On 12/11/2013 1:13 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Dec 2013, at 20:08, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/10/2013 12:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 09 Dec 2013, at 23:28, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/9/2013 12:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 12:57 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/9/2013 12:44 AM, LizR wrote:
On 9 December 2013 20:56, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/8/2013 4:36 PM, LizR wrote:
On 9 December 2013 07:41, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com
<mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Determinism is far from "well established".
> It's a basic assumption in almost every scientific theory.
In the most important theory in physics, Quantum Mechanics, no such
assumption is made, and despite a century of trying no experiment
has
ever been performed that even hinted such a deterministic assumption
should be added in.
I believe the two-slit experiment hints that QM is deterministic by
implying the existence of a multiverse.
Wasn't it you, Liz, that pointed out this was circular. Everett
assumes a
multiverse in order to make QM determinsitic.
I did say something like that, didn't I? [insert embarrassed emoticon here].
I think I was saying that it was too strong to say that QM "follows the
principle of determinism" (or something like that) because it appears to be
indeterminate and only becomes deterministic thanks to Everett. However, the
two-slit experiment does /suggest/ the multiverse as a valid explanation, in
that any other explanation requires other principles to be violated
(causality,
locality...)
I think I was attempting to position myself between John and Jason - to say
that determinism is reasonably well established, but only as a result of a
long
and winding process of experiment, conjecture and so on.
But it isn't. As Roland Omnes says, quantum mechanics is a probabilistic
theory
so it predicts probabilities - what did you expect? Among apostles of
Everett
there's a lot of trashing of Copenhagen. But Bohr's idea was that the
classical
world, where things happened and results were recorded, was *logically*
prior to
the quantum mechanics. QM was a way of making predictions about what could
done
and observed. Today what might be termed neo-Copenhagen is advocated by
Chris
Fuchs and maybe Scott Aronson. I highly recommend Scott's book "Quantum
Computing Since Democritus". It's kind of heavy going in the middle, but if
you're just interested in the philosophical implications you can skip to the
last chapters. Violation of Bell's inequality can be used to guarantee the
randomness of numbers, http://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.3427v3.pdf, assuming only
locality.
Bell's theorm proves that local hidden variables are impossible which leaves only
two remaining explanations that explain the EPR paradox:
1. Non-local, faster-than-light, relativity violating effects
That's non-local hidden variable - which is exactly what a parallel universe is.
What is non local here?
A whole world is duplicated - including remote parts.
This will include only apparent distant associations. Splitting or differentiation
occurs at the speed of the interaction, which is light speed, or slower. The same occurs
in the UD.
But it is distant associations that make violation of Bell's inequality a non-local
phenomenon. One may say decoherence propagates via interactions within the forward light
cone, but the source can be a set of spacelike events (e.g. corresponding to different
measurement choices at opposite ends of an EPR experiment).
Whether the same occurs in the UD is just a hope, unless you've been able to derive
spacetime from the UD process.
Brent
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