FQXi
Ken Olum at FQXi’s 5th International Conference.
Source
What is the Minimal Observer by Ken Olum
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The functioning brain of some intelligent creature like a modern adult human, one good model of how it arose – the observed history of the universe, the low entropy of the big bang, and essentially fixed physical laws following the Higgs phase, could be predicted with a statistical probability of P=1. If we could create a universe at will, such a universe would be very easy to specify, we know it came about somehow. The particular manifestation of a real adult human, with memories of a lifetime of interactions with other humans, a brain which has developed along with a sophisticated culture over millions of years, becomes so incredibly unlikely to be produced in a random quantum fluctuation, at least so rarely even in deep time, the overwhelming likelihood is that if I think I am human, I almost certainly am.