We're speaking to the statement: do extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, or do sufficient claims demand sufficient evidence? Pauling, I dismiss as too political. There were various reviews of the nuclear winter claim during the 80's and after, and since the fall of the sov empire many of the old kgb files were opened and it was that org which funded the so called antiwar movement. Notice that nobody ever protested soviet deployments of ss-20's an 18's? But it was always cruise missiles and pershings that drew crowds in Europe. The nature of nuclear devastation was enhanced by the nuke antiwar people who needed to exaggerated to sell the point, as they are with AGW. Sell the point, not the whole truth. Would killing off 1-2 billion people sort of mess things up for the species? I surmise, yes. Since the report by Everett and Hugh are still classified (?) we have no way to analyze the veracity. As for MWI, it appears inescapable and very strange. -----Original Message----- From: Jason Resch <[email protected]> To: Everything List <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Feb 22, 2015 6:01 pm Subject: Re: Philip Ball, MWI skeptic
Whether or not nuclear winter was a real phenomenon or not, Hugh Everett together with George Pugh proved that anything beyond a small-scale nuclear would (due to the radiation) kill most of the life on the planet. I think this finding helped convince everyone that nuclear was was unwinnable and likely saved the planet. The projections were that there would be 20 million uninjured survivors out of 800 million if even 10% of the nuclear stockpiles were used. Cf. Dr. Linus Pauling Nobel Peace Prize 1962 lecture (and reprinted in Peace by Frederick W. Haberman, Irwin Abrams, Tore Frängsmyr, Nobelstiftelsen, Nobelstiftelsen (Stockholm), published by World Scientific, 1997 ISBN 981-02-3416-3), delivered on December 11, 1963, in which he mentioned the work by Pugh and Everett regarding the risks of nuclear profliferation and even quoted them from 1959. Pauling said: "This is a small nuclear attack made with use of about one percent of the existing weapons. A major nuclear war might well see a total of 30,000 megatons, one-tenth of the estimated stockpiles, delivered and exploded over the populated regions of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the other major European countries. The studies of Hugh Everett and George E. Pugh [21], of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Division, Institute of Defense Analysis, Washington, D.C., reported in the 1959 Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation, permit us to make an estimate of the casualties of such a war. This estimate is that sixty days after the day on which the war was waged, 720 million of the 800 million people in these countries would be dead, sixty million would be alive but severely injured, and there would be twenty million other survivors. The fate of the living is suggested by the following statement by Everett and Pugh: 'Finally, it must be pointed out that the total casualties at sixty days may not be indicative of the ultimate casualties. Such delayed effects as the disorganization of society, disruption of communications, extinction of livestock, genetic damage, and the slow development of radiation poisoning from the ingestion of radioactive materials may significantly increase the ultimate toll.' ..." The report remains classified to this day: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hugh-everett-biography/ In 1960 he helped write WSEG No. 50, a catalytic report that remains classified to this day. According to Everett’s friend and WSEG colleague George E. Pugh, as well as historians, WSEG No. 50 rationalized and promoted military strategies that were operative for decades, including the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. WSEG provided nuclear warfare policymakers with enough scary information about the global effects of radioactive fallout that many became convinced of the merit of waging a perpetual standoff—as opposed to, as some powerful people were advocating, launching preemptive first strikes on the Soviet Union, China and other communist countries. Jason On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 4:02 PM, spudboy100 via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: 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]. 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