(2) I hope you’ll dig into this more in those future posts, because I think it is extremely non-obvious.
(3) Yes, I will concede that example, you’re right. For any observer in any possible world, there are an arbitrarily large number of larger universes within which it could be a perfect simulation, and these would be indistinguishable from the inside. This is a thing we cannot know, and the choice to then act as if those unknowable things don’t exist is an additional choice. I definitely did not think this was the kind of metaphysical context you were pointing towards, considering that your post is ultimately about how non-physicalist metaphysical assumptions should alter our expectations regarding possible future events in our world. I hope in future posts you’ll explain (a) why you think this kind of class of indistinguishable-in-principle worlds is interesting and useful to think about, and (b) how it relates to the topic of this post.
(4) Yes, I did read it, and didn’t find anything novel in it, though it was a good summary of a common viewpoint. I am aware you are not the originator of this viewpoint. I am also aware that QM (or more specifically, a set of beliefs about QM) has, indeed, had profound implications on metaphysical and philosophical discourse. This is because the pioneers of QM were confused about what they were learning; how could they not be? That’s what being a pioneer is. And they taught generations of physicists in ways that perpetuated that confusion without holding back technical progress in experimental physics. But the theorists have continued to make progress, and physics does know that e.g. none of this requires any kind of conscious observers or retrocausality or superluminal signal transmission. That’s a confusion that has persisted, even among many physicists (or at least, among their readily available analogies for describing things colloquially), not a part of the physics itself.
(5) I look forward to it.
(2) I hope you’ll dig into this more in those future posts, because I think it is extremely non-obvious.
(3) Yes, I will concede that example, you’re right. For any observer in any possible world, there are an arbitrarily large number of larger universes within which it could be a perfect simulation, and these would be indistinguishable from the inside. This is a thing we cannot know, and the choice to then act as if those unknowable things don’t exist is an additional choice. I definitely did not think this was the kind of metaphysical context you were pointing towards, considering that your post is ultimately about how non-physicalist metaphysical assumptions should alter our expectations regarding possible future events in our world. I hope in future posts you’ll explain (a) why you think this kind of class of indistinguishable-in-principle worlds is interesting and useful to think about, and (b) how it relates to the topic of this post.
(4) Yes, I did read it, and didn’t find anything novel in it, though it was a good summary of a common viewpoint. I am aware you are not the originator of this viewpoint. I am also aware that QM (or more specifically, a set of beliefs about QM) has, indeed, had profound implications on metaphysical and philosophical discourse. This is because the pioneers of QM were confused about what they were learning; how could they not be? That’s what being a pioneer is. And they taught generations of physicists in ways that perpetuated that confusion without holding back technical progress in experimental physics. But the theorists have continued to make progress, and physics does know that e.g. none of this requires any kind of conscious observers or retrocausality or superluminal signal transmission. That’s a confusion that has persisted, even among many physicists (or at least, among their readily available analogies for describing things colloquially), not a part of the physics itself.