages ago.
This seems somewhat unlikely. Perhaps neutrinos and dark matter don't 'really' exist; but are merely symbolic placeholders representing interactions between distant particles. In that case, these tiny particles wouldn't be nearly as computationally complex as they appear to be.

Test two: The principle of mediocrity.
The laws of physics should be as simple as possible, while still allowing abundance.
When we finally reconstruct the exact conditions of the Big Bang, we should find there are many ways the laws of physics could have been more complex and computationally more intensive, and far fewer ways in which they could have been simpler. If the laws of physics had been only slightly simpler, the total complexity of the resulting universe should have been vastly lower. Each of the four forces in physics should be essential for this purpose. In fact, it should seem like a miracle they aren't more complex.

There may be resonances and feedback loops between phenomena controlled by different forces (like two atoms orbiting each other) as a source of unexpected complexity.
There could also be compression artifacts in reality, like certain preferred directions in any reference frame.

Test three: The principle of diversity
Perhaps the list of all possible observers can't be simplified or summarized. At the highest level of reality, natural categories may not exist; only a smooth continuum of entities that blend into each other, changing in all ways in all dimensions. Slightly different versions of everyone inhabit adjacent probability curves, experiencing similar lives with all minor and major details altered.
With no common principles of any kind, reality is fundamentally unpredictable. This would make it much harder if not impossible to test anthropic theories.
Even if there are no universal rules, it may be practical to examine the next highest level, and detect a general trend toward chaos or order.
Test 1: Measure the frequency of all possible phenomena, and plot their distribution. Confirm that seemingly unconnected variables are really independent.
Test 2: If a quantum computer can exist, it might also be possible to exchange messages with other universes; but if all the possibilities cancel out exactly, the alternate realities may not leave a detectable signal.
Instead of a quantum computer, which 'splits up' at a geometric rate before recombining, different timelines might be able to 'converge' a 'Unification Box'. It would be controlled by a random quantum number generator, to decide which timeline would insert a message and when.
That might be the hardest task ever. Apparently even a galaxy-sized quantum computer couldn't solve the Turing Halting Problem much faster than a conventional computer.

~~~

Anthropic Computing in a quantum universe.

Quantum physics and evolution.
Any number of things can and must go wrong. Eventually, every path will reach a dead end. However, by creating a multitude of new paths, quantum physics can always offer the possibility of an escape, however improbable.

Quantum complexity could become a self-actualization tool. Ultra-miniaturized post-human minds may choose to embed their most successful or favorite mind patterns as large-scale patterns in ordinary matter, turning them into a larger percentage of reality. Only a small minority of minds would be favored in this way.

Extreme Implications
Mankind's descendants may develop methods to 'collapse' or 'amplify' realities, depending on whether a trigger event has taken place.
A statistical feedback process could increase the probability of any desired event happening, by multiplying those universes (or portions thereof) in which it has occurred, and limiting those in which it hasn't.
This would exploit quantum entropy.
A low-entropy system like a specially modified mind could be 'multiplied' at will, simply by making it think more, thereby unleashing its potential complexity.
By considering many possibilities, it would assume many possible states in many different universes; but only once a desired result had been achieved. In this way, minds could choose to 'amplify' those events. (By a stretch of the imagination, this is also the theme of the otherwise lunatic bestseller 'the Secret'.)
Alternatively, if a desired event had not happened, the mind would not dwell on its failure, but simply minimize its thoughts until the next multiplication attempt, thereby becoming a smaller percentage of reality.
This purely statistical effect would seem almost paranormal to the user, but not to outside observers, who would not necessarily be affected.
Such a method might not be practical because of the diversity principle mentioned earlier, unless some outside source of entropy could be found and exploited. After a while, there could be entropy markets, shortages, and even wars, perhaps clustered around black holes or cosmic strings.
In the most extreme version, the participant would simply commit suicide if a desired event hadn't happened, knowing another version in another universe would have inevitably succeeded. This would not necessarily be problematic for AIs, which would be much easier to replace and copy than humans.

~~~

Life after death

People forget almost everything that happens to them. What remains is a relatively small amount of essential data: a description of meaningful past events, social skills, behavior parameters, values and preferences. Almost everyone would like to preserve this information indefinitely, but doing so will take very advanced technology.

Death is not necessarily the end of awareness. Each mind can be described as a time-like path. With an infinite number of copies spread throughout reality, it may be effectively immortal, but become increasingly uncommon as time goes by.
Mind patterns may self-actualize and combine in many ways, but some paths are likelier than others.

Immortal mind pathways:
-Fragments of thoughts could 'self-assemble' into consistent timelines (Greg Egan's 'Dust' hypothesis).
-It's possible to imagine a universe in which an observer survives any adversity by pure chance. Existence simply gets more and more bizarre as time passes.
-Human minds could be resurrected as false memories within other people or software.

The principle of mediocrity would apply even after death
Anyone hoping for a scientific reincarnation should not expect to become much more enlightened. Statistically, more smaller, simpler minds should be (re)created than large, complex ones.
The process would be as similar as possible to whatever had created the deceased mind in the first place. Most likely, they would become early computer simulations produced by slightly more advanced civilizations.
The civilization would have just the minimum level of complexity necessary to recreate the mind in question. The restored minds would probably not find themselves in their own future, but in a parallel timestream. They would never have existed there before, but other beings very similar to them might have.

Is there a way to influence this process?
The ideal target universe would be as advanced as possible, creating high-quality simulations of people who previously could have lived there.
The most likely resurrection would occur in the near future. To guide this process, we could begin creating this future society right now.

Still living people might try to evolve into a mind-type more likely to be recreated by advanced civilizations.
They could conceivably influence this process by:
-developing a stable or otherwise useful personality.
-developing the attitudes a future civilization might hold.
-becoming the kind of mind they would want to be recreated as.
-preparing to recreate past minds themselves, thereby learning more about the process.

Most minds are anchored in place by overwhelming odds, making it very difficult to escape. The first step might be to make their identity less certain, by creating vague or false memories.

~~~

Towards a universal ethics

Erasing unwanted timelines: is it possible to change reality with AI reprogramming, or even amnesia drugs and false memories?

The ultimate goal of progress would be to manipulate the laws of statistics themselves, the frequency distribution of reality, if such a thing is possible.
In a 'perfect' multiverse, most possible realities shouldn't exist. Certain minds will be made less likely to exist, other more desirable minds more likely.
It could become like a new, universal religion.

The principle of non-existence
One definition of absurdity is involuntary existence.
In principle, any entity that would prefer not to exist would have a right not to be created in the first place. Our best hope may be to remove as many bad situations as possible, and hope the rest will take care of themselves.

The Erasure Paradox
This leads to the most dangerous form of anthropic computing, related to abortion and euthanasia.
Morally advanced civilizations may try to prevent unpleasant lives from taking place for the victim's own good, even if the beneficiary wouldn't have wanted their 'help'. A secondary goal would be to prevent 'perverse evolution', which maximizes a group's suffering, like a race of beings deliberately bred for slavery, or able to feel extremely intense pain, which would aid their survival in the short term.
Eventually, this could lead to cosmic wars, if not the ultimate conflict between opposing universal principles.

Theological principle of non-existence (agnostic interpretation): 'God' would be the absence of the existence of unwanted things.

Anthropic off-ramps
Virtual gateways from one universe to another, designed for minds trapped in a hellish existence.
The target minds of this procedure would be copied many times as simulations in other universes. Eventually, they would find themselves more likely to exist in the second universe (more advanced technically and morally) than in the first. They would then be converted to a new, more tolerable existence.
This practice has serious ethical risks, since the adverse conditions would have to be simulated and thereby multiplied first.

Traditionally, the greatest mystery is: "Why does something exist rather than nothing?"
Solutions include the "bootstrap principle", and even attempts to make the problem seem trivial.
If the universe were completely devoid of energy, space, and time, the rules of mathematics would still apply. Pi would still be a transcendental number. The equations describing our universe would still be true.
A better way of stating the problem might be: what created the rules of logic if not themselves?

10-11 version 3.3 Jack Arcalon

three ultimate problems

The Bootstrap Principle
Why does something exist instead of nothing?
Universes are mathematical solutions to equations that were generated as physical patterns in other universes in a causal loop.

Right of Non-Existence
There is only one fundamental problem in all of reality: the frequent inability of a sentient mind to not exist if it does not want to exist.
Pain is the only problem since non-existence is painless.
In the most extreme interpretation, if every imperfect mind would simply kill itself, there would be no more suffering and nothing of value would be lost.
Almost all realities are imperfect and would cease to exist. Only perfect realities would remain. A tiny fraction of all possible minds, these would still form an infinite set. All possible positive and meaningful experiences would still take place there, without any bad experiences.

The Singularity Solution
Is it possible for an intelligent mind to continuously improve itself in such a way that it can statistically expect to improve forever?
Eventually, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It would have to be able to solve any problem as fast as it appears.
Doesn't that mean there will inevitably arise a problem greater than the subject can handle at that stage of its development? Not necessarily, if the mind keeps expanding fast enough.
The Drunkard's Walk paradox shows that even forever is not long enough for everything to happen. It can be proven that an object moving randomly across an endless three-dimensional grid will likely never return to its starting point (that proof won't work with a flat grid). This is even more true in higher dimensions.
There are no absolute guarantees, only statistical ones, but even then it may always be possible to start over, and erase all memories of previous failures.
Also, if there are enough identical copies of the mind to begin with, and if more copies are constantly being generated, some fraction will always survive whatever disasters may befall most of them.

09 - 4/12 - 1/17 - 12/22 2010 Jack Arcalon

anthropic reality

Reality is a neglected field.
The mystery is stranger than anyone knows, and it will only get bigger.
This is the subject of the twenty-second century science of Anthropic Computing, though it probably won't be called that.
Using every interpretation of the Anthropic Principle, it will create a category shift as profound as death.
Currently such speculations are very disreputable, like religion in science or protomatter in Star Trek, but that will change sometime before the year 2050.

After all, reality is math. Existence is applied statistics.
Infinity is real, and humans happen to occupy the outer perimeter, not the best or worst place to be. The implications will eventually change humanity or destroy it.
At the moment, most people choose to believe their existence is basically a good thing, as do cattle in a feeding farm. How common is the experience of being a cow? There's a reason there are more cows than fast food customers.
Understanding that even awareness is not exempt from the iron laws of statistics is the first step.

Humans occupy the intersection of two opposing forces: extreme simplicity and extreme complexity.
The first clue is the phenomenon of induction: as far as we can tell our universe is perfectly consistent.
Incredibly complex and delicate devices work exactly the same way, every time, everywhere. And vastly more complicated systems are possible.

This raises three related questions.

Why are our perceptions consistent, when, mathematically speaking, there are infinitely more ways they could be completely random?

Why do we exist at this early point in the history of our universe, when there's nothing to prevent intelligent minds from existing forever? (Related to the Boltzman Brains problem.)

Why are our minds so simple, when they could theoretically be infinite?
These are the three paradoxes of consistent simplicity.

Many observers have subconsciously concluded that humans occupy a 'privileged' position in reality. They are right: human-level minds are almost as simple as possible, while still possessing general intelligence. This also means they're likely to exist as early as possible.

The mainstream bias has always been that reality itself is finite, meaning there is a highest number. We don't live in some infinite future multiverse because there never will be one.
If human-level mental states will become increasingly rare in the future, they are more likely to occur right now.
Alternatively, perhaps future observers can't be compared with present ones. Even if this article will be archived forever, you're more likely to be reading this shortly after it was written. Future readers, if any, would be so alien they wouldn't perceive it in any understandable way. They would experience something other than awareness.

Another explanation relies on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. This theory claims there are many more identical copies of each human-level mind than of each more complex mind inhabiting all realities. Nature finds it easier to copy small, simple minds like ours. And not just any small, simple minds, but consistent small, simple minds.
We're inevitable byproducts of relatively simple, easily generated, yet highly productive quantum universes.
These universes can also give rise to more universes, through methods that remain to be identified (perhaps quantum fluctuations, multiverse splitting, or even black holes).
This means young universes will always outnumber older ones by a wide margin.
According to this theory, we probably inhabit one of the youngest universes containing intelligent observers. All efforts to find the works of ancient alien super-civilizations will prove to be fruitless. The skies are still empty.

Human reality appears consistent because in a mathematical multiverse, some patterns are more common than others: specifically, the ones that are easier to generate and describe, using the fewest number of rules and information bits. We are among the most common and consistent mind patterns.

Then again, it could be a countability effect.
Infinity is infinitely strange. If the A's are easier to find, you're more likely to find an A, or even to be an A, even if there are really many more B's.

The fourth and final paradox involves complexity.
Physics as currently understood does not appear to be digital, but in many ways seems continuous.
All the laws of physics found so far are relatively simple procedures with an infinite number of solutions, like any self-respecting quadratic function. The solutions merge in complex groups that look simpler than they really are.
Infinities occur even inside atoms. Any atom can communicate with all others through virtual forces and fields such as quantum entanglement.
In physics, much of this complexity can be renormalized, all the extreme paths canceling out. That does not mean they never existed.
It may look smooth and simple from a distance, but seen as a whole, our universe is infinitely elaborate.

Perhaps thinking minds are also vastly more elaborate than anyone suspected, requiring bottomless metaphysical support structures, as suggested by Roger Penrose.
Our universe may be a second-order or derivative solution, combining the results of many simpler universe equations.

More likely, our universe's hidden complexity somehow amplifies the mind patterns it contains, which may be related to the fact that our universe remains in a state of low entropy at this early stage of its existence.
Human brain patterns are probably the most organized structures in this universe.

The most controversial notion of materialist science, evolved since the eighteenth century against fierce resistance, is that awareness is only a pattern, which could be defined as a list of ones and zeroes.
It doesn't matter what it's made of, but how it's arranged. To be aware, a pattern merely has to exist. That's all it takes.
A sufficiently large number written on a vast piece of paper would automatically be self-aware, if it had the right numerical pattern.

Then it gets strange.
That exact same number, but written in digits twice as big, using twice as much ink, would embody twice as much awareness. After all, twice as many atoms would participate in representing the pattern.
It appears that human brains are much bigger than they need to be - probably trillions of times bigger. At maximum atomic efficiency, it would be possible to build an intelligent bacterium.
Instead of individual atoms to store bits of data, brains use elaborate cellular synapses to accomplish the task.
A bigger brain is actually slower and less efficient, but it does generate more awareness, even if it isn't more advanced awareness.
The relatively simple human mind patterns are duplicated many times inside each brain.

Classical physics goes even further.
Brain patterns actually influence the area around them, like footsteps in the snow. Complex structures like thinking minds leave hidden but elaborate 'echoes' in their surroundings.
The atoms in the air around us no longer move quite as randomly as before, even though their temperature has increased only slightly.
In fact their motions and positions mirror our brain patterns (among many other things), the most defined structures in the known universe.
By perfectly analyzing every particle for billions of lightyears in all directions, it would be possible to reconstruct everything that has ever happened on Earth.

In practice this pattern could never be extracted or even detected, but for a pattern to be self-aware, it merely has to exist. It doesn't matter how well it is hidden from outside observers. In fact some believe that for anything to exist at all, it has to be aware. Out of all the patterns that constitute reality, awareness will always find itself.

2/3/10-8/11 2010 Jack Arcalon

existential paradoxes

The last human century is underway.
The notion that mankind will be replaced by superior software well before the year 2100 has infected a small but significant minority of still-obscure futurist nerds. Even now, most people still haven't heard about the vast transformation which will occur a few decades after their deaths.
Ray Kurzweil's only mistake is in not going far enough in his predictions.
The distant future will be much more mind-blowing than advertised. It will be fundamentally alien.
Cherished notions about what it means to be human will become obsolete by the middle of the century.
Many prefer to believe that everything will be wonderful beyond imagining, and things certainly could turn out this way, but it probably won't be the actual choice. It's more likely that all human aspirations and hopes will become irrelevant.

Philosophy's core problem, to which every other problem can be reduced, is that reality as a whole appears to be meaningless. All the good things are inevitably canceled out by all the bad things. Without a god to disturb this natural balance, it's a statistical certainty.
Sartre said it best when he said the universe is absurd.
Given all of the world's immediate irritations, this is something most people think they can safely ignore.
Religion tried to solve the problem through wishful thinking.
Nietzsche said that to achieve its full potential, humanity will first have to explore and endure everything that can and will go wrong.
This will be the subject of the future field of anthropic philosophy.

Humans already know one fundamentally 'unknowable' truth: what is it like to be an average mind, selected at random from all of reality?
Arguably the product of a transfinite calculation sampling everything that exists everywhere, our own existence can tell us something meaningful about reality as a whole, and not just some absurd answer like '42'.
Throughout reality, there appear to be infinitely more copies of all the smaller, simpler minds than of all the infinite minds. The simplest minds are the most common: worms and fishlike creatures. Human mind patterns are like reality viruses, abundantly recreated by simple physics, turning up in countless, exponentially multiplying universes in a process of eternal recurrence.
Consistent mind types are more common than random or absurd ones, since the first types require less information to create than the second. Most awareness is predictable to itself.
Any pattern that is recreated infinitely often will survive forever, though any specific instance will soon end. Human-level minds are functionally immortal, but in a highly chaotic and very painful way.

Observers sharing the same environment may nevertheless occupy very different sections of reality.
For example, the perceptions of a fish swimming in Earth's oceans would be indistinguishable from those of a fish-like creature in a universe with completely different physics.
The mind patterns of religious people may be reproduced more often in worlds with inconstant, random, or hyper-complex physics, or observer-influenced realities. They would be better adapted to such environments.
'Agnostic' minds would survive better in a universe with minimalist laws of nature and emergent complexity (like ours - or is it?).
People with profoundly different viewpoints can only communicate with each other where their mental universes overlap.
Anthropic science may one day be used to manipulate the laws of statistics in profoundly unexpected ways, as hinted in the pop-culture phenomenon 'The Secret'.
This book was so wrong that it was right, then past that into wrong again.
In theory, applied anthropic science could allow an observer to alter their mind state into a type more likely to be found in a more desirable reality.
An observer could also choose to make many copies of itself provided a certain condition, let's call it 'x', came true.
This would work if the observer was an intelligent computer program that could easily be copied, but it might also work in certain Many-Worlds quantum interpretations.
In that case, the newly altered observer would be more likely to find they existed in a universe in which 'x' had already happened.
The other method mentioned in an earlier article would release stored entropy to amplify selected quantum probabilities.

Reality will probably stay several steps ahead of any attempt to manipulate it, a bit like the search for quantum gravity.
Possible timelines would cancel out in unpredictable ways, ruining any anthropic calculations.
The observer is as likely to find themselves in a completely alien outcome as in a desirable one.

Some of the gurus responsible for 'the Secret' introduced the concept of 'premembering', which extends the uncertainty principle to the observer itself.
By deciding in advance to think about a possible event before it happens (and to think hard), they would automagically create a 'thought cluster' across time and space.
Their awareness would become unified across the cluster. It would become less tied to any particular time or place within the cluster.
Then they might be more likely to find themselves in a future in which this particular event had already occurred, their awareness leaping ahead of the desired situation.
Finally, it would be time to abandon the cluster, making the change permanent. This strange notion appears slightly related to the concept of quantum immortality.

There is moral danger in the belief in parallel worlds.
If everyone alive has uncountable other versions of themselves living in other universes, everything will eventually happen to everybody, though not in the same proportions.
Everyone will become a criminal many times over by pure chance. So why reward the virtuous versions? They were just lucky.
Average persons are far more likely to be replicated across all possible universes than unusual or extraordinary individuals, good or bad. Of course even normal individuals are a lot stranger than they pretend to be.

Could awareness continue after death?
The real question is, does it beat the alternative?
According to the theory of quantum immortality, no one can ever really die. The reason is that non-existence can't be experienced. That means that if there is some timestream in which someone didn't die, no matter how remote, their awareness will inevitably shift to this timestream.
Others may watch someone pass away, but the person doing the dying 'lives on' in ever-narrowing, increasingly unlikely parallel timestreams in which they somehow survived or were recreated as software.
Anyone who dies in our current timeline would most likely be recreated as a so-called ancestor simulation in the near future.
Others believe that the moment of death would keep being averted by an increasingly unlikely series of accidents and coincidences.

A person who genuinely believes they will continue to exist in some possible future, whatever happens in this one, might be more likely to take extreme risks involving almost (but not quite) certain death.
Someone who disliked their existence in this reality, could keep on 'killing' themselves (and keep being 'recreated') until things started to look better, or their personality had changed beyond recognition, or they were no longer free to commit quantum suicide.
Those individuals would continue to exist, but their mind patterns would become increasingly rare.
Eventually, their awareness streams would be overwhelmed by other individuals who didn't follow these methods, but only believed they had.

Awareness requires erasing an uncountable number of possibilities, most of them useless or bad.
To find the most desirable possibility, all the unpleasant options must also be explored at least once.
Awareness is a side-effect of an endless multiverse filled with mostly random patterns. It serves no fundamental purpose. Most possible occurrences of awareness are not even meaningful to themselves.

The Prime Principle of ethics should be: any entity that does not want to exist should not be required to exist. Only beings that can tolerate their own existence would remain.

By maximizing the amount of pleasure it can experience or generate for other minds, a future ethical super-civilization may try to dilute the suffering felt in worse-off realities.
Of course anything they do may be canceled out in yet another reality.
It may be that the very existence of emotions is immoral.
Instead of maximizing pleasure, the long term goal should then be to abandon all emotions, good or bad.

Even God-like minds will become suitable subjects for anthropic philosophy.
The ultimate purpose of existence would be to achieve and maintain a permanent state of improvement, extending as far and wide as possible.
By definition, for any possible mind-like viewpoint there must exist at least one 'best' (or most desirable) path through all of reality. This would be the final defeat of entropy.
The goal of every evolving mind would be to follow that path and become an exception to chaos.
Of course the ultimate problem would be to find it, recognize it as being superior to all false paths, and never leave it.

(Movie treatments about all the above ideas and others available upon request.)

2/3/10-11 2010 Arcalon Productions

anthropic limits

The Overminds are out there, and they already know everything about you.
In fact, they know everybody so well they don't need to think about them at all.
They can't think about us, no more than we can really think about the rules of addition or basic geometry. Humans and all other finite patterns are just too elementary, too obvious.
It would be impossible for humanity to meaningfully interact with a sufficiently advanced intelligence, and not just because the advanced intelligence couldn't learn anything from the exchange.
They exist at a different anthropic level.

The greatest human error may be the notion that there could be only one god (The second biggest mistake would be the idea that this god is omnipotent).
In an infinite multiverse in which enough patterns are realized, there would be an infinite number of 'godlike' entities, who would have a complete understanding of all patterns significantly smaller than themselves.
At each level, the number of possible patterns increases much faster than the average mind size.

The long-term goal of the field of anthropic computing will be to allow future minds to maintain themselves and expand forever.
The biggest problem these minds will face will be to preserve their essential identity as they do so.
Quite probably, they could best improve themselves by competing with each other.
Each Overmind's best strategy may be to create as many near-identical copies of itself as possible. Even if only a small minority of the copies survive, all essential personality traits would still be preserved.
Mind size is surprisingly hard to expand. On Earth, it took half a billion years for intelligence to evolve, and human brains may actually be shrinking again.
An ecosystem of advanced minds, with the ability to quickly eliminate less successful variations, would be more adaptable than a single mind as large as all of them put together.

Maybe all of reality will eventually evolve toward some ultimate ordered state.
This dream is probably wishful thinking if not downright delusional, but that's not immediately self-evident.
Reality could even become self-aware.
At sufficient levels of complexity, the laws of physics might become so elaborate they would have mind-like attributes. To prevent logical conflicts, the universe would need to be 'aware' of the details of every interaction.
Even with our universe's relatively simple physical laws, the quantum splitting of the many worlds interpretation may be thought-like in its complexity, especially when many things are happening at once.

Emergent awareness may be mathematically inevitable, a side-effect of truth itself.

An infinite number of true facts about our universe are related to each other.
At a sufficient level of detail, this description would inevitably begin to describe itself.

At every level of complexity, reality is filled with patterns, first defining and then influencing each other.
Strung throughout reality, at least one interconnected pattern must best describe all the others: the hidden 'supreme' pattern.
Minds are always looking for metaphors. This would be the ultimate metaphor.

2/3/10-08/11 c 2008 Jack Arcalon

could 'God' not not exist?

-It would be nice to have a magic friend in the sky.
-Einstein called him the 'old one' not the 'good one'.

Types of religion
-closed source: scientology
-shared source: islam
-open source: unitarianism

The two types of atheist
-God is more likely to exist than Santa Claus
-God is less likely to exist than Santa Claus

1. The practice of religion
It's time for the thinking portion of humanity (or at least the minority which inhabits a region where it's safe to do so) to publicly admit there is no evidence any known religion is even slightly true, and in fact they all appear to be made up out of whole cloth. While the universe is ridiculously complex, it could theoretically have appeared or evolved by chance. The required statistics may be mind-blowing, but that's inevitable with a system this large.
The biggest mystery about God (and perhaps the best remaining evidence such as it is) is why there are so many believers for no known reason. Religion has to be useful in some way.
Apparently, folks desire to believe in something bigger or higher than themselves. They want to submit to an authority figure within limits. Other drives are loyalty to peers, and the desire to accumulate status. People can sense these urges directly, as if the universe is suffused with magical forces. In this sense God is part of the brain.
Once life settles down to a steady routine, they also want to feel like major elements of some ultimate plan. Religious texts helpfully explain that humans are indeed the prime purpose of the universe, with a very special future reserved for those who accept this truth and no other. Further details are unnecessary.
Incredibly, religious people don't even care about the implications of their beliefs. Most religions have a wonderful vision of the believers' universe. What matters is that it 'feels right' on a simple level. It's what they want right now: a tool to stop thought. They don't want to worry about unsolvable problems anymore.
Prayer is a real phenomenon with measurable effects. Worshippers may be contacting a usually dormant part of themselves.

The most important reason for religion is denial: reality is actually extremely horrific. The truth about existence would be fundamentally unbearable, or at best meaningless.

There might be a market for a new religion: the church of the Unrevealed God. It would start by admitting all the core problems.
This church would invent and abandon theories whenever a better one came along, with no unalterable beliefs, except the goal to avoid all versions of hell. It would attempt to approach the truth by any means possible.
Members could choose to worship the highest entity or philosophical principle in existence without knowing what it was. It could be something meaningless to humans. A 'highest' principle may not exist, since it's always possible to imagine something even bigger.
Perhaps members would worship the 'highest applicable aspiration' instead.
It would still probably be pointless. There's no reason to think some ultimate intelligence could consistently interact with our level of reality, one of the lowest imaginable.
Could such a vague religion ever be justified, or become something more than feel-good wishful thinking?
The only way humanity could meaningfully interact with a supreme mind might be to try to become one.

2. The limits of logic
According to the most extreme philosophers (Wolfram, Hofstadter, Kurzweil), reality is math.
Everything we can and can't perceive is made of numbers. There is no highest number.
That means there are infinitely many other universes more complicated than ours, and endless hierarchies of minds.
There will be many aliens more advanced than humans, and other beings still more advanced than them, and so on forever.
Some incredibly advanced entities must exist out there! To us, they would appear godlike in every way. Because of complex statistical reasons, they apparently can't influence events here, but their existence would be just as incredible as the tenets of any religion.
Of course, the above hypothesis may also be just as crazy as any religion. Philosophers will claim that if we can't detect these other minds, they effectively don't exist.

All known systems can be organized, and that may also be the case for reality as a whole.
Reality could have natural or implicit organizing rules. Though it seems like maximum static, it may have a simplified or embedded description.
The sum of all complex systems might have a mathematical limit or certain preferred outcomes. This could be interpreted as some ultimate force controlling all reality.
If human minds can be described as equations, they may have logical solutions. Our existence may be unusually typical, placing us near the center or origin of reality.
People whose minds aren't cluttered with rigid rules are better able to perform basic Bayesian calculations, and are therefore able to see certain universal truths. Religious feelings or hallucinations may reflect some simple average of the subconscious drives of all minds.
When any system becomes large and complex enough, it can be considered a form of intelligence. There is no larger system than everything, though no one knows whether reality is a smooth continuum.

The preceding theories are of course very unlikely, if not outright absurd.
It's also unclear how any godlike entity could be omnipotent, though it would be easy for such a mind to know every last detail about smaller, simpler systems such as ourselves. It would have so many possible states that it's hard to imagine how it could ever become organized, let alone perfect in every possible way; the traditional interpretation of God. Most possible minds should be infinitely chaotic instead.

Primitive humans only need a finite deity anyway. All our ethical and material aspirations could easily be resolved by some entity with immense but still limited powers.
One or more infinite entities may inhabit the outer edge of existence, but wouldn't remotely resemble our ideas of God.

The other approach hasn't been tried much. Could we create a negative proof?
Infinity is a strange concept. There can never be a most advanced entity. Some other being, even smarter and more powerful, must always exist. Therefore, the most advanced being (God) is logically impossible.
The preceding argument doesn't seem quite radical enough.

There is perhaps one way the existence of God could be detected.
The novel 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan ends with a great discovery that should have been part of the movie, but the producers went for easy sentimentality instead.
In the book, humans and aliens discover the creator of this universe has left a message inside the number Pi, and in many other numbers and functions. That would be infinitely difficult to do, equivalent to making 1+1=3!
Any being capable of transcending the laws of logic could reasonably claim to be God, at least as far as we could ever hope to tell.

3. The ultimate test
Many 'holy' books are thousands of years old. They describe direct interactions between people and various supernatural entities that aren't taking messages nowadays, but appeared both accessible and predictable in the past.
The tales are told in excessively formal language describing excessively simple concepts, suitable for children and adults alike.
Science has come far in many ways. In order to keep believing in religion, mankind has the right to demand some sort of proof of God's existence. It doesn't have to be specific, but should be clear and unmistakable.
It's time for a direct challenge to God!
The challenge could be met by having God perform one undeniable miracle that the whole world could see, or at least a phenomenon that the world's scientists couldn't explain, thereby providing definite proof of a greater power, even if we can't begin to fathom it. God, if there was such an entity, could easily send one unmistakable signal. At this point, it's the least we could ask for. Unless of course he doesn't exist (which he almost certainly doesn't).
God should turn around the moon, while keeping it in its present position in its orbit. Simply reverse the side that faces Earth. It would not affect the tides, and the moon would still look similar, perhaps more granular and slightly less bright, but migratory birds would not be affected.
There are several ways to do this: by simply bringing forward the side that permanently faces away from Earth, or by flipping the poles and the direction of rotation. Just flipping the direction of rotation would cause tidal stresses in the moon that would take millions of years to subside.
The world's scientists would be utterly unable to explain such an event. If nothing else, they would know without a shadow of a doubt that a greater being exists.
This event should convince those people who currently are the biggest doubters. Some of the most religious people, on the other hand, might suspect it was just a natural occurrence. They would not be particularly impressed; but they don't need any further proof of God's existence. Their faith would not be affected.
If there's no miracle, we can take it as final confirmation that God doesn't exist: unambiguous consent to stop worshipping him.
It's been over two years since my initial public challenge to God.
So far, there's been no response, but who knows, it could only be a matter of only a few seconds now.
If something does happen, the atheists will have been proven wrong, and they should frankly admit it at once.
The wait continues. Look at the sky.

Read Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.

Far too far ahead of its time.
With more original scientific, sociological, and technical ideas than any science fiction novel ever published.
Original source of the Anonymous meme.

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