Related papers: Three Aspects of Typicality in Multiverse Cosmolog…
Unexpectedness is a central concept in Simplicity Theory, a theory of cognition relating various inferential processes to the computation of Kolmogorov complexities, rather than probabilities. Its predictive power has been confirmed by…
The concept of typicality refers to properties holding for the "overwhelming majority" of cases and is a fundamental idea of the qualitative approach to dynamical problems. We argue that measure-theoretical typicality would be the adequate…
The observable universe is necessarily hospitable for life. There are indications, however, that the laws of physics and cosmological parameters need not take the form and values observed, and if they were slightly different life could not…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
In the multiverse hypothesis, a range of universes exist with differing values of our physical constants. Here, we investigate how the probabilities of observing our values of these constants depend on the assumptions made about the…
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…
We show that most of cutoff measures of the multiverse violate some of the basic properties of probability theory when applied repeatedly to predict the results of local experiments. Starting from minimal assumptions, such as Markov…
The possibility that the multiverse corresponds to physical reality deserves serious investigation. Having three different important theories,(quantum mechanics, string theory and inflation), predict the existence of the multiverse is…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…
In cosmology, we would like to explain our observations and predict future observations from theories of the entire universe. Such cosmological theories make ontological assumptions of what entities exist and what their properties and…
If the origin of life is rare and sensitive to the local conditions at the site of its emergence, then, using the principle of mediocrity within a multiverse framework, we may expect to find ourselves in a universe that is better than usual…
We compute trivariate probability distributions in the landscape, scanning simultaneously over the cosmological constant, the primordial density contrast, and spatial curvature. We consider two different measures for regulating the…
[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…
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,…
This paper evaluates some important aspects of the multiverse concept. Firstly, the most realistic opportunity for it which is the spacetime variability of the physical constants and may deliver worlds with different physics, hopefully…
In what has become a standard eternal inflation picture of the string landscape there are many problematic consequences and a difficulty defining probabilities for the occurrence of each type of universe. One feature in particular that…
A central focus of data science is the transformation of empirical evidence into knowledge. As such, the key insights and scientific attitudes of deep thinkers like Fisher, Popper, and Tukey are expected to inspire exciting new advances in…
Inferring causal models from observed correlations is a challenging task, crucial to many areas of science. In order to alleviate the computational effort when sifting through possible causal explanations for some given observations, it is…
We consider how to define a natural probability distribution over worlds within a simple class of deterministic many-worlds theories. This can help us understand the typical properties of worlds within such states, and hence explain the…
The anthropic principle is an inevitable constraint on the space of possible theories. As such it is central to determining the limits of physics. In particular, we contend that what is ultimately possible in physics is determined by…