I think the cardinality should be Beth(0) or Beth(1) since finite beings should have finite descriptions, and additionally finite beings can have at most Beth(1)(if we allow immortality) distinct sequences of thoughts, actions, and observations, given that they can only think, observe, act, in a finite number of ways in finite time, so if you quotient by identical experiences and behaviors you get Beth(0) or Beth(1)(you might think we can e.g. observe a continuum amount of stuff in our visual field but this is an illusion, the resolution is bounded). The Bekenstein bound also implies physically limited beings in our universe have a finite description length.
There could be a God-less universe with Beth 2 people, but I don’t know how that would work
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine such a universe, e.g. consider all possible physical theories in some formal language and all possible initial conditions of such theories. This might be less simple to state than “imagine an infinitely perfect being” but it’s also much less ambiguous, so it’s hard to judge which is actually less simple.
SIA gives reason to think you should assign a uniform prior across possible people
My perspective on these matters is influenced a lot by UDASSA, which recovers a lot of the nice behaviors of SIA at the cost of non-uniform priors. I don’t actually think UDASSA is likely a correct description of reality, but it gives a coherent pictures of what an atheistic multiverse containing a great many possible people could look like.
Well, UDASSA is false https://joecarlsmith.com/2021/11/28/anthropics-and-the-universal-distribution. As I argue elsewhere, any view other than SIA implies the doomsday argument. The number of possible beings isn’t equal to the number of “physically limited beings in our universe,” and there are different arrangements for the continuum points.
Did you notice that I linked the very same article that you replied with? :P I’m aware of the issues with UDASSA, I just think it provides a clear example of an imaginable atheistic multiverse containing a great many possible people.
It may be imaginable, but if it’s false, who cares. Like, suppose I argue, that fundamental reality has to meet constraint X and view Y is the only plausible view that does so. Listing off a bunch of random ones that meet constraint X but are false doesn’t help you .
It’s a counterexample to a single step of reasoning(large multiverse of people --> God), it doesn’t have to be globally a valid theory of reality. And clearly the existence of an imaginable multiverse satisfying a certain property makes it more plausible that our actual multiverse might satisfy the same property. (As an analogy, consider math, where you might want an object satisfying properties A and B. Constructing an object with property A makes it more plausible that you might eventually construct one with both properties)
I think the cardinality should be Beth(0) or Beth(1) since finite beings should have finite descriptions, and additionally finite beings can have at most Beth(1)(if we allow immortality) distinct sequences of thoughts, actions, and observations, given that they can only think, observe, act, in a finite number of ways in finite time, so if you quotient by identical experiences and behaviors you get Beth(0) or Beth(1)(you might think we can e.g. observe a continuum amount of stuff in our visual field but this is an illusion, the resolution is bounded). The Bekenstein bound also implies physically limited beings in our universe have a finite description length.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine such a universe, e.g. consider all possible physical theories in some formal language and all possible initial conditions of such theories. This might be less simple to state than “imagine an infinitely perfect being” but it’s also much less ambiguous, so it’s hard to judge which is actually less simple.
My perspective on these matters is influenced a lot by UDASSA, which recovers a lot of the nice behaviors of SIA at the cost of non-uniform priors. I don’t actually think UDASSA is likely a correct description of reality, but it gives a coherent pictures of what an atheistic multiverse containing a great many possible people could look like.
Well, UDASSA is false https://joecarlsmith.com/2021/11/28/anthropics-and-the-universal-distribution. As I argue elsewhere, any view other than SIA implies the doomsday argument. The number of possible beings isn’t equal to the number of “physically limited beings in our universe,” and there are different arrangements for the continuum points.
Did you notice that I linked the very same article that you replied with? :P I’m aware of the issues with UDASSA, I just think it provides a clear example of an imaginable atheistic multiverse containing a great many possible people.
It may be imaginable, but if it’s false, who cares. Like, suppose I argue, that fundamental reality has to meet constraint X and view Y is the only plausible view that does so. Listing off a bunch of random ones that meet constraint X but are false doesn’t help you .
It’s a counterexample to a single step of reasoning(large multiverse of people --> God), it doesn’t have to be globally a valid theory of reality. And clearly the existence of an imaginable multiverse satisfying a certain property makes it more plausible that our actual multiverse might satisfy the same property. (As an analogy, consider math, where you might want an object satisfying properties A and B. Constructing an object with property A makes it more plausible that you might eventually construct one with both properties)