On 23 April 2014 21:33, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 11:12:53 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 4/22/2014 4:54 AM, Pierz wrote: >> >> Thanks Brent. I read Mermin and am both wiser and none-the. It seems to >> me in this paper he is chickening out by saying that QM shouldn't really >> think about the conscious observer, because that leads to the "fairy tale" >> of many worlds. Instead it should consider consciousness to reside outside >> the competent scope of a physical theory. >> >> >> I don't think he means that. He just means that it's a separate question >> from the interpretation of QM and that it's a mistake to mix them together. >> >> It's kind of like his answer is to say "don't ask those questions". And >> he explicitly repudiates the notion that "it's all in your head" or that a >> quantum state is a "summary of your knowledge of the system". The >> correlations are objective. What I liked about the paper though was the >> notion of correlations without correlata (which Garrett invokes) - the idea >> that quantum theory is about (and only about) systemic relationships makes >> a lot of sense. To take the answer to "what is QM telling us?" just a >> little further philosophically than what Mermim is prepared to, I'd say >> it's telling us (for one thing) that we've hit the limits of atomism. We're >> bouncing off the boundary of the reductionistic epistemology. >> >> Anyway, sadly I haven't yet seen anything that could supply a cogent >> alternative to MWI. I'll move on to the other papers tomorrow night... :) >> >> >> Chris Fuchs is the main proponent of quantum Bayesianism, which also >> takes the wave-function to just be a summary of one's knowledge of the >> system - and so there is nothing surprising about it "collapsing" when you >> get new information. >> >> Of course another alternative is an objective collapse theory like GRW. >> I'm just now reading a book by Ghirardi,"Sneaking a Look at God's Cards" >> which surveys the experiments that force the weirdness of QM on us and the >> various interpretations. Of course he devotes a special chapter to GRW >> theory, but he is very even handed. >> >> I'm not sure why you're worried about MWI though. Is it because you read >> "Divide by Infinity"? I don't think that's what MWI really implies. >> >> No I never read that, but hell yeah, MWI worries me! Doesn't it worry > you? I mean I know at one level that in a very real sense it doesn't matter > whether it's true or not, since the other universes can never affect me, > but at another the reality that everything happens to me that I can imagine > is just plain terrifying. And the 'me' isn't just the versions of me that > are still called by my name, I can't escape the conclusion that I am > everyone and everyone is me and that *everyone's* experience is my > experience at some level. If MWI ever does become the accepted conception > of reality, we have a huge amount of philosophical reorientation ahead of > us. For instance, if I take some risk (like drink-driving, a relevant topic > on another thread), and 'get away with it', MWI suggests I am still > responsible for other realities in which I crashed and injured or killed > myself and/or others. My whole approach to risk management becomes quite > different if all outcomes are realised. It no longer makes sense to think > about "if" something will happen to me in the future. I have to accept that > it all will happen, it's just that all those future mes won't know about > the other ones, so they will all have the impression of a single outcome. > It's a disorienting and disturbing thought. Of course it should't lead to > fatalism, since one's choices are part of the deterministic system that > determines the 'weight' of certain futures - and I suppose it should > actually lead to a kind of 'radical acceptance'. There's no point thinking > "why me?" or "what bad luck", since your experiencing this, and indeed > everything, is inevitable. But then I console myself by thinking that any > human-level qualitative interpretation of this level of reality is > mistaken, a kind of confusion of levels. And still it horrifies me... > (But like Bruno, my dedication to truth keeps me from rejecting it purely > because I hate it. The logic is very compelling.) >
We accept as a society the risk of death by motor vehicle accident because there is a 1/10,000 chance per year it will happen to an individual, even though that means that in a large city a person will on average be killed every day. I think this situation is analogous to the moral question of MWI versus a single world interpretation of QM. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
