On 8/5/2018 9:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 4 Aug 2018, at 23:32, agrayson2...@gmail.com
<mailto:agrayson2...@gmail.com> 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.
?? The epistemic content IS how interference occurs in nature. The
wave function is one's estimation/knowledge of how events will infold,
including intereference.
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.
That's like arguing that the map is the territory because if you follow
it you get where you want to go.
Brent
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.
No, but you need to believe that abstractions like universal Turing
machines exist and are running a UD and that you and your whole world
are just computations.
Brent
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
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