Markus Müller is a theoretical physicist at Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Vienna, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Rotman Institute of Philosophy. In the captioned paper, presented at the 6th International FQXi Conference, he shows that mind before matter worldview can explain the emergence of inter-subjectively verifiable world.
Markus believes that a question "What next?" emerging to the protagonists of two puzzles: Guinea pig of Parfit's teleportation experiment and the Boltzmann brain, motivate an idealist worldview that starts with the notion of the first-person perspective and not with the world — an approach in which observers are fundamental. Markus proceeds to prove that notion of an external world can emerge from such a beginning. He also shows that the so-called objective reality is like a statistical long term consequence of some assumptions that you make. Finally, Markus concludes that Boltzmann brains are something like a probabilistic or information-theoretic version of zombies.
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Markus believes that a question "What next?" emerging to the protagonists of two puzzles: Guinea pig of Parfit's teleportation experiment and the Boltzmann brain, motivate an idealist worldview that starts with the notion of the first-person perspective and not with the world — an approach in which observers are fundamental. Markus proceeds to prove that notion of an external world can emerge from such a beginning. He also shows that the so-called objective reality is like a statistical long term consequence of some assumptions that you make. Finally, Markus concludes that Boltzmann brains are something like a probabilistic or information-theoretic version of zombies.
Markus Müller starts with two conceptual puzzles: Derek Parfit’s Tele-transportation paradox, a thought experiment in psychology and Boltzmann brain, a thought experiment in physics.
In Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons (1987), Parfit asks the reader to imagine entering a "tele-transporter", that puts you to sleep, records your molecular composition, breaking you down into atoms, and relaying it to Mars at the speed of light. On Mars, another machine re-creates an exact replica of you (from local stores of carbon, hydrogen, and so on). Parfit asks “Is the person on Mars the same person as the person who entered the tele-transporter on Earth?” Certainly, when waking up on Mars, you would feel like being you, you would remember entering the tele-transporter in order to travel to Mars, you would even feel the cut on your upper lip from shaving this morning. Then the tele-transporter on Earth could be modified to not destroy the person who enters it, but instead create infinite replicas, all of whom would claim to remember entering the tele-transporter on Earth in the first place.
Parfit argues that any criteria we attempt to use to determine sameness of person will be lacking because there is no further fact. According to Parfit what identity means is simply "Relation R", psychological connectedness, including memory, personality, and so on.
Teletransportation paradox - Wikipedia
The Boltzmann brain argument suggests that it is more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a false memory of having existed in our universe) than it is for our universe to have come about in the way modern science thinks it actually did. A Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our universe, that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Theoretically, over an extremely large but not infinite amount of time, by sheer chance atoms in a void could spontaneously come together in such a way as to assemble a functioning human brain.
Around 2002 some cosmologists showed that, in many existing theories about the Universe, human brains in the current Universe appear to be vastly outnumbered by Boltzmann brains in the future Universe who, by chance, have exactly the same perceptions that we do; leading to the conclusion that statistically, we ourselves are likely to be Boltzmann brains.
Boltzmann brain - Wikipedia
Markus thinks that Parfit’s question is not useful and does not resolve anything. Instead, Markus asks one to suppose that one is actually Ellis the guinea pig who knows that the transporter is broken before Ellis could board it. He suggests that Ellis the guinea pig may like to ask “What will happen to me next? Will I be on earth or will I wake up on Mars?“ Markus suggests that perhaps probabilities could be assigned to the possible eventualities.
In the case of Boltzmann brain, Markus points out that people may be worried “Am I actually a Boltzmann brain? What will I see next?” Markus thus sets up his experiment with the question “What will I see next?”
Markus believes that both puzzles motivate an idealist worldview that starts with the notion of the first-person perspective and not with the world — an approach in which observers are fundamental. Markus proceeds to prove that notion of an external world can emerge from such a beginning. He also shows that the so-called objective reality is like a statistical long term consequence of some assumptions that you make. Finally, Markus concludes that Boltzmann brains are something like a probabilistic or information-theoretic version of zombies.
Markus reminds that the formulas of quantum theory give the probabilities of outcomes on measurements and it is not about what the world is like. Bell's Theorem tells us that it is inconsistent to assume that measurements just always reveal how the world has been like before the measurement unless we give up other principles like locality.
So, according to Markus, it is a natural question to ask “Where do we go from here?”, and suggests that we could assign a probability or some mathematical rule that tells us in all situations what we would likely see next.
Markus believes that the standard view that we have an objective world external to us and the laws of physics determine its evolution and somehow we supervene on the world doesn't help us to solve the puzzles about the future of Ellis the guinea pig. Markus says “I don’t think that any detailed physical knowledge of the of the mechanism of the transporter will actually be able to answer this question.”
Markus suggests to drop for the moment the idea of a world and begin with the idea that one is an observer in some state now and then will be in another state next and some probability distribution can tell the chances of what’s going to happen in the following moment.
Markus proposes employing Solomonov induction for the purpose. Solomonov has proven that algorithmic probabilities can be predicted given sufficient current state data. Markus thus hypothesises that there's a chance of one’s next state to be given by algorithmic probability. The hypothesis is consistent with the Church-Turing thesis, which says that our world as we know it is a probabilistic environment that is computable.
Markus provides some more detail of his theorem and concludes that we can know whether Ellis the guinea pig will actually be on earth or on Mars, with certain attached probabilities. According to Markus, since Solomonov method uses induction similar to physics the method is consistent with science. But the question remains “Why should we expect that there is some appearance of an external world in the first place?”
Beginning with no information at the very beginning and then after significant data gets gathered the probability of a complex world arises. It's an abstract computational process that generates what you see —your observer state and everything one sees will just look as if it came from some larger process, which is actually a computation, probabilistic and probably simple. To Ellis, the guinea pig things will pretty much look like a world around her.
In case of more than one observer, if the theorem applies, in Ellises’ world she can find other interesting thinks even as like we in our world can point and say “Oh that's Scott”. That's would be a data kind of an interesting piece of data that would be like seeing a 3rd person perspective. One can gather some first-person data from Scott and correlate to the third-person observations.
Markus gives an example here. Suppose Ellis the Sunrise every day and thus has a 99% chance of seeing the sunrise tomorrow. That also means that Ellis actually has a 99 per cent chance of seeing Bob see the sunrise tomorrow. That would be third person probability. Markus says that his theorem predicts that in the long run, the third and first-person probabilities will actually agree.
But we may occasionally get situations where first and third-person probabilities are different and examples would be actually Boltzmann brains. They would be a probabilistic version of zombies. But there can be envisaged when some sort of zombie actually exists amongst us.
Markus ends the presentation by acknowledging that although his scheme is a kind of toy version, it shows how in an idealist worldview the notion of an external world can be explained.
In Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons (1987), Parfit asks the reader to imagine entering a "tele-transporter", that puts you to sleep, records your molecular composition, breaking you down into atoms, and relaying it to Mars at the speed of light. On Mars, another machine re-creates an exact replica of you (from local stores of carbon, hydrogen, and so on). Parfit asks “Is the person on Mars the same person as the person who entered the tele-transporter on Earth?” Certainly, when waking up on Mars, you would feel like being you, you would remember entering the tele-transporter in order to travel to Mars, you would even feel the cut on your upper lip from shaving this morning. Then the tele-transporter on Earth could be modified to not destroy the person who enters it, but instead create infinite replicas, all of whom would claim to remember entering the tele-transporter on Earth in the first place.
Parfit argues that any criteria we attempt to use to determine sameness of person will be lacking because there is no further fact. According to Parfit what identity means is simply "Relation R", psychological connectedness, including memory, personality, and so on.
Teletransportation paradox - Wikipedia
The Boltzmann brain argument suggests that it is more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a false memory of having existed in our universe) than it is for our universe to have come about in the way modern science thinks it actually did. A Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our universe, that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Theoretically, over an extremely large but not infinite amount of time, by sheer chance atoms in a void could spontaneously come together in such a way as to assemble a functioning human brain.
Around 2002 some cosmologists showed that, in many existing theories about the Universe, human brains in the current Universe appear to be vastly outnumbered by Boltzmann brains in the future Universe who, by chance, have exactly the same perceptions that we do; leading to the conclusion that statistically, we ourselves are likely to be Boltzmann brains.
Boltzmann brain - Wikipedia
Markus thinks that Parfit’s question is not useful and does not resolve anything. Instead, Markus asks one to suppose that one is actually Ellis the guinea pig who knows that the transporter is broken before Ellis could board it. He suggests that Ellis the guinea pig may like to ask “What will happen to me next? Will I be on earth or will I wake up on Mars?“ Markus suggests that perhaps probabilities could be assigned to the possible eventualities.
In the case of Boltzmann brain, Markus points out that people may be worried “Am I actually a Boltzmann brain? What will I see next?” Markus thus sets up his experiment with the question “What will I see next?”
Markus believes that both puzzles motivate an idealist worldview that starts with the notion of the first-person perspective and not with the world — an approach in which observers are fundamental. Markus proceeds to prove that notion of an external world can emerge from such a beginning. He also shows that the so-called objective reality is like a statistical long term consequence of some assumptions that you make. Finally, Markus concludes that Boltzmann brains are something like a probabilistic or information-theoretic version of zombies.
Markus reminds that the formulas of quantum theory give the probabilities of outcomes on measurements and it is not about what the world is like. Bell's Theorem tells us that it is inconsistent to assume that measurements just always reveal how the world has been like before the measurement unless we give up other principles like locality.
So, according to Markus, it is a natural question to ask “Where do we go from here?”, and suggests that we could assign a probability or some mathematical rule that tells us in all situations what we would likely see next.
Markus believes that the standard view that we have an objective world external to us and the laws of physics determine its evolution and somehow we supervene on the world doesn't help us to solve the puzzles about the future of Ellis the guinea pig. Markus says “I don’t think that any detailed physical knowledge of the of the mechanism of the transporter will actually be able to answer this question.”
Markus suggests to drop for the moment the idea of a world and begin with the idea that one is an observer in some state now and then will be in another state next and some probability distribution can tell the chances of what’s going to happen in the following moment.
Markus proposes employing Solomonov induction for the purpose. Solomonov has proven that algorithmic probabilities can be predicted given sufficient current state data. Markus thus hypothesises that there's a chance of one’s next state to be given by algorithmic probability. The hypothesis is consistent with the Church-Turing thesis, which says that our world as we know it is a probabilistic environment that is computable.
Markus provides some more detail of his theorem and concludes that we can know whether Ellis the guinea pig will actually be on earth or on Mars, with certain attached probabilities. According to Markus, since Solomonov method uses induction similar to physics the method is consistent with science. But the question remains “Why should we expect that there is some appearance of an external world in the first place?”
Beginning with no information at the very beginning and then after significant data gets gathered the probability of a complex world arises. It's an abstract computational process that generates what you see —your observer state and everything one sees will just look as if it came from some larger process, which is actually a computation, probabilistic and probably simple. To Ellis, the guinea pig things will pretty much look like a world around her.
In case of more than one observer, if the theorem applies, in Ellises’ world she can find other interesting thinks even as like we in our world can point and say “Oh that's Scott”. That's would be a data kind of an interesting piece of data that would be like seeing a 3rd person perspective. One can gather some first-person data from Scott and correlate to the third-person observations.
Markus gives an example here. Suppose Ellis the Sunrise every day and thus has a 99% chance of seeing the sunrise tomorrow. That also means that Ellis actually has a 99 per cent chance of seeing Bob see the sunrise tomorrow. That would be third person probability. Markus says that his theorem predicts that in the long run, the third and first-person probabilities will actually agree.
But we may occasionally get situations where first and third-person probabilities are different and examples would be actually Boltzmann brains. They would be a probabilistic version of zombies. But there can be envisaged when some sort of zombie actually exists amongst us.
Markus ends the presentation by acknowledging that although his scheme is a kind of toy version, it shows how in an idealist worldview the notion of an external world can be explained.
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One or two readers may benefit by at least knowing that Markus has such an idea.
