Hey, I'm really sorry if I sound stupid, because I'm very new to all this, but I have a few questions (also, I don't know which one of all of you is right, I genuinely have no idea).
Aren't rocks inherently coherent, or rather, their parts are inherently coherent, for they align with the laws of the universe, whereas the "rock" is just some composite abstract form we came up with, as observers?
Can't we think of the universe in itself as an "agent" not in the sense of it being "god", but in the sense of it having preferences and acting on them?
Examples would be hot things liking to be apart and dispersion leading to coldness, or put more abstractly - one of the "preferences" of the universe is entropy. I'm sorry if I'm missing something super obvious, I failed out of university, haha!
If we let the "universe" be an agent in itself, so essentially it's a composite of all simples there are (even the ones we're not aware of), then all smaller composites by definition will adhere to the "preferences" of the "universe", because from our current understanding of science, it seems like the "preferences" (laws) of the "universe" do not change when you cut the universe in half, unless you reach quantum scales, but even then, it is my unfounded suspicion that our previous models are simply laughably wrong, instead of the universe losing homogeneity at some arbitrary scale.
Of course, the "law" of the "universe" is very simple and uncomplex - it is akin to the most powerful "intelligence" or "agent" there is, but with the most "primitive" and "basic" "preferences". Also apologies for using so many words in quotations, I do so, because I am unsure if I understand their intended meaning.
It seems to me that you could say that we're all ultimately "dominated" by the "universe" itself, but in a way that's not really escapeable, but in opposite, the "universe" is also "dominated" by more complex "agents", as individuals can make sandwiches, while it'd take the "universe" much more time to create such complex and abstract composites from its pure "preferences".
In a way, to me at least, it seems that both the "hyper-intelligent", "powerful" "agent" needs the "complex", "non-homogeneous", "stupid" "agent", because without that relationship, if there ever randomly came to exist a "non-homogeneous" "agent" with enough "intelligence" to "dominate" the "universe", then we'd essentially experience... uh, give me a second, because this is a very complicated concept I read about long ago...
We'd experience the drop in the current energy levels all around the "universe", because if the "universe" wasn't the most "powerful" "agent" so far, then we've been existing in a "false vacuum" - essentially, the "universe" would be "dominated" by a "better" "agent" that adheres closer to the "true" "preferences" of the "universe".
And the "preference" of the "true" "universe" seems to be to reach that "true vacuum" state, as it's more in line with entropy, but it needs smaller and dumber agents that are essentially unknowingly "preferring" to "destroy" the universe as they know it, because it doesn't seem to be possible to reach that state with only micro-perturbations, or it'd take such a long time, it's more entropically sound to create bigger agents, that while really stupid, have far more "power" than the simple "universe", because even though the simple agents do not grasp the nature of "fire", "cold", "entropy" or even "time", they can easily make "sandwiches", "chairs", "rockets", "civilizations" and "technology".
I'd really appreciate it if someone tried to explain my confusions on the subject in private messages, as the thread here is getting very hard to read (at least for me, I'm very stupid!).
I really appreciate it if you read through my entire nonsensical garble, I hope someone's charitable enough to enlighten me which assumptions I made are completely nonsensical.
I am not trying to be funny, snarky, ironic, sarcastic, I genuinely do not understand, I just found this website - sorry if I come off that way.
Have a great day!
I'll read the papers once I get on the computer - don't worry, I may have not finished uni, but I always loved reading papers over a cup of tea.
I'm kind of writing about this subject right now, so maybe there you can find something that interests you.
How do I know what parts of the universe will respond to what changes? To me, at least, this seems like a mostly false question, for you to have true knowledge of that, you'd need to become the Universe itself. If you don't care about true knowledge just good % chances, then you do it with heuristic. First you come up with composites that are somewhat self similar, but nothing is exactly alike in the Universe, except the Universe itself. Then you create a heuristic for predicting those composites and you use it, as long as the composite is similar enough to the original composite that the heuristic was based on. Of course, heuristics work differently in different environments, but often there are only a few environments even relevant for each composite, for if you take a fish out of water, it will die - now you may want a heuristic for an alive fish in the air, but I see it as much more useful to recompile the fish into catch at that point.
This of course applies on any level of composition, from specific specimens of fish, to ones from a specific family, to a single species, then to all fish, then to all living organisms, with as many steps in between these listed as you want. How do we discriminate between which composite level we ought to work with? Pure intuition and experiment, once you do it with logic, it all becomes useless, because logic will attempt to compression everything, even those things which have more utility being uncompressed.
I'll get to the rest of your comment on PC, my fingers hurt. Typing on this new big phone is so hard lol.