Wasn't this a form of Carl Sagan's statement., "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?" Sagan was extremely bright and inspiring but he was not the best astronomer who ever drew breath. For instance, he sided with the soviet - sponsored propaganda on Nuclear Winter, which captured a few scientists, not by their intelligence, but because of their anti-nationalism. It was plausible nonsense and sagan and postel jumped aboard the Kremlin train based on their world view and not facts. Freeman Dyson, comparatively wondered by looking at the projections if it might not result in a nuclear autumn instead, climate-wise? Closer in time, do you not remember the BICEP-2 trouble? Here was "Extraordinary Evidence" that proved itself wrong." I am thinking, Brent, guessing really, that falsifying Computationalism will take a mountain of money (trillions?) to Falsify, ultimately, since we're speaking to the possible underpinnings of the universe. A far way to walk either way.
Computationalism is an extraordinary claim. That some things may happen at random isn't. -----Original Message----- From: meekerdb <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Feb 22, 2015 4:17 pm Subject: Re: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic On 2/22/2015 9:19 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 21 Feb 2015, at 02:50, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2015 8:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: QM + collapse is inconsistent (with a great variety of principle, like computationalism, God does not play dice, no spooky actions, etc.). Principles of Platonist faith. You don't need any faith to disbelieve in the opportunity to invoke magical thing in the explanation. It is up to those who make extraordinary claims to provide the evidences. Computationalism is an extraordinary claim. That some things may happen at random isn't. 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, Does it? What's the definition of a world in comp? It is a model of "my beliefs", assuming I am consistent (so that such a model exist). That would comport with quantum bayesianism. You can handle the world by notion like maximal consistent sets of formula, which in this case can have oracle like answering W or M when opening a door after a self-duplication. A world can satisfy a belief like "I belief in PA and I am currently located at Washington". But those are just words. Does Washington have to exist in a world? Or just propositions containing "Washington". Without some referents every two propositions not of the form "X and not-X" will be consistent. "I'm in Washington." and "I'm in Moscow." are consistent unless we have a theory of existence in spacetime and some referents for "Washington" and "Moscow". Brent Can you show that there are distinction denumerable worlds? Word are internal psychological, epistemological or theological notion, and the geometry on the worlds depend on the person's point of view. The "probability measure" is not dependent of our ability to distinguish worlds, but on their ability to differentiate in principle, a bit like decoherence in Everett-QM. Of course, we have only the shadow of coherence, so we can't extract decoherence today: a lot of problems must be solved before. The point is: we have the math to do so, and so to test classical computationalism. Bruno -- 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.
