Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas cover image

200 | Solo: The Philosophy of the Multiverse

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

The Principle of Typicality Is Presumptuous

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The assumption that you are a typical observer has given you enormous leverage over what the rest of the universe is like, without going out and looking at it. The point is that typicality is actually presumptuous. And if we can't assume that we're typical, then how do we make predictions? How do we use anthropic reasoning at all? Can we use it at all? So there are a couple of different solutions to this,. am and i want to talk about one solution that i don't like because it's a little tempting a but i really want, i want to disagree with it.

The 200th episode of Mindscape! Thanks to everyone for sticking around for this long. To celebrate, a solo episode discussing a set of issues naturally arising at the intersection of philosophy and physics: how to think about probabilities and expectations in a multiverse. Here I am more about explaining the issues than offering correct answers, although I try to do a bit of that as well.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

References:

Guth, “Inflation and Eternal Inflation“
Weinberg, “Living In the Multiverse“
Susskind, “The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory“
Carroll, Johnson, and Randall, “Dynamical Compactification from De Sitter Space“
Sebens and Carroll, “Self-Locating Uncertainty and the Origin of Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics“
Wald, “Asymptotic behavior of homogeneous cosmological models in the presence of a positive cosmological constant“
Gibbons and Hawking, “Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation“
Carroll and Chatwin-Davies, “Cosmic Equilibration: A Holographic No-Hair Theorem from the Generalized Second Law“
Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind, “Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant“
Albrecht and Sorbo, “Can the Universe Afford Inflation?“
Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack, “De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations“
Carroll, “Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad“
Aguirre, Carroll, and Johnson, “Out of Equilibrium: Understanding Cosmological Evolution to Lower-Entropy States“
Carroll, “Beyond Falsifiabiliy: Normal Science in a Multiverse“
Carter and McCrea, “The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution“
Leslie, “Doomsday Revisited“
Gott, “Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects“
Bostrom, Anthropic Bias
Vilenkin, “The Principle of Mediocrity“
Olum, “Conflict Between Anthropic Reasoning and Observation“
Elga, “Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem“
Lewis, “Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Elga“
Hartle and Srednicki, “Are We Typical?“
Hartle and Srednicki, “Science in a Very Large Universe“
Neal, “Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Fully Non-Indexical Conditioning“

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.

App store banner

Play store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode