If both states are possible, why not just say “my past contains ambiguity?”
Ambiguity it is, but we usually want to know the probabilities. If I tell you that whether you win or not win a lottery tomorrow is “ambiguous”, you would not be satisfied with such answer, and you would ask how much likely it is to win. And this question somehow makes sense even if the lottery is decided by a quantum event, so you know that each future happens in some Everett branch.
Similarly, in addition to knowing that the past is ambiguous, we should ask how likely are the individual pasts. In our universe you would want to know how the pasts P1 and P2 are likely to become NOW. The Conway’s Game of Life does not branch time-forward, so if you have two valid pasts, their probabilities of becoming NOW are 100% each.
But that is only a part of the equation. The other part are the prior probabilities of P1 and P2. Even if both P1 and P2 deterministically evolve to NOW, their prior probabilities influence how likely did NOW really evolve from each of them.
I am not sure what would be the equivalent of Solomonoff induction for the Conway’s Game of Life. Starting with a finite number of “on” cells, where each additional “on” cell decreases the prior probability of the configuration? Starting with an infinite plane where each cell has a 50% probability to be “on”? Or an infinite plane with each cell having a p probability of being “on”, where p has the property that after one step in such plane, the average ratio of “on” cells remain the same (the p being kind-of-eigenvalue of the rules)?
But the general idea is that if P1 is somehow “generally more likely to happen” than P2, we should consider P1 to be more likely the past of NOW than P2, even if both P1 and P2 deterministically evolve to NOW.
Ambiguity it is, but we usually want to know the probabilities. If I tell you that whether you win or not win a lottery tomorrow is “ambiguous”, you would not be satisfied with such answer, and you would ask how much likely it is to win. And this question somehow makes sense even if the lottery is decided by a quantum event, so you know that each future happens in some Everett branch.
Similarly, in addition to knowing that the past is ambiguous, we should ask how likely are the individual pasts. In our universe you would want to know how the pasts P1 and P2 are likely to become NOW. The Conway’s Game of Life does not branch time-forward, so if you have two valid pasts, their probabilities of becoming NOW are 100% each.
But that is only a part of the equation. The other part are the prior probabilities of P1 and P2. Even if both P1 and P2 deterministically evolve to NOW, their prior probabilities influence how likely did NOW really evolve from each of them.
I am not sure what would be the equivalent of Solomonoff induction for the Conway’s Game of Life. Starting with a finite number of “on” cells, where each additional “on” cell decreases the prior probability of the configuration? Starting with an infinite plane where each cell has a 50% probability to be “on”? Or an infinite plane with each cell having a p probability of being “on”, where p has the property that after one step in such plane, the average ratio of “on” cells remain the same (the p being kind-of-eigenvalue of the rules)?
But the general idea is that if P1 is somehow “generally more likely to happen” than P2, we should consider P1 to be more likely the past of NOW than P2, even if both P1 and P2 deterministically evolve to NOW.