On 08/03/11 14:39, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 8, 11:47 am, Andrew Soltau<andrewsol...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 06/03/11 15:22, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 4, 8:12 pm, Andrew Soltau<andrewsol...@gmail.com> 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.
Yes, but it is an assumption, a theory. What we have is evidence that
subjectively there is collapse, and that objectively, 'most of the
time', the wave equation applies, complete with decoherence producing a
mixture of all possible states.
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
Maybe, but I have read leading figures in modern physics explaining that
the world really is as Schroedinger's cat demonstrates.
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.
As does the environment. The only determinacy is that much of the
environment correlated with the observer by 'observation', which in RQM
means physical interaction.
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.
Agreed
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.
True. He uses the example of a non human observer, so clearly his
argument applies to non humans.
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.
Agreed, access consciousness is, in this context, all to do with
producing observations and instantiating the record of observations.
(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
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