On 19 Feb 2015, at 22:05, LizR wrote:
I'm not happy with an article that deliberately picks on the use of
"favourite" to make a spurious argument. It's obvious what was meant
- would "preferred" have been better, or "considered most likely" ?
That sort of intellectual dishonesty isn't a good start.
Then the phrase in the title - "why are some so keen to believe..."
- "speaks volumes" (sic) about the attitude of the writer. It
immediately attempts to cast "believers" in a certain hypothesis as
vaguely like religious nuts. The correct answer (as with "why do you
believe in evolution? Is that somehow better than my belief in
God?") is "I don't BELIEVE in the evolution (or the MWI) - I
understand the evidence that indicates it may be the correct
description of reality."
Reasons to "believe" the MWI might include the fact that it answers
important questions, and is the simplest hypothesis (to date) that
explains all the observations of QM. That doesn't make it right, but
it does mean it merits genuine, serious discussion. Any article that
starts with ad hominem attacks against some generic "believer" isn't
attempting any intellectual rigour or honesty - it's acting like a
spin doctor, trying to pre-emptively discredit anyone who disagrees
with it in much the same way governments do when someone attempts to
question their policies (you object to tax loopholes for the rich?
You must be a threat to National security!)
So I will give that article a miss. I expect that sort of
intellectual dishonesty from politicians, although I'd rather it
wasn't there, either - but it has no place in science, IMHO.
I agree. The problem is that when some scientists do metaphysics, they
forget the scientific attitude, and they use the old "shoulder
shrugging argument", like if in those field, we can stop the serious
thinking.
I live this all my life as you can understand, except that in my case
it was even shoulder shrugging in the back.
And then It is only aristotelian faith. It is not just shoulder
shrugging. It is more like "don't touch my dogma".
As you know (perhaps) I don't believe that the "many-worlds" is an
interpretation, at the start.
The many-world or relative states is a theorem of QM + reasonable
assumption.
QM + collapse is inconsistent (with a great variety of principle, like
computationalism, God does not play dice, no spooky actions, etc.).
The collapse theories just failed, or need to introduce a God playing
dice, spooky action at distance, primary non Turing emulable matter,
etc.
The many worlds follows formally when defining "world" by (roughly)
set of events close from interaction. The many-worlds is then a direct
consequence of the linearity of evolution and the linearity of the
tensor product. I do think those are better described as many relative
states.
It is a theorem of comp, also. The many worlds, in his relative state
formulation, is already a consequence of computationalism. By church
thesis, *all* computations are emulated in all possible ways in
elementary arithmetic, with a typical machine-independent redundancy:
it makes the notion of "world" formulable, and it is an open problem
if those world are well definite points in some mathematical
structure, or does not exist physically. They do pose a formulable
measure problem, and QL looks like an answer, and progress have done
in that direction (modest progress).
The paper here illustrates well that some scientists are just
religious believer. They believe in some primary Universe. They share
the belief in a Material "Creation" with the other aristotelians, like
the christians. They seem to be not aware that we cannot prove the
existence of the Creation, no more than for a Creator. That follows
directly by the indian-chinese-greek dream argument, that comp +
mathematical logic formalizes in arithmetic. PA already understands
this.
Bruno
Life, what is it, but a dream (Lewis Carroll).
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