On 01 Apr 2014, at 03:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 3/31/2014 6:00 PM, LizR wrote:
On 1 April 2014 06:04, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
The price is not having a unified 'self' - which many people would
consider a big price since all observation and record keeping which
is used to empirically test theories assumes this unity. If you
observe X and you want to use that as empircal test of a theory it
isn't helpful if your theory of the instruments says they also
recorded not-X.
(I suspect some people would consider it a big price not to have a
unified self for other reasons, too!)
I can't see how it's worse for your theory to say that your
instruments "will record X and not X" as opposed to saying they
"will record X or not X, but we don't know which".
That's before the fact. I didn't write "will". MWI is a theory
that says when you read your instrument and it says X, it's only one
of an infinite set some of which say X and some say not-X.
The former explanation says there will be apparent but explicable
randomness, the latter says there will be intrinsic and
inexplicable randomness.
But is it explicable. Bruno is careful to refer to "uncertainty" or
"indeterminancy". Those are not necessarily probabilities unless
they can be quantified to satisfy Kolomogorov's axioms - and it's
not clear to me that they can. The axioms require that the set of
"everything" have measure 1. But in this case "everything" is ill
defined and uncountably infinite.
It might be definable though, like "the consciousness of the universal
machine". It is the least Turing emulable entity having some "futures"
in the arithmetical reality. It is the first person mental state in
front of the maximal FPI.
In common applications of QM one assumes isolation and considers
only a small (at least finite) set of possible results - which works
FAPP.
But in Everett and comp we "know" why, without having to invoke a
mysterious pseudo-God-like selection, apparently. ISTM.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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