On 2/18/2014 8:34 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:42:48AM +0000, chris peck wrote:
how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point?
Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the
ground and says:
"there's a gold coin buried right there."
Russell says:
"no there isn't"
They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no -
one ever looks.
Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an
MWIer.
Nice example. I would say it is not a fact (in this universe). Of
course, in the Multiverse, there will be observers of both facts, as
well as worlds, like ours, in which it is not a fact (a superposition
in other words).
There's an implicit assumption that in the Multiverse *everything* happens. I don't think
that's entailed by QM and so does not have empirical support.
Brent
But I can see that someone like Deutsch would say that the Multiverse
is decohered, and that there is a matter of fact about whether the
coin is there, even if we don't know it. I just happen to disagree
with Deutsch, and can think of no experiment to distinguish whether
he's right or I'm right.
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