3 ms·
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 examp
by upwardbound 3y ago
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 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.
- jojobas 3y agoScience fiction is great and all, but I'd rate this probability more like the inverse of stupid large numbers brought to us by Knuth's up-arrow notation.
- upwardbound 3y agoCould be! Your estimate is as valid as mine. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem ), philosophy of knowledge (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle ), and theology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds ). Another similar topic about which we must reason without having yet made any applicable observations is the question of whether our universe is a simulation. If it is, then it is possible that a sufficiently well-constructed prayer (message to the system administrators) could have causal effects.
- jojobas 3y agoSorry, I can't help but perceive this as intellectual cowardice. "There has to be something that'll make our collective life not as finite and pointless as the evidence we have suggests!".