As an “external observer”, we still have a standpoint, e.g. getting visual input from some camera. (This is apparent in movies)
We can look at ourselves from the outside, e.g. from the perspective of a camera placed in a room. However, this is a particular outside (that can be placed relative to us). If the outside could not be placed relative to us, we could not know anything about how we would appear to that outside. It would be kind of like getting lost in a random parallel universe and seeing phenomena totally unrelated to ourselves, if this thought experiment is even conceivable (I’m not convinced it is).
Our ability to imagine data about us being received by some perspective, depends on placing that perspective relative to our own.
Maybe this will help. Consider the characters in a video game. We are an external observer as we can see what is happening in the game, but they can’t see us. The point isn’t that we can see ourselves from the outside, but that we can imagine what it would be like to be seen from the outside.
“Our ability to imagine data about us being received by some perspective, depends on placing that perspective relative to our own”—Yes, there are limits to what we can say about the outside perspective as we can’t reference it directly. We can only discuss it by analogy.
That doesn’t at all contradict what I said. The camera in a video game such as Super Mario Bros is placed at particular space-time coordinates, and for the viewer to see Mario, the camera has to be close to Mario, and in fact the game logic makes sure the camera does not drift from Mario’s position. It isn’t a view from nowhere, it’s a view from somewhere pretty close to Mario’s locality.
The camera Mario gets when (hypothetically) he imagines himself from outside is different than Luigi’s if they are at significantly different locations (hence, multi player games such as Maro Kart have multiple screens even in a third-person view).
The outside perspective is outside but it is not observer-independent.
I guess I should have been more precise. Imagine a game where we can see all the information, but some characters inside only have access to limited info.
“The outside perspective is outside but it is not observer-independent”
Sure, but it’s not subject to the world-internal observer effects
The simulator’s perspective is outside “our universe” but not outside the totality; there are multiple possible simulable universes, like there are different video games. Mario’s (hypothetical) notion of “a view outside this world” refers to a view of the world of Super Mario Bros, and this differs depending on the video game character. Additionally, the video game players / simulators live in their own world, which is part of the totality.
Any given perspective can imagine zooming out by a given “distance” (in terms of space, time, simulation level, multiversal branch, perhaps others). This yields a sequence of views, each of which is dependent on the initial perspective. Perhaps the “view from nowhere” may be considered as the limit of this process. I am not convinced this limit may be coherently reified as a referenceable thing, however. In addition, such a view would be infinitely far from our own, and it would take an infinite time to zoom in from there to our actual here-and-now location.
As an “external observer”, we still have a standpoint, e.g. getting visual input from some camera. (This is apparent in movies)
We can look at ourselves from the outside, e.g. from the perspective of a camera placed in a room. However, this is a particular outside (that can be placed relative to us). If the outside could not be placed relative to us, we could not know anything about how we would appear to that outside. It would be kind of like getting lost in a random parallel universe and seeing phenomena totally unrelated to ourselves, if this thought experiment is even conceivable (I’m not convinced it is).
Our ability to imagine data about us being received by some perspective, depends on placing that perspective relative to our own.
Maybe this will help. Consider the characters in a video game. We are an external observer as we can see what is happening in the game, but they can’t see us. The point isn’t that we can see ourselves from the outside, but that we can imagine what it would be like to be seen from the outside.
“Our ability to imagine data about us being received by some perspective, depends on placing that perspective relative to our own”—Yes, there are limits to what we can say about the outside perspective as we can’t reference it directly. We can only discuss it by analogy.
That doesn’t at all contradict what I said. The camera in a video game such as Super Mario Bros is placed at particular space-time coordinates, and for the viewer to see Mario, the camera has to be close to Mario, and in fact the game logic makes sure the camera does not drift from Mario’s position. It isn’t a view from nowhere, it’s a view from somewhere pretty close to Mario’s locality.
The camera Mario gets when (hypothetically) he imagines himself from outside is different than Luigi’s if they are at significantly different locations (hence, multi player games such as Maro Kart have multiple screens even in a third-person view).
The outside perspective is outside but it is not observer-independent.
I guess I should have been more precise. Imagine a game where we can see all the information, but some characters inside only have access to limited info.
“The outside perspective is outside but it is not observer-independent”
Sure, but it’s not subject to the world-internal observer effects
See this thread on Game of Life.
The simulator’s perspective is outside “our universe” but not outside the totality; there are multiple possible simulable universes, like there are different video games. Mario’s (hypothetical) notion of “a view outside this world” refers to a view of the world of Super Mario Bros, and this differs depending on the video game character. Additionally, the video game players / simulators live in their own world, which is part of the totality.
Any given perspective can imagine zooming out by a given “distance” (in terms of space, time, simulation level, multiversal branch, perhaps others). This yields a sequence of views, each of which is dependent on the initial perspective. Perhaps the “view from nowhere” may be considered as the limit of this process. I am not convinced this limit may be coherently reified as a referenceable thing, however. In addition, such a view would be infinitely far from our own, and it would take an infinite time to zoom in from there to our actual here-and-now location.