Re: Many-Worlds Interpretation

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:49:28 -0600

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> I can't imagine a more complete and precise answer to
> the question "for what reason...?" than "none". The
> fact that you don't like the answer is /your/ problem,
> not the universe's.

And once again, Crocker lands in my (as-yet-unpublished) Quotes file.

Even so, I do have a minor quibble. Except for state-vector reduction, there are no truly non-causal events in physics, and even that exception is debatable. I would say that there are events which have no *high-level* reason.

If you ask, "Why was I born under the sign of Sagittarius in the constellation of Andromeda?", the only answer is "The Universe" - all the atoms acting under the laws of physics to produce the final event. There is no high-level explanation, or at least no high-level explanation that uses the same simplifying descriptors as the high-level question.

-- 
        sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
         http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
          http://pobox.com/~sentience/singul_arity.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
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