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prase comments on Irrationality Game II - Less Wrong Discussion

13 [deleted] 03 July 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: prase 05 July 2012 01:19:11PM 1 point [-]

Still, what you see in one basis is not independent on what you see in another one, and I expect elegant mapping between the bases. There is difference between

  • "there exist a basis in the Hilbert space in which some vaguely interesting phenomena could be observed, if we were able to perceive the associated operator the same way as we perceive position"

and

  • "there exist simple functions of observables such as momentum, particle number or field intensities defining observables which, if we could perceive them directly, would show us a world with life and civilisations and evolution"

My 15% belief is closer to the second version.

Comment author: endoself 06 July 2012 01:41:03AM 2 points [-]

Okay, that's less likely. I'd still give it higher than 15% though. The holographic principle is very suggestive of this, for instance.

It's hard to know exactly what would count in order to make an estimate, since we don't yet know the actual laws of physics. It's obvious that "position observables, but farther away" would encode the regular type of alien, but the boundary between regular aliens and weird quantum aliens could easily blur as we learn more physics.

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