*Brent(?) wrote*: 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.) *Stathis: * 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. *Me:* #1: I do not consider quantitative chance (probability) because of its unidentified sequence of occurrence . #2: I take MWI as a potentially valid idea - with the proviso that the unverses are DIFFERENT. In my narrative I give an idea to occur infinite universes of infinite qualia - ours seems to be a moderate one with no structural access to others, what does not mean the same vice versa. Hence: the "ZOOKEEPER" theories and the unexplained occurrences. #3: I take exception to any extension of anthropocentric ideas to the "everything" of which we are not equipped to know a lot. - That pertains to quantizing (math?) and drawing conclusions upon observations of phenomena we don't know indeed. JM
On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 12:17 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > 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. > -- 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.
