A complete theory of everything (will be subjective)

DOI10.3390/A3040329zbMATH Open1465.00011arXiv0912.5434OpenAlexW2146387620WikidataQ58012300 ScholiaQ58012300MaRDI QIDQ1662561FDOQ1662561

Authors: Marcus Hutter 

Publication date: 20 August 2018

Published in: Algorithms (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Increasingly encompassing models have been suggested for our world. Theories range from generally accepted to increasingly speculative to apparently bogus. The progression of theories from ego- to geo- to helio-centric models to universe and multiverse theories and beyond was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the sizes of the postulated worlds, with humans being expelled from their center to ever more remote and random locations. Rather than leading to a true theory of everything, this trend faces a turning point after which the predictive power of such theories decreases (actually to zero). Incorporating the location and other capacities of the observer into such theories avoids this problem and allows to distinguish meaningful from predictively meaningless theories. This also leads to a truly complete theory of everything consisting of a (conventional objective) theory of everything plus a (novel subjective) observer process. The observer localization is neither based on the controversial anthropic principle, nor has it anything to do with the quantum-mechanical observation process. The suggested principle is extended to more practical (partial, approximate, probabilistic, parametric) world models (rather than theories of everything). Finally, I provide a justification of Ockham's razor, and criticize the anthropic principle, the doomsday argument, the no free lunch theorem, and the falsifiability dogma.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5434

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zbMATH Keywords

computabilitypredictive powerno-free-lunchOckham's razoruniversal theoriesinductive reasoningworld modelsobserver localizationsimplicity and complexityuniversal self-sampling

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Foundational topics in statistics (62A99) Foundations, quantum information and its processing, quantum axioms, and philosophy (81P99) Algorithmic information theory (Kolmogorov complexity, etc.) (68Q30) Philosophy of mathematics (00A30)

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Cited In (4)

• Why Occam's razor
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