Related papers: Are There Many Worlds?
Given a knowledge base KB containing first-order and statistical facts, we consider a principled method, called the random-worlds method, for computing a degree of belief that some formula Phi holds given KB. If we are reasoning about a…
(abridged) The study of other worlds is key to understanding our own, and not only provides clues to the origin of our civilization, but also looks into its future. Rather than in identifying nearby systems and learning about their…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
Ecologists have put forward many explanations for coexistence, but these are only partial explanations; nature is complex, so it is reasonable to assume that in any given ecological community, multiple mechanisms of coexistence are…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
We analyze mathematical models of the global human population growth and compare them to actual dynamics of the world population and of the world surplus product. We consider a possibility that the so-called world's demographic transition…
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
How can probabilities make sense in a deterministic many-worlds theory? We address two facets of this problem: why should rational agents assign subjective probabilities to branching events, and why should branching events happen with…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our universe appears to be…
In this work, we analyze the happiness levels of countries using an unbiased emotion detector, artificial intelligence (AI). To date, researchers proposed many factors that may affect happiness such as wealth, health and safety. Even though…
We discuss the possibility that the complexity of biological systems may lie beyond the predictive capabilities of theoretical physics: in Stuart Kauffman's words, there is a World Beyond Physics (WBP). It is argued that, in view of modern…
In metaphysics, there are a number of distinct but related questions about the existence of "further facts" -- facts that are contingent relative to the physical structure of the universe. These include further facts about qualia, personal…
This paper presents a Bayesian framework for assessing the adequacy of a model without the necessity of explicitly enumerating a specific alternate model. A test statistic is developed for tracking the performance of the model across…
The main research involving globalization nowadays is to describe the impact of globalization in their respective fields. However, globalization is a complex phenomenon across multiple sections. But as a concept in the social science, it…
In Everett's many worlds interpretation, quantum measurements are considered to be decoherence events. If so, then inexact decoherence may allow large worlds to mangle the memory of observers in small worlds, creating a cutoff in observable…
The Born Interpretation of the wave function gives only the relative frequencies as the number of observations approaches infinity. Using the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, specifically the fact that there must exist other…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute…
Hypothetical existence of other universes gives an opportunity not only to extend the scope of physics, but the scope of biology, SETI, and METI as well. Some steps of the development of alien life concept shall be briefly summarized, then…
We propose a probabilistic model to aggregate the answers of respondents answering multiple-choice questions. The model does not assume that everyone has access to the same information, and so does not assume that the consensus answer is…