How gruesome is the world?
Intuitively, some objects are more natural than others. For example, cats are more natural than mereological fusions of cats and elephants. I think that ultimately, naturalness of things should be definable in terms of naturalness of the properties the things instantiate. I'm not quite sure how exactly this is to be done, so for now I'll stick with the intuitive notion of naturalness. Intuitively natural things are spatiotemporally connected, constitute a causal unity, contrast with their surroundings, etc. The world, that is, the mereological fusion of everything that exists at any spacetime distance from us, does fairly well here: As far as I know, it is perfectly connected, causally united (indeed, causally closed) and contrasts clearly with everything outside of it (such as numbers or other worlds, if such there be). Why then does Brian Weatherson think that the world is gruesome?
I see two ways to exclude 'the world exists' as the best theory of everything. The first is the one I already mentioned: to state that a good theory must imply interesting truths a priori. The second is to stipulate that a theory must not contain individual constants. I have some sympathy with such a stipulation, though it may stipulate away haecceitism.