200 | Solo: The Philosophy of the Multiverse

<p>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.</p> <p><em>Support Mindscape on </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p>References:</p> <ul> <li>Guth, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0002156" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Inflation and Eternal Inflation</a>"</li> <li>Weinberg, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0511037" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Living In the Multiverse</a>"</li> <li>Susskind, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0302219" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory</a>"</li> <li>Carroll, Johnson, and Randall, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.3115" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dynamical Compactification from De Sitter Space</a>"</li> <li>Sebens and Carroll, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7577" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Self-Locating Uncertainty and the Origin of Probability in Everettian Quantum Mechanics</a>"</li> <li>Wald, "<a href="https://inspirehep.net/literature/188658" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Asymptotic behavior of homogeneous cosmological models in the presence of a positive cosmological constant</a>"</li> <li>Gibbons and Hawking, "<a href="https://inspirehep.net/literature/125663" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation</a>"</li> <li>Carroll and Chatwin-Davies, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09241" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmic Equilibration: A Holographic No-Hair Theorem from the Generalized Second Law</a>"</li> <li>Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0208013" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant</a>"</li> <li>Albrecht and Sorbo, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0405270" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Can the Universe Afford Inflation?</a>"</li> <li>Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations</a>"</li> <li>Carroll, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00850" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad</a>"</li> <li>Aguirre, Carroll, and Johnson, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.0417" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Out of Equilibrium: Understanding Cosmological Evolution to Lower-Entropy States</a>"</li> <li>Carroll, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.05016" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Beyond Falsifiabiliy: Normal Science in a Multiverse</a>"</li> <li>Carter and McCrea, "<a href="https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsta.1983.0096" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Anthropic Principle and its Implications for Biological Evolution</a>"</li> <li>Leslie, "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2220451?seq=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Doomsday Revisited</a>"</li> <li>Gott, "<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038%2F363315a0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects</a>"</li> <li>Bostrom, <a href="https://www.anthropic-principle.com/q=book/table_of_contents/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Anthropic Bias</em></a></li> <li>Vilenkin, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.4990" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Principle of Mediocrity</a>"</li> <li>Olum, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0303070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Conflict Between Anthropic Reasoning and Observation</a>"</li> <li>Elga, "<a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~adame/papers/sleeping/sleeping.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem</a>"</li> <li>Lewis, "<a href="http://www.fitelson.org/probability/lewis_sb.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Elga</a>"</li> <li>Hartle and Srednicki, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2630" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Are We Typical?</a>"</li> <li>Hartle and Srednicki, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0906.0042" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Science in a Very Large Universe</a>"</li> <li>Neal, "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0608592" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Fully Non-Indexical Conditioning</a>"</li> </ul> <p><br /></p>