On 24/06/2017 3:02 pm, Russell Standish wrote:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 01:09:41PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 24/06/2017 11:20 am, Russell Standish wrote:
The 3p is what is left after removing all personal baggage of each 1p
view point. It is literally the view from nowhere (since location is
just such a baggage), and cannot be conscious in itself (for exactly
the reason you outline below)
It is this characterization of 3p that I find misleading. If all
personal baggage has been removed, how come you still talk as
thought this were a third person view? I think this terminology is
an unfortunate carry-over from the classical person-duplication
thought experiments. The bird view would more properly be called a
0p view, since there are no 'persons' or 'person' who has this view.
I have no problem with you arguing for a change in terminology, but to
be clear, the term 3p has been used consistently on this list to mean
roughly what I describe above for almost 2 decades.
Until this discussion, it never even ocurred to me that it might be
confusing - I never thought of 3p as a person.
Maybe you guys should get out more....?
There is still another datum. Because of the reasoning used in my
derivation of QM (appendix D of my book), I equate the 3p with the
quantum multiverse. Of course, my derivation may well be faulty - to
my knowledge, only a handful of people have dug into and critiqued
the argument in its 17 years of existence, without finding any fatal
flaw - however assuming its validity, then we can equate the 3p with
the bird view of Tegmark's level 3 multiverse.
I have not had the time or energy to delve deeply into your
derivation. My experience of other attempts to 'derive' quantum
mechanics is that basic quantum concepts are introduced by
sleight-of-hand -- in other words, they usually beg the question.
That is still quite possible in my case, of course, but I have tried
my utmost to make the assumptions explicit, and give reasonable
justifications for them in terms of observer properties. Brent found 1
(or maybe 2, memory's a little hazy) hidden assumptions in my first
version of the argument 15 years ago, which I have since corrected.
Well, I have just taken a quick look. What strikes me is that the first
paragraph of Appendix D defines "Observer moments psi(t) are sets of
possibilities consistent with what is known at that point in time,
providing variation upon which anthropic selection acts. ... We wish to
determine the probability of outcome a being observed." So you assume a
probabilistic model from the outcome. Why would you do that? Why not a
deterministic model?
So you know about QM from the start, and devise a strategy to get you
there. One of the problems that many-worlders face in their attempts to
derive the Born rule from within MWI is that they cannot independently
justify a probabilistic model. If you have a probabilistic model in 3 or
more dimensions, Gleason's theorem tells you that the Born rule is the
only consistent model for probabilities. But you have to say why you
want a probabilistic interpretation in the first place. Deutsch's
attempts founder on the fact that he has to assume that small amplitudes
have small probabilities, even to get started, so his argument is
manifestly circular.
The work has passed peer review, but as you well know, that's only a
minimal hurdle. It is not enough for the work to be taken seriously by
the field, nor (obviously) for to actually be right.
The most worrying aspect of my derivation is the requirement that the
complex field is the most general measure applicable for sets of
observers. Complex numbers are not the most general measure (Banach
spaces are), and if we must restrict the type of measure for any
reason, then why not restrict all the way to real measures (which kind
of seems natural).
Another open problem is what is the relationship with the Gleason
theorem? The Born rule naturally falls out of my construction, so the
question is whether my derivation is independent of Gleason's theorem,
or just incorporates it in disguise.
As I said, you build a probabilistic model in at the start, so Gleason's
theorem is going to get you the Born rule automatically. Or if you don't
assume Gleason, you have an equivalent result by another route. Assuming
a probabilistic model is a very powerful starting point......
Bruce
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