On Mar 8, 11:47 am, Andrew Soltau <[email protected]> wrote: > On 06/03/11 15:22, 1Z wrote: > > > On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltau<[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 04/03/11 19:10, Brent Meeker wrote:> Collapse "appears" to instruments > >> as well as people > > >> We don't have any evidence for that, > > Of course we do > > That was a rather blanket statement. But if we can doubt the existence > of everything but our minds, then we don't have any evidence for it! > > But I think it is perfectly tenable to say that we cannot prove that the > instruments which appear to us to be collapsed are in fact not > collapsed, that there is only the appearance of collapse subjectively.
That they really are collapsed is tenable too. > How could one possibly disprove that?>> indeed, if we take either the > >> concept of Wigner's friend or Rovelli's RQM seriously, > > We shouldn't take Wigner's friend as proving CCC, since it is > > intended as a reductio ad absurdum of it. > > OK, but I happen to think it is a precise explanation of how reality works. It is strange to regard something intended as a paradox as an explanation >> And RQM doesn't remotely have that implication. > Yes it does. In RQM the environment is determinate where, and only > where, the observer has observed it. In RQM, the observers knowledge becomes determinate when they observe something. >If I am Wigner, and my friend goes > off and does an experiment, the result is indeterminate in my version of > the environment. Well, you don't know it. But you don't cause the friend to collapse, because there is no collapse in RQM. >> this is not the > >> case.> - that's why we can shared records of experiments and agree on > >> them. > > >> Or, we can deduce those phenomena simply from the coherence of our > >> personal systems.> I'm not sure what you mean by "account for" collapse. > > >> I mean that if there is a unitary linear dynamics, with no collapse, as > >> in Everett, no physical collapse, then there is the appearance of > >> collapse only 'in consciousness'. > > But Everett can explain the apperarance of collapse to instruments... > > he doesn't need consciousness. > > Everett states very clearly that with respect to the physical body of > the observer there is no collapse. I think the intruments the observer > is using come under the same banner, the linear dynamics. He makes it > very clear that it is only with regard to the "record of sensory > observations and machine configuration" which I equate in his > formulation with the functional identity of the observer, that there is > the appearance of collapse. SInce you didn't say whether you mean human or machine observer, that doesn't clarify matters. As it happens, Everettian record making can be automated. > This is pretty much exactly the definition > of access consciousness, that of which the observer is directly and > immediately aware. Access consciousness involves record making, and so do any number of non-conscious machines...seismographs, video recorders, etc. I don't think you can argue that consciousness is involved just because record making is. > (In the human observer, I take the record of machine > configuration to be the observations of the internal state of the > observer, as I explain in detail elsewhere.)>>> At least one > interpretation of QM, advocated by Peres, Fuchs, an > >>> Omnes for example, is that the "collapse" is purely epistemological. > >>> All that changes is our knowledge or model of the state and QM merely > >>> predicts probabilities for this change. > > That's what I thought I was saying! > > >> Fits my view. > > >>> Brent -- 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.
