> On 4 Aug 2018, at 23:32, [email protected] wrote: > > AFAIK, no one has ever observed a probability wave, from which I conclude the > wave function has only epistemic content.
Then you need to explain how that epistemic content interfere in nature. Your idea might make sense, and indeed if we believe in a collapse (as you have to do if you believe in QM and that the superposition does not apply to us) the idea that consciousness collapse the wave is perhaps the less ridiculous idea. That idea has indeed be defended by von Neumann, Wigner, and some others. But has been shown to lead to many difficulties when taken seriously by Abner Shimony, as well guessed by Wigner itself. Obviously that idea would be inconsistent with Mechanism. There is no probability waves. There is only an amplitude of probability wave, and the weirdness is that we have strong indirect evidence that the amplitude of that wave is as physically real as the particles that we can observe, because the particle location is determined by that wave having interfered like wave usually do. In particular, even if send one by one, the particles will never been found where the wave interfere destructively, and the pattern on the screen will reflect the number of holes, and their disposition. It is OK to say that probability comes from ignorance, and that the wave describe that ignorance, the extraordinary thing is then that this ignorance interfere independently of you. > So I have embraced the "shut up and calculate" interpretation of the wave > function. That can be wise. Nobody can enforce the search of the truth. It is frustrating because we can’t be sure if we progress toward it or the contrary, and it is shocking because truth always beat fictions. > I also see a connection between the True Believers of the MWI, and Trump > sycophants; they seem immune to simple facts, such as the foolishness of > thinking copies of observers can occur, or be created, willy-nilly. AG That remark deserves your point and diminish your credibility. It also suggests that you are a “True Believer” in something. Assuming Mechanism in cognitive science, you don’t need quantum mechanics to understand that there are infinitely many relative computational states corresponding to you here and now emulated by infinitely many universal machines. Even without mechanism this is a theorem of arithmetic using only Church thesis. With mechanism, we have to derive the “guessable wave" from a statistics on those computations, and so we can test Mechanism if it leads to more, or less extravaganza than Nature. It fits up to now. So with Mechanism, we get the *appearance* of many interfering “worlds”, and this without any worlds, from just the natural numbers and the laws of addition and multiplication. I will show that with the combinators as it is much shorter (but still long) than showing this with the numbers. This is known by logicians since the 1930s (I mean that a universal Turing machine is an arithmetical object). Computationalism, or Indexical Digital Mechanism imposes a Many-Dreams internal interpretation of Arithmetic (or combinator theory, or game-of-life theory, … we have to assume only one universal machinery). 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
