On 8/6/2018 11:22 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 6 Aug 2018, at 09:23, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
On Sunday, August 5, 2018 at 5:50:56 PM UTC, [email protected]
<http://gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, August 5, 2018 at 4:43:21 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.
*Easy to show that consciousness doesn't collapse the wf. Just do
repeated trials and don't look at the screen until the experiment
is finished. I forget; what is mechanism? AG *
There is no probability waves.
*
IIUC, the wf has the mathematical form of a wave, of which the
amplitude is part of. AG
*
The point is that it behave also like a wave. Even if I send only one
particle, the position of the screen is determine by a wave which take
into account all physical available path.
You have proposed an instrumentalist interpretation, and that is OK if
you goal is to build microscopic transistor or atomic bombs. Here we
try to make sense of a theory. The choice is between a non-local
guiding potential, the relative states or a (magical) collapse, also
non local.
You want to make sense of a theory that is defined by complex valued
fields in a Hilbert space built on spacetime. You begin by assuming
mechanism, which implicitly replaces everything physical, including the
spacetime, with conscious thoughts which are realized as theorems in
arithmetic (or equivalent computation). You have not shown how this
entails conscious thoughts about a quasi-classical world, i.e. one in
which there appears a shared reality. So wouldn't it be simpler to just
adopt the interpretation of QBism. It seems compatible with the idea of
a computational substrate, but it doesn't need to assume one. That fact
tells me the computational substrate is an independent assumption that
does not follow from QM.
Brent
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