On Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 11:23:29 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
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> On 11/17/2019 2:47 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
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> On Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 4:36:13 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
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>> On 11/16/2019 11:39 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
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>> On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 4:45:56 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>>
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>>> On 11/16/2019 2:38 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
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>>> On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 10:54:06 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The epistemic interpretation just says the wf is our mathematical
>>>> representation of what we know about reality.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> If that is the definition of epistemic, then any mathematical physics is
>>> epistemic ("ur mathematical representation of what we know"):
>>>
>>>
>>> It is the definition of epistemic. And it is in contrast to the ontic
>>> interpretation of QM which says that the wave function is real and changing
>>> it due to a measurement must be described a some physical process, not just
>>> taking the measurement into account to update our knowledge.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> From an applied mathematics perspective, it seems that *Schrödinger
>> equation*, *Einstein equations*, *Maxwell's equations*, ... are all
>> tools for making predictions about measurements, whether those measurements
>> are made by lab instruments or telescopes.
>>
>> I don't see where a philosophically metaphysical and esoteric term like
>> "knowledge" comes in in any of those equations.
>>
>>
>> It comes into QM because it's probabilistic. If you wrote Maxwell's
>> equations for the field produced by charged particles whose position was
>> only given by a probability density function you would get a probabilistic
>> prediction and when you measured the field at a few points and got definite
>> answers, you would change you prediction of the field so that it matched
>> the measurements at those points. Your knowledge of the field would still
>> not be definite but it would have changed due to the measurement.
>> Schrodinger's equation only predicts probabilistic measurement results, so
>> it's always like that.
>>
>> Brent
>>
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> Just because one formulates stochastic vs. deterministic models doesn't
> mean "knowledge" has any special place in one type vs. the other,
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> I took a course in stochastic differential equations
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> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_differential_equation
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> and I don't think the philosophical subject of "knowledge" came up in any
> special way vs. the subject of (deterministic) differential equations.
>
>
> Then there was something that changed when you got a measurement, whatever
> you called it. Maybe the Bayesian estimated density function.
>
> Brent
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>
Stochastic modeling has nothing (in general) to do with Bayesian modeling.
(Though the latter of course can be considered a special case of the
former.) And quantum mechanics works fine as a stochastic model without
ever introducing Bayesian probability densities.
@philipthrift
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