Alejandro1 comments on Natural Laws Are Descriptions, not Rules - Less Wrong

32 Post author: pragmatist 08 August 2012 04:27AM

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Comment author: Alejandro1 13 August 2012 03:12:22AM 1 point [-]

Yes, your second paragraph gets at what I was thinking (and you are right that it is not exactly the Boltzmann Brain problem). But I don't think it is the same as the general problem of induction, either.

On your model, if I understand correctly, there are microscopic, time symmetric laws that hold everywhere. (That they hold everywhere and not just on our experience we take for granted--we are not allowing Humean worries about induction while doing physics, and that's fine.) But on top of that, there is a macroscopic law that we observe, the Second Law, and you are proposing (I think--maybe I misunderstand you) that its explanation lies in that we are agents and observers, and that the immediate environment of a system that is an agent and observer must exhibit this kind of time asymmetry. But then, we should not expect this macroscopic regularity to hold beyond our immediate environment. I think this is ordinary scientific reasoning, not Humean skepticism.

Comment author: pragmatist 14 August 2012 02:00:26AM 1 point [-]

Do you have a similar concern about Tegmark's anthropic argument for the microscopic laws? It only establishes that we must be in a universe where our immediate environment follows those laws, not that those laws hold everywhere in the universe.

Comment author: Alejandro1 15 August 2012 05:54:27AM 1 point [-]

I am not really familiar with the details of Tegmark's proposal. If your two-sentece summary is accurate, then yes, I would have concerns.

Comment author: pragmatist 15 August 2012 10:22:59PM *  0 points [-]

Hmmm... I'm not yet sure how bothered I should be about your worry. Possibly a lot. I'll have to think about it.