How do the initial simple conditions relate to the branching? Our universe seems to have had simple initial conditions but there’s still been a lot of random branching, right? That is, the universe from our perspective is just one branch of a quantum state evolving simply from simple conditions, so you need O(#branching events) bits to describe it. Incidentally this undermines Eliezer’s argument for MWI based on Solomonoff induction, though MWI is probably still true
[EDITED: Oh, from one of your other comments I see that you aren’t saying the shortest program involves beginning at the start of the universe. That makes sense]
True—which would lead a solomonoff inductor to look harder for theories that are simple even including initial conditions :)
How do the initial simple conditions relate to the branching? Our universe seems to have had simple initial conditions but there’s still been a lot of random branching, right? That is, the universe from our perspective is just one branch of a quantum state evolving simply from simple conditions, so you need O(#branching events) bits to describe it. Incidentally this undermines Eliezer’s argument for MWI based on Solomonoff induction, though MWI is probably still true
[EDITED: Oh, from one of your other comments I see that you aren’t saying the shortest program involves beginning at the start of the universe. That makes sense]