On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 1:58 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 5:26 AM Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> > wrote > >> You can if the theory is deterministic but not realistic as Many > Worlds is, that is to say if a deterministic interaction between 2 > particles always produces more than one outcome.: > >> >> > Actually, I thought one of the attractions of the many worlds theory >> was that it was realistic -- in the sense that the wave function really >> exists a a physical object, >> > > I don't know where in the world you got that idea. Even probability is > pretty abstract but you don't even get that until you take the square of > the absolute value of the wave function, which contains imaginary numbers > by the way. How much more different from a physical object do you want? > I know that you like to play dumb, John, and act the troll. But I thought that you had read Sean Carroll's recent book and might, therefore, have known better than this. On page 32, Carroll writes "First, we take the wave function seriously as a direct representation of reality, not just a book-keeping device to help us organize our knowledge. We treat it as ontological, not epistemic." That is what is meant by wave function realism. *> How much more realistic do you want?* >> > > It would need one hell of a lot more to be realistic! A theory is > realistic if it says a particle is in one and only one definite state both > before and after an interaction even if it has not been observed. Many > Worlds is about as far from that as you can get. > That is not wave function realism as used in many worlds. That version of realism is not even applicable to ordinary "text-book" quantum mechanics; it is not even Eisteinian realism. The idea in many-worlds was to be realist about the wave function, not epistemic as in the text-book approach. That is what Carroll explains, and what I was talking about. Look, John, it is not cute to act dumb and play with words in the way you do. If you want to participate in an adult discussion list, it is time to start acting like an adult.. Bruce -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTQH%2B56pLa2J5%3DQqvK%2B7mvgA%3DY-q4TkqOYvwpDRoj5_%3DQ%40mail.gmail.com.
