Algorithmic idealism: what should you believe to experience next?

TL;DR

This paper introduces algorithmic idealism, a framework in physics that focuses on what an agent should expect to observe next, offering solutions to longstanding enigmas like the Boltzmann brain problem and the simulation hypothesis.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, mathematically rigorous approach based on algorithmic information theory to interpret quantum theory and resolve foundational paradoxes in physics and cosmology.

Findings

Dissolves the Boltzmann brain paradox by advising against betting on being one.

Shows that shutting down simulations does not necessarily end their inhabitants.

Predicts an approximate embedding of subjective experience into an external world.

Abstract

I argue for an approach to the Foundations of Physics that puts the question in the title center stage, rather than asking "what is the case in the world?". This approach, algorithmic idealism, attempts to give a mathematically rigorous in-principle-answer to this question both in the usual empirical regime of physics and in some more exotic regimes within cosmology, philosophy, and science fiction (but soon perhaps real) technology. I begin by arguing that quantum theory, in its actual practice and in some interpretations, should be understood as telling an agent what they should expect to observe next (rather than what is the case), and that the difficulty of answering this former question from the usual "external" perspective is at the heart of persistent enigmas such as the Boltzmann brain problem, extended Wigner's friend scenarios, Parfit's teletransportation paradox, or our understanding of the simulation hypothesis. Algorithmic idealism is a conceptual framework, based on two postulates that admit several possible mathematical formalizations, cast in the language of algorithmic information theory. Here I give a non-technical description of this view and show how it dissolves the aforementioned enigmas: for example, it claims that you should never bet on being a Boltzmann brain regardless of how many there are, that shutting down computer simulations does not generally terminate its inhabitants, and it predicts the apparent embedding into an objective external world as an approximate description.