Measure, Topology and Probabilistic Reasoning in Cosmology†
Measure, Topology and Probabilistic Reasoning in Cosmology† Erik Curiel‡ September 13, 2015 Keywords: cosmology; probability; measure theory; topology; infinite-dimensional spaces A man said to the universe: \Sir, I exist!" \However," replied the universe, \The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." | Stephen Crane ABSTRACT I explain the difficulty of making various concepts of and relating to probability precise, rigorous and physically significant when attempting to apply them in reasoning about objects (e.g., spacetimes) living in infinite-dimensional spaces, working through many examples from cosmology. I focus on the relation of topological to measure-theoretic notions of and relating to probability, how they diverge in unpleasant ways in the infinite- dimensional case, and are difficult to work with on their own as well in that context. Even in cases where an appropriate family of spacetimes is finite-dimensional, however, and so admits a measure of the relevant sort, it is always the case that the family is †I thank the members of the working group on Cosmology and Probability at the 2014 MCMP/Lausanne Summer School on Probability in Physics for invaluable feedback on a presentation of an earlier version of this paper, especially Jeremy Butterfield, Juliusz Doboszewski, Sam Fletcher, Karim Th´ebeault and Jos Uffink. I particularly thank Juliusz for catching errors in an earlier draft. I thank Gordon Belot for pointing out ambiguities, infelicities, and unresolved technical issues, and for passing on to me some excellent stray thoughts. I thank David Malament for pointing out a serious technical lacuna in the discussion of §3.
[Show full text]