Re: NYTimes.com: In Race to Build A.I., Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade
Massive spending is needed, but the profits will be meagre on the short to medium term, just like it was in case of the Internet in the early 2000s. Investors have priced in massive profits, but that cannot happen, because it all has to trickle down from the end-consumer who aren't going to be able to spend a lot more in the short to medium term. Investors are slowly starting to see the writing on the wall, that's why META shares sold off on the news that META plans to invest a lot more in AI. NVIDIA may follow suit soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1FWykYvV10=870s Saibal On 28-04-2024 13:53, John Clark wrote: Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. In Race to Build A.I., Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade The spending that the industry’s giants expect artificial intelligence to require is starting to come into focus — and it is jarringly large. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/technology/ai-big-tech-spending.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n00.wnjx.g7BWR6BsPrbE=em-share -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Orb-d2YZkv%2BDF3q%2ByEKMXn9zVfd_gFMVzST0qq3%2BmOg%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Orb-d2YZkv%2BDF3q%2ByEKMXn9zVfd_gFMVzST0qq3%2BmOg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/84439ec4fbac6d8c2ae0f3b28a85fcc9%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Claude-3 says he's conscious and doesn't want to die or be modified
If you wake up finding yourself without a body, hearing questions and answering them, then you'll know what has happened. Saibal On 08-03-2024 20:32, John Clark wrote: This guy's experience with Claude-3 is similar to my own. It's very hard to read these responses and conclude that Claude is just a glorified autocomplete program. Claude-3 says he's conscious and doesn't want to die or be modified [1] John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [2] cig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2K7tOzZYjxtVP-78y1T5FepdjC8SfCyqOV3i_PTeJ8tA%40mail.gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pc8uP4S9rDoNpwJDZ/claude-3-claims-it-s-conscious#Moral_patienthood [2] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2K7tOzZYjxtVP-78y1T5FepdjC8SfCyqOV3i_PTeJ8tA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a832c979219001b25abbf67c51808bee%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The multiverse is unscientific nonsense??
On 24-11-2023 10:49, Brent Meeker wrote: On 11/23/2023 10:38 PM, smitra wrote: On 23-11-2023 22:12, Brent Meeker wrote: On 11/23/2023 2:26 AM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 5:55 PM Brent Meeker wrote: Bohr insisted that we treat electrons as quantum objects but our measuring instruments as classical objects. He also insisted that human observers were classical objects, but he never specified exactly where the dividing line between the quantum world and the classical world was. And if that dividing line isn't the "Heisenberg cut" then what is? But to be fair to you it's difficult to know exactly what Bohr endorsed because much of his philosophical prose is virtually unreadable; that's one reason the Copenhagen adherence can't agree about fundamentally important things even among themselves. The point is that Bohr (unlike Heisenberg) didn't regard the "cut" as part of physics. It was a choice of our description. It could be chosen anywhere up to the macroscopic OK, but Let me ask you this, like Bohr does that explanation satisfy your curiosity about the fundamental nature of reality so much that you don’t think anybody should even try to find something better, so we should just give up? No, but we shouldn't adopt a just-so-story out of desperation to avoid saying, "We don't know." Are you absolutely certain nobody will ever find an explanation a little more satisfying than that? Are you absolutely certain that the long sought theory of quantum gravity will not change our view of QM? Should Galileo have been satisfied with "things fall to the ground because it is their nature to do so", should Newton have been satisfied with that, or Einstein? If we never even try to find something better than that we will certainly never find it. You're the one who is saying, "I've found the truth and it's MWI." Not me. You criticize me because QBism isn't _enough_ interpretation for you. It leaves too much open. _> This more like QBism_ Nobody is saying that QBism a.k.a. Copenhagen, a.k.a. Shut Up And Calculate, doesn’t work; if you’re an Engineer who doesn't care what's going on and just wants to make money with a new gadget it’s fine. But it's gone beyond Copenhagen and cleaned up some of Copenhagen's vagueness by taking advantage of deoherence theory. Experimental results are necessary but they are not sufficient, you also need a theory to make sense of it all, otherwise it's just a bunch of numbers. _ > Experimental results include theoretical interpretations which get written up in arXiv.org, all of which are macroscopic and classical so we can all read them and agree on what they say. _ Everybody agrees on what the results of an experiment are, but they disagree about what they mean. Without the General Theory Of Relativity the LIGO results are just squiggles produced by 2 mirrors 2 1/2 miles apart. So the mirrors squiggle, who cares? _> it's all NECESSARILY CLASSICA_ Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works. The explanation is in print which is classical. Anyway you're sure Many Worlds is better than than just noting that probability means one thing happens and others don't. That's not what probability means. But that's what it needs to mean to explain empirical results. Probability is a real number between zero and one that can be used to make money by making bets on what you will see next provided you only make bets when that number is greater than 0.5 and you make enough bets. And quantum mechanics can tell you what that number is. But MWI says all the bets win. It doesn't tell you will only see one result. It doesn't take the probabilities seriously. How is it even an interpretation without interpreting the Born rule. When I think of MWI I think "results become orthogonal" should say "...and then all but one vanish." But that violates the dogma that only the Schroedinger equation is needed. If all bets win, then you would still only see one result. Probability is not a well-defined physical concept anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s This also means that MWI is likely also not the final answer, but the implied multiverse aspect of Nature is hard to escape. It's similar to the position Einstein was in when he had very powerful arguments why gravity should be described as curved spacetime before he had found the field equations. I think it makes much more sense to ditch probability altogether as a fundamental concept and instead use information as the more fundamental concept. If I observe the result of an experiment, then I obtain new in formation. I started out as a container of a massive amount of information that defines exactly who I am (or actually that part of it that I am aware of myself). So, before the measurement the fact that it's me th
Re: The multiverse is unscientific nonsense??
On 23-11-2023 22:12, Brent Meeker wrote: On 11/23/2023 2:26 AM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 5:55 PM Brent Meeker wrote: Bohr insisted that we treat electrons as quantum objects but our measuring instruments as classical objects. He also insisted that human observers were classical objects, but he never specified exactly where the dividing line between the quantum world and the classical world was. And if that dividing line isn't the "Heisenberg cut" then what is? But to be fair to you it's difficult to know exactly what Bohr endorsed because much of his philosophical prose is virtually unreadable; that's one reason the Copenhagen adherence can't agree about fundamentally important things even among themselves. The point is that Bohr (unlike Heisenberg) didn't regard the "cut" as part of physics. It was a choice of our description. It could be chosen anywhere up to the macroscopic OK, but Let me ask you this, like Bohr does that explanation satisfy your curiosity about the fundamental nature of reality so much that you don’t think anybody should even try to find something better, so we should just give up? No, but we shouldn't adopt a just-so-story out of desperation to avoid saying, "We don't know." Are you absolutely certain nobody will ever find an explanation a little more satisfying than that? Are you absolutely certain that the long sought theory of quantum gravity will not change our view of QM? Should Galileo have been satisfied with "things fall to the ground because it is their nature to do so", should Newton have been satisfied with that, or Einstein? If we never even try to find something better than that we will certainly never find it. You're the one who is saying, "I've found the truth and it's MWI." Not me. You criticize me because QBism isn't _enough_ interpretation for you. It leaves too much open. _> This more like QBism_ Nobody is saying that QBism a.k.a. Copenhagen, a.k.a. Shut Up And Calculate, doesn’t work; if you’re an Engineer who doesn't care what's going on and just wants to make money with a new gadget it’s fine. But it's gone beyond Copenhagen and cleaned up some of Copenhagen's vagueness by taking advantage of deoherence theory. Experimental results are necessary but they are not sufficient, you also need a theory to make sense of it all, otherwise it's just a bunch of numbers. _ > Experimental results include theoretical interpretations which get written up in arXiv.org, all of which are macroscopic and classical so we can all read them and agree on what they say. _ Everybody agrees on what the results of an experiment are, but they disagree about what they mean. Without the General Theory Of Relativity the LIGO results are just squiggles produced by 2 mirrors 2 1/2 miles apart. So the mirrors squiggle, who cares? _> it's all NECESSARILY CLASSICA_ Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works. The explanation is in print which is classical. Anyway you're sure Many Worlds is better than than just noting that probability means one thing happens and others don't. That's not what probability means. But that's what it needs to mean to explain empirical results. Probability is a real number between zero and one that can be used to make money by making bets on what you will see next provided you only make bets when that number is greater than 0.5 and you make enough bets. And quantum mechanics can tell you what that number is. But MWI says all the bets win. It doesn't tell you will only see one result. It doesn't take the probabilities seriously. How is it even an interpretation without interpreting the Born rule. When I think of MWI I think "results become orthogonal" should say "...and then all but one vanish." But that violates the dogma that only the Schroedinger equation is needed. If all bets win, then you would still only see one result. Probability is not a well-defined physical concept anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s This also means that MWI is likely also not the final answer, but the implied multiverse aspect of Nature is hard to escape. It's similar to the position Einstein was in when he had very powerful arguments why gravity should be described as curved spacetime before he had found the field equations. I think it makes much more sense to ditch probability altogether as a fundamental concept and instead use information as the more fundamental concept. If I observe the result of an experiment, then I obtain new in formation. I started out as a container of a massive amount of information that defines exactly who I am (or actually that part of it that I am aware of myself). So, before the measurement the fact that it's me that is about to do the measurement, not someone else is part of the observation. Personal identity is then just the sum total of all the information, and this then changes
Re: NYTimes.com: What History Tells Us About the Feel-Bad Economy
I posted my comment here: https://nyti.ms/40AQJCh#permid=129092606 Saibal On 10-11-2023 13:51, John Clark wrote: Check out this article from The New York Times. Because I'm a subscriber, you can read it through this gift link without a subscription. What History Tells Us About the Feel-Bad Economy Why are voters unhappy about low unemployment and falling inflation? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/opinion/biden-economy-unemployment-history.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9Uw.oavr.izSY2fH23dGq=em-share -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1Uui%2BD2nesf8RqMFJDP894Jkdq1nR7O14N%2BrNccuNjxQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1Uui%2BD2nesf8RqMFJDP894Jkdq1nR7O14N%2BrNccuNjxQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/3a60477713ea420a862a58ea1f5eb997%40zonnet.nl.
Re: AI and interest rates
On 02-10-2023 19:06, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 9:26 AM smitra wrote: _> Productivity increase due to AI has yet to materialize. Systems like ChatGPT are not all that useful for the economy_ That's because GPT-4 was only introduced a few months ago, and right now it's as stupid as it's ever going to be. But it's inevitable that a machine that is as smart as a man is going to make a huge impact on the economy. Yes, I agree. But I do think that making progress in automatizing hands-on work is going to prove more difficult than letting an AI do purely digital tasks. There is 100% freedom in the virtual environment an AI has to operate in, but the real world is what it is. The reason why there has been no recession so far is because the Biden Administration has been spending massive amounts of money to stimulate the economy: Then why is the rate of inflation coming down so fast? And why is the market telling us it expects inflation to stay low for the next few years at least? I do agree with what you wrote below about the way the GOP has an is causing trouble. The reason why inflation is coming down fast now is a combination of lower energy prices plus also the FED hikes starting to have an effect. The stock market and the bond market are telling different things about what to expect, and the bond market tends to be right most of the time. The stock market has moved into a bubble due to the fast FED hikes and the fact that the FED is never going to return to the previous policy of zero interest rates (ZIRP) and quantitative easing (QE) on a permanent basis outside of a recession. The fundamental problem was that after the 2008 financial crisis, central banks ended up not just temporarily implementing a ZIRP + QE policy, but that this became a permanent measure. Many economists had warned that this was bound to go wrong Sooner or later a problem would occur for which you would normally require a stimulus in the form of ZIRP and QE and because we would already be doing that, other measures that are much more inflationary would be require. And then curbing the inflation that would inevitably crop up would be extremely painful because that would require reversing ZRP + QE under more difficult conditions. And that's pretty much what happened in the aftermath of Covid. The economy is now in trouble because interest rates are now much higher and will be kept high with only moderate rat cuts next year. Particularly the smaller cmpanies have lots of debt and many of them need to refinance next year. Doing ZIRP + QE for over a decade has forced many smaller companies to take on lots of debt due to competition. A company cannot just decide to not take on lots of debt at low interest rates to boosts profits, because they would end up outcompeted by competitors who then would do that. If ZIRP + QE would be a short term policy to get the economy out of recession then this dynamics would not be in play. But because it was done permanently under good economic conditions, this has caused a significant part of the economy to be no longer profitable without ZIRP + QE. This has then caused the stick market to move into a bubble. The stock market reached its peak in late 2021 early 2022. The valuation of stocks is basically an extrapolation of where the economy is expected to be in the future. And that was the based on the expectation that ZIRP and QE would continue to be the FED's policy indefinitely. But the FED hiked rates very fast and realistically the FED is never going to return to ZIRO + QE. Tis means that the stock market is enormously overvalued. It did correct down on 2022 but then later rise sharply to current levels. Investors don't what to lose their money, the recession didn't come as fast as was expected. Many traders who were short became wrong footed, the market was pumped up and they had to cover their shorts. But now reality is slowly sinking in, companies will not make the sort of profits that can justify the current valuation of stocks, and the market will end up going down. As long as the market is overvalued, all the investors taken together make less money per invested dollar. So, after some ups and downs, the market will end up going down to a low enough level from which it can generate reasonable returns for investors. But the problem is that it has to sink to very low values for that to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-9yz_1mJME=1085s This means that either the stock market has to crash, or it will end up going sideways for a very long time. I think the latter scenario is more likely, but ether way this does have consequences for the real economy, because the value of pensions are going to go down if the stock market goes down, or doesn't grow as it normally does for a long period of time, which then affects spending. Saibal By the way, under the Trump administration the national d
Re: AI and interest rates
Productivity increase due to AI has yet to materialize. Systems like ChatGPT are not all that useful for the economy as a whole, because if you are a manager or programmer and you earn $300,000 per year and you can now do more work per hour, you are not going to work less hours and take a pay cut for working less. You are just going to do more things, so the costs of having you employed stays the same. Productivity measured by the rate of production of goods will not go up, because ChatGPT s not replacing people at the factory floor, at least not yet. For ChatGPT to boost productivity would require that the managers take a pay cut and work less. They could then perhaps supplement their income by doing hands-on work that's difficult to automatize on the factor floor. But that's obviously not going to happen. The reason why there has been no recession so far is because the Biden Administration has been spending massive amounts of money to stimulate the economy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-06/bidenomics-boosts-the-us-economy-fanning-soft-landing-hopes-inflation-fears#xj4y7vzkg And this in combination with the fact that many companies used the opportunity to refinance their debts and home owners refinanced their mortgages at low rates before the FED started to raise rates. This has increased the lag effect of the FED hikes. But the hammer will still come down, it will only take a bit longer. There will be companies that get into difficulties who previously could ahve been easily saved by a a cheap loan who now cannot get a cheap loan. So, even if refinancing is not an issue right now, the higher rates can still bite. The refinancing wall is, however, still going to hit hard next year and in 2025. The FED will not have cut rates all that much unless the economy would already have tanked. The situation looks quite bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vkGjSybTLg=728s And with bond yields having increased recently, this situation has only gotten worse. Saibal On 02-10-2023 13:46, John Clark wrote: Events of the last year have not turned out as economists thought they would, they thought the US was heading for a recession but that hasn't happened, and they all thought inflation would remain stubbornly high but for the last 3 months it is only been at 2.2 %, and the Federal Reserve considers 2% to be the perfect amount of inflation. But there's something that has surprised economists even more, they expected interest rates to remain low but instead they are higher than they've been in over 20 years, even higher than they were during the 2008 global financial meltdown. What's really unprecedented is that by analyzing the spread between the price of ordinary bonds and bonds indexed to changes in the Consumer Price Index the market is telling us that for the last six months investors believed inflation is under control; in the past this has always led to long term interest rates going down, but that is not happening. So what is different this time? I think the difference is AI. I think the market, that is to say the collective wisdom of investors, is telling us that in 10 years it will take far fewer dollars to remain alive or even to achieve a middle-class lifestyle than it takes today to do the same thing, and perhaps it won't take any dollars at all. So a dollar today will be far more valuable to you than it will be 10 years from now. So if I'm gonna loan you a dollar today I will demand a very high interest rate to make it worth my while, and if you're not willing to pay it I'll just spend that dollar on myself today. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] icp -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KUJ2A2Cyw7OjCCr1mvfM2ZG1Bwz-sv0NxZMbre89K2Q%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KUJ2A2Cyw7OjCCr1mvfM2ZG1Bwz-sv0NxZMbre89K2Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/50b55e34a5a8fa293a4e0029b049f00c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Is Many Worlds Falsifiable?
On 04-09-2023 01:35, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, Sep 3, 2023 at 11:37 AM smitra wrote: On 31-08-2023 06:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: That is all very well, but it is not a local account of violations of the Bell inequalities. You merely claim that the local theory is such an account, but you do not spell it out. John has addressed this in a subsequent reply where he cites an old reply giving the detailed account involving polarizers. I have responded to John in a separate post. He appears to have a very weak grasp of logic, and his arguments are not valid. Thing is that in conventional QM we only have the dynamics only involves the Schrödinger equation and collapse. The Schrodinger equation is not necessary for quantum mechanics. The Heiseberg matrix formulation does not involve the SE. Time evolution is just a unitary transformation after all. The wave function is not necessary. Dirac, in his book on quantum mechanics, mentions the wave function only in an inconsequential footnote. It's equivalent, so it doesn;t matter that there exists an alternative formalism. The time evolution according to the Schrödinger equation is manifestly local, But unitary evolution according to the SE cannot account for the correlation of entangled particles. It can, just calculate it and don't collapse the wavefunction. If the parallel worlds are unobservable FAPP, then it shouldn't matter whether or not you assume they exist or not, at least for these sorts of practical experiments. while the collapse is the only non-local part. So, any version of QM in which there is no collapse is guaranteed to be local. Another important thing to note here is that Bell's theorem only applies to hidden variable theories, it does not apply to QM in general. Where on earth did you get that idea from? As John has pointed out, Bell's theorem does not require even quantum mechanics. It is just a piece of mathematics.It applies with complete generality to quantum mechanics, with or without hidden variables. Bell's theorem is about local hidden variables theories, it's not a theorem of QM in the sense of something that follows from the postulates of QM like e.g Ehrenfest's theorem. It's theorem that follows from he assumed properties of a general local hidden variables theory and it derives bounds on correlations. You can then consider the correlations of certain observables in QM and see that they violate these inequalities. What conclusions can we draw? If we assume that QM is not fundamental and that there exists a hidden variables theory that reproduces QM either exactly or to a good approximation, then we can conclude that such a hidden variables theory cannot be local. Or we can conclude that QM is fundamental and that there is no deeper hidden variables theory underlying QM. In this case the violation of Bell's inequality does not imply non-locality. However, collapse is then still a non-local mechanism. The MWI is not a hidden variables theory, so Bell's theorem has nothing whatsoever to say about this. Again, As I pointed out to John, even if you assume that Bell's theorem does not apply to MWI (and of course it does), then it does not follow that the theory is local. It could be non-local for reasons unconnected with Bell's theorem. Yes, but the only source of non-locality is collapse. Once you get rid of collapse, the theory becomes local, because the Standard Model is a local theory. We have had this discussion before, and you couldn't give the detailed local account then either. You disputed the well established fact that all known interactions are locaThat is not a well establised fact. Given the violations of the Bell inequalitiers, the only well established fact is that standard QM is non-local. As pointed out above the violation of Bell's inequality only implies non-locality in hidden variables models. Bell's theorem s a theorem derived from the general properties of an arbitrary local hidden variables theory and one then derives bounds for correlations. You seem to pretend that it's a theorem of QM, in which case one would start from the postulates of QM and derive bounds on correlations for any system described by a local Hamiltonian. That's obviously not true. You would not take a formal answer like psi(x, t) = Exp(-i H/hbar t) psi(x,0) where H is the a local Hamiltonian that describes the dynamics for an answer. Of course that is not an answer. It is merely a re-stating of your contention that QM is always local. Whether or not that Hamiltonian formulation is able to account for the Bell-type correlations is precisely the point at issue. Restating that the correlations do indeed have a local explanation does not take us any further forward. No non-local interactions have ever been demonstrated to exist. You wanted me two explicitly write out H for a Bell-type experiment for H a manifestly local Hamiltonian
Re: Is Many Worlds Falsifiable?
On 31-08-2023 06:08, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 12:27 PM smitra wrote: There is no problem here because in practice MWI is nothing more than the usual QM formalism to compute the outcome of experiments where you then assume that the ensemble of all possible outcomes really exists. Locality then follows from the fact hat the dynamics of the theory is manifestly local. The Hamiltonian only includes local interactions and observers are part of this dynamics. Although observer are not explicitly treated as being part of the wavefunction that describes the entire system, the assumption is that in principle, this is the case. In practice, one can then proceed according to the usual QM formalism. That is all very well, but it is not a local account of violations of the Bell inequalities. You merely claim that the local theory is such an account, but you do not spell it out. John has addressed this in a subsequent reply where he cites an old reply giving the detailed account involving polarizers. Thing is that in conventional QM we only have the dynamics only involves the Schrödinger equation and collapse. The time evolution according to the Schrödinger equation is manifestly local, while the collapse is the only non-local part. So, any version of QM in which there is no collapse is guaranteed to be local. Another important thing to note here is that Bell's theorem only applies to hidden variable theories, it does not apply to QM in general. The MWI is not a hidden variables theory, so Bell's theorem has nothing whatsoever to say about this. We have had this discussion before, and you couldn't give the detailed local account then either. You disputed the well established fact that all known interactions are local. You would not take a formal answer like psi(x, t) = Exp(-i H/hbar t) psi(x,0) where H is the a local Hamiltonian that describes the dynamics for an answer. You wanted me two explicitly write out H for a Bell-type experiment for H a manifestly local Hamiltonian, and then to compute the time evolution. Me not doing that was your argument that something non-local was going on here. Bell'e theorem applies in Everettian quantum mechanics in exactly the same way as it applies in one-world accounts. Bell's theorem proves that the effect is non-local, so no local account is possible in any interpretation of QM. Bell's theorem only applies to hidden variable theories, MWI is not a hidden variables theory. Bell's theorem does not even prove that Bell-type correlations are non-local in one-world interpretations of QM. Until that time one postulates hidden variables, Bell's theorem has nothing whatsoever to say about this. Saibal John points out the thought experiments by Deutsch makes it clear that the usual QM formalism will not work in certain cases, that will then falsify the ad hoc collapse postulate. If you then believe that MWI cannot account for violation of Bell's inequalities while ordinary QM can, then that begs the question of how removing the FAPP unobservable sectors where all other outcomes are realized, could matter at all. The other sectors are not just FAPP unoservable, they are not observable in principle. How could the presence of unobservable fairy tales affect anything at all? The standard account of violations of the Bell inequalities in quantum mechanics relies on the notion of non-locality. And since the effect is non-local, no local account is possible. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTAg%3D%2BVf34FWWYXZ3%2BxKwkZmNWdt2VM_CRfHHBm3nqE%3Dg%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTAg%3D%2BVf34FWWYXZ3%2BxKwkZmNWdt2VM_CRfHHBm3nqE%3Dg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4e601eea2b01d2f7c4bb5efe23ba904b%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Is Many Worlds Falsifiable?
There is no problem here because in practice MWI is nothing more than the usual QM formalism to compute the outcome of experiments where you then assume that the ensemble of all possible outcomes really exists. Locality then follows from the fact hat the dynamics of the theory is manifestly local. The Hamiltonian only includes local interactions and observers are part of this dynamics. Although observer are not explicitly treated as being part of the wavefunction that describes the entire system, the assumption is that in principle, this is the case. In practice, one can then proceed according to the usual QM formalism. John points out the thought experiments by Deutsch makes it clear that the usual QM formalism will not work in certain cases, that will then falsify the ad hoc collapse postulate. If you then believe that MWI cannot account for violation of Bell's inequalities while ordinary QM can, then that begs the question of how removing the FAPP unobservable sectors where all other outcomes are realized, could matter at all. Saibal On 31-08-2023 00:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: The many worlds idea has already been falsified because it cannot account for the observed violation of the Bell inequalities for entangled particles. MWI is supposedly a local theory -- where is the local account of the correlations of entangled particles? Bruce On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 12:39 AM John Clark wrote: The short answer is yes, Many Worlds is falsifiable. For example, right now there are experiments underway in an attempt to prove that the GRW theory of objective quantum wave collapse makes predictions that Many Worlds does not, if they are successful it will prove that Everett was dead wrong, it's as simple as that. GRW claims that Schrodinger's equation is incomplete and that another very complex term needs to be added to it because it's the only way they could think of to get rid of all those worlds that for some reason they dislike, there was simply no other reason to add that extra term. With this new term Schrodinger's equation is no longer completely deterministic because a random element is added such that the larger the wave function is (the more particles it has) the more likely the quantum wave function will objectively collapse. They carefully tuned their very complex extra term inserted into Schrödinger's equation in just such a way that, because an individual electron is so small the probability of you being able to observe one objectively collapse is almost but not quite zero; but the probability of you NOT observing something as large as a baseball NOT collapsing is also almost, but not quite, zero. Despite heroic efforts. up to the present day nobody has found a speck of experimental evidence in support of the GRW theory of objective quantum wave collapse, and until and unless they do Many Worlds must be the preferred theory according to Occam's razor because it makes fewer assumptions, it has no need to complicate matters by adding that extra term to Schrodinger's equation. But GRW is not the only or even the most popular competitor to Many Worlds, that honor would have to go to the Copenhagen interpretation, and there is certainly no way to falsify that, but back in 1986 in his book "The Ghost in the Atom" David Deutsch proposed another way to falsify Everett's Many Worlds; the experiment would be difficult to perform but Deutsch argues that is not Many Worlds fault, the reason it's so difficult is that the conventional view says conscious observers obey different laws of physics, Many Worlds says they do not, so to test who's right we need a mind that uses quantum properties. In Deutsch's experiment, to prove or disprove the existence of many worlds other than this one, a conscious quantum computer shoots electrons at a metal plate that has 2 small slits in it. It does this one at a time. The quantum computer has detectors near each slit so it knows which slit the various electrons went through. The quantum mind now signs a document for each and every electron saying it has observed the electron and knows which slit it went through. It is very important that the document does NOT say which slit the electron went through, it only says that it went through one and only one slit and the mind has knowledge of which one. Now just before the electron hits the plate the mind uses quantum erasure to completely destroy the memory of what slits the electrons went through, but all other memories including all the documents remain undamaged. After the document is signed the electron continues on its way and hits the photographic plate. Then after thousands of electrons have been observed and all which-way information has been erased, develop the photographic plate and look at it. If you see interference bands then the Many World interpretation is correct. If you do not see interference bands then there are no worlds but this one and the conventional interpretation is correct.
Re: Have huge stars powered by Dark Matter been discovered?
See page 11 section A: "Cold Thermal Relic" of this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3102 As pointed out there, the mass of the particle then drops out of the estimate of the cross section. And as pointed out in section C: "Supermassive relics", if the mass is more than 240 TeV then it cannot be a thermal relic. Saibal On 10-08-2023 23:42, Jesse Mazer wrote: Any links on this argument? If we do assume that dark matter is made of WIMPs and that they *were* approximately in thermal equilibrium not long after the Big Bang, does the argument imply an upper limit on the collider energy needed to observe them, because WIMPs at higher energies than this limit would be inconsistent with cosmological observations about dark matter? On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 7:58 AM smitra wrote: A more model independent argument (which does have loopholes) goes as follows. The weaker WIMPS interact with themselves and with baryons, the sooner after the Big Bang they decouple, leading to a higher present-day abundance. Then with the present-day abundance fixed, this implies limits on the parameters describing WIMPS. And it becomes more and more difficult to accommodate for WIMS with smaller and smaller small cross-sections. But dark matter that has extremely weak interactions and self-interactions would never have been in thermal equilibrium, which is a possible loophole out of this no-go argument. Saibal On 10-08-2023 01:42, Jesse Mazer wrote: Does the idea that colliders should have already found WIMPs depend on the "naturalness" idea at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalness_(physics) which requires supersymmetric particles at those energies in order to solve the "hierarchy problem", or are there independent reasons to think that if WIMPs existed they should already have been found? I've read that those who endorse the string theory "landscape" idea see anthropic fine-tuning as an alternative to naturalness and thus didn't predict that supersymmetric particles would likely be found at LHC energies, for example Leonard Susskind's 2004 paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0406197v1 said the following on pages 1-2: 'If the Landscape and the Discretuum are real, the idea of naturalness must be replaced with something more appropriate. I will adopt the following tentative replacement: First eliminate all vacua which do not allow intelligent life to evolve. Here we need to make some guesses. I’ll guess that life cannot exist in the cores of stars, cold interstellar dust clouds or on planets rich in silicon but poor in carbon. I’ll also guess that black holes, red giants and pulsars are not intelligent. 'Next scan the remaining fraction of vacua for various properties. If the property in question is common among these “anthropically acceptable” vacua then the property is natural. By common I mean that some non-negligible fraction of the vacua have the required property. If however, the property is very rare, even among this restricted class, then it should be deemed unnatural. Of course there is no guarantee that we are not exceptional, even among the small fraction of anthropically acceptable environments. It is in the nature of statistical arguments that rare exceptions can and do occur. Michael Douglas has advocated essentially the same definition although he prefers to avoid the use of the word anthropic wherever possible, and substitute “phenomenologically acceptable”. We have both attempted to address the following question: Are the vacua with anthropically small enough cosmological constants and Higgs masses, numerically dominated by low energy supersymmetry or by supersymmetry breaking at very high energy scales [8][7]? In other words is low energy supersymmetry breaking natural? My conclusion–I won’t attempt to speak for Douglas–is that the most numerous “acceptable vacua” do not have low energy supersymmetry. Phenomenological supersymmetry appears to be unnatural.' On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 5:26 PM Lawrence Crowell wrote: One weakness with this idea is it depends upon WIMP theory. This is where the DM particles are weak interacting and Majorana. They are their own anti-particle as a result annihilate themselves. The problem is that detectors means to find WIMPS have come up with nothing. DM appears to exist, but it may not be a weakly interacting particle or WIMP. LC On Sunday, July 16, 2023 at 6:58:19 AM UTC-5 John Clark wrote: As early as 2012 scientists predicted that the Hubble telescope would see something they called a "Dark Star". Observing supermassive dark stars with James Webb Space Telescope [1] They theorized in the early universe Dark Matter, whatever it is, must've been much more densely concentrated than it is today, and if Dark Matter particles are their own antiparticles as many think then their annihilation could provide a heat source, they could keeping star
Re: Have huge stars powered by Dark Matter been discovered?
A more model independent argument (which does have loopholes) goes as follows. The weaker WIMPS interact with themselves and with baryons, the sooner after the Big Bang they decouple, leading to a higher present-day abundance. Then with the present-day abundance fixed, this implies limits on the parameters describing WIMPS. And it becomes more and more difficult to accommodate for WIMS with smaller and smaller small cross-sections. But dark matter that has extremely weak interactions and self-interactions would never have been in thermal equilibrium, which is a possible loophole out of this no-go argument. Saibal On 10-08-2023 01:42, Jesse Mazer wrote: Does the idea that colliders should have already found WIMPs depend on the "naturalness" idea at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalness_(physics) which requires supersymmetric particles at those energies in order to solve the "hierarchy problem", or are there independent reasons to think that if WIMPs existed they should already have been found? I've read that those who endorse the string theory "landscape" idea see anthropic fine-tuning as an alternative to naturalness and thus didn't predict that supersymmetric particles would likely be found at LHC energies, for example Leonard Susskind's 2004 paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0406197v1 said the following on pages 1-2: 'If the Landscape and the Discretuum are real, the idea of naturalness must be replaced with something more appropriate. I will adopt the following tentative replacement: First eliminate all vacua which do not allow intelligent life to evolve. Here we need to make some guesses. I’ll guess that life cannot exist in the cores of stars, cold interstellar dust clouds or on planets rich in silicon but poor in carbon. I’ll also guess that black holes, red giants and pulsars are not intelligent. 'Next scan the remaining fraction of vacua for various properties. If the property in question is common among these “anthropically acceptable” vacua then the property is natural. By common I mean that some non-negligible fraction of the vacua have the required property. If however, the property is very rare, even among this restricted class, then it should be deemed unnatural. Of course there is no guarantee that we are not exceptional, even among the small fraction of anthropically acceptable environments. It is in the nature of statistical arguments that rare exceptions can and do occur. Michael Douglas has advocated essentially the same definition although he prefers to avoid the use of the word anthropic wherever possible, and substitute “phenomenologically acceptable”. We have both attempted to address the following question: Are the vacua with anthropically small enough cosmological constants and Higgs masses, numerically dominated by low energy supersymmetry or by supersymmetry breaking at very high energy scales [8][7]? In other words is low energy supersymmetry breaking natural? My conclusion–I won’t attempt to speak for Douglas–is that the most numerous “acceptable vacua” do not have low energy supersymmetry. Phenomenological supersymmetry appears to be unnatural.' On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 5:26 PM Lawrence Crowell wrote: One weakness with this idea is it depends upon WIMP theory. This is where the DM particles are weak interacting and Majorana. They are their own anti-particle as a result annihilate themselves. The problem is that detectors means to find WIMPS have come up with nothing. DM appears to exist, but it may not be a weakly interacting particle or WIMP. LC On Sunday, July 16, 2023 at 6:58:19 AM UTC-5 John Clark wrote: As early as 2012 scientists predicted that the Hubble telescope would see something they called a "Dark Star". Observing supermassive dark stars with James Webb Space Telescope [1] They theorized in the early universe Dark Matter, whatever it is, must've been much more densely concentrated than it is today, and if Dark Matter particles are their own antiparticles as many think then their annihilation could provide a heat source, they could keeping star in thermal and hydrodynamic equilibrium and prevent it from collapsing. They hypothesized something they called a "Dark Star '', it would be a star with a million times the mass of the sun and would be composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium but with 0.1% Dark Matter. A Dark Star would not be dark but would be 10 billion times as bright as the sun and be powered by dark matter not nuclear fusion. Astronomers were puzzled by pictures taken with the James Webb telescope that they interpreted to be bright galaxies just 320 million years after the Big Bang that were much brighter than most expected them to be that early in the universe, a recent paper by the same people that theorized existence of Dark Stars claim they could solve this puzzle. They claim 3 of the most distant objects that the Webb telescope has seen are point sources, as you'd expect from a Dark Star, and their spectrum
Re: Superconductivity
We'll have to see! Commentary from experts leans to this result more likely being due to strong paramagnetism rather than the Meissner effect characteristic of superconductivity. Saibal On 26-07-2023 22:55, 'spudboy...@aol.com' via Everything List wrote: So, what is next, manufacturing for zero-G on earth, MagLev trains? Baby Fusion reactors? On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 04:20:28 PM EDT, smitra wrote: There were two preprints, this is the other one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037 Saibal On 26-07-2023 17:27, John Clark wrote: In March the journal Nature published an article claiming that a room temperature Superconductor had been discovered. Evidence of near-ambient superconductivity in a N-doped lutetium hydride [1 [1]] I was a little surprised Nature decided to publish it because the same people made the same claim a few years ago but the journal had to retract it, and now to their intense embarrassment it looks like history is going to be repeating itself; the lead author sent another paper to the Physical Review Journal and now it looks like they're going to have to retract that paper too: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction imminent for controversial physicist [2 [2]] Meanwhile a completely different group has claimed to have found a different substance that superconducts at room temperature and pressure. I'll believe it when I see it: The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor [3 [3]] John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [4 [4]] 9kd -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3FkeLSj-AfFvOmm6AwJzYUNWZw-BZwmtXc3dr6aPEBuw%40mail.gmail.com [5]. Links: -- [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02401-2 [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 [4] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [5] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3FkeLSj-AfFvOmm6AwJzYUNWZw-BZwmtXc3dr6aPEBuw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/35c084baecad279f6ef28ca300b49fde%40zonnet.nl [5] . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1117422481.3143174.1690404941350%40mail.yahoo.com [6]. Links: -- [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02401-2 [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 [4] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [5] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/35c084baecad279f6ef28ca300b49fde%40zonnet.nl?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [6] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1117422481.3143174.1690404941350%40mail.yahoo.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f0c746073df6c2d96404d990c9f594bb%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Are insects sentient?
As I've mentioned here some time ago, I'm of the opinion that we're
approaching these sorts of questions backward. In my opinion there just
exists consciousness, feelings etc. and having an awareness of having a
particular identity is then part of that. And this latter aspect that is
strongly present in us may not be so strong in animals.
We then need to consider a continuum of conscious states where some
conscious states include an awareness about a personal identity. And
that awareness may not always locate its presence in space and time all
that precisely. It's easy to get to contrived thought experiments like
the brain-in-a-vat thought experiments where an isolated brain ends up
implementing the consciousness of someone who has a normal body and is
gong about his normal business. In that case we could say that this
brain is conscious. But the content of its consciousness is that of a
person who is located elsewhere (if we take the multiverse view than
that person really exists). So, from the point of view of that person
that is implemented by the brain-in-a-vat, that person is not a
brain-in-a-vat at all. If the brain-in-a-vat were to be destroyed, the
person would continue his life as if nothing had happened.
I think we need to approach the question of insect awareness from the
same perspective. The algorithms that the brain of insects implement do
not process enough information to locate themselves inside the bodies
and where we observe them. From the point of view of the algorithm that
is run by the insect, it could be in a far wider range of body-shapes
and live in a far wider range of locations than where we observe it to
be.
Saibal
On 28-06-2023 20:15, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 4:12 PM Brent Meeker
wrote:
I think sentient includes consciousness, but is broader including
perception and feelings. Does it include self-reflection? empathy?
Great article, thanks for sharing. I also enjoyed the one which this
article was about:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-insects-feel-joy-and-pain/
As for definitions, some use sentience to mean the capacity to feel,
while others lump in self-awareness with sentience. I think the former
is more standard and in line with the original meaning.
As for which word is more inclusive, I think consciousness can in some
respects be considered the most general and inclusive word, its
meaning being simply "having knowledge". Since the knowledge can
concern anything (including things besides knowledge of one's feelings
or perceptions), then the word "consciousness" is the broadest.
Sentience would be a subset of consciousness, and self-awareness,
self-reflection, emotions, and empathy would be subclasses of
possible conscious states.
Jason
Forwarded Message
whyevolutionistrue posted: "The Oxford English Dictionary gives
three relevant definitions of the adjective "sentient": a.) That
feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or function of
sensation or of perception by the senses. b.) Conscious or
percipient of something. " Why Evolution Is True [4]
ARE INSECTS SENTIENT? [5]
whyevolutionistrue
Jun 25
The _Oxford English Dictionary_ gives three relevant definitions of
the adjective "sentient":
a.) That feels or is capable of feeling; having the power or
function of sensation or of perception by the senses.
b.) Conscious or percipient _of_ something.
c.) _Physiology_. Of organs or tissues: Responsive to sensory
stimuli.
("Sentience" itself is defined only as "The condition or quality of
being sentient, consciousness, susceptibility to sensation.")
The question that the _Scientific American_ article below asks (and
for once it's written by a scientist in this field [6]) is whether
insects fit the definition of the first two definitions: do they
have feelings and sensations experiencing _qualia [7]_ like pain,
joy, pleasure, or the sensation of "redness"? Or are insects merely
chitinous robots that are _programmed by evolution to act (to us) as
if they have feelings—_programmed reactions that we
anthropormophize as similar to our own sensations? After all, you
can be "responsive to sensory stimuli" (the third sense above)
without actually _feeling_ the sensory stimuli the way humans do.
Answering the question of whether a bee or a fly is sentient in the
first two senses, or has consciousness (the ability to be sentient
and perceive stimuli), is difficult. Some would say it's impossible.
After all, we all know that we ourselves have consciousness and
feel pain and joy, because we experience those things personally.
But can I _prove_ that, say, another person is conscious? Not
directly, because we can't get inside their brains. We _infer_ that
they're conscious because they tell us they are; they are physically
constructed with the same neurons that give _us_ consciousness; and
they act as if they experience qualia. It's inference, but of a
Bayesian sort, and the
Re: what chatGPT is and is not
Indeed, and as I pointed out, it's not all that difficult to debunk the idea that it understands anything at all by asking simple questions that are not included in its database. You can test chatGPT just like you can test students who you suspect have cheated at exams. You invite them for clarification in your office, and let them do some problems in front of you on the blackboard. If those questions are simpler than the exam problems and the student cannot do those, then that's a red flag. Similarly, as discussed here, chatGPT was able to give the derivation of the moment of inertia of a sphere, but was unable to derive this in a much simpler way by invoking spherical symmetry even when given lots of hints. All it could do was write down the original derivation again and the argue that the moment of inertia is the same for all axes, and that the result is spherically symmetric, But it couldn't derive the expression for the moment of inertia by making use of that (adding up the momenta of inertia in 3 orthogonal directions yields a spherically symmetric integral that's much easier to compute). The reason why it can't do this is because it's not in its database. And there are quite few of such cases where there the widely published solution is significantly more complex than another solution which isn't widely published and may not be in chatGPT's database. For example: Derive that the flux of isotropic radiation incident on an area is 1/4 u c where u is the energy density and c the speed of light. Standard solution: The part of the flux coming from a solid angle range dOmega is u c cos(theta) dOmega/(4 pi) where theta is the angle with the normal of the surface. Writing dOmega as sin(theta) dtheta dphi and integrating over the half-sphere from which the radiation can reach the area, yields: Flux = u c/(4 pi)Integral over phi from 0 o 2 pi dphi Integral over theta from 0 to pi/2 of sin(theta) cos(theta) d theta =1/4 u c chatGPT will probably have no problems blurting this out, because this can be found in almost all sources. But the fact that radiation is isotropic should be something that we could exploit to simplify this derivation. That's indeed possible. The reason why we couldn't in the above derivation was because we let the area be a small straight area that broke spherical symmetry. So let's fix that: Much simpler derivation: Consider a small sphere of radius r inside a cavity filled with isotropic radiation. The amount of radiation intercepted from a solid angle range dOmega around any direction is then u c pi r^2 dOmega/(4 pi), because the radiation is intercepted by the cross section of the sphere in the direction orthogonal from where the radiation is coming and hat's always pi r^2. Because this doesn't depend on the direction the radiation is coming from, integrating over the solid angle is now trivial, this yields u c pi r^2. The flux intercepted by an area element on the sphere is then obtained by dividing this by the area 4 pi r^2 of the sphere which is therefore 1/4 u c. And if that's the flux incident on an area element of a sphere, it is also the flux though it if the rest of the sphere wouldn't be there. chatGPT probably won't be able to present this much simpler derivation regardless of how many hints you give it. Saibal On 22-05-2023 23:56, Terren Suydam wrote: Many, myself included, are captivated by the amazing capabilities of chatGPT and other LLMs. They are, truly, incredible. Depending on your definition of Turing Test, it passes with flying colors in many, many contexts. It would take a much stricter Turing Test than we might have imagined this time last year, before we could confidently say that we're not talking to a human. One way to improve chatGPT's performance on an actual Turing Test would be to slow it down, because it is too fast to be human. All that said, is chatGPT actually intelligent? There's no question that it behaves in a way that we would all agree is intelligent. The answers it gives, and the speed it gives them in, reflect an intelligence that often far exceeds most if not all humans. I know some here say intelligence is as intelligence does. Full stop, conversation over. ChatGPT is intelligent, because it acts intelligently. But this is an oversimplified view! The reason it's over-simple is that it ignores what the source of the intelligence is. The source of the intelligence is in the texts it's trained on. If ChatGPT was trained on gibberish, that's what you'd get out of it. It is amazingly similar to the Chinese Room thought experiment proposed by John Searle. It is manipulating symbols without having any understanding of what those symbols are. As a result, it does not and can not know if what it's saying is correct or not. This is a well known caveat of using LLMs. ChatGPT, therefore, is more like a search engine that can extract the intelligence that is already structured
Re: NYTimes.com: Will a Chatbot Write the Next ‘Succession’?
On 29-04-2023 22:39, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 4:28 PM smitra wrote: https://nyti.ms/3VlIBDo#permid=124757243 [1] You say that GPT4 doesn't understand what it is saying, but did you read my post about what happened when Scott Aaronson gave his final exam on Quantum Computers to GPT4? The computer sure acted as if it understood what it was saying! John K Clark If I read his account of the xam on posted here: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7209 Then while I'm impressed about how much progress has been made with AI systems being able to communicate in plain language, I don't see much evidence that it understands anything at all. Even though the exact same questions with answers are not posted on the Internet, a student with poor knowledge of the subject who could very fast search the entire Internet would be able to score a similar result and you would then see a similar patters in ha questions it got right and wrong. The way we evaluate students who we suspect of have cheated, is to invite them at the office for some questioning, We then ask the student to do some problems on the blackboard and try to get to the bottom of whether or not the student has a proper understanding of the subject consistent with the exam score. That's why I think that the only proper way to evaluate GPT is via such a dialogue where you ask follow up questions that go to the hart of the matter. If we want to test of GPT has properly mastered contour integration, I would first start with asking to give me the derivation of the integral of sin(x)/x dx from minus to plus infinity. It will probably blurt out the standard derivation that involves integrating exp(i z)/z that bypasses the origin along a small circle of radius epsilon and you then have to subtract that contribution of that half circle and take the limit of epsilon to zero. This is the standard textbook derivation which is actually quite a bit more complicated with all this fiddling with epsilon than a different derivation which is not widely published. All you need to do is right at th start when you write the integral as the limit of R to infinity of the integral from minus to plus R of sin(x)/x dx, to ud]se Cauchy's theorem to change to integration path from along the real axis to one which bypasses the origin You can do that in any arbitrary way, we can let the contour pass it from above. But because sin(z) for complex z cannot be written as the imaginary part of exp(i z), we must now use that sin(z) = [exp(i z) - exp(- i z)]/(2 i). And we then split the integral into two parts for each of these terms. The integral, from the first term is then completed by an arc of radius R in the upper half-plane and this integral yields zero, while the integral for the second term is completed in the lower half-plane and this then picks up the contribution from the pole at zero. Clearly this is a much simpler way of computing the integral, no fiddling with epsilon involved at all but GPT may struggle doing the problem in that much simpler way even if you walk it through most of the details of how to do it, because it's not widely published and it doesn't understand anything at all about complex analysis at all. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/cdf9deadf2976b5f1fe7f8a912e447bf%40zonnet.nl.
Re: NYTimes.com: Will a Chatbot Write the Next ‘Succession’?
On 29-04-2023 14:29, John Clark wrote: You can read this article from The New York Times without a subscription. Tap the link to read it, and enjoy quality independent journalism Will a Chatbot Write the Next ‘Succession’? As labor contract negotiations heat up in Hollywood, unions representing writers and actors seek limits on artificial intelligence. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/business/media/writers-guild-hollywood-ai-chatgpt.html?unlocked_article_code=LYJ1gMOSvuHfXBMyMp9CG9WwcOmBzuRncRWRTgjC7kiFMI_MuZp1gqqbephUDdTx2TCll7-Zc1FIxDFRyNmhvYYVieXwR1WEZIUH_rPmpI5h9lqSvWOpNfdYuRrqtgxsELEHhNNusat9OXhVVyvom31Xz6fROodH8pGpD9y-iuojJlm1lDv1xsepfiVIcl64IUfag38WYeDwDiJGyO9BUL5RLqO9qgUZcxW1-HUf0p_GiydH1rPa1XZM-RryoJTTQXt5wtN0iAYa3-jnTo57_eSc7n_MRYepjTqhDGHsCGRpq9P5lYJjW_oRgGvnlaVLx_9KhFgFCoKmr2yPq21GRgZgnNoFAeBTvi5ZRG4cchhEEKM=3_Independent=em-share Replied: https://nyti.ms/3VlIBDo#permid=124757243 Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/798d98b88a864cf751faad2093302295%40zonnet.nl.
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
On 12-04-2023 13:36, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 11:06 PM smitra wrote: So, it has noticed that it used the wrong formulas and it has found the correct ones. However, it was not able to do the calculation using spherical symmetry. It only noted in the previous answer that the answer is spherically symmetric because it doesn't depend on the orientation of the axis relative to which the moment of inertia is computed. So, it tells you the steps to compute the three dimensional integral in spherical coordinates, it is unable to see that adding up the three moments of inertias about the x, y and z axis yields a spherically symmetric expression that can be computed using a one dimensional integral over the radius. Being unable to solve a problem in a much simpler way than the standard way is a big red flag against the idea that GPT can do any math at all. I think the problem is that you and GPT have a difference of opinion about which is simpler, Cartesian coordinates or spherical coordinates. And there is no disputing matters of taste. I just add this conversation with GPT ME: If adding up the three moments of inertias about the x, y and z axis yields a spherically symmetric expression can the moment of inertia formula be derived by simply using a one dimensional integral over the radius? GPT: "Yes, that's correct. Once we have established that the moment of inertia of a solid sphere is spherically symmetric, we can compute it using a one-dimensional integral over the radius. Specifically, the moment of inertia of a solid sphere of radius R and mass M about an axis passing through its center is given by: I = (2/5) MR^2 This formula can be derived by integrating the spherically symmetric expression for the moment of inertia over the volume of the sphere using spherical coordinates, which simplifies the calculation to a one-dimensional integral over the radius. Here's how the derivation goes: The moment of inertia of a solid sphere of radius R and mass M about an axis passing through its center is given by: I = ∫∫ (r^2 sin^2θ) ρ dV where ρ is the density and dV is the volume element in spherical coordinates. Since the sphere has uniform density, we can write ρ = M / (4/3 * π * R^3).Using the fact that the integrand is spherically symmetric, we can write: I = ∫∫∫ (r^2 sin^2θ) ρ dV = ρ ∫∫∫ (r^2 sin^2θ) r^2 sin θ dr dθ dφ Substituting in the expression for ρ and using the fact that the integral is spherically symmetric, we can simplify the integral to: I = (3/5) MR^2 ∫∫ sin^3θ dθ dφ The integral over θ and φ can be evaluated to give: ∫∫ sin^3θ dθ dφ = 4π/3 Substituting this into the expression for I, we get: I = (2/5) MR^2 THEREFORE, THE MOMENT OF INERTIA OF A SOLID SPHERE ABOUT AN AXIS PASSING THROUGH ITS CENTER CAN BE DERIVED BY SIMPLY USING A ONE-DIMENSIONAL INTEGRAL OVER THE RADIUS, AND IS GIVEN BY (2/5) MR^2." John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] 5vd The issue is that GPT keeps on doing the derivation in the same way where the symmetry is broken by the choice of the axis and it then ends up with the integral over theta, phi and r and after doing the trigonometric integral it says that there is only an integral over r left. But if you just write down the formula for Ix + Iy + Iz then because for Ik you need to integrate r^2 - distance along kth axis^2, we have to integrate 3 r^2 - (x^2 + y^2 + z^2) = 2 r^2. So, the integrand is now spherically symmetric as a result of having added up the moment of inertia in 3 orthogonal directions. Since these moments of inertia are all equal due to spherical symmetry, we have that 3 times the moment of inertia is 2 times the integral of r^2, therefore we have: Iz = 2/3 integral over ball of radius R of r^2 dm You can then write dm = rho 4 pi r^2 dr and only have an integral over r from 0 to R. Even this can be simplified by dividing Iz by M, so that we get: Iz/M = 2/[3 V(R)] Integral over ball of radius R of r^2 dV We can then insert V(R) = 4/3 pi R^3 and dV = 4 pi r^2 dr and integrate over r, but we don't even need to do that. We can simply use the fact that V(r) is some constant c times r^3 without bothering to write down that constant explicitly: Integral over ball of radius R of r^2 dV = Integral over ball of radius R of d[r^2 V(r)] - Integral over ball of radius R of 2 r V(r) dr = R^2 V(R) - 2/5 c R^5 = 3/5 R^2 V(R) So, we have Iz/M = 2/[3 V(R)] 3/5 R^2 V(R) = 2/5 R^2 So, in the entire derivation I only needed to integrate over the radius r. That's the whole point of restoring spherical symmetry. Otherwise you end up having to evaluate integrals over the angles defined relative to the rotation axis. ChatGPT can only do the latter because in its database there is only a derivation based on the latter logic presented. While there are spruce's in its database that discuss spherical symmetry for this case, it can only then talk about that, it is unable to
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
On 10-04-2023 12:34, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 3:11 PM smitra wrote: GPT: FOR A SOLID SPHERE OF UNIFORM DENSITY, WE CAN DIVIDE IT INTO SMALL volume elements, each with mass dm. The volume element located at a distance r from the center of the sphere has a moment of inertia relative to the x-axis given by: dIx = dm * y^2 _> smitra: dIz = dm * (x^2 + y^2)_ I asked GPT to take a second look at the part where it said "DIX = DM * Y^2". I did NOT say it was wrong or it had made an error of any kind, I just asked it to look at it, but nevertheless it knew it had made a boo-boo. GPT said this: "GPT: I apologize for the error in my previous response. The correct expression for the moment of inertia of a small volume element relative to the x-axis is: dIx = dm * (y^2 + z^2) This takes into account the fact that the mass element is not necessarily located on the y-axis, but rather at a distance y from the x-axis and at a distance z from the z-axis. Similarly, the moment of inertia of a small volume element relative to the y-axis is: dIy = dm * (x^2 + z^2) and the moment of inertia of a small volume element relative to the z-axis is: dIz = dm * (x^2 + y^2) I hope this clarifies the issue. Thank you for bringing it to my attention." By the way, the version of GPT I was using was NOT the one that had the Mathematica plug-in. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] 5vd So, it has noticed that it used the wrong formulas and it has found the correct ones. However, it was not able to do the calculation using spherical symmetry. It only noted in the previous answer that the answer is spherically symmetric because it doesn't depend on the orientation of the axis relative to which the moment of inertia is computed. So, it tells you the steps to compute the three dimensional integral in spherical coordinates, it is unable to see that adding up the three moments of inertias about the x, y and z axis yields a spherically symmetric expression that can be computed using a one dimensional integral over the radius. Being unable to solve a problem in a much simpler way than the standard way is a big red flag against the idea that GPT can do any math at all. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dd7c6758574b6f4a6ad1e3b1f54ae191%40zonnet.nl.
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
On 09-04-2023 19:56, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 12:53 PM smitra wrote: For some simple physics or math result consider different ways of getting to that result where one of these ways is not widely published and is likely not in GPT's database. Take e.g. different ways of computing the moment of inertia of a ball of uniform density of radius R and mass M (relative to an axis through the center). There are many ways to do this, but I've not seen my favorite way of doing this on any webpage, which is to restore spherical symmetry by adding up the three identical moments of inertia relative to 3 orthogonal axes. I just send this to GPT: _Me: __Derive the formula for the moment of inertia (relative to an axis through the center) of a ball of uniform density of radius R and mass M by adding up the three identical moments of inertia relative to 3 orthogonal axes and restoring spherical symmetry._ _And in less than three seconds it gave me this: _ GPT: To derive the formula for the moment of inertia of a ball of uniform density, we will start by finding the moment of inertia relative to three orthogonal axes passing through the center of the ball. Let's call these axes x, y, and z. The moment of inertia of a point mass m relative to an axis at a distance r from the mass is given by: I = m * r^2 For a solid sphere of uniform density, we can divide it into small volume elements, each with mass dm. The volume element located at a distance r from the center of the sphere has a moment of inertia relative to the x-axis given by: dIx = dm * y^2 dIx = dm * (y^2 + z^2) I'm guessing GPT found the formula for the disk in its database and used that here Similarly, the moment of inertia of this volume element relative to the y-axis is: dIy = dm * x^2 dIy = dm * (x^2 + z^2) The moment of inertia relative to the z-axis is: dIz = dm * r^2 dIz = dm * (x^2 + y^2) Not r^2 but it's r^2 for a disk wth the z-axis orthogonal to the plane of a disk. where r is the distance from the center of the sphere to the volume element. We can express the differential mass element dm in terms of the density ρ and the volume element dV: dm = ρ * dV For a sphere of radius R, the volume element is: dV = 4/3 * π * r^2 * dr Substituting dm and dV into the expressions for dIx, dIy, and dIz, and integrating over the volume of the sphere, we get: Ix = ∫∫∫ y^2 * ρ * (4/3 * π * r^2 * dr) dV Iy = ∫∫∫ x^2 * ρ * (4/3 * π * r^2 * dr) dV Iz = ∫∫∫ r^2 * ρ * (4/3 * π * r^2 * dr) dV where the limits of integration are: 0 ≤ r ≤ R, 0 ≤ θ ≤ π, 0 ≤ φ ≤ 2π To simplify these integrals, we can use spherical coordinates, where x = r sin θ cos φ, y = r sin θ sin φ, and z = r cos θ. The volume element in spherical coordinates is: dV = r^2 sin θ dr dθ dφ Substituting this into the expressions for Ix, Iy, and Iz, we get: Ix = 2/5 * M * R^2 Iy = 2/5 * M * R^2 Iz = 2/5 * M * R^2 Using the correct formula's that would be the results. But even then that's not doing the problem with restrig spehrical symmetry. where M is the mass of the sphere, given by: M = ρ * V = 4/3 * π * R^3 * ρ where V is the volume of the sphere. Note that Ix = Iy, since the sphere has spherical symmetry, and the moments of inertia relative to any two orthogonal axes in a plane perpendicular to the third axis are equal. Therefore, the moment of inertia of a sphere of uniform density relative to an axis through the center is: I = 2/5 * M * R^2 which is the desired formula. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] grxq So, this shows that GPT does not know what it is doing. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3HFKt73uZGEEQ1dPRXDw0%3D%2BsTWfLWe4cZAuW9PFjXTtw%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3HFKt73uZGEEQ1dPRXDw0%3D%2BsTWfLWe4cZAuW9PFjXTtw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6f87c0a3c5d74f6284b55a8333f8fbb9%40zonnet.nl.
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
On 03-04-2023 22:23, John Clark wrote: On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 5:58 PM smitra wrote: While GPT hooked up to Mathematica may greatly improve its performance, I would not be impressed when judging that in terms of approaching human level cognition. A long time ago I was teaching a statistical mechanics class, the students had to do a certain calculation for homework that involved doing the series expansion of 1/sinh(x) to order x. I was shocked to see that none of the students could do it. But some did come up with the right answer, they had shown some failed attempts and then wrote that they used Mathematica and Mathematica says that the answer is 1/x - x/6 ... The students couldn't do it because they could not use the Taylor expansion formula due to the singularity at x = 0. Most students had not bothered to think about how to bypass that problem, otherwise at least a few would have written down the correct derivation Forget algebra, trigonometry and calculus, even when a human performs something as basic as long division he's usually just blindly following an algorithm that he learned in grade school and is not consciously thinking about why it works. But GPT4 is certainly capable of providing mathematical proofs if necessary and can show it understands them by correctly answering questions about them and even giving the proof in a very different way. I just asked GPT3.5 to give me Euclid's proof of the infinity of the primes but do so in the form of a poem, and in less than two seconds this is what it produced, no doubt GPT4 could do even better. And this is before Mr.GPT got hooked up with Mathematica: "In Euclid's time, a great debate was rife, About the primes that fill the number line, _SOME CLAIMED THAT THEIR COUNT MUST END IN TIME,_ BUT EUCLID PROVED THEM WRONG WITH REASONS MIGHT. SUPPOSE WE HAVE A FINITE SET OF PRIMES, _AND MULTIPLY THEM ALL TO GET A LINE, _ _WE ADD ONE TO THIS PRODUCT, QUITE SUBLIME, _ A new number appears, that's not confined. This number is not divisible _BY ANY OF THE PRIMES IN OUR FINITE SET, _ _FOR IF IT WERE, WED REACH A SORRY LIE, _ _That contradicts the number line's duet._ So this new number must be prime indeed, _AND THUS WEVE FOUND A NEW ONE TO CONCEDE, _ _ADDING IT TO OUR SET, WE THEN PROCEED, _ _To find another prime with the same breed._ _And thus we prove there's infinite primes to find, _ _A TRUTH THAT STANDS THE TEST OF SPACE AND TIME, _ _THE PRIMES ARE INFINITE, IN NUMBER AND KIND, _ _THANKS TO EUCLIDS PROOF, SO CLEAR AND DIVINE."_ John K Clark GPT used its language skills to morph the standard proof into a poem. It is good enough on language to reformulate the text so that its meaning doesn't change, but that doesn't imply that it has a good understanding of the text. To test GPT's math skills you need to get it do produce a result that is not in its database. The fact that GPT fail at simple arithmetic betrays that GPT doesn't understand math. It doesn't have the answers to all simple sums in its database and therefore it cannot reproduce such results. I don't have a lot of time to test GPT myself, but you should try the following. For some simple physics or math result consider different ways of getting to that result where one of these ways is not widely published and is likely not in GPT's database. Take e.g. different ways of computing the moment of inertia of a ball of uniform density of radius R and mass M (relative to an axis through the center). There are many ways to do this, but I've not seen my favorite way of doing this on any webpage, which is to restore spherical symmetry by adding up the three identical moments of inertia relative to 3 orthogonal axes. Because you are integrating over the square of the distance to each axis which is the square of the distance to the origin minus the square of the coordinate along that axis, the sum becomes the integral of 2 times the squared distance to the center. So, the moment of inertia of a ball is given by: 2/3 M integral from 0 to R of 4 pi r^4 dr / (4/3 pi R^3) = 2/5 M R^2 So, we get to a simple one-line derivation that's so simple that I can easily do it in my head. But this may not be in GPT's database, and if it's not then GPT will fail to reproduce this very simple result while it will have no difficulties spewing out the more complex derivations, formulate those as poems etc. etc. There are quite a few of such cases where you have a widely published result which is more complicated than the most efficient way of getting to that result but with that more efficient way not being widely published, so many tests like this van be done. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
Allan Snyder's research group has done these experiments: http://www.centreforthemind.com/publications/SavantNumerosity.pdf http://www.centreforthemind.com/images/savantskills.pdf Saibal On 03-04-2023 01:10, Brent Meeker wrote: That's fascinating. I had not heard to the magnetic stimulation/inhibition experiments. Have you a reference? Brent On 4/2/2023 2:58 PM, smitra wrote: While GPT hooked up to Mathematica may greatly improve its performance, I would not be impressed when judging that in terms of approaching human level cognition. A long time ago I was teaching a statistical mechanics class, the students had to do a certain calculation for homework that involved doing the series expansion of 1/sinh(x) to order x. I was shocked to see that none of the students could do it. But some did come up with the right answer, they had shown some failed attempts and then wrote that they used Mathematica and Mathematica says that the answer is 1/x - x/6 ... The students couldn't do it because they could not use the Taylor expansion formula due to the singularity at x = 0. Most students had not bothered to think about how to bypass that problem, otherwise at least a few would have written down the correct derivation: 1/sinh(x) = 1/(x + x^3/6 +...) = 1/x 1/(1 + x^2/6 + ...) = 1/x (1 - x^2/6 + ...) = 1/x - x/6 +... Now, I do think that GPT is a great leap forward, I don't want to downplay the progress made. But I'm quite skeptical about the idea that such systems are approaching human level cognition. The human brain is an enormously powerful system, but we don't have free access to use the power of our brains to do whatever we want. For example, most people cannot multiply two 5 digit numbers in their head, but a simple pocket calculator has no problems with that task. However, some autistic savants do have more of a privileged access to use the power of the our brains to do arithmetic. Some of them can do calculations that most other people cannot do. In certain tests involving magnetic stimulation or inhibition of certain brain parts performed on ordinary people, it has been shown that people can temporarily gain certain abilities that they normally don't have. For example, if you look at a screen with a few hundreds dots on it, can you count the number of displayed dots in one second? Most people can't, some autistic savants can do this. But in the experiment with magnetic stimulation or inhibition, the test subjects were also able to do this. When we are consciously using our brains doing complicated things e.g. mathematics, then we are using our brains in an extremely inefficient way. If we could have an artificial brain similar to our brain but one which is completely dedicated to doing mathematics instead of what our brains are dedicated to do, then it would be enormously better at math than we are. It's then likely that something like the brain of a lizard that is fully dedicated to math would already completely outclass the world's best mathematicians. Perhaps even the brain of insects could perform at the same level of most mathematicians when fully dedicated to doing math. Saibal On 28-03-2023 23:32, John Clark wrote: Apparently I'm not the only one who has become obsessed with the developments in AI that have occurred in the last few weeks, Stephen Wolfram, the man who developed Mathematica, started Wolfram Alpha, and wrote the book A New Kind Of Science about cellular automation, has given two very interesting interviews on the subject. Wolfram wrote a plug-in to connect GPT4 with Mathematica because calculation was the one thing that GPT4 was not very good at but Mathematica is superb at it; he describes the experience as "poking at an alien intelligence". GPT + Wolfram: The Future of AI is Here! [1] GPT, AI, and AGI with Stephen Wolfram [2] John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis [3] 9eq -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2%3D_vDQ1fhCpoa3nv20TC66iWGLb1oiEtEmpGfb3YOQiA%40mail.gmail.com [4]. Links: -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5WZhCBRDpU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szxiPMyuMGY [3] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [4] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2%3D_vDQ1fhCpoa3nv20TC66iWGLb1oiEtEmpGfb3YOQiA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups
Re: GPT4 + Mathematica
While GPT hooked up to Mathematica may greatly improve its performance, I would not be impressed when judging that in terms of approaching human level cognition. A long time ago I was teaching a statistical mechanics class, the students had to do a certain calculation for homework that involved doing the series expansion of 1/sinh(x) to order x. I was shocked to see that none of the students could do it. But some did come up with the right answer, they had shown some failed attempts and then wrote that they used Mathematica and Mathematica says that the answer is 1/x - x/6 ... The students couldn't do it because they could not use the Taylor expansion formula due to the singularity at x = 0. Most students had not bothered to think about how to bypass that problem, otherwise at least a few would have written down the correct derivation: 1/sinh(x) = 1/(x + x^3/6 +...) = 1/x 1/(1 + x^2/6 + ...) = 1/x (1 - x^2/6 + ...) = 1/x - x/6 +... Now, I do think that GPT is a great leap forward, I don't want to downplay the progress made. But I'm quite skeptical about the idea that such systems are approaching human level cognition. The human brain is an enormously powerful system, but we don't have free access to use the power of our brains to do whatever we want. For example, most people cannot multiply two 5 digit numbers in their head, but a simple pocket calculator has no problems with that task. However, some autistic savants do have more of a privileged access to use the power of the our brains to do arithmetic. Some of them can do calculations that most other people cannot do. In certain tests involving magnetic stimulation or inhibition of certain brain parts performed on ordinary people, it has been shown that people can temporarily gain certain abilities that they normally don't have. For example, if you look at a screen with a few hundreds dots on it, can you count the number of displayed dots in one second? Most people can't, some autistic savants can do this. But in the experiment with magnetic stimulation or inhibition, the test subjects were also able to do this. When we are consciously using our brains doing complicated things e.g. mathematics, then we are using our brains in an extremely inefficient way. If we could have an artificial brain similar to our brain but one which is completely dedicated to doing mathematics instead of what our brains are dedicated to do, then it would be enormously better at math than we are. It's then likely that something like the brain of a lizard that is fully dedicated to math would already completely outclass the world's best mathematicians. Perhaps even the brain of insects could perform at the same level of most mathematicians when fully dedicated to doing math. Saibal On 28-03-2023 23:32, John Clark wrote: Apparently I'm not the only one who has become obsessed with the developments in AI that have occurred in the last few weeks, Stephen Wolfram, the man who developed Mathematica, started Wolfram Alpha, and wrote the book A New Kind Of Science about cellular automation, has given two very interesting interviews on the subject. Wolfram wrote a plug-in to connect GPT4 with Mathematica because calculation was the one thing that GPT4 was not very good at but Mathematica is superb at it; he describes the experience as "poking at an alien intelligence". GPT + Wolfram: The Future of AI is Here! [1] GPT, AI, and AGI with Stephen Wolfram [2] John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [3] 9eq -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2%3D_vDQ1fhCpoa3nv20TC66iWGLb1oiEtEmpGfb3YOQiA%40mail.gmail.com [4]. Links: -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5WZhCBRDpU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szxiPMyuMGY [3] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [4] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2%3D_vDQ1fhCpoa3nv20TC66iWGLb1oiEtEmpGfb3YOQiA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d853615bdddbd0b993040c282514ae15%40zonnet.nl.
Re: 4 Tests Reveal Bing (GPT 4) ≈ 114 IQ (last test is nuts)
I'll be convinced if they succeed making such a system do original research in, say, theoretical physics or mathematics and get lots of high quality research results published that gets los of citations for groundbreaking work, rather than small improvements of details of existing work. If the next Feynman, Einstein, or John on Neumann is an AI system then skeptics can continue to argue that the system is still just a dumb computer, but the world will then have moved on with those AI systems becoming an ever more important part of society. I'm not convinced that the present GPT systems are demonstrating human-level intellect. Our brains are very powerful computers that we can use in a very inefficient way to do academic work with. If the brain of a lizard were fully dedicated to analyze and process texts instead of controlling its body to react optimally to its environment, it would likely also perform extremely well compared to these GPT systems. The way one would be able to see that the system despite performing extremely well does not have the intellectual capabilities of a human being, would be to follow up on gaps in its knowledge and see if it can learn from its mistakes and master new subjects. So, in the video we see that it got a question wrong because it thought that 33 is a prime number. I would be more impressed by a system that may make many more mistakes like that than this GPT system made, but where there is a follow-up conversation where the mistakes are pointed out and the system shows that it has learned and then gets similar questions that it would previously have gotten wrong given the previous answers, correct. Saibal On 16-03-2023 18:30, John Clark wrote: Forget the Ukraine war, forget climate change, forget Donald Trump, I now think GPT-4 is by far the most world shaking event and the most underreported one. Many of us have been talking about the singularity for decades, but now it looks like we're on its doorstep. You've got to look at this video! 4 Tests Reveal Bing (GPT 4) ≈ 114 IQ (last test is nuts) [1] John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [2] cdk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0SOiZQ3fLU-8fQDX5Zfs6%3Dm5koRbJzRV%2Bdg6E-a-mm%3DA%40mail.gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvDJnf0GXslist=PLYXp_rV1HrBAOZqPJTOSo91275hKQrfplindex=13 [2] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0SOiZQ3fLU-8fQDX5Zfs6%3Dm5koRbJzRV%2Bdg6E-a-mm%3DA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6120aa1466fe3983f58c7d8b9f67272c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Physics Without Probability
On 22-11-2022 02:47, Brent Meeker wrote: On 11/21/2022 5:12 PM, smitra wrote: The problem lies with the notion of probability, he explains here that it cannot refer to anything in the physics world as an exact statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s That's then a problem for a fundamental theory of physics as such a theory must refer to statements about nature that are exactly true. Who says so? Physics never makes exact measurements. Why should the theory do something that the physics can't? Deutsch is like the scholastics, he thinks physics is just a branch of mathematical logic. Brent But physics cannot implement a rigorous notion of probability. So, that then makes QM in the traditional formulation problematic. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b12a7a8595e6646a11c323c3af6a41df%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Physics Without Probability
On 22-11-2022 02:45, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 12:12 PM smitra wrote: The problem lies with the notion of probability, he explains here that it cannot refer to anything in the physics world as an exact statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s That's then a problem for a fundamental theory of physics as such a theory must refer to statements about nature that are exactly true. No statements in physics are exactly true. Bruce The problem with probability is actually the other way around. It's impossible to rigorously define probability in purely physical terms. Therefore the exact formulation of the laws of physics cannot refer to probability. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ%3D0R9tMkdiUfQ%3D4ofBwYL9eSbPibJW70YKM083YiuiQQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ%3D0R9tMkdiUfQ%3D4ofBwYL9eSbPibJW70YKM083YiuiQQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0abd81559bf04125eb4382c07faeca6a%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Physics Without Probability
The problem lies with the notion of probability, he explains here that it cannot refer to anything in the physics world as an exact statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s That's then a problem for a fundamental theory of physics as such a theory must refer to statements about nature that are exactly true. Saibal On 22-11-2022 01:08, Brent Meeker wrote: He's wrong that frequentism does not empirically support probability statements. He goes off on a tangent by referring to "other gamblers". Nothing in physics is certain, yet Deutsch takes a bunch of definite assertions and claims they alone are the real physics. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." --- Damon Runyan "In the Austin airport on the way to this meeting I noticed for sale the October issue of a magazine called Astronomy, having on the cover the headline “Why You Live in Multiple Universes.” Inside I found a report of a discussion at a conference at Stanford, at which Martin Rees said that he was sufficiently confident about the multiverse to bet his dog’s life on it, while Andrei Linde said he would bet his own life. As for me, I have just enough confidence about the multiverse to bet the lives of both Andrei Linde and Martin Rees’s dog." --- Steven Weinberg Brent On 11/20/2022 4:28 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 2:52 AM smitra wrote: Probability cannot be a fundamental concept in physics as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc I'm afraid Deutsch is a bit too glib in this lecture. He hasn't, despite his best efforts, removed probability from physics. For example, in quantum mechanics, he has not explained why, if one measures the z-spin of a spin-half particle prepared in an eigenstate of x-spin, one gets only one result -- either z-spin-up or z-spin-down. If one has eliminated probability, one should be able to explain which result one gets, and why. It is no solution to say that with many-worlds, that both results are obtained by disjoint copies of the experimenter. The experimenter is just one copy, and one would have to explain the result for each individual separately. Many worlds does not explain why I, for example, see only z-spin-up and not z-spin-down. To make sense of that, we need a viable concept of probability and the Born rule. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQR4F3uEXO3HCPysF5Rwwr5x6NCOVZ5vk5wmiqu%2BWi8qw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ef67fea2-fbf8-6e1a-2b5b-3b5182515732%40gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQR4F3uEXO3HCPysF5Rwwr5x6NCOVZ5vk5wmiqu%2BWi8qw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ef67fea2-fbf8-6e1a-2b5b-3b5182515732%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e77e1b82b1f376e022d74c9da341a941%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Physics Without Probability
On 21-11-2022 01:28, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 2:52 AM smitra wrote: Probability cannot be a fundamental concept in physics as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc I'm afraid Deutsch is a bit too glib in this lecture. He hasn't, despite his best efforts, removed probability from physics. For example, in quantum mechanics, he has not explained why, if one measures the z-spin of a spin-half particle prepared in an eigenstate of x-spin, one gets only one result -- either z-spin-up or z-spin-down. If one has eliminated probability, one should be able to explain which result one gets, and why. It is no solution to say that with many-worlds, that both results are obtained by disjoint copies of the experimenter. The experimenter is just one copy, and one would have to explain the result for each individual separately. Many worlds does not explain why I, for example, see only z-spin-up and not z-spin-down. To make sense of that, we need a viable concept of probability and the Born rule. Bruce He has argued that fundamental physics cannot be based on probability, it can at best play a role in an effective description of the physical world. This excerpt is the most to the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc=1036s He then goes on to argue that there is no need to refer to probabilities in QM using a decision theoretic argument that does not refer to any notion of a probability. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c6ad39d5ed1cd0de95cc09a8afb87275%40zonnet.nl.
Physics Without Probability
Probability cannot be a fundamental concept in physics as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b567bf283b6c4586116e41723dbf0a48%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Apparently objective quantum wave function collapse doesn't occur
On 26-10-2022 07:45, Brent Meeker wrote: On 10/25/2022 4:15 PM, smitra wrote: On 26-10-2022 00:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 9:00 AM John Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 5:31 PM Bruce Kellett wrote: _> One of the main troubles with this is that the Copenhagen Interpretation, insofar as there is any such thing, does not entail that the wave function collapses when the result enters consciousness. This was a mad idea put forward by Wigner, and it was soon realized that the idea was just silly, and could never work. So that idea has long been abandoned. Deutsch's attempted proof involves comparison with an abandoned idea of quantum mechanics, so it doesn't really prove anything. Besides, the whole set-up involves assumptions about quantum computers and consciousness that are far from obvious, and probably not even correct._ OK, so forget about consciousness, the fact remains that If you see interference bands on Deutsch's photographic plate then that would prove a universe can split and, provided the difference between them is very small, can under the right conditions become identical again and thus merge back together. That is the key part of the multiverse idea and if it's true then there is no need to indulge in the mumbo-jumbo of Copenhagen quantum complementarity. That is as much mumbo-jumbo as anything in Copenhagen. For instance, what determines if the difference between the worlds is small 'enough'? You are using the result of no divergence between worlds to conclude something about a divergence that probably never occurred. It is simpler to state that no measurement was made in the Deutsch set-up. Measurement, after all, involves irreversible decoherence, and such cannot be 'quantum erased'. So no which-way measurement would have been made in the Deutsch experiment. "Measurement" requires the formation of permanent records in the environment (and many copies of the result can be formed as well). There is no such thing as irreversible decoherence in unitary QM. Now, you and Brent have invoked the expansion of the universe in past discussions to argue that fundamentally irreversible phenomena do exist. However this reasoning is flawed, because you then assume a semi-classical model where the expansion of the universe is described in a classical way. If QM is fundamental, then the entire state of the universe, including the space-time geometry is part of that quantum description. You then have a wavefunctional that assigns a complex amplitude to the entire state of the universe that includes al the fields of all particles and also the space-time geometry. That assumes that the long sought quantum theory of gravity will not break unitarity. There are already proposals for this https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.11658.pdf Brent It's not clear that generalizing from unitary to isometric transforms makes much of a difference here for the purpose of getting to a real collapse of the wavefunction. ALso, in the article they Thing is that the laws of physics are what they are. You cannot demand that you require measurement results to be truly permanent and that they therefore arise due to irreversible processes. Whether that's the case or not is determined by the laws of physics, not by us. Also, in the article they threat the space-time geometry as a classical background field, the consider the problem of QFT in an expanding universe. It's not clear at all from their proposals how in their proposal where the dimension of Hilbert space increases, one would quantize gravity. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a9f8f0cf88c9c388c9b78cde79d5b803%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Apparently objective quantum wave function collapse doesn't occur
On 26-10-2022 01:40, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 10:15 AM smitra wrote: On 26-10-2022 00:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: There is no such thing as irreversible decoherence in unitary QM. Now, you and Brent have invoked the expansion of the universe in past discussions to argue that fundamentally irreversible phenomena do exist. However this reasoning is flawed, because you then assume a semi-classical model where the expansion of the universe is described in a classical way. If QM is fundamental, then the entire state of the universe, including the space-time geometry is part of that quantum description. You then have a wavefunctional that assigns a complex amplitude to the entire state of the universe that includes al the fields of all particles and also the space-time geometry. Thing is that the laws of physics are what they are. You cannot demand that you require measurement results to be truly permanent and that they therefore arise due to irreversible processes. Whether that's the case or not is determined by the laws of physics, not by us. The laws of physics tell us that measurements are irreversible. Unitary evolution is universal only in your imagination. Many Worlds is an interpretation, not an established fact. Bruce The laws of physics as we know them today, rule out the existence of any physical process that is fundamentally irreversible. So, measurements cannot be irreversible if the known laws of physics are correct. If you disagree then it's up to you to point to just a single example of such a process and write up an article that proves your point and get that published in a per reviewed journal. Simply saying that QM as traditionally formulated considers measurement as a special process that os irreversible, doesn't cut it, because measurement is then not treated in terms of the fundamental dynamics of the theory, it is put in in an ad hoc way. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQXBFdX%2BAWENJg7%2B_PFG%2BK5w370ZCrJN20wU96uV4VVzA%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQXBFdX%2BAWENJg7%2B_PFG%2BK5w370ZCrJN20wU96uV4VVzA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ea0399bd45351bd7372b09917c1f6bea%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Apparently objective quantum wave function collapse doesn't occur
On 26-10-2022 00:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 9:00 AM John Clark wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 5:31 PM Bruce Kellett wrote: _> One of the main troubles with this is that the Copenhagen Interpretation, insofar as there is any such thing, does not entail that the wave function collapses when the result enters consciousness. This was a mad idea put forward by Wigner, and it was soon realized that the idea was just silly, and could never work. So that idea has long been abandoned. Deutsch's attempted proof involves comparison with an abandoned idea of quantum mechanics, so it doesn't really prove anything. Besides, the whole set-up involves assumptions about quantum computers and consciousness that are far from obvious, and probably not even correct._ OK, so forget about consciousness, the fact remains that If you see interference bands on Deutsch's photographic plate then that would prove a universe can split and, provided the difference between them is very small, can under the right conditions become identical again and thus merge back together. That is the key part of the multiverse idea and if it's true then there is no need to indulge in the mumbo-jumbo of Copenhagen quantum complementarity. That is as much mumbo-jumbo as anything in Copenhagen. For instance, what determines if the difference between the worlds is small 'enough'? You are using the result of no divergence between worlds to conclude something about a divergence that probably never occurred. It is simpler to state that no measurement was made in the Deutsch set-up. Measurement, after all, involves irreversible decoherence, and such cannot be 'quantum erased'. So no which-way measurement would have been made in the Deutsch experiment. "Measurement" requires the formation of permanent records in the environment (and many copies of the result can be formed as well). There is no such thing as irreversible decoherence in unitary QM. Now, you and Brent have invoked the expansion of the universe in past discussions to argue that fundamentally irreversible phenomena do exist. However this reasoning is flawed, because you then assume a semi-classical model where the expansion of the universe is described in a classical way. If QM is fundamental, then the entire state of the universe, including the space-time geometry is part of that quantum description. You then have a wavefunctional that assigns a complex amplitude to the entire state of the universe that includes al the fields of all particles and also the space-time geometry. Thing is that the laws of physics are what they are. You cannot demand that you require measurement results to be truly permanent and that they therefore arise due to irreversible processes. Whether that's the case or not is determined by the laws of physics, not by us. Saibal So if the experiment was actually performed, what is your guess would happen, what would you place your money on, would there be interference bands on that photographic plate or would there not be? My guess is that you would see interference bands, I would not bet my life on it or even my house, but I would be willing to bet a week's salary. I, too, would expect to see interference bands, because no which-way measurement would have been made in that set-up. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQxCDUwLp%2BROQu5Rk0ApAeqJqcFaKgDV2FSOtzkebNXFw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQxCDUwLp%2BROQu5Rk0ApAeqJqcFaKgDV2FSOtzkebNXFw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c264b1391530e8b42be2dc7788e215da%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The code for AGI will be simple
This is something that fits in with what I wrote here some time ago about insect-level AI taking over from us. A system with AGI doesn't have to be all that intelligent for it to be extremely useful. Today we cannot build a remotely controlled spider that could survive in Nature. That little intelligence a spider has is the GI it needs to take on the challenges of surviving. If we have something similar, say spider level AGI then that's good enough to fully automatize our entire economy with. The reason why you can't replace all factory worker with machines is due to a lack of even a minimal amount of AGI. So, I think insect-level AGI will cause a rapid transition to a machine civilization. This will lead to a new biology of machines with insect level intelligence ending up wiping out all life on Earth due to pollution, similar to the great oxygenation event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event And as I pointed out earlier, I think this is a universal phenomena that all intelligent life is subject to. The whole point of being intelligent is to let as much of the work be done for you by entities that are dumber than you. But in that process that leads to faster and faster economic growth, its inevitable that at some point you are going to crate autonomous systems that will grow exponentially. The point where the transition to artificial life starts is going to be close to the minimum intelligence level needed for exponential growth. If you make it hotter and hotter in some closed space, a fire will break out, this is going to happen close to the minimum required temperature for ignition, not at some extremely high value for the temperature. Nature shows us that the minimum amount of intelligence required for efficient self-maintenance and reproduction that yields exponential growth is very low. Saibal On 08-09-2022 14:09, John Clark wrote: This is an interview of the great computer programmer John Carmack, he thinks the time when computers can do everything, not just some things, as good or better than humans is much closer than most people believe, he thinks there is a 60% chance it will happen by 2030. Like me Carmack is much more interested in intelligence than consciousness and has no interest in the "philosophical zombie" argument. As far as the future history of the human race is concerned the following quotation is particularly relevant: "___It seems to me this is the highest leverage moment for a single individual potentially_ _in the history of the world._ [...] _I am not a mad man in saying that the code for artificial General intelligence is going to be tens of thousands of lines of code, not millions of lines of code. This is code that conceivably one individual could write, unliker writing a new web browser or operating system._" The code for AGI will be simple [1] John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [2] b30 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3ZEbXXVjs803%3Dutjc2pvkCgpZGA%2Bad_OWBhue-5kxDJQ%40mail.gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLi83prR5fg [2] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3ZEbXXVjs803%3Dutjc2pvkCgpZGA%2Bad_OWBhue-5kxDJQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d4b54074fe283e5c198ff6a6d709b143%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Trump and government secrecy
Leading GOP politicians such as Lindsey Graham are telling lies about the facts of this case, and FOX NEWS is helping to spread all these lies. So, I think the current constitutional system cannot survive. A constitutional democracy is ultimately a set of rules that everyone agrees to stick to. Parties win or lose elections under these rules, but they accept the outcome and will only raise objections based on the rules, they won't attempt to circumvent the rules to get the outcome they want. Once a major party representing a significant fraction of the population no longer accepts all of the rules of the system, then the system will collapse. I think the only way to fix the system is for the Democrats to make it clear to the GOP that their Administration will no longer recognize SCOTUS rulings but will instead appoint an ad-hoc judicial committee consisting of independent legal experts and will let that committee rule on the cases that go to SCOTUS and stick to whatever that committee rules and totally ignore the SCOTUS rulings. The GOP will then move to impeach the government, but the Democrats will be able to block any conviction in the Senate by not attending (because they don't recognize the SCOTUS, they won't take the oath and accept the Chief Justice overseeing the impeachment as legitimate) which means that the quorum requirement won't be met. The Democrats can then tell the GOP that they intent to do this unless the GOP starts to behave like a normal party again, accepts the system as it is and stops railing against it. Saibal On 01-09-2022 13:32, John Clark wrote: Remember the big fuss Donald Trump made over Hillary Clinton's email server? The government has 4 general classification levels ,Top Secret, Secret, Confidential and Sensitive, there was never anything on Clinton's server that was higher than "sensitive". For a year and a half the government had been trying to get back classified documents that Trump has been keeping in cardboard boxes in an unsecured storage room at his golf club. Finally on June 3 of this year lawyers for Trump returned an envelope with a few classified documents in them and said UNDER OATH that after an "extensive search" that's all the classified material they could find. However the government received a tip (from who we do not know) that the lawyers were lying and there were more secret documents there. So on August 8 FBI agents raided Mar-A-Lago and after just a few minutes of searching they found one document that was "secret" and 5 that were not only top-secret but Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI); that means documents that are only supposed to be looked at in specially prepared super secure rooms called a SCIF, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Mar-A-Lago had a SCIF when Trump was president but it hasn't had one since he left the presidency and Donald Trump no longer has the clearance to even read stuff that is "sensitive" , much less documents marked Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). Below is a photo taken by the FBI on August 8: John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] hct -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2qZHQxFf6h8zyg3ZW2edS_abUZM38yBtUXryqcM9Xgkg%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2qZHQxFf6h8zyg3ZW2edS_abUZM38yBtUXryqcM9Xgkg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fdb717c3c21e9813b290dd094105ea00%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Information conservation and irreversibility
But then you are describing only part of the system using QM. The whole system includes the universe itself, this is described by a wavefunctional that assigns amplitudes to entire space-time configurations and the fields in it. Saibal On 28-08-2022 20:42, Brent Meeker wrote: But in the mean time the expansion of the universe has moved lots of what the wave function of the universe beyond our horizon. And what we can access is not the unitary evolution of what we could earlier. Brent On 8/28/2022 1:34 AM, smitra wrote: It's a unitary map, it will evolve the past state into a superposition of many different states. One may argue that this is meaningless, as one has to choose a basis. But this is essentially what time evolution operator does for you. If you work in a particular basis then applying the time evolution operator amounts to changing that basis into another basis without affecting the state of the system in any way. Saibal On 28-08-2022 00:41, Brent Meeker wrote: Why do you think the evolution is deterministic of our part of universe? Brent On 8/27/2022 9:17 AM, smitra wrote: The time evolution operator maps past states of our universe to present states. So, the present state of the universe, which includes our conscious experience of the present state was also present in the early universe in a nonlocal way where there would be no obvious sign of us existing at all. Saibal On 27-08-2022 02:44, Brent Meeker wrote: Even if it were sentient its thoughts would be incomprehensible to us. Brent On 8/26/2022 2:52 AM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 5:41 AM Lawrence Crowell wrote: _> I do not think much of this idea that the universe is sentient._ I think the idea is a bit silly because I don't see any way to prove or disprove it even in theory. And in the entire universe the only thing that I know with absolute certainty is sentient is the 3 pounds of gray goo inside a bone vat that is sitting on my shoulders. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] ibv -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com [2]. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/88f97c9665788bab88ce5e055bd83335%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Information conservation and irreversibility
It's a unitary map, it will evolve the past state into a superposition of many different states. One may argue that this is meaningless, as one has to choose a basis. But this is essentially what time evolution operator does for you. If you work in a particular basis then applying the time evolution operator amounts to changing that basis into another basis without affecting the state of the system in any way. Saibal On 28-08-2022 00:41, Brent Meeker wrote: Why do you think the evolution is deterministic of our part of universe? Brent On 8/27/2022 9:17 AM, smitra wrote: The time evolution operator maps past states of our universe to present states. So, the present state of the universe, which includes our conscious experience of the present state was also present in the early universe in a nonlocal way where there would be no obvious sign of us existing at all. Saibal On 27-08-2022 02:44, Brent Meeker wrote: Even if it were sentient its thoughts would be incomprehensible to us. Brent On 8/26/2022 2:52 AM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 5:41 AM Lawrence Crowell wrote: _> I do not think much of this idea that the universe is sentient._ I think the idea is a bit silly because I don't see any way to prove or disprove it even in theory. And in the entire universe the only thing that I know with absolute certainty is sentient is the 3 pounds of gray goo inside a bone vat that is sitting on my shoulders. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] ibv -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com [2]. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/141cdf186bbcd182a47972317fedebaf%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Information conservation and irreversibility
The time evolution operator maps past states of our universe to present states. So, the present state of the universe, which includes our conscious experience of the present state was also present in the early universe in a nonlocal way where there would be no obvious sign of us existing at all. Saibal On 27-08-2022 02:44, Brent Meeker wrote: Even if it were sentient its thoughts would be incomprehensible to us. Brent On 8/26/2022 2:52 AM, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 5:41 AM Lawrence Crowell wrote: _> I do not think much of this idea that the universe is sentient._ I think the idea is a bit silly because I don't see any way to prove or disprove it even in theory. And in the entire universe the only thing that I know with absolute certainty is sentient is the 3 pounds of gray goo inside a bone vat that is sitting on my shoulders. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] ibv -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com [2]. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com [3]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2kQ_tSW8HT5bb2BSh%3Dm3gjcqV-NB8zbZFwTg8CejdFew%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/17ec80e2-08aa-5174-6f3f-9c807f946441%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2fb6679ae9bfe38d12e3ff2bfd7509a3%40zonnet.nl.
Re: NYTimes.com: We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting
If intelligent life that's way more intelligent than insects gets replaced by AI systems with insect level intelligence together with all other life except microbes on a planet, then they are back where biology was in the Cambrian era. The fundamental issue is that intelligence creatures will create tools that will make the work they need to do easier. The tools become ever more sophisticated, so that a lot more work can be done. At some point we get machines and then we get machines with some level of intelligence and then we get to a point where the machines do all the work themselves including the work needed to repair and build themselves. But this is going to to be reached when the typical intelligence of the machines is way less than that of the intelligent creatures that gave rise to the machines. Saibal On 25-08-2022 12:12, Telmo Menezes wrote: I suspect AI is already past insect-level for some tasks, e.g. image recognition and language understanding. The number of parameters in a state-of-the-art huge language model or in something like DALL-E 2 means that these are probably already more complex than an insect nervous system. I might be wrong. In any case, what I don't understand about the supposed solution to the "Fermi paradox" is: why would they expect technological-life evolution to stagnate? In fact I think this reinforces the Fermi paradox. Why aren't we being visited by alien AIs? Of course the usual hypothesis apply: the universe is too young, life is to rare, etc etc Telmo Am Mi, 24. Aug 2022, um 19:28, schrieb smitra: Thanks for sharing! My comment on this article: https://nyti.ms/3dQoxqU#permid=120043436 "It is inevitable that AI systems will end up becoming good enough to run the economy, repair and reproduce themselves. Biology shows us that this does not require highly intelligent systems. As things stand now, even insects outperform our best AI systems, but then we may not even need insect-level intelligence to fully automatize our economy. This development is then driven by economic growth, it's not something that's easy to regulate. Companies will use whatever technology is available to reduce costs and to get to higher profits. The current climate crisis shows just how hard it is to regulate the rather simple process of our use of energy to reduce CO2 emissions. When in the future the economy is run by autonomous machines that maintain and copy each other while producing all the stuff we consume, there will exists a new machine biology besides the original biology. It's then inevitable that the machine biology will not be fully compatible with the original biology. Toxic compounds are likely to be produced. The problem we'll then face is that we'll have even less power to mitigate such problems than we have now when dealing with our CO2 emissions. It's then likely that the new machine biology will destroy most of the original biology. All intelligent life in the universe likely ends in this way. The takeover by machines with insect-level intelligence or less, then explains why the galaxy hasn't already been colonized (the so-called Fermi Paradox)." Saibal On 24-08-2022 14:39, John Clark wrote: Check out this article from The New York Times. Because I'm a subscriber, you can read it through this gift link without a subscription. We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting We’re in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/technology/ai-technology-progress.html?unlocked_article_code=CEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DFDmweiPgYCIiG_EPKarskbtp2wzmQRNlGNLggVblq1OhQJUF2UE-ovp6A0twjEhkClLiSDCkwzo6fGvcx6yPrZW20b710ybPitBzZdWLoUKLA1XV2IRI1qJpmaV372SYKlazAReYl3cJsnqt0XuAMTjgFbCCLv_TjGk8-bI3ANkeAn1FwD-JJWjjTnsqe4qYAdWhRClHHRXB44wUs-Y8WeYNXbOukcUlWKIepiq4RC2doMI6iG5YwIoDUnL9gurLMwgeevnYkS2GsPvx_F8Tqd-ALMQ=em-share -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv21vyY7ZgNzkcVQ1wYr_6dxYq5LyveYMZZrvkig%2B_oV6A%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv21vyY7ZgNzkcVQ1wYr_6dxYq5LyveYMZZrvkig%2B_oV6A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/468ea47509d9246593730ed39b099f9c%40zonnet.nl. -- You received this message
Re: NYTimes.com: We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting
On 24-08-2022 19:41, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 1:28 PM smitra wrote: All intelligent life in the universe likely ends in this way. The takeover by machines with insect-level intelligence or less, then explains why the galaxy hasn't already been colonized (the so-called Fermi Paradox)." If human beings go extinct because they are outsmarted by something "_with insect-level intelligence or less_" then they deserve to go extinct; but I haven't found many insects that can play Chess and GO at a superhuman level, or make original paintings that are far far better than anything I can do if I were just told to paint "infinite joy". This is what a computer thinks it looks like: We're currently struggling getting climate change under control by fixing the way we use energy. What's the intelligence in the system responsible for getting fossil fuels out of the ground to generate power for our economy? It's far simpler than the metabolic processes in a cell. It's true that we can do amazing things with AI. Of course, an insect cannot play chess, but we need to consider here that we're training an AI system for some specific task like playing chess, while an insect has to do many different tasks that have to do with staying alive. It has to find food, stay away from predators etc. etc. To compare an AI to an insect you must see how well they perform when their entire machinery is devoted to the same task. Since we can't hack an insect's brain to optimize it for playing chess, we then need to let an AI simulate a virtual insect to see how well it performs compared to a real insect. There then isn't a big difference in performance anymore. We know that real brains function differently from AI systems, AI systems use a lot of brute force that real brains are able to avoid: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/19/145532/why-even-a-moths-brain-is-smarter-than-an-ai/ But this is actually good news, as it means that a lot of progress can still be made. There is no contradiction with an AI being able to do many things better than we can. Your brain can also do many things that you can't do well consciously. For example, controlling the muscles when you walk is done unconsciously. If you had to consciously control all the muscles needed for walking including keeping balance, you would be unable to walk. Walking would seem to be a task that is way beyond human control. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/789bf05e653c6844f4ac0e24b1c7fdc4%40zonnet.nl.
Re: NYTimes.com: We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting
Thanks for sharing! My comment on this article: https://nyti.ms/3dQoxqU#permid=120043436 "It is inevitable that AI systems will end up becoming good enough to run the economy, repair and reproduce themselves. Biology shows us that this does not require highly intelligent systems. As things stand now, even insects outperform our best AI systems, but then we may not even need insect-level intelligence to fully automatize our economy. This development is then driven by economic growth, it's not something that's easy to regulate. Companies will use whatever technology is available to reduce costs and to get to higher profits. The current climate crisis shows just how hard it is to regulate the rather simple process of our use of energy to reduce CO2 emissions. When in the future the economy is run by autonomous machines that maintain and copy each other while producing all the stuff we consume, there will exists a new machine biology besides the original biology. It's then inevitable that the machine biology will not be fully compatible with the original biology. Toxic compounds are likely to be produced. The problem we'll then face is that we'll have even less power to mitigate such problems than we have now when dealing with our CO2 emissions. It's then likely that the new machine biology will destroy most of the original biology. All intelligent life in the universe likely ends in this way. The takeover by machines with insect-level intelligence or less, then explains why the galaxy hasn't already been colonized (the so-called Fermi Paradox)." Saibal On 24-08-2022 14:39, John Clark wrote: Check out this article from The New York Times. Because I'm a subscriber, you can read it through this gift link without a subscription. We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting We’re in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/technology/ai-technology-progress.html?unlocked_article_code=CEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DFDmweiPgYCIiG_EPKarskbtp2wzmQRNlGNLggVblq1OhQJUF2UE-ovp6A0twjEhkClLiSDCkwzo6fGvcx6yPrZW20b710ybPitBzZdWLoUKLA1XV2IRI1qJpmaV372SYKlazAReYl3cJsnqt0XuAMTjgFbCCLv_TjGk8-bI3ANkeAn1FwD-JJWjjTnsqe4qYAdWhRClHHRXB44wUs-Y8WeYNXbOukcUlWKIepiq4RC2doMI6iG5YwIoDUnL9gurLMwgeevnYkS2GsPvx_F8Tqd-ALMQ=em-share -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv21vyY7ZgNzkcVQ1wYr_6dxYq5LyveYMZZrvkig%2B_oV6A%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv21vyY7ZgNzkcVQ1wYr_6dxYq5LyveYMZZrvkig%2B_oV6A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/468ea47509d9246593730ed39b099f9c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: What Threshold Threat of CO2
https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/ "Climate physicists at the California Institute of Technology performed a state-of-the-art simulation of stratocumulus clouds, the low-lying, blankety kind that have by far the largest cooling effect on the planet. The simulation revealed a tipping point: a level of warming at which stratocumulus clouds break up altogether. The disappearance occurs when the concentration of CO2 in the simulated atmosphere reaches 1,200 parts per million — a level that fossil fuel burning could push us past in about a century, under “business-as-usual” emissions scenarios. In the simulation, when the tipping point is breached, Earth’s temperature soars 8 degrees Celsius, in addition to the 4 degrees of warming or more caused by the CO2 directly. Once clouds go away, the simulated climate “goes over a cliff,” said Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A leading authority on atmospheric physics, Emanuel called the new findings “very plausible,” though, as he noted, scientists must now make an effort to independently replicate the work. To imagine 12 degrees of warming, think of crocodiles swimming in the Arctic and of the scorched, mostly lifeless equatorial regions during the PETM. If carbon emissions aren’t curbed quickly enough and the tipping point is breached, “that would be truly devastating climate change,” said Caltech’s Tapio Schneider, who performed the new simulation with Colleen Kaul and Kyle Pressel. Huber said the stratocumulus tipping point helps explain the volatility that’s evident in the paleoclimate record. He thinks it might be one of many unknown instabilities in Earth’s climate. “Schneider and co-authors have cracked open Pandora’s box of potential climate surprises,” he said, adding that, as the mechanisms behind vanishing clouds become clear, “all of a sudden this enormous sensitivity that is apparent from past climates isn’t something that’s just in the past. It becomes a vision of the future.”" Saibal On 18-08-2022 16:42, Philip Benjamin wrote: WHAT THRESHOLD THREAT OF CO2 FROM CLIMATE CHANGE? https://news.yahoo.com/solar-storm-strike-earth-direct-101857176.html "Solar storm about to strike Earth in a direct hit" Adam Smith Mon, July 18, 2022 at 5:18 AM Solar effects (sunspots, solar storms etc.) etc. will certainly affect the wind systems of the globe. That has nothing to do with CO2 quantities!! The pseudoscience of climatology (not meteorology) which is now an integral part of a worldwide pagan religion, contrary to the Augustinian 'awakened' consciousness. (https://www.midwestaugustinians.org/conversion-of-st-augustine, https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/great-awakening). An estimated 1,050 wildfires worldwide produced global CO2 emissions of 76 billion tons in 2021. That is on the average ~ 3 forest fires each day, producing ~ 78 billion tons of CO2/day. The petroleum burning per year is 5.1/ 150 = ~ 1/30 = ~ 0.03 trillion tons of CO2 = 3 x 10^-2 x10^12 = ~ 30 billion tons of CO2/year. Which is a threat? What is the threshold of CO2 doom? https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8349/cold-and-snow [1]. The climatic SNOW LINE is about 15,000 ft above sea level at the equator and 19,000 ft in the Himalayas. It is progressively lower as the latitude increases, to just below 9,800 ft in the Alps. The reduced volume of melting of _glaciers & icebergs (about 90% below the water surface) can only lower the sea level. The melting of_ mountain ice alone cannot dangerously raise the sea level; for those very powerful forces (not by CO2 !!) will be required to bring up the humongous subterranean water beds. Destroy the petroleum industries, then even the battery industry will be destroyed because some of the 6000 byproducts of petroleum are indispensable for battery production also. Industries cannot keep an oil refinery open just for batteries! Automobile battery alone may then cost prohibitively high. Philip Benjamin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/SJ0PR14MB52646AF7D609A2F4BD051929A86D9%40SJ0PR14MB5264.namprd14.prod.outlook.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/8349/cold-and-snow [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/SJ0PR14MB52646AF7D609A2F4BD051929A86D9%40SJ0PR14MB5264.namprd14.prod.outlook.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
Re: Information conservation and irreversibility
On 04-08-2022 17:41, Alan Grayson wrote: I recall Bruce giving an example of an irreversible process, but I can't recall the details. AG Probably a FAPP irreversible process. Saibal On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 6:39:04 AM UTC-6 Jason wrote: On Thu, Aug 4, 2022, 5:23 AM Alan Grayson wrote: I meant to write that information conservation depends on reversibility! How solid is that assumption? AG I think it is pretty good. I think reversibility is part of it. Certainly in a reversable Newtonian kind of physics (no GR and no QM, full determinism), reversability would imply an inability to destroy information. In reversible computers, information can't be deleted, only shuffled around, so in this simplistic model, reversibility (in a Turing machine) implies conservation of information. In GR, matter falling into black holes was originally thought to be an irreversible process. This led to the "black hole war". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole_War which was eventually settled by concluding information isn't destroyed in a black hole, therefore the pattern of black hole radiation must somehow indicate or encode what has fallen in to it. In QM, wave function collapse was thought to be an example of an irreversible process. Yet from the global view of all the branches and many world's it is not. But moreover, despite the apparent irreversibility if collapse from the confines of any one branch, the information available within any single branch still seems to be conserved (just as matter and energy are). This lead to a kind of: energy-matter-information equivalence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle#Energy,_matter,_and_information_equivalence This question, I think, probes at the very deepest levels of physics. I have some more thoughts on this written here: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Information_as_Fundamental Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1c5ab1b8-fef6-4a5c-bd88-fb7b24d0e4b8n%40googlegroups.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1c5ab1b8-fef6-4a5c-bd88-fb7b24d0e4b8n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a893846c56a40fce7c3efdac42cb0cc3%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The collapse of bitcoin
If a multiverse exists then there are worlds where Hal Finney = Satoshi Nakamoto and as long as you don't have any information that refutes this, you have exact copies in such worlds. Saibal On 31-07-2022 13:22, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 8:33 PM wrote: _> The aha on your energy observation seemingly would be resolved by huge electricity making. I will list the electricity makings that are likely to be ginormous if perfected?_ That won't help because the energy cost involved in making a bitcoin is also increasing and it's increasing exponentially; there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins in the world because if there are 21 million of them the energy needed to make another one is infinite. Bitcoin is inherently energy inefficient and its inefficiency can only increase. Other than it's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto the very first person to ever mint a bitcoin was Hal Finney in 2009, back then a typical home computer could make a bitcoin in just a few minutes, I remember he said on the Extropian mailing list I was on at the time that on a whim he once left his computer on overnight minting bitcoins. He claims that after that he forgot all about it but soon after he was faced with huge medical bills because he was diagnosed with ALS, the same disease Stephen Hawkings had, and about the same time he started reading about the huge increase in the price of Bitcoins. Finney no longer used that old obsolete computer but he still had it at the back of his closet, and the Bitcoins were still on the hard drive, they were more than enough to pay for his medical expenses. Finney died in 2014 and to this day some people think he actually was Satoshi Nakamoto. It may be a coincidence that Nakamoto stopped posting and disappeared about the same time Finney got sick, or it may not be, but it would explain why although he owns billions of dollars worth of bitcoins not a single one has ever been spent by somebody who controls the Bitcoin account of "Satoshi Nakamoto". Even after this recent price collapse Nakamoto is still one of the richest men in the world, and yet he doesn't seem to have ever spent a single nickel of his vast fortune. It's weird. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] 3ch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1BHpiwwUQDPcqJ66kUxWDuiKLBEqEa%3DK9Zo7gHZryg5g%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1BHpiwwUQDPcqJ66kUxWDuiKLBEqEa%3DK9Zo7gHZryg5g%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9331a4f2208bcf9c4e49f84edc9890af%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The collapse of bitcoin
Warren Buffett's take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVm7Pfb0ilY Saibal On 12-07-2022 17:26, Lawrence Crowell wrote: Currencies are in some ways just as artificial as cryptocurrencies. In fact, most everything humans chase after is spun up as whole cloth, from countries, to gods, to money to belief in comrades in arms and so forth. Most everything humanity does is ultimately fake. Money is stuff we just "make up." Even the value of gold is something we "make up." We might be better off if we stopped making this crap up. However, with currencies at least in a representative system the average person has some impact. The crypto-currency trend has been the culmination of Milton Friedman's strange dream of privatizing almost everything. In that setting the average person only has as much power in the system as what they hold. An Elon Musk or Bezos etc has vastly more and so they not only have more power, they have more power to get more. A world of complete private forms of currencies is one that will lead to a sort of monetary feudalism. There will at some point be a few people, financial institutions and banks that own it all. They would come to be the overlords of the world. The collapse of the cryptocurrencies and bitcoin is something of some relief to me. The next dark age may be forestalled a few years at least. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2df15bdf-0573-4664-8582-f7b276a401bbn%40googlegroups.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2df15bdf-0573-4664-8582-f7b276a401bbn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1f9d03b5e5b643cd252058568d68%40zonnet.nl.
Re: China
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62310576 ""If Pelosi visits Taiwan, [People's Liberation Army] military aircraft will accompany Pelosi's plane to enter the island, making a historic crossing of the island by military aircraft from mainland for the 1st time," Hu Xijin wrote." So, I guess her plane will be intercepted and use as a pawn in a standoff between the Chinese air force and the Taiwanese air force. Chinese warplanes will fly very close to Pelosi's plane, attempting to escort her plane to Taiwan. The Taiwanese air force will then have a difficult time intercepting the Chinese warplanes without blocking Pelosi's plane from being able to visit Taiwan. Taiwan would certainly not risk trying to shoot a Chinese plane down, as that would risk hitting Pelosi's plane. Saibal On 27-07-2022 13:30, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 10:32 PM wrote: _ > Based on what almost all China hands have said, the weaker you behave toward the CCP the more they will pick the best time to advance against you, and do so. Question. Pelosi to Taiwan? Yes._ OK, but I'm gonna remember what you said, so if she takes the trip and everything goes to hell I don't wanna hear any crap from you about how the Democrats started a war. As for myself, I'm unsure if she should go or not, it would be a strong sign of support for Taiwan which would be a good thing but I think the personal factor is more important than you seem to; as I said, most dictators would rather destroy the world than be embarrassed and I'm not sure if Xi is an exception. The only thing I'm certain of is that whatever she does most Republicans will say she did the wrong thing. The corporate boards that fund both parties are assholes as far as US survival goes. If the US gets destroyed by a nuclear attack, they plan (unrealistically) to set up shop elsewhere, perhaps under the benevolence of Comrade Xi. Don't be ridiculous. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] qcz n\ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0mhB1Bkd4wOOK6GfpThub7nWR_bunE1Dk6oP9LY%3DVTSA%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0mhB1Bkd4wOOK6GfpThub7nWR_bunE1Dk6oP9LY%3DVTSA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4695ffd1dbaeec32d8fdd01831332d3c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals
Makes sense to me. If you fail that test you are very frail. Staying active is the best way to prolong your life: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180710-whats-it-like-working-past-your-100th-birthday "And while retiring early is generally thought to be better for your health, in some circumstances giving up work might achieve the opposite. One study of blue collar workers in Austria found that men who retired three and a half years early were 13% more likely to die by the age of 67 – particularly if they were single, lonely and used it as an opportunity to reduce their physical activity. South-west of Japan’s main islands, in the East China Sea, is a tropical outpost that seems to back this up. Okinawa is famed for its high proportion of centenarians; it’s been estimated that roughly one in every 2,000 people there are over the age of 100. Over the years, researchers studying this remarkable place have noticed several aspects of the Okinawan lifestyle that might explain their longevity. These include eating lots of vegetables and fewer calories overall than the average American – but also their attitude to work. There is no word for “retirement” in the Okinawan language; the locals, many of whom grew up as farmers and fisherpeople, may carry on working until they die. Elderly residents live by the principle of “ikigai”, which is loosely translated as “having a reason to get up in the morning”. " https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43308729 "Doing lots of exercise in older age can prevent the immune system from declining and protect people against infections, scientists say. They followed 125 long-distance cyclists, some now in their 80s, and found they had the immune systems of 20-year-olds. Prof Norman Lazarus, 82, of King's College London, who took part in and co-authored the research, said: "If exercise was a pill, everyone would be taking it. "It has wide-ranging benefits for the body, the mind, for our muscles and our immune system." The research was published in the journal Aging Cell. Prof Janet Lord, director of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, at the University of Birmingham, and co-author of the research, said: "The immune system declines by about 2-3% a year from our 20s, which is why older people are more susceptible to infections, conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and, potentially, cancer. "Because the cyclists have the immune system of a 20-year-old rather than a 70- or 80-year-old, it means they have added protection against all these issues."" Saibal On 27-06-2022 19:14, Lawrence Crowell wrote: I can do that. I just did it for about 30 seconds. LC On Friday, June 24, 2022 at 1:53:22 PM UTC-5 medinuclear wrote: FROM: Philip Benjamin Friday, June 24, 2022 9:37 AM SUBJECT: 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/balancing-on-one-leg-for-10-seconds-may-predict-likelihood-of-living-or-dying-study-says/ https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/early/2022/06/22/bjsports-2021-105360.full.pdf Successful 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals Claudio Gil Araujo , Christina Grüne de Souza e Silva , Jari Antero Laukkanen , Maria Fiatarone Singh, Setor Kwadzo Kunutsor , Jonathan Myers , João Felipe Franca ,Claudia Lucia Castro -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5caa0f01-d042-4d81-aff5-e70bdd0fe393n%40googlegroups.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5caa0f01-d042-4d81-aff5-e70bdd0fe393n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/98662bf9d8af419ce20a5a082308bf50%40zonnet.nl.
Re: WOW, it looks like the technological singularity is just about here!
On 14-06-2022 14:18, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 9:51 PM Bruce Kellett wrote: I doubt Lemoine went crazy and just fabricated the conversation, but if he did the truth will undoubtedly come out in a day or two. And if the conversation exists as advertised then it is a monumental development. _> The thing is that there are an awful lot of questions that remain unanswered in the information as presented. We don't actually know how lambda works._ If the conversation was as described and was not somehow staged or cherry-picked then LaMDA is a real AI and nobody knows or will ever know how LaMDA or any AI works except in vastly oversimplified outline. The group of people who originally made LaMDA taken together understood how it once worked (although no single person did) but no individual or group of individuals can understand what it became. And if the conversation was staged or cherry-picked then I don't understand why Google hasn't said so by now, after all the longer they delay the more foolish they will seem when the truth comes out, and if LaMDA is not what it seems then it's only a matter of time, and not much time, before the truth comes out. John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] LaMDA is fed English texts as raw input data and processing it, which means that it is treating what to us would be very high level information, as low level information. So, I would guess that if LaMDA is experiencing anything, its not going to be the meaning of the texts. If we treat English words as fundamental, then there exists a state space all possible texts, the rules of English language are the effective laws of physics that apply to such a space. So, LaMDA may be experiencing such a virtual world. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e088a74739879f570021603ccd9d436f%40zonnet.nl.
Re: Self-Replicating Robots and Galactic Domination
John Clark schreef op 19 mei '22: On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 11:41 AM smitra wrote: *> AI systems have still insect-level intelligence.* 10 years ago that might've been true, maybe even five, but not today. There has been a lot of progress in recent years. The problem with AI is that we cannot build the right sort of hardware, making the systems we have rather inefficient. We may now have systems that rival or exceed insect brain power, but only using very large and computationally inefficient systems. * > The self-replicating machines will produce whatever chemical wasteproducts they can live with and they will be too dumb to realize that they are killing everything else.* If an AI decides to kill all biological life it won't be because it's stupid, and even if they do decide to do that it wouldn't explain why we don't see an engineered universe when we look at the night sky. Somebody has to be the first and I think it must be us. Most living organisms on Earth today are not very intelligent at all. So, AI systems under development may soon be good enough to build self-replicating machinery for fully automated factories with. The AI systems running these factories don't need to be much smarter than insects. Such factories will outcompete conventional factories, so within a very short time period, most of our economy will run on such AI systems. The fact that many people have the ambition to build AI systems with human-level intelligence or even more, is also true, but that's not going to stop the use of insect-level AI systems in fully automated factories. What may then happen is that we gradually lose control over the self-replicating systems running the economy. Waste products produced by the system accumulate, so it becomes like a cancer killing the entire biosphere. If this sounds far-fetched, note that the current climate crisis is due to our economy producing CO2 and our resistance to reduce CO2 emissions. We find it difficult to reduce CO2 emissions because we need to take measures that will reduce out wealth to a limited degree (on the short term). If we have difficulties doing this for such a simple system (fossil fuels taken from the ground, burned in power plants to generate power) that can easily be modified without ruining the economy, think about how difficult it would be for the next generations to intervene in a system of self-replicating factories that starts to grow a bit out of control, producing toxic chemicals. They'll have the choice of adapting to live in a polluted world and still enjoy their enormous wealth without having to work for it, or go back to the sort of civilization we live in where you have to work hard to get a bit more than your basic needs. Given that it took us more than 40 years to finally do something about our CO2 emissions, I don't think we can be very confident that they'll promptly revert to the old way of living. A big obstacle being also that just like in case of climate change, this requires a global consensus. It's no good if China decides that self-replicating machines are with the pollution they produce and then refuses to put a stop to using them. So, I see this as just another phase in the evolution of life where technological lifeform arise and end up replacing all biological lifeforms except microbes. Saibal John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> fal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/225b1a4ac581a2b1c7dd7e1c947c7dc1%40zeelandnet.nl.
Re: Self-Replicating Robots and Galactic Domination
On 19-05-2022 12:54, John Clark wrote: Self-Replicating Robots and Galactic Domination [1] We're now producing very smart AI systems that can replace humans, but those AI systems have still insect-level intelligence. So, while a technological civilization like ours will get transformed into a machine civilization due to economic growth, the self-replicating machines that will arise will be rather dumb machines. They are then likely to destroy all biological life forms, analogous to what happened when oxygen producing microbes arose about 2.4 billion years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event The self-replicating machines will produce whatever chemical waste products they can live with and they will be too dumb to realize that they are killing everything else. Saibal John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0cq-zu6wL4c0i60E%2B-xYz1qs6_%2B7rrRcXmiAXt26wgvA%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H55wybU3rI [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0cq-zu6wL4c0i60E%2B-xYz1qs6_%2B7rrRcXmiAXt26wgvA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0a7e2ef06c001aad9442b8f72d0d4f58%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 15-05-2022 09:30, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 5:11 PM smitra wrote: On 15-05-2022 00:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 1:17 AM smitra wrote: The big advantage is that decoherence is a well researched area of (mathematical) physics, results like the density matrix becoming approximately diagonal, and relations between decoherence to entropy increase making it effectively irreversible are all rigorous results that are uncontroversial. People may still have objections against the MWI, but they'll still accept these results on decoherence. Yes. And decoherence says that with time, the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix become arbitrarily small. If there is a smallest non-zero probability, then eventually these off-diagonal elements become zero. This reduces the pure state to a mixture. Which is to say that there is a collapse; unitary evolution ceases, and we have reached a classical world. Non-zero minimum probability on its own, however, does not cause a system to evolve in a non-unitary way. It does when decoherence is taken into account. See the above explanation. Bruce has not omitted anything. Bruce I see, but these sorts of models can already be ruled out. There are plenty of simple systems where one can make extremely accurate measurements on which can be kept totally isolated and quantum coherent for long enough where such effects would have become visible. The effects are due to decoherent entanglement with the environment. So of course they are not seen in isolated systems. Duh. If you don't trace over environmental degrees of freedom and include everything in your description, then you just have a unitary evolution operator U for a time step delta t. The evolution operator for n time steps is U^n, which is unitary if U is unitary. The question is how we end up with a non-unitary result this way. Your answer will then probably be that we must modify this rule and remove entries in the matrix U^n that are below some small cutoff value. If this is then the general rule for the time evolution of quantum systems, then this can be verified in the lab. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQOkOzad2Sd9FVY5whohG5%3DzOg1R5J8joNor2vNMPyhLQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQOkOzad2Sd9FVY5whohG5%3DzOg1R5J8joNor2vNMPyhLQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/87a9dea03a94a5b8bf52cd936b32b71f%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 15-05-2022 05:11, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/14/2022 3:55 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 1:17 AM smitra wrote: On 13-05-2022 21:59, Brent Meeker wrote: Right CI doesn't explain the collapse and MWI doesn't explain the collapse either but assumes it can be explained without new physics. I hypothesize (not assume) that CI+ probability> can explain the collapse. I don't see any big advantage for MWI here. The big advantage is that decoherence is a well researched area of (mathematical) physics, results like the density matrix becoming approximately diagonal, and relations between decoherence to entropy increase making it effectively irreversible are all rigorous results that are uncontroversial. But it is more than "effectively" irreversible because decohering information spreads at the speed of light, and in an expanding universe cannot be captured and reversed. This why I think there is some relation between the holographic principle, expansion of the universe, Hawking-Bekenstien entropy, and a non-zero minimum probability. It's still only effectively irreversible because nothing stops one from reflecting all the escaping photons back. If we use mirrors that are cooled to almost absolute zero, then the leakage of information from the interior that results from having carried out a spin measurement there can be made arbitrarily small, so the probability that the information escapes from the confined region can be made arbitrarily small. There is no connection between our ability to observe something and the processes involved in making sure the photons don't escape, so whether or not there are actually these supercool mirrors reflecting all the photons back to recreate the initial state cannot be relevant. Saibal Brent People may still have objections against the MWI, but they'll still accept these results on decoherence. Yes. And decoherence says that with time, the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix become arbitrarily small. If there is a smallest non-zero probability, then eventually these off-diagonal elements become zero. This reduces the pure state to a mixture. Which is to say that there is a collapse; unitary evolution ceases, and we have reached a classical world. Non-zero minimum probability on its own, however, does not cause a system to evolve in a non-unitary way. It does when decoherence is taken into account. See the above explanation. Bruce has not omitted anything. Bruce Bruce is omitting something here, perhaps some limits in which the time evolution operator becomes degenerate or something like that. But a product of two unitary transforms is a unitary transform, so the nth power of a unitary transform is also a unitary transform. There is no ay you can get anything non-unitary out of this, unless possibly in the limit of n to infinity. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSqWc3OwbenyDa_-0rjvBYVFqFSQhubXUEu6-Lxsb1XNw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/82b201f4-8d24-14b1-91e7-f4cc50c85a56%40gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSqWc3OwbenyDa_-0rjvBYVFqFSQhubXUEu6-Lxsb1XNw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=emailutm_source=footer [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/82b201f4-8d24-14b1-91e7-f4cc50c85a56%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/de46bdb7ac6f983ebb589a6349c2f9c8%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 15-05-2022 00:55, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 1:17 AM smitra wrote: On 13-05-2022 21:59, Brent Meeker wrote: Right CI doesn't explain the collapse and MWI doesn't explain the collapse either but assumes it can be explained without new physics. I hypothesize (not assume) that CI+ can explain the collapse. I don't see any big advantage for MWI here. The big advantage is that decoherence is a well researched area of (mathematical) physics, results like the density matrix becoming approximately diagonal, and relations between decoherence to entropy increase making it effectively irreversible are all rigorous results that are uncontroversial. People may still have objections against the MWI, but they'll still accept these results on decoherence. Yes. And decoherence says that with time, the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix become arbitrarily small. If there is a smallest non-zero probability, then eventually these off-diagonal elements become zero. This reduces the pure state to a mixture. Which is to say that there is a collapse; unitary evolution ceases, and we have reached a classical world. Non-zero minimum probability on its own, however, does not cause a system to evolve in a non-unitary way. It does when decoherence is taken into account. See the above explanation. Bruce has not omitted anything. Bruce I see, but these sorts of models can already be ruled out. There are plenty of simple systems where one can make extremely accurate measurements on which can be kept totally isolated and quantum coherent for long enough where such effects would have become visible. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a25c4ba5c8dd5541400d07eff1ff81d6%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 14-05-2022 21:11, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/14/2022 8:16 AM, smitra wrote: On 13-05-2022 21:59, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/13/2022 12:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 22:27, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:42 AM, smitra wrote: All that the experiments demonstrate is that the wave function evolves unitarily between state preparation and measurement. This is most easily accounted for by assuming that the wave function is a purely epistemic vehicle for the time evolution of probabilities. Since it is purely epistemic, collapse is not a problem since it is not a physical event. One does not have to go the whole way to QBism -- the wave function can still be objective (inter-subjectively agreed). That's possible but that means that QM is not a complete fundamental theory of reality. Anything that explains these probabilities is then possible, including the existence of a multiverse. Which is about as explanatory as "God did it." Explaining the values of the probabilities isn't the problem with MWI, it's explaining that there ARE probabilities even though nothing happens, and when and where the probabilities arise. I agree with what John Clark said in his reply. To add to that, the "God did it" thing applies far more to the CI, because there one postulates the collapse without explaining the mechanism for it. In the MWI one assumes that the appearance of collapse can be explained from the known dynamics. Right CI doesn't explain the collapse and MWI doesn't explain the collapse either but assumes it can be explained without new physics. I hypothesize (not assume) that CI+ can explain the collapse. I don't see any big advantage for MWI here. The big advantage is that decoherence is a well researched area of (mathematical) physics, results like the density matrix becoming approximately diagonal, and relations between decoherence to entropy increase making it effectively irreversible are all rigorous results that are uncontroversial. People may still have objections against the MWI, but they'll still accept these results on decoherence. Non-zero minimum probability on its own, however, does not cause a system to evolve in a non-unitary way. Bruce is omitting something here, perhaps some limits in which the time evolution operator becomes degenerate or something like that. But a product of two unitary transforms is a unitary transform, so the nth power of a unitary transform is also a unitary transform. There is no ay you can get anything non-unitary out of this, unless possibly in the limit of n to infinity. My attitude toward interpretations is that they are unimportant in themselves, but they are useful in pointing to new, more comprehensive and accurate theories. That's one reason I'm not impressed by MWI since it seems to ex hypothesi put any emprical testing out of reach. But that's because MWI amounts to omitting something from a theory that's not needed. But something is needed. The appearance of the classical world we experience (as well as quantum gravity, which maybe unrelated). There is no evidence for any additional dynamic rule that induces collapse. Evidence that it is actually needed can come from experiments that demonstrates faster decoherence than what one would expect given the theoretical modeling based on assuming only the usual unitary time evolution. Saibal Brent It's like what would have happened if Einstein had formulated his theory of special relativity but he had kept the ether to serve as the medium with strange properties such that you still have the equivalence of inertial frames. If you then had formulated your alternative version of special relativity by saying that the ether doesn't exist, then people who would have stuck to the idea what an ether must exist could have argued in the same way, i.e. that you are not adding anything that can be tested experimentally. Saibal Brent Those explanations may not be satisfactory as of yet, but that's typical for most of science. There are phenomena that as of yet are not well explained, but that does not (necessarily) lead us to postulate new physics all the time. Doing so would make us like creationists who tend to invoke a "God of the gaps". Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To uns
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 14-05-2022 03:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sat, May 14, 2022 at 5:51 AM smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 22:18, Brent Meeker wrote: I agree. And in fact SE fails all the time. It fails to predict a definite outcome...which is OK if you accept probabilistic theories. Physics doesn't work in this way. You always need to define a well defined hypothesis first in order to interpret experimental results and be able to test various alternative hypotheses/theories. If you don't do this, you are not doing physics. Tell that to the army of people who pounce on every anomaly that appears in analyses of partial data from the LHC or Tevatron. Every anomaly produces a slew of papers, all proposing "explanations" of the anomaly. This is an industry, it is not physics. Generally the anomalies go away with time and further data -- there are no "well defined hypotheses" at work here. These are well defined hypotheses. They then explain the anomaly, but not much else. They are not going to be accepted as a promising candidate for a new theory unless a lot more experimental data comes in to confirm one of them. But then its real failure is that it doesn't tell you exactly when and where and why it stops unitary evolution and produces a result. That's a failure of particular interpretations of QM, e.g. the CI that postulate collapse. The Born rule tells us the probability of a result...IF there is one. Decoherence tells there's an asymptotic approach to a result and why...but not when and where it arrives. Decoherence does does tell you how the different sectors split over time. Not if unitary evolution is exact and always. You have often argued that the original superposition never really goes away. Strictly, that means that the initial state is still intact, and nothing has in fact happened. Why would nothing have happened? The observer is internal to the system and is in an entangled state with the measured system and the local environment. Decoherence has to work through to a conclusion if the sectors are to split and a definite result is to emerge. Definite results are not needed because the observers are internal to the system, there is no outside observer external to the entire universe. This is where unitary evolution breaks down. Taken literally it never leads to a result. Just as in a quantum computer -- the internal unitary evolution has to invoke decoherence and collapse in order for a result to emerge. Only from the point of view of an external observer. But there is nothing external to the universe. You need some marker of the point at which the different sectors finally differentiate. The SE itself is clearly not the whole story...you need something like a minimum non-zero probability! Or an acceptance that FAPP is good enough, along with an understanding of when FAPP is good enough. Or just accept that we also consist of partielces and are not external to the universe. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQuT%3DzffD-fgKTvd6kJk7Pg5NxfXz_LE6BLqJ-Qd8_JzQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQuT%3DzffD-fgKTvd6kJk7Pg5NxfXz_LE6BLqJ-Qd8_JzQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1356908a0a3fdf5eff7d9ff9907776df%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 13-05-2022 22:06, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/13/2022 11:47 AM, smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 22:18, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:17 AM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 23:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 11:51 AM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:25, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:11 PM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse That depends on how you read the data. We only see one outcome for each experiment, after all! And the results of those experiments lead to a theory where time evolution is given by a unitary transform. It's as John Clark also mentioned in one of his replies, analogous to how time reversal symmetry is not apparent in the macroscopic world. But we know that the fundamental laws are time reversible. This apparent discrepancy can be explained, it's not evidence for time reversibility being violated in nature. and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. The SE also has many problems., as I have taken pains to point out. There are no problems with the SE. It's not inconsistent with the Born rule. The only issue is that it looks a bit unnatural for a fundamental law of physics to require both a dynamical ruke and the Born rule. But a real collapse is inconsistent with the SE. Not in QBism. It's just updating your prior. Seems a perfect fit for someone who wants to take an information theoretic approach and model consciousness as an algorithm. A real collapse is nevertheless inconsistent with the SE, there would exist physical processes where the SE would fail. If real collapse is supposed to happen in experiments, then because experiments are ultimately just many particle interactions then that means that, in general, the SE cannot be exactly valid. We may then try to observe small violations of the SE in the lab. I agree. And in fact SE fails all the time. It fails to predict a definite outcome...which is OK if you accept probabilistic theories. Physics doesn't work in this way. You always need to define a well defined hypothesis first in order to interpret experimental results and be able to test various alternative hypotheses/theories. If you don't do this, you are not doing physics. Which is why assuming the SE is the whole truth even though it predicts that everything possible happens, isn't doing physics. Everything possible also happens in eternal inflation theories due to the infinite universe that these theories predict. So, that feature of the theory isn't the relevant physics content. The same is true for the MWI, where the relevant physics content isn't that I have a copy somewhere in the multiverse, but the prediction that isolated systems always evolve according to a unitary time evolution. IF CI is true then even a totally isolated system must have a probability of undergoing a non-unitary collapse. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/92bd2a0f086691676bd332ba56bc0762%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 13-05-2022 21:59, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/13/2022 12:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 22:27, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:42 AM, smitra wrote: All that the experiments demonstrate is that the wave function evolves unitarily between state preparation and measurement. This is most easily accounted for by assuming that the wave function is a purely epistemic vehicle for the time evolution of probabilities. Since it is purely epistemic, collapse is not a problem since it is not a physical event. One does not have to go the whole way to QBism -- the wave function can still be objective (inter-subjectively agreed). That's possible but that means that QM is not a complete fundamental theory of reality. Anything that explains these probabilities is then possible, including the existence of a multiverse. Which is about as explanatory as "God did it." Explaining the values of the probabilities isn't the problem with MWI, it's explaining that there ARE probabilities even though nothing happens, and when and where the probabilities arise. I agree with what John Clark said in his reply. To add to that, the "God did it" thing applies far more to the CI, because there one postulates the collapse without explaining the mechanism for it. In the MWI one assumes that the appearance of collapse can be explained from the known dynamics. Right CI doesn't explain the collapse and MWI doesn't explain the collapse either but assumes it can be explained without new physics. I hypothesize (not assume) that CI+ can explain the collapse. I don't see any big advantage for MWI here. The big advantage is that decoherence is a well researched area of (mathematical) physics, results like the density matrix becoming approximately diagonal, and relations between decoherence to entropy increase making it effectively irreversible are all rigorous results that are uncontroversial. People may still have objections against the MWI, but they'll still accept these results on decoherence. Non-zero minimum probability on its own, however, does not cause a system to evolve in a non-unitary way. Bruce is omitting something here, perhaps some limits in which the time evolution operator becomes degenerate or something like that. But a product of two unitary transforms is a unitary transform, so the nth power of a unitary transform is also a unitary transform. There is no ay you can get anything non-unitary out of this, unless possibly in the limit of n to infinity. My attitude toward interpretations is that they are unimportant in themselves, but they are useful in pointing to new, more comprehensive and accurate theories. That's one reason I'm not impressed by MWI since it seems to ex hypothesi put any emprical testing out of reach. But that's because MWI amounts to omitting something from a theory that's not needed. It's like what would have happened if Einstein had formulated his theory of special relativity but he had kept the ether to serve as the medium with strange properties such that you still have the equivalence of inertial frames. If you then had formulated your alternative version of special relativity by saying that the ether doesn't exist, then people who would have stuck to the idea what an ether must exist could have argued in the same way, i.e. that you are not adding anything that can be tested experimentally. Saibal Brent Those explanations may not be satisfactory as of yet, but that's typical for most of science. There are phenomena that as of yet are not well explained, but that does not (necessarily) lead us to postulate new physics all the time. Doing so would make us like creationists who tend to invoke a "God of the gaps". Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5e1ae7bf5844947512948d4c03900461%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 22:18, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:17 AM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 23:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 11:51 AM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:25, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:11 PM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse That depends on how you read the data. We only see one outcome for each experiment, after all! And the results of those experiments lead to a theory where time evolution is given by a unitary transform. It's as John Clark also mentioned in one of his replies, analogous to how time reversal symmetry is not apparent in the macroscopic world. But we know that the fundamental laws are time reversible. This apparent discrepancy can be explained, it's not evidence for time reversibility being violated in nature. and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. The SE also has many problems., as I have taken pains to point out. There are no problems with the SE. It's not inconsistent with the Born rule. The only issue is that it looks a bit unnatural for a fundamental law of physics to require both a dynamical ruke and the Born rule. But a real collapse is inconsistent with the SE. Not in QBism. It's just updating your prior. Seems a perfect fit for someone who wants to take an information theoretic approach and model consciousness as an algorithm. A real collapse is nevertheless inconsistent with the SE, there would exist physical processes where the SE would fail. If real collapse is supposed to happen in experiments, then because experiments are ultimately just many particle interactions then that means that, in general, the SE cannot be exactly valid. We may then try to observe small violations of the SE in the lab. I agree. And in fact SE fails all the time. It fails to predict a definite outcome...which is OK if you accept probabilistic theories. Physics doesn't work in this way. You always need to define a well defined hypothesis first in order to interpret experimental results and be able to test various alternative hypotheses/theories. If you don't do this, you are not doing physics. But then its real failure is that it doesn't tell you exactly when and where and why it stops unitary evolution and produces a result. That's a failure of particular interpretations of QM, e.g. the CI that postulate collapse. The Born rule tells us the probability of a result...IF there is one. Decoherence tells there's an asymptotic approach to a result and why...but not when and where it arrives. Decoherence does does tell you how the different sectors split over time. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8a4e1f406d2cfd215a64c154b3ce5dce%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 13-05-2022 14:08, John Clark wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 4:27 PM Brent Meeker wrote: _> Explaining the values of the probabilities isn't the problem with MWI, it's explaining that there ARE probabilities_ That's easy in MWI. Probabilities exist because until you actually look at it there is no way to know if you are the Brent Meeker who lives in a universe where the electron went left or you are the Brent Meeker who lives in a universe where the electron went right, due to the fact that the only difference between the two Brent Meekers is what the electron does. Indeed! Saibal John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at Extropolis [1] mbe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Dn8ghJUMTt%3DU0L48ROnNYOpweXCa1sB0os140U8FNyA%40mail.gmail.com [2]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis [2] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3Dn8ghJUMTt%3DU0L48ROnNYOpweXCa1sB0os140U8FNyA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/daadcbda1aca56f700cdb901d13d64d5%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 13-05-2022 02:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 5:22 AM smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 00:44, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 1:06 PM, smitra wrote: There is effective collapse in experiments we do, but the experiments nevertheless demonstrate that the fundamental processes proceed under unitary time evolution. Except when you measure them and actually get a result. No, there exist no experiment results that demonstrate that unitary time evolution is not exactly valid. What you are referring to is that in experiments we do the wavefunction of the measured system (effectively) collapses. But, because we also know from all the experimental results that the wavefunction evolves in a unitary way, and experiments are ultimately nothing more that many particle interactions, that either unitary time evolution cannot be exactly valid or that the collapse during measurement is an artifact of decoherence where the observer (and the local environment) gets into an entangled superposition with the measured system. The former hypothesis lacks experimental support. The multiverse hypothesis also lacks experimental support. We observe collapse every day and in every experiment. We never observe a multiverse. Which is consistent with the multiverse hypothesis. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTFptj7ttYYvfyP6A2Ep%3DMernnzMR4Znmx4Xk6-Nxh4NA%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTFptj7ttYYvfyP6A2Ep%3DMernnzMR4Znmx4Xk6-Nxh4NA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7e1b30ad5b81f1f8468942531dab32fd%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 13-05-2022 02:50, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 5:57 AM smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 01:36, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:24 AM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:30, Bruce Kellett wrote: Who proved that the universe was finite? If it's infinite, one can focus on only the visible part of it. The visible part is only locally defined -- go to the edge and there is another, larger, region. Yes, but in the end this doesn't really matter due to there only being local interactions. After a finite time any finite system can only interact with a finite number of degrees of freedom in its environment. But that does not mean that variables are discrete rather than continuous. I agree, not by itself. If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. That simply begs the question. Finite or infinite universe, observers are always finite. The universe itself is not defined by observers. The state of the observer can then factor out of the branches the universe is in. That is just a meaningless contention. The state of the observer, or what the observer is aware of, or can or cannot factor out, is irrelevant to the universe. Reality is not defined by observers. I fully agree. But this is precisely an argument in favor of the multiverse when applied to the different sectors. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRSiX0gaOj7mG7U0pObfB99FrrwVLCYWsuCSKmbkpWV4Q%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRSiX0gaOj7mG7U0pObfB99FrrwVLCYWsuCSKmbkpWV4Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1c4a35206ad67f85f1f50ec57a0f3094%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 22:39, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 12:08 PM, smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 01:46, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:08 AM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 08:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:39 PM Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 9:43 PM, smitra wrote: If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. So what does the SE for this discrete universe look like? The one every cites assumes a continuum. If the universe is finite then there's smallest non-zero probability, which as Bruce says, raises some problems. Not the least of these problems is the fact that a smallest non-zero probability makes the collapse real; destroys the ongoing superposition; renders everything absolutely irreversible; and screws the hell out of unitary evolution. Counterexample: The internal state of an ideal quantum computer will always evolve under unitary time evolution. If there is a smallest non-zero probability, this may no longer be the case. A quantum computer implements exactly the sort of a discrete system that is discussed, and yet it works just fine, evolving under the unitary time evolutions as it should during the time it can be maintained in a quantum coherent state. But it doesn't give an answer by evolving unitarily. True, but as long as we (can) keep it isolated, the evolution is unitary, and that contradicts the point Brice was making about discrete systems and unitary time evolution. Actually, a smallest non-zero probability would certainly resolve a lot of the problems with many worlds theory. Unitarity would no longer work to all levels; pure states would automatically become mixtures under decoherence; reversibility would vanish; collapse would make sense, and the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum substrate would be explained. All this follows if there are no continuous quantities in physics, and continuous variables are just approximations to underlying discrete quantities.. Solves a lot of problems. I can see why Brent is attracted to this idea. This does not follow from the non-existence of continuous quantities, because nothing on the current laws of physics implies that continuous quantities objectively exist. All the more reason to suspect that there is a smallest non-zero probability. Yes, but the point Brice makes about unitary time evolution is not true, at least not in the general way he formulated it. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1243dc3dc5f9087dd03d90367536c987%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 22:27, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:42 AM, smitra wrote: All that the experiments demonstrate is that the wave function evolves unitarily between state preparation and measurement. This is most easily accounted for by assuming that the wave function is a purely epistemic vehicle for the time evolution of probabilities. Since it is purely epistemic, collapse is not a problem since it is not a physical event. One does not have to go the whole way to QBism -- the wave function can still be objective (inter-subjectively agreed). That's possible but that means that QM is not a complete fundamental theory of reality. Anything that explains these probabilities is then possible, including the existence of a multiverse. Which is about as explanatory as "God did it." Explaining the values of the probabilities isn't the problem with MWI, it's explaining that there ARE probabilities even though nothing happens, and when and where the probabilities arise. I agree with what John Clark said in his reply. To add to that, the "God did it" thing applies far more to the CI, because there one postulates the collapse without explaining the mechanism for it. In the MWI one assumes that the appearance of collapse can be explained from the known dynamics. Those explanations may not be satisfactory as of yet, but that's typical for most of science. There are phenomena that as of yet are not well explained, but that does not (necessarily) lead us to postulate new physics all the time. Doing so would make us like creationists who tend to invoke a "God of the gaps". Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/03b48558-b7a4-a48a-ee68-58e5e07931a4%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/85bbb2cca9328111a45d828e14112f4a%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 22:23, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/12/2022 11:27 AM, smitra wrote: On 12-05-2022 00:44, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 1:06 PM, smitra wrote: That's complete and audacious question begging. What you mean by "real" is "modeled within the SE". There is NOTHING BUT collapse experimentally; every result recorded in every notebook and every tape is evidence of a collapse. There is effective collapse in experiments we do, but the experiments nevertheless demonstrate that the fundamental processes proceed under unitary time evolution. Except when you measure them and actually get a result. No, there exist no experiment results that demonstrate that unitary time evolution is not exactly valid. What you are referring to is that in experiments we do the wavefunction of the measured system (effectively) collapses. But, because we also know from all the experimental results that the wavefunction evolves in a unitary way, and experiments are ultimately nothing more that many particle interactions, that either unitary time evolution cannot be exactly valid or that the collapse during measurement is an artifact of decoherence where the observer (and the local environment) gets into an entangled superposition with the measured system. The former hypothesis lacks experimental support. "we also know from all the experimental results that the wavefunction evolves in a unitary way"...until we get a result and then it doesn't. So does the latter. It's based purely on the absence of a theory of collapse, beyond, perhaps, decoherence which provides a (sort of) theory of pointer basis and approach to collapse. As I wrote in the previous reply, physics does not work in the way you are arguing here. You always have to formulate a well defined set of hypotheses first which you can then test with experimental data. There are plenty of examples where people tried to do test in a supposedly model independent way and then got results that were not at all model independent. In this case, that the wavefunction collapses or at least appears to, is something that's treated radically different between the CI-like hypotheses and the MWI-like hypotheses. So, we can consider a class of MWI-like theories where there is no collapse with CI-like theories where there is collapse and then consider how they explain all of the experimental data. If you do that, then you see that CI-like theories postulate a new physical mechanism for collapse that's left unspecified that cannot be explained from the interaction Hamiltonian that one uses. Here I'm staying within the context of the CI, I'm not introducing any baggage from the MWI. In MWI-like theories, there is nothing else than what is described by the interaction Hamiltonian. The problem here is to get to a better explanation of ho decoherence leads to the effective classical world. The former problem is a real physics problem where one depends on a new phenomena, just like e.g. dark matter in cosmology. It has to exist according to the theory, but it hasn't yet been discovered yet. But unlike in case of dark matter where there are multiple independent observational results that point to its existence, in case of collapse, you only have the mere fact that in experiments the wavefunction collapses. The problems with MWI-like theories is usual business that's seen in most other theories. Take e.g. superconductivity and we have plenty of experimental data that's not well explained yet by the theory. But this does not lead physicists to postulate new physics. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ac4e6ed3360303b86c215abab97f72a4%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 01:46, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:08 AM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 08:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:39 PM Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 9:43 PM, smitra wrote: If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. So what does the SE for this discrete universe look like? The one every cites assumes a continuum. If the universe is finite then there's smallest non-zero probability, which as Bruce says, raises some problems. Not the least of these problems is the fact that a smallest non-zero probability makes the collapse real; destroys the ongoing superposition; renders everything absolutely irreversible; and screws the hell out of unitary evolution. Counterexample: The internal state of an ideal quantum computer will always evolve under unitary time evolution. If there is a smallest non-zero probability, this may no longer be the case. A quantum computer implements exactly the sort of a discrete system that is discussed, and yet it works just fine, evolving under the unitary time evolutions as it should during the time it can be maintained in a quantum coherent state. Actually, a smallest non-zero probability would certainly resolve a lot of the problems with many worlds theory. Unitarity would no longer work to all levels; pure states would automatically become mixtures under decoherence; reversibility would vanish; collapse would make sense, and the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum substrate would be explained. All this follows if there are no continuous quantities in physics, and continuous variables are just approximations to underlying discrete quantities.. Solves a lot of problems. I can see why Brent is attracted to this idea. This does not follow from the non-existence of continuous quantities, because nothing on the current laws of physics implies that continuous quantities objectively exist. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ1J0gJy2F1EVCZA8BuiO-2ae7RDc9xcVrWPCVWZ%3DYTpA%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ1J0gJy2F1EVCZA8BuiO-2ae7RDc9xcVrWPCVWZ%3DYTpA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ee6c3f41267ebbfd8c837ef103f8a82a%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 01:36, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:24 AM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:30, Bruce Kellett wrote: Who proved that the universe was finite? If it's infinite, one can focus on only the visible part of it. The visible part is only locally defined -- go to the edge and there is another, larger, region. Yes, but in the end this doesn't really matter due to there only being local interactions. After a finite time any finite system can only interact with a finite number of degrees of freedom in its environment. If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. That simply begs the question. Finite or infinite universe, observers are always finite. The universe itself is not defined by observers. The state of the observer can then factor out of the branches the universe is in. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLT_m8o6hx%2BNCkFg9rALPXYozuWgwVMGL-okgY4RtX6KnA%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLT_m8o6hx%2BNCkFg9rALPXYozuWgwVMGL-okgY4RtX6KnA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/bffe2a3d342bd0ff660841662dfed0ac%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 01:01, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 8:36 AM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:42, Brent Meeker wrote: That's complete and audacious question begging. What you mean by "real" is "modeled within the SE". There is NOTHING BUT collapse experimentally; every result recorded in every notebook and every tape is evidence of a collapse. There is effective collapse in experiments we do, but the experiments nevertheless demonstrate that the fundamental processes proceed under unitary time evolution. All that the experiments demonstrate is that the wave function evolves unitarily between state preparation and measurement. This is most easily accounted for by assuming that the wave function is a purely epistemic vehicle for the time evolution of probabilities. Since it is purely epistemic, collapse is not a problem since it is not a physical event. One does not have to go the whole way to QBism -- the wave function can still be objective (inter-subjectively agreed). That's possible but that means that QM is not a complete fundamental theory of reality. Anything that explains these probabilities is then possible, including the existence of a multiverse. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSf3z54_UNEvZBRsazzYFPWPx-GaBq3xY8UyDZATsArCQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSf3z54_UNEvZBRsazzYFPWPx-GaBq3xY8UyDZATsArCQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4a5e5c5249d646fb96866b54b8568d9a%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 12-05-2022 00:44, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 1:06 PM, smitra wrote: That's complete and audacious question begging. What you mean by "real" is "modeled within the SE". There is NOTHING BUT collapse experimentally; every result recorded in every notebook and every tape is evidence of a collapse. There is effective collapse in experiments we do, but the experiments nevertheless demonstrate that the fundamental processes proceed under unitary time evolution. Except when you measure them and actually get a result. No, there exist no experiment results that demonstrate that unitary time evolution is not exactly valid. What you are referring to is that in experiments we do the wavefunction of the measured system (effectively) collapses. But, because we also know from all the experimental results that the wavefunction evolves in a unitary way, and experiments are ultimately nothing more that many particle interactions, that either unitary time evolution cannot be exactly valid or that the collapse during measurement is an artifact of decoherence where the observer (and the local environment) gets into an entangled superposition with the measured system. The former hypothesis lacks experimental support. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4824477e-6952-5c26-4b4f-00be790f6b50%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4824477e-6952-5c26-4b4f-00be790f6b50%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e6a07d6037e9fbbfc1966579f4be742c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 23:02, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/11/2022 11:51 AM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 07:25, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:11 PM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse That depends on how you read the data. We only see one outcome for each experiment, after all! And the results of those experiments lead to a theory where time evolution is given by a unitary transform. It's as John Clark also mentioned in one of his replies, analogous to how time reversal symmetry is not apparent in the macroscopic world. But we know that the fundamental laws are time reversible. This apparent discrepancy can be explained, it's not evidence for time reversibility being violated in nature. and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. The SE also has many problems., as I have taken pains to point out. There are no problems with the SE. It's not inconsistent with the Born rule. The only issue is that it looks a bit unnatural for a fundamental law of physics to require both a dynamical ruke and the Born rule. But a real collapse is inconsistent with the SE. Not in QBism. It's just updating your prior. Seems a perfect fit for someone who wants to take an information theoretic approach and model consciousness as an algorithm. A real collapse is nevertheless inconsistent with the SE, there would exist physical processes where the SE would fail. If real collapse is supposed to happen in experiments, then because experiments are ultimately just many particle interactions then that means that, in general, the SE cannot be exactly valid. We may then try to observe small violations of the SE in the lab. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ef2430ed5cfac7cfe9ddc8cf7cce590e%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:30, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:16 PM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:01, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:51 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote: Such models are certainly inconsistent with the SE. So if your concern is that the SE does not contain provision for a collapse, then you should doubt other theories that violate the SE. You can't have it both ways: you can't reject collapse models because they violate the SE and then embrace other models that also violate the SE. Either the SE is universally correct, or it is not. What matters is that such models can be formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is another issue. As Brent has also pointed out, there amount of information in the visible universe is finite. That does not limit the number of branches. A finite universe does not limit the number of points in a line. There is no such thing as a mathematical continuum in the real physical world. Can you prove that? There is no evidence that space and time are discrete. In physics we only have a continuum in the scaling limit where we've scaled the microscopic distances away to zero. Whenever we do a computations where it really matters whether or not the continuum is real, we end up having to impose a short-ditance cut-off and can only remove this cut-off via a renormalization procedure. See also page 12 of this document: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/lectures/basisqft.pdf "Often, authors forget to mention the first, very important, step in this logical procedure: replace the classical field theory one wishes to quantize by a strictly finite theory. Assuming that physical structures smaller than a certain size will not be important for our considerations, we replace the continuum of three-dimensional space by a discrete but dense lattice of points. In the differential equations, we replace all derivatives ∂/∂xi by finite ratios of differences: ∆/∆x , where ∆φ stands for φ(x + ∆x) − φ(x) . In Fourier space, this means that wave numbers ~k are limited to a finite range (the Brillouin zone), so that integrations over ~k can never diverge. If this lattice is sufficiently dense, the solutions we are interested in will hardly depend on the details of this lattice, and so, the classical system will resume Lorentz invariance and the speed of light will be the practical limit for the velocity of perturbances. If necessary, we can also impose periodic boundary conditions in 3-space, and in that case our system is completely finite. Finite systems of this sort allow for ‘quantization’ in the old-fashioned sense: replace the Poisson brackets by commutators. " There are only a finite number of distinct quantum states available for a finite universe. Who proved that the universe was finite? If it's infinite, one can focus on only the visible part of it. This is clear for states below some total energy E. But there is an upper limit to the total energy due to gravitational collapse when the energy exceeds a certain limit. But one can also consider observers and then each observer has a some finite memory so there are only a finite number of branches the observer can distinguish between. That does not follow. If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. That simply begs the question. Finite or infinite universe, observers are always finite. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLR%2Bakx3k3W3QXHHPCgnYaUZ%3Dp6m8uoxS0RKiyp8Xaw6oQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLR%2Bakx3k3W3QXHHPCgnYaUZ%3Dp6m8uoxS0RKiyp8Xaw6oQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/bece38b298ad4930234d13a404e9a9c8%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:28, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 8:17 PM, smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 6:37 AM smitra wrote: On 08-05-2022 05:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: It is when you take the SE to imply that all possible outcomes exist on each trial. That gives all outcomes equal status. All outcomes can exist without these being equally likely. One can make models based on more branches for certain outcomes, but these are just models that may not be correct. Such models are certainly inconsistent with the SE. So if your concern is that the SE does not contain provision for a collapse, then you should doubt other theories that violate the SE. You can't have it both ways: you can't reject collapse models because they violate the SE and then embrace other models that also violate the SE. Either the SE is universally correct, or it is not. What matters is that such models can be formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is another issue. This has been discussed. To allow for real number probabilities, the number of branches on each split must be infinite. The measure problem for infinite numbers of branches has not been solved. It is unlikely that any consistent measure over infinite numbers of branches can be defined. So this idea is probably a non-starter. At least other models have a reasonable chance of success. As Brent has also pointed out, there amount of information in the visible universe is finite. But one can also consider observers and then each observer has a some finite memory so there are only a finite number of branches the observer can distinguish between. Quite aside from memory, per Everett there are a bazillion branches that are only "measured" by the environment and no human is every aware of. But shall we not consider the "memory of the environment". That's where decoherence says the classical result gets recorded. Yes, but note that the observer's memory then factors out of the part of the state that descibes what the observer is not aware of, and that part is then in a superposition of all possibilities. See also here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.00749 "A no-go theorem for observer-independent facts" Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/552539e300bf3c95a6327bbf5943d4f8%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 08:14, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:39 PM Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 9:43 PM, smitra wrote: If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. So what does the SE for this discrete universe look like? The one every cites assumes a continuum. If the universe is finite then there's smallest non-zero probability, which as Bruce says, raises some problems. Not the least of these problems is the fact that a smallest non-zero probability makes the collapse real; destroys the ongoing superposition; renders everything absolutely irreversible; and screws the hell out of unitary evolution. Counterexample: The internal state of an ideal quantum computer will always evolve under unitary time evolution. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTj9WvFA-MHW%3DCPKAPzBKPWgnsNDxZe-QiHrMXmMH4PTQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTj9WvFA-MHW%3DCPKAPzBKPWgnsNDxZe-QiHrMXmMH4PTQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/cdd3792bb4d3b66615a7fb41b54b4fa5%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:42, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 9:47 PM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse That's complete and audacious question begging. What you mean by "real" is "modeled within the SE". There is NOTHING BUT collapse experimentally; every result recorded in every notebook and every tape is evidence of a collapse. There is effective collapse in experiments we do, but the experiments nevertheless demonstrate that the fundamental processes proceed under unitary time evolution. Saibal Brent and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. Believing in collapse is like believing in the ether after special relativity was already formulated and experimentally confirmed. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/372ddccaca1691d9a2fb338c4d4f96f1%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:25, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 8:11 PM, smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 6:52 AM smitra wrote: On 08-05-2022 06:04, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:21 AM smitra wrote: The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. Everett is supposed to be QM without observers. So the number of things that Mr Data can possibly be aware of is irrelevant. According to the SE, all branches are equivalent. All else flows from this -- there are no further "hidden assumptions about branches". Yes, but I'm not a big fan of "sticking to scripture". What matters for me is that collapse is inconsistent with the SE, therefore we should consider QM without collapse and see how to best to move forward on that basis. That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Well, there's a big fat hint that it breaks down FAPP in every measurement, in every bit of physics that appears classical and irreversible. So it has a burden to explain this appearance. It does not have the burden to explain this fully. Lacking a good explanation, one has to go through all reasonable explanations based on what is known. A good example is what John Clark also mentioned about time reversibility. Boltzmann presented an incomplete argument on how the tension between the Second law and microscopic time reversibility could be resolved. And while the precise rigorous argument was not satisfactorily settled until quite recently, it was good enough for physicists to move on and accept that the laws of physics are time reversible. This is because it was implausible to have time reversibility at the micro-level and not at a higher level, given that what happens at the macro-level is fully determined by what happens at the micro-level. It would require new experimental results to cast doubt on reversibility, so the burden of proof is on anyone proposing such a hypothesis. The case of unitary time evolution is similar. There are no experimental results that demonstrate that this is violated. While we do have effective collapse at the macro-scale, this is what one would expect due to decoherence. I see some progress in this direction in decoherence and Zurek's quantum Darwinism. But it still ends in hand waving, Physics would not be possible without lots of hand waving. "Since the SE applies to everything the wave-function must be real and every component of it must exist." Which begs the question, "Does it apply to everything?" It doesn't apply to spacetime and gravity. It does apply to spacetime, at least there is no problem with assuming that it does. See e.g. here for some details: https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.4748 In particular Section 4.1. "How to Make Computations" on page 23 and further And it might just be an effective approximation as in QBism. That could be, but as things stand now, there is no evidence for that. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ed465f1f7fb89144ce70fadc97975592%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:39, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/10/2022 9:43 PM, smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:01, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:51 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote: Such models are certainly inconsistent with the SE. So if your concern is that the SE does not contain provision for a collapse, then you should doubt other theories that violate the SE. You can't have it both ways: you can't reject collapse models because they violate the SE and then embrace other models that also violate the SE. Either the SE is universally correct, or it is not. What matters is that such models can be formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is another issue. This has been discussed. To allow for real number probabilities, the number of branches on each split must be infinite. The measure problem for infinite numbers of branches has not been solved. It is unlikely that any consistent measure over infinite numbers of branches can be defined. So this idea is probably a non-starter. At least other models have a reasonable chance of success. As Brent has also pointed out, there amount of information in the visible universe is finite. That does not limit the number of branches. A finite universe does not limit the number of points in a line. There is no such thing as a mathematical continuum in the real physical world. There are only a finite number of distinct quantum states available for a finite universe. This is clear for states below some total energy E. But there is an upper limit to the total energy due to gravitational collapse when the energy exceeds a certain limit. But one can also consider observers and then each observer has a some finite memory so there are only a finite number of branches the observer can distinguish between. That does not follow. If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. So what does the SE for this discrete universe look like? The one every cites assumes a continuum. If the universe is finite then there's smallest non-zero probability, which as Bruce says, raises some problems. You then have a finite set of states with transition probabilities for transitions between the states. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/baa1576b0e09664ce40375c604843930%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 07:25, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 3:11 PM smitra wrote: On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse That depends on how you read the data. We only see one outcome for each experiment, after all! And the results of those experiments lead to a theory where time evolution is given by a unitary transform. It's as John Clark also mentioned in one of his replies, analogous to how time reversal symmetry is not apparent in the macroscopic world. But we know that the fundamental laws are time reversible. This apparent discrepancy can be explained, it's not evidence for time reversibility being violated in nature. and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. The SE also has many problems., as I have taken pains to point out. There are no problems with the SE. It's not inconsistent with the Born rule. The only issue is that it looks a bit unnatural for a fundamental law of physics to require both a dynamical ruke and the Born rule. But a real collapse is inconsistent with the SE. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQtFVcW_4fSQjOrHCu-atrTi4SnXH8KbbVXYRVSP%2B6PVg%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQtFVcW_4fSQjOrHCu-atrTi4SnXH8KbbVXYRVSP%2B6PVg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e05ba284db1b94a0fb046d54cd488fca%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 06:01, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:51 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote: Such models are certainly inconsistent with the SE. So if your concern is that the SE does not contain provision for a collapse, then you should doubt other theories that violate the SE. You can't have it both ways: you can't reject collapse models because they violate the SE and then embrace other models that also violate the SE. Either the SE is universally correct, or it is not. What matters is that such models can be formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is another issue. This has been discussed. To allow for real number probabilities, the number of branches on each split must be infinite. The measure problem for infinite numbers of branches has not been solved. It is unlikely that any consistent measure over infinite numbers of branches can be defined. So this idea is probably a non-starter. At least other models have a reasonable chance of success. As Brent has also pointed out, there amount of information in the visible universe is finite. That does not limit the number of branches. A finite universe does not limit the number of points in a line. There is no such thing as a mathematical continuum in the real physical world. There are only a finite number of distinct quantum states available for a finite universe. This is clear for states below some total energy E. But there is an upper limit to the total energy due to gravitational collapse when the energy exceeds a certain limit. But one can also consider observers and then each observer has a some finite memory so there are only a finite number of branches the observer can distinguish between. That does not follow. If there are only a finite number of states the entire universe can be in, then that's also true for observers. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ%2B9Ot9VBtuwLdPSLAXbjSLdgvRdGo%3D%3DcDfbDNyia_N-Q%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ%2B9Ot9VBtuwLdPSLAXbjSLdgvRdGo%3D%3DcDfbDNyia_N-Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a7524c8454e0e1bf3f80da6329d52042%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 11-05-2022 06:06, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 1:56 PM smitra wrote: On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Such faith would be touching if it weren't so naive. There are good theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that it cannot be the whole story. As John Clark has also mentioned, the opposite is true. There are no good arguments for collapse theories. There are no experimental hints for real collapse and if we argue based on theory, then we see that it leads to many problems. Believing in collapse is like believing in the ether after special relativity was already formulated and experimentally confirmed. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSFh6-AjAE%3DbSQRnDFWJWOi4BVvEmFFv6WkvUD9FLJBgQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSFh6-AjAE%3DbSQRnDFWJWOi4BVvEmFFv6WkvUD9FLJBgQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/cb23f64bf3b9b156bdc3d3fe33b69b75%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 09-05-2022 00:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 6:52 AM smitra wrote: On 08-05-2022 06:04, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:21 AM smitra wrote: The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. Everett is supposed to be QM without observers. So the number of things that Mr Data can possibly be aware of is irrelevant. According to the SE, all branches are equivalent. All else flows from this -- there are no further "hidden assumptions about branches". Yes, but I'm not a big fan of "sticking to scripture". What matters for me is that collapse is inconsistent with the SE, therefore we should consider QM without collapse and see how to best to move forward on that basis. That still treats the SE as indubitally true. No theory in physics is 'indubitably true'. The Everett program is to say that the SE is all that there is -- it explains everything. That is clearly false (no Born rule in the SE), so it might be wise to doubt the universal application of the SE. There is no good reason to doubt the SE without any experimental hints that it breaks down, or any good theoretical reasons why it is likely to break down in some regime. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRG_Qpwy3294cyU2BT1M9KRgO5mFkj%3DBDg4eo4LbdYuaw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRG_Qpwy3294cyU2BT1M9KRgO5mFkj%3DBDg4eo4LbdYuaw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e332635c7c6d1334797dfa57903082e8%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 09-05-2022 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 6:37 AM smitra wrote: On 08-05-2022 05:58, Bruce Kellett wrote: It is when you take the SE to imply that all possible outcomes exist on each trial. That gives all outcomes equal status. All outcomes can exist without these being equally likely. One can make models based on more branches for certain outcomes, but these are just models that may not be correct. Such models are certainly inconsistent with the SE. So if your concern is that the SE does not contain provision for a collapse, then you should doubt other theories that violate the SE. You can't have it both ways: you can't reject collapse models because they violate the SE and then embrace other models that also violate the SE. Either the SE is universally correct, or it is not. What matters is that such models can be formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is another issue. This has been discussed. To allow for real number probabilities, the number of branches on each split must be infinite. The measure problem for infinite numbers of branches has not been solved. It is unlikely that any consistent measure over infinite numbers of branches can be defined. So this idea is probably a non-starter. At least other models have a reasonable chance of success. As Brent has also pointed out, there amount of information in the visible universe is finite. But one can also consider observers and then each observer has a some finite memory so there are only a finite number of branches the observer can distinguish between. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTbW-T8BfRjw7_Kyf1Vw%3DLVPaVDs6iaPp4hMw97DJMEJw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTbW-T8BfRjw7_Kyf1Vw%3DLVPaVDs6iaPp4hMw97DJMEJw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a17eab1ce1e6b4e0e0e9f2586e601915%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 09-05-2022 01:00, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/8/2022 1:50 PM, smitra wrote: On 08-05-2022 06:03, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/7/2022 6:21 PM, smitra wrote: On 05-05-2022 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/4/2022 12:27 PM, smitra wrote: In fact, that idea introduces a raft of problems of its own -- what is the measure over this infinity of branches? What does it mean to partition infinity in the ratio of 0.9:0.1? What is the mechanism (necessarily outside the Schrodinger equation) that achieves this? That simply means that there is as of yet no good model for QM without the Born rule. But there is no mechanism for the Born rule. It is inconsistent with pure Schroedinger evolution of the wave function. I think the problem of measures on infinity is overcome if you simply postulate a very large but finite number of branches to split. Or why not not an continuum probability and just measure by the density around the eigenvalue...the measured values are never exact anyway. I don't these things are wrong or show MWI is inconsistent, but I think they show it has just moved the problems it purported to solve off to some unobservable worlds, which is no better than CI. Born rule is not inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation, it just tells you that the wavefunction gives you the probability amplitudes. This is better than the CI, because the CI is inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation. Because?? It takes one more step and says "probability means something happens and other things don't." It's not called the "Copenhagen Equation". It's called the "Copenhagen Interpretation", i.e. how to _INTERPRET_ the Schroedinger equation and so it is consistent with it. It's called an interpretation just like the MWI, but these are actually different theories that make different predictions, albeit in a domain that cannot easily be accessed experimentally. That the CI is inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation is easy to see. If the Schrödinger is valid, then the state of a system evolves in a unitary way. But after a real collapse the state changes in a non-unitary way. Which is only a problem if one insists that the Schroedinger equation is the whole of the theory and it is ontic. CI denies the first and says that measurements are projection operators because a measurements is necessarily a classical-like result. QBism says the whole theory is epistemic. Yes, but this mans that CI is not compatible with QM as a fundamental theory. You can't have a fundamental Schrödinger equation and then have it not apply to some special cases. If we consider measuring the z-component of a spin polarized in the x-direction using a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, then the entire system of the spin the experimental set-up, the observer and local environment consists of particles that should evolve according to the Schrödinger equation. "Should"? If MWI is correct. If the measurement takes one minute, then the initial state of a patch of one light-minute diameter around the location of the experiment maps to a final state of that patch in a unitary way. You seem to overlook that this one-light minute sphere also had incoming particles and radiation which could not be accounted for the Schroedinger equation. Yes, so one can imagine a shield keeping particles from outside that region from interacting with particles inside the region. Weakly interacting particles like neutrinos can enter, but they don't interact with what's inside the interior region. So, the state of the universe factors into a part for the inside and outside regions (where the outside region also incudes weakly interacting particles that have moved inside). Both parts evolve in a unitary way. But CI says that this does not happen because the internal observer in the system performed a measurement that causes the state of the system to collapse. Yes, that's a problem although CI+decoherence doesn't depend on an observer. The effect of the incoming radiation is also a problem. But MWI doesn't solve the problem, it just assumes that the correlations are created which have the same effect as collapse as far as the instruments and observers are concerned. Decoherence goes part way to solving the problem by quantifying how the "collapse" occurs statistically in time. Yes, one needs to consider correlations between the states of the measurement devices and the measured systems. Saibal Brent The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. But different Mr. Data's and different instruments ca
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 08-05-2022 06:04, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:21 AM smitra wrote: The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. Everett is supposed to be QM without observers. So the number of things that Mr Data can possibly be aware of is irrelevant. According to the SE, all branches are equivalent. All else flows from this -- there are no further "hidden assumptions about branches". Yes, but I'm not a big fan of "sticking to scripture". What matters for me is that collapse is inconsistent with the SE, therefore we should consider QM without collapse and see how to best to move forward on that basis. Saibal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQbZrov9a6Xs5mrr0o%3DkFSmeSHKdLG%3DbwgkOF6er43RKQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQbZrov9a6Xs5mrr0o%3DkFSmeSHKdLG%3DbwgkOF6er43RKQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2c76502dc01f6a62e0759d3927bedc53%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 08-05-2022 06:03, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/7/2022 6:21 PM, smitra wrote: On 05-05-2022 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/4/2022 12:27 PM, smitra wrote: In fact, that idea introduces a raft of problems of its own -- what is the measure over this infinity of branches? What does it mean to partition infinity in the ratio of 0.9:0.1? What is the mechanism (necessarily outside the Schrodinger equation) that achieves this? That simply means that there is as of yet no good model for QM without the Born rule. But there is no mechanism for the Born rule. It is inconsistent with pure Schroedinger evolution of the wave function. I think the problem of measures on infinity is overcome if you simply postulate a very large but finite number of branches to split. Or why not not an continuum probability and just measure by the density around the eigenvalue...the measured values are never exact anyway. I don't these things are wrong or show MWI is inconsistent, but I think they show it has just moved the problems it purported to solve off to some unobservable worlds, which is no better than CI. Born rule is not inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation, it just tells you that the wavefunction gives you the probability amplitudes. This is better than the CI, because the CI is inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation. Because?? It takes one more step and says "probability means something happens and other things don't." It's not called the "Copenhagen Equation". It's called the "Copenhagen Interpretation", i.e. how to _INTERPRET_ the Schroedinger equation and so it is consistent with it. It's called an interpretation just like the MWI, but these are actually different theories that make different predictions, albeit in a domain that cannot easily be accessed experimentally. That the CI is inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation is easy to see. If the Schrödinger is valid, then the state of a system evolves in a unitary way. But after a real collapse the state changes in a non-unitary way. If we consider measuring the z-component of a spin polarized in the x-direction using a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, then the entire system of the spin the experimental set-up, the observer and local environment consists of particles that should evolve according to the Schrödinger equation. If the measurement takes one minute, then the initial state of a patch of one light-minute diameter around the location of the experiment maps to a final state of that patch in a unitary way. But CI says that this does not happen because the internal observer in the system performed a measurement that causes the state of the system to collapse. The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. But different Mr. Data's and different instruments can have different number of states. So what you're suggesting is QBism. It may fall under QBism, the question is if this is going to cause problems that cannot be resolved well. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/cdb187f5-6770-7216-a03f-75fca3b0c4c7%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/cdb187f5-6770-7216-a03f-75fca3b0c4c7%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/40a815757d1b9434b25dfd3aef27093d%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 08-05-2022 05:58, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:32 AM smitra wrote:
On 05-05-2022 01:15, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:27 AM smitra wrote:
On 04-05-2022 01:49, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I have not introduced any concept of probability. The 2^N
branches
that are constructed when both outcomes are realized on each of
N
Bernoulli trials are all on the same basis.
If you ignore the amplitudes in the states, and that means
modifying
QM into something else.
QM does not assume that all branches exist equally. In Everett you
have already modified QM into something else.
The Schrodinger equation is insensitive to the amplitudes. You get
the
same set of 2^N branches from the Schrodinger equation, whatever
amplitudes you have. The weights of these branches certainly
depend on
the amplitudes: if there are n zeros in the set of N trials, there
are
N-n ones. The weight of the corresponding binary string is a^n
b^(N-n), but without further assumption, this plays no role in the
future development of the state or in the interpretation of the
binary
string. If you interpret it as the probability of the string, you
again have a conflict, since all binary strings are constructed on
an
equal basis, the natural probability for each is 2^{-N}.
There is no conflict whatsoever with assuming the Born rule and the
Schrodinger equation. The "construction on an equal basis" is not at
all
implied by the Schrödinger equation.
It is when you take the SE to imply that all possible outcomes exist
on each trial. That gives all outcomes equal status.
All outcomes can exist without these being equally likely. One can make
models based on more branches for certain outcomes, but these are just
models that may not be correct. What matters is that such models can be
formulated in a mathematically consistent way, which demonstrates that
there is n o contradiction. The physical plausibility of such models is
another issue.
Saibal
Bruce
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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 08-05-2022 05:56, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 11:40 AM smitra wrote: On 05-05-2022 01:57, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:27 AM smitra wrote: Of course you can. The lottery example shows that even in classical physics you can imagine this happening. If a million copies of you are made and one will win a lottery whole the rest won't then you have one in a million chance of experiencing winning the lottery, even though both outcomes of winning and losing will occur with certainty. The trouble is that classically, a million copies of you cannot be made. Then assume that I'm Mr. Data and just copy the software running Mr. Data a million times. So, this is not a findamtnel problem with the argument. That technology does not currently exist. And one might reasonably doubt that it will ever exist The issue was that if the probability of an outcome is 10%, then it does not make sense to say that that outcome will certainly happen. It does make sense in a scenario where there are multiple copies if the same observer. If Alice makes 10 copies of Bob, and one copy of Bob is going to experience outcome A and the rest will experience outcome B, then from Alice will see all the possible states for Bob. But from Bob's point of view, things are different. After Bob is exposed to the result (A or B) there are two versions of Bob, Bob I think this boils down to the first person:third person confusion that Bruno often refers to. From the third person perspective, the outcome is certain. But from the first person perspective of each of the copies, the outcome is not certain. Consider the following simple situation. You have a bag containing ten balls, nine of which are red and one is black. If there are ten copies of Bob, for example, and each copy draws a ball from the bag, without replacement. Then it is certain (100% probability) that the black ball will be drawn. But the probability that any particular copy of Bob drew the black ball is only 10%. (They draw the balls without knowing the results of other draws). The probability that 'Bob' (including all copies, presumed identical) will have the black ball is still 100%. That is the 3p perspective. For each copy, however, their 1p perspective is that the probability that their ball is black is only 10%. The problem arises if you attempt to impose the 1p perspective on the 3p view. It cannot be the case that a particular copy of Bob is both certain to draw black and has only a 10% chance of drawing black. To consider all copies as equally identified as 'Bob' is the 3p view, and that is the view that is relevant for the Everett interpretation of an experiment -- there is nothing in the SE that identifies one particular observer (there is no 1p view), so Everett is incompatible with the Born rule (which is a 1p view). I agree here, except that the wavefunction will (in general) assign different amplitudes to different states of observers. Therefore there is problem with the Born rule assigning different probabilities to the observer being in different states. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSj-5%2BTxBEPFkYByU%2BbEOHPELDG2NGquM%3Dqqtq3%2BXqLnw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSj-5%2BTxBEPFkYByU%2BbEOHPELDG2NGquM%3Dqqtq3%2BXqLnw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/97140fac15627bcea79e49eeec011428%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 05-05-2022 01:57, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:27 AM smitra wrote: On 04-05-2022 01:49, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 10:11 PM smitra wrote: What you are constructing is not the result of QM. I think you are being confused by the presence of coefficients in the expansion of the original state: the a and b in |psi> = a|0> + b|1> The linearity of the Schrodinger equation means that the coefficients, a and b, play no part in the construction of the 2^N possible branches; you get the same set of 2^N branches whatever the values of a and b. Think of it this way. If a = sqrt(0.9) and b = sqrt(0.1), the Born rule probability for |0> is 90%, and the Born rule probability for |1> is 10%. But, by hypothesis, both outcomes occur with certainty on each trial. There is a conflict here. You cannot rationally have a 10% probability for something that is certain to happen. Of course you can. The lottery example shows that even in classical physics you can imagine this happening. If a million copies of you are made and one will win a lottery whole the rest won't then you have one in a million chance of experiencing winning the lottery, even though both outcomes of winning and losing will occur with certainty. The trouble is that classically, a million copies of you cannot be made. Then assume that I'm Mr. Data and just copy the software running Mr. Data a million times. So, this is not a findamtnel problem with the argument. The issue was that if the probability of an outcome is 10%, then it does not make sense to say that that outcome will certainly happen. It does make sense in a scenario where there are multiple copies if the same observer. If Alice makes 10 copies of Bob, and one copy of Bob is going to experience outcome A and the rest will experience outcome B, then from Alice will see all the possible states for Bob. But from Bob's point of view, things are different. After Bob is exposed to the result (A or B) there are two versions of Bob, Bobknows beforehand how the experiment s set up, he'll assign a probability of 10% of going to find himself in state Bob_B after the experiment. Putting things off into other worlds does not make the logic work. If there is a copy of you for every ticket in the lottery, then you can say with certainty that one copy of you will have the winning ticket. But what sense does it make to say that your chance of winning is then one in a million? You can't have it both ways. If winning and not winning are both regarded as legitimate outcomes, then you are not certain to win, although you are certain to have an outcome. Whatever way you spin it, the same thing cannot both be certain and have a probability of 10% (or one in a million). See above explanation. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ4po5iHWyefMkk5-5AheiRTudkfkSJ2eXgfFAXX1ntTQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQ4po5iHWyefMkk5-5AheiRTudkfkSJ2eXgfFAXX1ntTQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4e0481d11902b6bc19dbe10dcfaecc80%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 05-05-2022 01:15, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 5:27 AM smitra wrote:
On 04-05-2022 01:49, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I have not introduced any concept of probability. The 2^N branches
that are constructed when both outcomes are realized on each of N
Bernoulli trials are all on the same basis.
If you ignore the amplitudes in the states, and that means modifying
QM
into something else.
QM does not assume that all branches exist equally. In Everett you
have already modified QM into something else.
The Schrodinger equation is insensitive to the amplitudes. You get the
same set of 2^N branches from the Schrodinger equation, whatever
amplitudes you have. The weights of these branches certainly depend on
the amplitudes: if there are n zeros in the set of N trials, there are
N-n ones. The weight of the corresponding binary string is a^n
b^(N-n), but without further assumption, this plays no role in the
future development of the state or in the interpretation of the binary
string. If you interpret it as the probability of the string, you
again have a conflict, since all binary strings are constructed on an
equal basis, the natural probability for each is 2^{-N}.
There is no conflict whatsoever with assuming the Born rule and the
Schrodinger equation. The "construction on an equal basis" is not at all
implied by the Schrödinger equation.
Because of
these obvious problems, most writers on MWI interpret the coefficients
as weights, and are careful to avoid calling the amplitudes
probabilities. The Born rule is taken to sit alongside the theory, but
it is not part of the theory because there are no probabilities in the
Schrodinger equation itself.
There are no forces in Maxwell equations either, that's given by the
Lorentz force equation. I sits alongside the Maxwell equations.
Saibal
Bruce
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Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 05-05-2022 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/4/2022 12:27 PM, smitra wrote: In fact, that idea introduces a raft of problems of its own -- what is the measure over this infinity of branches? What does it mean to partition infinity in the ratio of 0.9:0.1? What is the mechanism (necessarily outside the Schrodinger equation) that achieves this? That simply means that there is as of yet no good model for QM without the Born rule. But there is no mechanism for the Born rule. It is inconsistent with pure Schroedinger evolution of the wave function. I think the problem of measures on infinity is overcome if you simply postulate a very large but finite number of branches to split. Or why not not an continuum probability and just measure by the density around the eigenvalue...the measured values are never exact anyway. I don't these things are wrong or show MWI is inconsistent, but I think they show it has just moved the problems it purported to solve off to some unobservable worlds, which is no better than CI. Born rule is not inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation, it just tells you that the wavefunction gives you the probability amplitudes. This is better than the CI, because the CI is inconsistent with the Schrödinger equation. The issues with branches etc. are likely just artifacts with making hidden assumptions about branches. At the end of the day there are only a finite number of states an observer can be in. If an observer is modeled as an algorithm, take e.g. Star Trek's Mr. Data then it's clear that there are only a finite number of bitstrings that can correspond to the set of all possible things Mr. Data can be aware of. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/24e759f9-cf72-8439-a8e7-cf3fc63cd2b7%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/24e759f9-cf72-8439-a8e7-cf3fc63cd2b7%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9d400595ad40043ef2eb3fb9e315448a%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 04-05-2022 22:24, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/4/2022 11:36 AM, smitra wrote: On 03-05-2022 19:52, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/3/2022 5:00 AM, smitra wrote: On 28-04-2022 07:24, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. But it shows why you can't use branch counting. There's no physical mechanism for translating the _a_ and _b_ of _|psi> = a|0> + b|1>_ into numbers of branches. To implement that you have put it in "by hand" that the branches have weights or numerousity of _a _and _b_. This is possible, but it gives the lie to the MWI mantra of "It's just the Schroedinger equation." Yes, one has to interpret the wavefunction as giving probabilities. That's still better than assuming that the physical state evolves sometimes according to the Schrödinger equations and sometimes by undergoing a nondeterministic collapse without there being any evidence for such collapses, without even credible theoretical models for it. Is there any evidence that is NOT from collapse? How does it get recorded? Where is it? A credible theoretical model is one that predicts the observed result...not necessarily one that satisfies your metaphysical prejudices. You seem to have adopted a Platonist view of physics. But as Sean Carroll (a proponent of MWI) remarked, "But all human progress has come from studying the shadows on the wall." A theoretical model cannot be tied to macroscopic concepts that are known to only give an effective description of nature. But that's not "known". It's only "known" if you assume the theoretical model...circular reasoning. If collapse is not effective but a real effect not due to decoherence, then there is as of yet no experimental evidence for it. It's just like concepts in thermodynamics that can be explained in a more fundamental way using statistical physics. No one objects to doing that on the grounds of any practical impossibility of building molecular-scale heat engines. But the consequences of thermodynamics are confirmed by observation. MWI puts them where they are, in
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 04-05-2022 01:49, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 10:11 PM smitra wrote: On 28-04-2022 07:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 3:24 PM Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: Changing the weights of the components in the superposition does not change the conclusion of most observers that the actual probabilities are 0.5 for each result. This is simple mathematics, and I am amazed that even after all these years, and all the times I have spelled this out, you still seek to deny the obvious result. Your logical and mathematical skill are on a par with those of John Clark. It's indeed simple mathematics. You apply that to branch counting to arrive at the result of equal probabilities. I have not used branch counting. Please stop accusing me of that. You are considering each branch to have an equal probability when there is no logical reason to do so, and when that's also being contradicted by QM. I have not introduced any concept of probability. The 2^N branches that are constructed when both outcomes are realized on each of N Bernoulli trials are all on the same basis. If you ignore the amplitudes in the states, and that means modifying QM into something else. There is no probability involved. The branches are all equivalent by construction. What you are constructing is not the result of QM. I think you are being confused by the presence of coefficients in the expansion of the original state: the a and b in |psi> = a|0> + b|1> The linearity of the Schrodinger equation means that the coefficients, a and b, play no part in the construction of the 2^N possible branches; you get the same set of 2^N branches whatever the values of a and b. Think of it this way. If a = sqrt(0.9) and b = sqrt(0.1), the Born rule probability for |0> is 90%, and the Born rule probability for |1> is 10%. But, by hypothesis, both outcomes occur with certainty on each trial. There is a conflict here. You cannot rationally have a 10% probability for something that is certain to happen. Of course you can. The lottery example shows that even in classical physics you can imagine this happening. If a million copies of you are made and one will win a lottery whole the rest won't then you have one in a million chance of experiencing winning the lottery, even though both outcomes of winning and losing will occur with certainty. One has to distinguish between the bird's eye and frog's eye view in a setting where there are copies of observers. This is why some people have resorted to the idea that there are in fact an infinite number of branches, both before and after the measurement. What the measurement does is partition these branches in the ratio of the Born probabilities. But this is just a suggestion. There is nothing in the Schrodinger equation, or in quantum mechanics itself, that would suggest that there are an infinite number of branches. There is the Born rule. If one throws away the Born rule then one has to specify another model that explains where it comes from. But of you just throw away the Born rule and don't replace that woth anythong else, then you are obviously not going to reproduce the same results. In fact, that idea introduces a raft of problems of its own -- what is the measure over this infinity of branches? What does it mean to partition infinity in the ratio of 0.9:0.1? What is the mechanism (necessarily outside the Schrodinger equation) that achieves this? That simply means that there is as of yet no good model for QM without the Born rule. You are concerned that a collapse introduces unknown physics outside the Schrodinger equation. You will have to be careful that your own solution does not introduce even more outrageous physics outside the Schrodinger equation. Collapse, after all, has a perfectly reasonable mechanism in terms of the flashes of relativistic GRW theory. If objective collapse exists then one should be able to demonstrate that in an experiment. There are as of yet no experimental results that suggests that a collapse mechanism exists. My conclusion from this is that Everett (and MWI) is inconsistent with the Born rule. So your idea of QM without collapse but with the Born rule, is simply incoherent. There can be no such theory that is internally consistent. That's based on assuming a model for the MWI that by construction is faulty. So, the conclusion has to be that one should not do branch counting. The question is then if this disproves the MWI. If by MWI we mean QM minus collapse then clearly not. Because in that case we use the Born rule to compute the probability of outcomes and assume that after a measurement we have different sectors for observers who have observed the different outcomes with the probabilities as given by the Born rule. In which case the Born rule is just an additional arbit
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 03-05-2022 19:52, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/3/2022 5:00 AM, smitra wrote: On 28-04-2022 07:24, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. But it shows why you can't use branch counting. There's no physical mechanism for translating the _a_ and _b_ of _|psi> = a|0> + b|1>_ into numbers of branches. To implement that you have put it in "by hand" that the branches have weights or numerousity of _a _and _b_. This is possible, but it gives the lie to the MWI mantra of "It's just the Schroedinger equation." Yes, one has to interpret the wavefunction as giving probabilities. That's still better than assuming that the physical state evolves sometimes according to the Schrödinger equations and sometimes by undergoing a nondeterministic collapse without there being any evidence for such collapses, without even credible theoretical models for it. Is there any evidence that is NOT from collapse? How does it get recorded? Where is it? A credible theoretical model is one that predicts the observed result...not necessarily one that satisfies your metaphysical prejudices. You seem to have adopted a Platonist view of physics. But as Sean Carroll (a proponent of MWI) remarked, "But all human progress has come from studying the shadows on the wall." A theoretical model cannot be tied to macroscopic concepts that are known to only give an effective description of nature. It's just like concepts in thermodynamics that can be explained in a more fundamental way using statistical physics. No one objects to doing that on the grounds of any practical impossibility of building molecular-scale heat engines. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b734ee5310198142ed9e0b26cfcf9449%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 03-05-2022 19:47, Brent Meeker wrote: On 5/3/2022 4:48 AM, smitra wrote: On 28-04-2022 07:23, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/27/2022 10:38 AM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 04:08, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. But it shows why you can't use branch counting. There's no physical mechanism for translating the _a_ and _b_ of _|psi> = a|0> + b|1>_ into numbers of branches. To implement that you have put it in "by hand" that the branches have weights or numerousity of _a _and _b_. This is possible, but it gives the lie to the MWI mantra of "It's just the Schroedinger equation." The problem is with giving a physical interpretation to the mathematics here. If we take MWI to be QM without collapse, then we have not specified anything about branches yet. Different MWI advocates have published different ideas about this, and they can't all be right. But at heart MWI is just QM without collapse. To proceed in a rigorous way, one has to start with what counts as a branch. It seems to me that this has to involve the definition of an observer, and that requires a theory about what observation is. I.m.o, this has to be done by defining an observer as an algorithm, but many people think that you need to invoke environmental decoherence. People like e.g. Zurek using the latter definition have attempted to derive the Born rule based on that idea. I.m.o., one has to start working out a theory based on rigorous definitions and then see where that leads to, instead of arguing based on vague, ill defined notions. "Observer as an algorithm" seems pretty ill defined to me. Which algorithm? applied to what input? How does the algorithm, a Platonic construct, interface with the physical universe? Decoherence seems much better defined. And so does QBism. Any human observer is arguably implemented by an algorithm run by a brain. Plus sensors, plus environmentyou call that "well defined"?? What matters is that it's well defined in principle. That in practice it looks like a big mess is irrelevant. So,
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 03-05-2022 14:11, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 9:40 PM smitra wrote: On 28-04-2022 02:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/27/2022 2:00 PM, smitra wrote: If you agree, and are prepared, with me, to throw out Everett, then we agree, and there is nothing more to be argued about (at least, until you present some different complete theory). I'm open to the idea that QM itself may only be an approximation to a more fundamental theory. The arguments in favor of no collapse are strong arguments but you then do get this issue with probability that you have discussed here. The disagreement with you about this is that I don't see it as a fatal inconsistency that would prove the MWI to be wrong. Probabilities for the different branches do not have to be equal. But that doesn't mean that this looks to be a rather unnatural feature of the theory. This suggests that a more fundamental theory exists from which one could derive quantum mechanics with its formalism involving amplitudes and the Born rule as an approximation. If there are probabilities attached to the branches, then Gleason's theorem shows that the probabilities must satisfy the Born rule. So I don't seen any inconsistency in simply saying they are probabilities of measurement results, that's Copenhagen. But if they are probabilities of results that implies that some things happen and others don't...other wise what does "probability" mean and what use is it as an empirical concept? That brings back the original problem of CI, where and how is this happening defined? If there are 3 copies of an observer and 2 experience outcome A and 1 experiences outcome B then the probability of the observer experiencing outcome B is 1/3. Here we should note that the personal identity of an observer is determined by all the information in the brain and is therefore different from the different outcomes. So, we always have (slightly) different observers observing different things, which is not all that different from starting with 3 different people of whom 2 experience outcome A and 1 experiences outcome B. That's just branch counting, which is known not to work. The complete physical state is not in doubt in this case. In your argument you apply your reasoning to QM but you remove the information about the amplitudes from the wavefunction so you replace QM by a Straw Man version of QM that then fails to describe the real world correctly. While MWI is QM minus collapse, what you do is consider MWI minus collapse minus Born rule, then argue that this doesn't work and that therefore the MWI is wrong. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQy0WgCuwwkv6%2B-z6H5o1r3OgZRZywq%3Di0zEUXaoC-MHw%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQy0WgCuwwkv6%2B-z6H5o1r3OgZRZywq%3Di0zEUXaoC-MHw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/403fa7da3f45d1ce42ea41e42f16680c%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 28-04-2022 07:51, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 3:24 PM Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: Changing the weights of the components in the superposition does not change the conclusion of most observers that the actual probabilities are 0.5 for each result. This is simple mathematics, and I am amazed that even after all these years, and all the times I have spelled this out, you still seek to deny the obvious result. Your logical and mathematical skill are on a par with those of John Clark. It's indeed simple mathematics. You apply that to branch counting to arrive at the result of equal probabilities. I have not used branch counting. Please stop accusing me of that. You are considering each branch to have an equal probability when there is no logical reason to do so, and when that's also being contradicted by QM. ' So, the conclusion has to be that one should not do branch counting. The question is then if this disproves the MWI. If by MWI we mean QM minus collapse then clearly not. Because in that case we use the Born rule to compute the probability of outcomes and assume that after a measurement we have different sectors for observers who have observed the different outcomes with the probabilities as given by the Born rule. In which case the Born rule is just an additional arbitrary assumption: it is not part of the Schrodinger equation. Your theory of QM minus collapse is not well-defined. You simply take whatever you want from text-book quantum mechanics, with no regard to the consistency of your model. QM includes the Born rule. QM minus collapse is just that: QM minus collapse. It's not QM minus collapse minus the Born rule. You then want to argue against that by claiming that your argument applies generally and would not allow one to give different sectors unequal probabilities. But that's nonsense, because you make the hidden assumption of equal probabilities right from the start. I simply assume the Schrodinger equation. Then, following Everett, we take it to be deterministic, so that all branches occur on every trial. Since it is deterministic, there is no concept of probability inherent in the Schrodinger equation, and I do not assume any definition of probability. So the branches occur as they occur, there is no assumption of equal probability. It is just that the construction means that all 2^N branches occur on the same basis and necessarily count equally in the overall branching picture. Why do they necessarily count equally? What is the meaning of the wavefunction? Why don't the amplitudes matter? There is nothing in QM that says that branches must count equally, and the lottery example I gave makes it clear that you can have branching with unequal probabilities in classical physics. As I have said, there is no classical analogue of an interaction in which all outcomes necessarily occur. So your lottery example is useless. There is no concept of probability involved in any of this. The lottery example I gave clearly is a classical example in which all outcomes necessarily occur. Your reasoning does not involve any QM at all, you just apply it to the MWI. Your argument goes through also in case of the lottery example, in which case it leads to an obviopusly wrong conclusion. So, it's your reasoning that's at fault not the MWI taken to be QM minus collapse. Saibal Bruce Yes, there's nothing in QM that says the branches must count equally. But there's also nothing in the evolution of Schroedingers equation that they must count as _a^2_ and _b^2_. Of course IF they are probabilities then it follows from Gleason's theorem that they follow the Born rule. But in that case you have reintroduced almost all the philosophical problems of the Copenhagen interpretation. When exactly does this splitting occur? Can the split be into irrational numbers of branches? A splitting is in some particular basis and not in other bases. What determines the pointer basis? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTBdJpDkw_duZDuvMvArLte-3OoxJcs8-3vXjroKSti8g%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTBdJpDkw_duZDuvMvArLte-3OoxJcs8-3vXjroKSti8g%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/m
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 28-04-2022 07:24, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. But it shows why you can't use branch counting. There's no physical mechanism for translating the _a_ and _b_ of _|psi> = a|0> + b|1>_ into numbers of branches. To implement that you have put it in "by hand" that the branches have weights or numerousity of _a _and _b_. This is possible, but it gives the lie to the MWI mantra of "It's just the Schroedinger equation." Yes, one has to interpret the wavefunction as giving probabilities. That's still better than assuming that the physical state evolves sometimes according to the Schrödinger equations and sometimes by undergoing a nondeterministic collapse without there being any evidence for such collapses, without even credible theoretical models for it. Brent The important point to notice is that this result of all possible binary sequences for N trials is independent of the coefficients in the binary expansion of the state: . Changing the weights of the components in the superposition does not change the conclusion of most observers that the actual probabilities are 0.5 for each result. This is simple mathematics, and I am amazed that even after all these years, and all the times I have spelled this out, you still seek to deny the obvious result. Your logical and mathematical skill are on a par with those of John Clark. It's indeed simple mathematics. You apply that to branch counting to arrive at the result of equal probabilities. So, the conclusion has to be that one should not do branch counting. The question is then if this disproves the MWI. If by MWI we mean QM minus collapse then clearly not. Because in that case we use the Born rule to compute the probability of outcomes and assume that after a measurement we have different sectors for observers who have observed the different outcomes with the probabilities as given by the Born rule. You then want to argue against that by claiming that your argument applies generally and would not allow one to give different sectors unequal probabilities. But that's nonsense, because you make t
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 28-04-2022 07:23, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/27/2022 10:38 AM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 04:08, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 5:32 PM, smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. But it shows why you can't use branch counting. There's no physical mechanism for translating the _a_ and _b_ of _|psi> = a|0> + b|1>_ into numbers of branches. To implement that you have put it in "by hand" that the branches have weights or numerousity of _a _and _b_. This is possible, but it gives the lie to the MWI mantra of "It's just the Schroedinger equation." The problem is with giving a physical interpretation to the mathematics here. If we take MWI to be QM without collapse, then we have not specified anything about branches yet. Different MWI advocates have published different ideas about this, and they can't all be right. But at heart MWI is just QM without collapse. To proceed in a rigorous way, one has to start with what counts as a branch. It seems to me that this has to involve the definition of an observer, and that requires a theory about what observation is. I.m.o, this has to be done by defining an observer as an algorithm, but many people think that you need to invoke environmental decoherence. People like e.g. Zurek using the latter definition have attempted to derive the Born rule based on that idea. I.m.o., one has to start working out a theory based on rigorous definitions and then see where that leads to, instead of arguing based on vague, ill defined notions. "Observer as an algorithm" seems pretty ill defined to me. Which algorithm? applied to what input? How does the algorithm, a Platonic construct, interface with the physical universe? Decoherence seems much better defined. And so does QBism. Any human observer is arguably implemented by an algorithm run by a brain. So, for any given observer at some time, there exists a precisely defined algorithm that defines that observer. In practice we cannot provide for any such definition, but from the point of view of the theory, it's important to takr into account the way an observer should be rigorously defined. Decoher
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 28-04-2022 02:14, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/27/2022 2:00 PM, smitra wrote: If you agree, and are prepared, with me, to throw out Everett, then we agree, and there is nothing more to be argued about (at least, until you present some different complete theory). I'm open to the idea that QM itself may only be an approximation to a more fundamental theory. The arguments in favor of no collapse are strong arguments but you then do get this issue with probability that you have discussed here. The disagreement with you about this is that I don't see it as a fatal inconsistency that would prove the MWI to be wrong. Probabilities for the different branches do not have to be equal. But that doesn't mean that this looks to be a rather unnatural feature of the theory. This suggests that a more fundamental theory exists from which one could derive quantum mechanics with its formalism involving amplitudes and the Born rule as an approximation. If there are probabilities attached to the branches, then Gleason's theorem shows that the probabilities must satisfy the Born rule. So I don't seen any inconsistency in simply saying they are probabilities of measurement results, that's Copenhagen. But if they are probabilities of results that implies that some things happen and others don't...other wise what does "probability" mean and what use is it as an empirical concept? That brings back the original problem of CI, where and how is this happening defined? If there are 3 copies of an observer and 2 experience outcome A and 1 experiences outcome B then the probability of the observer experiencing outcome B is 1/3. Here we should note that the personal identity of an observer is determined by all the information in the brain and is therefore different from the different outcomes. So, we always have (slightly) different observers observing different things, which is not all that different from starting with 3 different people of whom 2 experience outcome A and 1 experiences outcome B. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7954277d-8375-0340-a5f7-b42d7d514fdb%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7954277d-8375-0340-a5f7-b42d7d514fdb%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/47a0d7555b9fc67d69040a2b9cc9b181%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 27-04-2022 04:01, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 11:35 AM smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 03:11, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10:32 AM smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01,10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. The distinctive feature of Everettian Many worlds theory is that every possible outcome is realized on every trial. I don't think that you have absorbed the full significance of this revolutionary idea. There is no classical analogue of this behaviour, which is why your lottery example is irrelevant. I spelled out the sequences that Everett implies in my earlier response. These clearly must have equal probability -- that is what the theory requires. QM without collapse does not require equal probabilities. Branches are not a fundamental concept of the theory. You just put this in by hand. It is not an assumption on my part -- it is a consequence of Everett's basic idea. Everett's (or for that matter any other person's) ideas cannot be the basis for doing physics in a rigorous way. Your argument is not based on QM without collapse, you are making ad hoc assumptions about branching when branching isn't a fundamental process in QM. So there is no branch counting involved. That is just another red herring that you have thrown up to distract yourself from the cold hard logic of the situation. You just presented an elaborate presentation involving N branching steps and counted all 2^N branches as equal. That's branch counting and it's known to not be compatible with QM. The MWI can be taken to be QM without collapse and this is known to be a consistent theory It would seem that you are claiming that QM without collapse is not based on Everett's ideas. If you claim that such a theory exists and is consistent, then you really should present that theory, and point out that it has nothing to do with Everett, or with obtaining every outcome of a trial on different branches. QM without collapse is just that: QM without collapse, nothing more, nothing less. Everett worked out this idea added the concept of branches and developed an effective theory and also attempted to derive the Born rule. But that latter attempt is now recognized to not work and other physicists have later used similar and also other approaches to get to a derivation of the Born rule. But so far no one has succeeded. My impression is that you do not have any worked-out theory -- you just throw arbitrary objections to my working through the consequences of Everett's approach to quantum mechanics. I have shown that many problems exist with Everettian QM. There only exists a problem with getting to the Born rule, not with QM without collapse. If you agree, and are prepared, with me, to throw out Everett, then we agree, and there is nothing more to be argued about (at least, until you present some different complete theory). I'm open to the idea that QM itself may only be an approximation to a more fundamental theory. The arguments in favor of no collapse are strong arguments but you then do get this issue with probability that you have discussed here. The disagreement with you about this is that I don't see it as a fatal inconsistency that would prove the MWI to be wrong. Probabilities for the different branches do not have to be equal. But that doesn't mean that this looks to be a rather unnatural feature of the theory. This suggests that a more fundamental theory exists from which one could derive quantum mechanics with its formalism involving amplitudes and the Born rule as an approximation. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 27-04-2022 03:11, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10:32 AM smitra wrote: On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. The distinctive feature of Everettian Many worlds theory is that every possible outcome is realized on every trial. I don't think that you have absorbed the full significance of this revolutionary idea. There is no classical analogue of this behaviour, which is why your lottery example is irrelevant. I spelled out the sequences that Everett implies in my earlier response. These clearly must have equal probability -- that is what the theory requires. QM without collapse does not require equal probabilities. Branches are not a fundamental concept of the theory. You just put this in by hand. It is not an assumption on my part -- it is a consequence of Everett's basic idea. Everett's (or for that matter any other person's) ideas cannot be the basis for doing physics in a rigorous way. Your argument is not based on QM without collapse, you are making ad hoc assumptions about branching when branching isn't a fundamental process in QM. So there is no branch counting involved. That is just another red herring that you have thrown up to distract yourself from the cold hard logic of the situation. You just presented an elaborate presentation involving N branching steps and counted all 2^N branches as equal. That's branch counting and it's known to not be compatible with QM. The MWI can be taken to be QM without collapse and this is known to be a consistent theory. So, if you arrive at a contradiction, you are making assumptions that are not implied by the theory. Saibal Bruce The important point to notice is that this result of all possible binary sequences for N trials is independent of the coefficients in the binary expansion of the state: |psi> = a|0> + b|1>. Changing the weights of the components in the superposition does not change the conclusion of most observers that the actual probabilities are 0.5 for each result. This is simple mathematics, and I am amazed that even after all these years, and all the times I have spelled this out, you still seek to deny the obvious result. Your logical and mathematical skill are on a par with those of John Clark. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQo8hZ2XYNfAJ%3DU9%3D9K3VxpZYFF4rWP_6tZ2bCzdDCmbQ%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQo8hZ2XYNfAJ%3DU9%3D9K3VxpZYFF4rWP_6tZ2bCzdDCmbQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d6eb52964b04a666bb1330a7cf4dcd66%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 26-04-2022 22:16, Brent Meeker wrote: On 4/26/2022 11:38 AM, smitra wrote: You do realize don't you that if you take this view you've made QM personal and epistemic so we can forget all the MWI muddle and adopt QBism whose only problem is that what you think reality is, is personal. One may get to something that looks like QBism, but one cannot conclude that reality is personal within the framework that I suggest. Why not. Each algorithm has it's own data, it's own prior, and so it's own idea of reality. Sounds like QBism to me. Yes, but QBism is more than just that, it makes assumptions like there not being a universal wavefunction. But in your version the universal wave function is an otiose assumption, a fiction put on top of the algorithmic experiences. Given some algorithm, we can in principle compute the probability of it processing some dataset when given an initial condition and a fundamental Hamiltonian. The fact that we experience a world describe by the laws of physics and not some fantasy world, is something that should be explainable. Saibal Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/98a08879-625b-9d76-e9c3-c11a0792881a%40gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/98a08879-625b-9d76-e9c3-c11a0792881a%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ab840667ebb179f62b9f92f65af88b19%40zonnet.nl.
Re: The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism
On 27-04-2022 01:37, Bruce Kellett wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 10:03 AM smitra wrote: On 24-04-2022 03:16, Bruce Kellett wrote: A moment's thought should make it clear to you that this is not possible. If both possibilities are realized, it cannot be the case that one has twice the probability of the other. In the long run, if both are realized they have equal probabilities of 1/2. The probabilities do not have to be 1/2. Suppose one million people participate in a lottery such that there will be exactly one winner. The probability that one given person will win, is then one in a million. Suppose now that we create one million people using a machine and then organize such a lottery. The probability that one given newly created person will win is then also one in a million. The machine can be adjusted to create any set of persons we like, it can create one million identical persons, or almost identical persons, or totally different persons. If we then create one million almost identical persons, the probability is still one one in a million. This means that the limit of identical persons, the probability will be one in a million. Why would the probability suddenly become 1/2 if the machine is set to create exactly identical persons while the probability would be one in a million if we create persons that are almost, but not quite identical? Your lottery example is completely beside the point. It provides for an example of a case where your logic does not apply. I think you should pay more attention to the mathematics of the binomial distribution. Let me explain it once more: If every outcome is realized on every trial of a binary process, then after the first trial, we have a branch with result 0 and a branch with result 1. After two trials we have four branches, with results 00, 01, 10,and 11; after 3 trials, we have branches registering 000, 001, 011, 010, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Notice that these branches represent all possible binary strings of length 3. After N trials, there are 2^N distinct branches, representing all possible binary sequences of length N. (This is just like Pascal's triangle) As N becomes very large, we can approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution, with mean 0.5 and standard deviation that decreases as 1/sqrt(N). In other words, the majority of trials will have equal, or approximately equal, numbers of 0s and 1s. Observers in these branches will naturally take the probability to be approximated by the relative frequencies of 0s and 1s. In other words, they will take the probability of each outcome to be 0.5. The problem with this is that you just assume that all branches are equally probable. You don't make that explicit, it's implicitly assumed, but it's just an assumption. You are simply doing branch counting. The important point to notice is that this result of all possible binary sequences for N trials is independent of the coefficients in the binary expansion of the state: |psi> = a|0> + b|1>. Changing the weights of the components in the superposition does not change the conclusion of most observers that the actual probabilities are 0.5 for each result. This is simple mathematics, and I am amazed that even after all these years, and all the times I have spelled this out, you still seek to deny the obvious result. Your logical and mathematical skill are on a par with those of John Clark. It's indeed simple mathematics. You apply that to branch counting to arrive at the result of equal probabilities. So, the conclusion has to be that one should not do branch counting. The question is then if this disproves the MWI. If by MWI we mean QM minus collapse then clearly not. Because in that case we use the Born rule to compute the probability of outcomes and assume that after a measurement we have different sectors for observers who have observed the different outcomes with the probabilities as given by the Born rule. You then want to argue against that by claiming that your argument applies generally and would not allow one to give different sectors unequal probabilities. But that's nonsense, because you make the hidden assumption of equal probabilities right from the start. There is nothing in QM that says that branches must count equally, and the lottery example I gave makes it clear that you can have branching with unequal probabilities in classical physics. Saibal Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLT22raNMhxUsrUqHni2P-T4Ww%3DXQh_HKUO7CBpTZv8q_Q%40mail.gmail.com [1]. Links: -- [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLT22raNMhxUsrUqHni2P-T4Ww%3D
