Related papers: A Computational Anthropic Principle: Where is the …
This paper investigates anthropic bounds on the vacuum energy $\Lambda$. We first consider the possibility of cosmic observers existing at any random time (including the future) for constant $\Lambda$, and take into account the suppression…
Are some cosmologists trying to return human beings to the centre of the cosmos? In the view of some critics, the so-called "anthropic principle" is a desperate attempt to salvage a scrap of dignity for our species after a few centuries of…
We attempt to dissolve the measurement problem using an anthropic principle which allows us to invoke rational observers. We argue that the key feature of such observers is that they are rational (we need not care whether they are…
The (re)introduction of $\Lambda$ into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the…
Recently the multitude of vacua in string theory have led some authors to advocate the anthropic principle as a possible resolution for the contrived set of parameters that seem to govern our universe. I suggest that string theories should…
From the existence of an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring, it is likely that quantum computation is intrinsically more powerful than classical computation. At present, the best upper bound known for the power of quantum computation…
In the {\em Many Worlds Interpretation} of quantum mechanics, the range of possible worlds (or histories) provides variation, and the Anthropic Principle is a selective principle analogous to natural selection. When looked on in this way,…
The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when ``anthropic'' observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge.…
In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However,…
The peculiar value of $\theta$ is a challenge to the notion of an anthropic landscape. We briefly review the possibility that a suitable axion might arise from an anthropic requirement of dark matter. We then consider an alternative…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
Extracting predictions from cosmological theories that describe a multiverse, for what we are likely to observe in our domain, is crucial to establishing the validity of these theories. One way to extract such predictions is from…
Many probability measures in the multiverse depend exponentially on some observable parameters, giving rise to potential problems such as youngness bias, Q-catastrophe etc. In this paper we explore a possibility that the exponential runaway…
I explain the difficulty of making various concepts of and relating to probability precise, rigorous and physically significant when attempting to apply them in reasoning about objects (e.g., spacetimes) living in infinite-dimensional…
Anthropic reasoning often begins with the premise that we should expect to find ourselves typical among all intelligent observers. However, in the infinite universe predicted by inflation, there are some civilizations which have spread…
Probabilistic models (developped by workers such as Boltzmann, on foundations due to pioneers such as Bayes) were commonly regarded merely as approximations to a deterministic reality before the roles were reversed by the quantum revolution…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by having it follow from…
The assumption that a complete description of an early state of the universe does not privilege any position or direction in space leads to a unified account of probability in cosmology, macroscopic physics, and quantum mechanics. Such a…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by being based on two…
The question of what can be computed, and how efficiently, are at the core of computer science. Not surprisingly, in distributed systems and networking research, an equally fundamental question is what can be computed in a…