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The minus-first law implies that the universe will bear the imprint of my father’s life forever. Long after our sun and even the entire Milky Way have flickered out, aliens with the godlike powers of LaPlace’s demon could in principle (that handy, all-purpose hedge) reconstruct the lives of my father and every other person who has ever lived. Source: Scientific American by John Hogan [Will the Universe Remember Us After We're Gone?][1] [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-the-universe-remember-us-after-were-gone/

Does "hedge" here mean "a way of protection"?

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    The bracketed text simply states that the words "in principle" can easily be introduced into any assertion (no matter how outrageously unlikely) to "justify" it. The fact that in practice it's bogglingly unlikely advanced aliens will at some future time exactly simulate every single human being's life experience needn't detract from the "fact" that in principle they could. (Of course, that's all assuming we don't currently live in a simulation, and thus we have no actual corporeal existence to "simulate" anyway! :) Commented Jun 18, 2021 at 14:05

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You're thinking along the right lines with "protection" but that isn't quite the correct connotation in my mind.

hedge
Etymology 1 / Noun
4. (pragmatics) A non-committal or intentionally ambiguous statement.
5. (finance) Contract or arrangement reducing one's exposure to risk.

Eymology 2 / Verb
4. (transitive, intransitive) To avoid verbal commitment: He carefully hedged his statements with weasel words.

So a "handy, all-purpose hedge" means a tried-and-true "out," an easy way of making a claim that cannot be disproven, a "get out of jail free" card.

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Does "hedge" here mean "a way of protection"?

Yes it does, in the way of insurance, not a physical protection but a metaphorical one.


metaphorical: adjective (also metaphoric); not having real existence but representing some truth about a situation or other subject:

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It's a sort of protection, in this sense:
American Heritage Dictionary hedge

  1. An intentionally noncommittal or ambiguous statement.
  2. A word or phrase, such as possibly or I think, that mitigates or weakens the certainty of a statement.

The phrase that the word "hedge" is applied to is in principle. It's claimed that it's true in principle, but don't ask to have it proven.

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