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billswift comments on Open Thread: September 2009 - Less Wrong
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Sorry, but that is a reification of "physical laws"; physical laws aren't a thing, they are simply our description of "how things work".
Stuff with which you interact is part of the rules of the game applied to you. The more generally applicable of these rules you call "physical laws". Those are the rules that can't be helped. If you are in the domain of a singleton, then its preference is one of the inescapable laws.
You can analyze the raw content of the laws applied to you, just as you can analyze sensory input, and see patterns such as individual agents making decisions that affect your condition. Maybe such patterns are there, maybe they are not, but the judgment of what to do under the given rules must depend on what exactly those patterns are, not just a fact of "their existence".
That's interesting: Vladimir_Nesov chastised me for exactly the same thing a month ago. While I probably do reify physical laws, I'm sure he was just applying a metaphor.
My point in both cases is more that the concept of "existence" is very low on meaningfulness, that you shouldn't act on mere "existence" of "nonexistence" of something, you must instead understand what that something is.