chaosmosis comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong
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Yes, exactly.
The cosmological horizon is defined in terms of a distance from a given observer. It is the distance beyond which you cannot observe anything, due to the expansion of the universe.
If you run the universe backwards, flipping all charges (positive to negative and vice versa) and parity (like a mirror image of the universe, I think) then the laws of physics, as we know them, remain unchanged at the atomic level. (Don't ask about all those eggs suddenly unscrambling in this reversed universe).
This is one of the foundational assumptions of relativity - that there is no absolute rest frame. That a set of coordinates using any one non-accelerating object as the origin is just as useful as the set of coordinates using any other non-accelerating object as the origin; you can use the same equations to describe the universe, regardless of the velocity of the origin. (Note that the acceleration of the origin still has an effect). For argument in support of this point, I recommend "On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" by A. Einstein (it's more readable than most people think).
Quite. I hope this helps.
My confusion was a result of me not recognizing that the Cosmological Horizon would be different if two people existed in different locations. It was also a result of taking a post-warp perspective instead of one which would apply equally well both post and pre warp, which caused me to misunderstand the way that some of those arguments were meant to function.
I don't think the point about absolute coordinates was relevant, or else I still might be misunderstanding it. The position I'm trying to defend doesn't say that "nothing exists outside of me", it takes a more agnostic approach and says that I shouldn't bother trying to decide whether things exist outside of me or whether or not I'm justified in assuming that everything there is the same as here. I don't say that the universe actually has a giant sphere built into it, centered on me; I just contend that I don't know anything about things that I'll never interact with and that I'm not much interested in them.
Thank you very much, you definitely helped.