On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 , Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
> >I have this crazy idea to remove the supposed ambiguity: ask a specific
> Telmo if his prediction was correct or not.
>
If Telmo were logical then that would be a good idea, a randomly picked
Telmo would say "I heard Telmo over there say that he saw X1 so I conclude
that the prediction that Telmo would see X1 was correct".
>> You don't need exotic matter duplicating machines for this thought
>> experiment because it's all just old fashioned conventional subjective
>> uncertainty not the newer objective uncertainty found in Quantum Mechanics.
>> The copies are uncertain about what they will see only because you have
>> kept some information from them.
>>
>
> > This is false. Both the original and the copies know everything that the
> experimenter knows about the experiment's protocol. Please tell me what
> information could be provided to the copies that would change the outcome
> of the experiment.
>
Monty Hall knows that when the Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow
opens the door and sees Moscow the Moscow Man will be born from the ashes
of the Helsinki Man, but the Helsinki Man in the sealed box in Moscow does
not know if he will see Moscow or Washington when he opens the door. And
the same goes for the Washington Man.
> > In "Let's Make a Deal", the host doesn't know which door the contestant
> will choose.
>
It doesn't matter because regardless of what door the contestant picks
Monty will always show them a door that doesn't have a car behind it.
> Verb tenses also become problematic if you introduce time machines.
>
Douglas Adams had something to say about this in The Hitchhikers Guide to
the Galaxy:
"The major problem [with time travel] is simply one of grammar, and the
main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time
Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for
instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the
past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to
avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you
are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a
time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher
complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are
actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming
your own mother or father. Most readers get as far as the Future
Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional
before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages
beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs."
> Show me how to do it. Describe quantum uncertainty according to the MWI
> without personal pronouns. I know you will be able to do it because:
> a) you like the MWI
> b) you hate personal pronouns
>
CASE #1
Telmo Menezes shoots one photon at 2 slits with a photographic plate behind
the slits. As the photon approaches the slits the entire universe splits
into 2 with the photon going through the left slit in one universe and the
right slit in the other universe. Being part of the universe Telmo Menezes
splits too although neither of the Telmos knows which slit the photon went
through. When the photons hit the photographic plate the photon no longer
exists in either universe so the universes are identical again and the
universes merge back together. When Telmo Menezes develops the plate the
beginnings of a interference pattern is seen which is consistent with a
single photon going through both slits.
CASE #2
The experiment is the same except that this time there is a sensor next to
each slit so that Telmo Menezes known what slit the photon went through. As
the photon approaches the slits the universe splits in two and Mr.Telmo
Menezes Left Slit sees the photon go through the left slit and Mr.Telmo
Menezes Right Slit sees the photon go through the right slit. When the
photons hit the photographic plate the photons no longer exist in either
universe but the 2 universes are still not identical because Mr.Telmo
Menezes Left Slit has a different physical structure in Mr.Telmo Menezes
Left Slit's brain (and thus a different memory) than Mr.Telmo Menezes Right
Slit. So the two universes remain separate. When Mr.Telmo Menezes Left Slit
develops the photographic plate a spot is found directly behind the left
slit which is consistent with the photon going through the left slit only,
and when Mr.Telmo Menezes Right Slit develops the photographic plate a spot
is found directly behind the right slit which is consistent with the photon
going through the right slit only.
And no damn pronouns.
>> The arrow of time MUST exist if the universe was created in a very low
>> entropy condition. How the universe was created in a low entropy condition
>> is an open problem.
>>
>
> > Ok. I have an idea about that, it is probably not original. Tell me what
> you think:
> The universe was not created. All possible states just exist. The moment
> of the big bang is one of the many possible states.
>
That's a little bit like Andrei Linde idea of eternal inflation. Alan Guth
postulated a inflation field that decayed away in a process somewhat
analogous to radioactive half life, and after the decay the universe
expanded at a much much much more leisurely pace. But then Linde proved
that for Guth's idea to work the inflation field had to expand faster than
it decayed, Linde called it "Eternal Inflation". Linde showed that for
every volume in which the inflation field decays away 2 other volumes don't
decay. So one universe becomes 3, the field decays in one universe but not
in the other 2, then both of those two universes splits in 3 again and the
inflation field decays away in two of them but doesn't decay in the other
4. And it goes on like this forever.
> > What we call the past is a sequence of steps in the state graph that are
> coherent predecessor of each other, in the sense that they contain less and
> less information. Given that the moment of the big bang is the lowest
> entropy state conceivable, all history lines will originate there.
>
Sounds reasonable except that Linda would say that what we call "The Big
Bang" isn't the beginning of everything it's just the end of inflation in
our particular part of the universe. So according to Linde this field
created one Big Bang, then 2, then 4, then 8, then 16 etc in a unending
process. Maybe in one of those universes Schrodinger's cat is dead and in
another the cat is alive.
John K Clark
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