Thank you for your opinions and conceptual clarifications. I'll answer separately.
Russell: On 24 Sep., 01:36, Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Successor observer moments are meant to be similar to their prior > OMs. By similar, I really mean differ by a single bit, but don't hold > me to that. I attribute this to the "heritability" requirement of an > evolutionary process, which I think the process of observation must be. > > Once you have this requirement, the probabilities of sucessive OMs are > not all equal, and in fact I do demonstrate how the Born rule arises > in this context (Occams Razor, my Book). Its not going to be so easy > to distinguish realism and idealism, as the emergent reality in > idealism also "kicks back". I really enjoyed reading your paper "Why Occam's Razor?" and I'd never pretend to understand your derivation of quantum mechanics better than you do. But maybe, I have another perspective on it (or even an addition). Explaining this will reveal why I think that the Born rule supports materialism/realism against idealism. >From a physicist's point of view, your derivation is complete and doesn't require any addition. We get the postulates as they can be found in every introductory textbook on quantum mechanics. But someone starting from the idea of the Everything ensemble won't be completely satisfied. You introduce an unspecified probability distribution P_psi which is essential in the definition of the inner product. In physics, the Hilbert space of physical states can be different for every system; a physical theory must specify the inner product of each Hilbert space from which we can reconstruct the distribution P_psi by applying the Born rule. Though, if we start from a theory of everything, we want a fundamental explanation for the specific distribution. The materialist approach (of the Everything ensemble) would say that P_psi(psi_a) is given by the measure of psi_a divided by the measure of psi. Here, the measure of psi(_a) is meant to be proportional to the 'number' of 'worlds' forming psi(_a). More precisely, I would not speak of a 'number' but merely of the measure in the case when equal weight is assigned to every single world. So, with the help of the theory of the Everything ensemble and materialism, we are able in principle to precisely define the probability distribution P_psi. The idealist approach may lead to a similar idea for calculating the distribution P_psi: An idealist would not count (or measure) worlds but observer moments. The problem that I see here is the following: Let's suppose a system is in the state I introduced in my first message... |B> = |0>/sqrt(3) + |1>/sqrt(1.5) Then, if an observer performs a measurement in the (|0>,|1>) basis, only two observer moments will follow. One OM that sees the outcome 0 and another OM that sees the outcome 1. If we apply equal measure to each of these OMs, we will conclude that both cases are equally probable. But they are not. I guess that the idealist approach leads to a probability distribution incompatible with the experiment. Marc: I do recognize the difference between weak and strong materialism but it's not essential in this case. When I wrote of mapping "physical states of the brain to states of the mind or observer moments", I did not exclude the possibility that the map is only a concept invented by humans. COMP surely provides a true alternative. It is good that you mention it. Nonetheless, it's still a little strange for me. My own thinking has always been rather similar to Russell's concepts. > Reflectivity (how to think about thought itself) > is an unsolved problem in probability > theory, the solution for which is known only to me. I have no > intention of revealing that solution here however, since it's the key > to AI and my opponents are undoubtably reading my postings on this > messagelist. Damn! I was convinced that my message would make you blab out your important ideas :) Youness Ayaita --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
