4 ms·
>Maybe, as the physicist Yakir Aharonov has advocated, our universe has not only a special, low-entropy initial state at the Big Bang, but also a "postselected
by nemo1618 9y ago
>Maybe, as the physicist Yakir Aharonov has advocated, our universe has not only a special, low-entropy initial state at the Big Bang, but also a "postselected final state," toward which the outcomes of quantum measurements get mysteriously "pulled"
This sounds a lot like Terence McKenna's "Transcendental Object at the End of Time".
But on the whole... wow, you ever get so upset about a presidential election that you invent a new theory of metaphysics?
- mileszim 9y agoThe remark on the Aharonov post-selection is weird coming from Aaronson's usual hard adherence to known physics - postselection is relevant in the quantum world only. For Aaronson to twist it into an argument of cosmology seems markedly out of character.
- yakult 9y agoIt is, of course, a joke. He's doing a reductio ad absurdem at the end of a tightly argued post about information theory. It's the advantage of doing a blog post rather than a paper, I suppose.
- mileszim 9y agoGood point, I liked the work he's criticizing so I think I'm currently primed to take the post too seriously