From: Simon Gordon (sim_dizzy@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Apr 25 2003 - 16:27:37 MDT
--- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
wrote:
>
> I use the term Reality to indicate the sum of
> everything.
I dont.
I used to but i dont anymore. Reality to me indicates
the subjective because what you experiance is what you
define as real. If you kick a stone and it kicks back
then it is real to you, but if you are talking about a
stone which does not exist within your experiances
then you cannot kick it and so it isnt real to you.
The consequence of this terminology is that everyone
lives in a different reality because we are all
observing different things.
In this sense that which exists outside your lightcone
is not real relative to you, but nevertheless it
exists.
I reserve the word 'existance' to cover absolutely
everything in the broadest possible sense i.e. all
logical forms, and this everything is absolute,
independent of any observer. Reality on the other hand
is about perception and is thus observer-relative.
So while you and i live in the same universe, we
occupy different realities. And this is where the word
'universes' comes in, because if we exist in the same
universe then this implies the existance of other
universes hence we need the plural.
If you have more than one universe, the term we use to
talk about them collectively is 'multiverse'.
A multiverse then is a collection or multiplicity of
universes. It is actually a very simple terminology
and we dont need the outdated idea that the term
universe must mean everything, any more. We can still
retain the word EVERYTHING to mean just exactly that:
everything ; if we equate universe=everything then
those words become interchangeable and we have
effectively lost one word in our terminology.
If you want to talk about all multiverses collectively
then the term 'metaverse' comes in handy (and this use
to be how i originally thought of the word 'reality').
The metaverse is really the sum of all
mathematical/physical spaces, equivalent to the
tegmark ensemble.
Simon G.
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