On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 1:30 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 2/7/2020 6:04 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 12:48 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> On 2/7/2020 2:36 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: >> >> >> You certainly have. The argument that output strings that give results >> inconsistent with your observations have vanishing measure overall -- an >> argument based on the Pascal Binomial and the law of large numbers -- >> applies equally to all observers, whatever output string they observe. So >> whatever data you observe, you conclude that the theory that is consistent >> with that data is confirmed by the data. Which is useless, because you >> reach that conclusion whatever data you observe. The law of large numbers >> fails you when all possible outcomes are observed by someone or the other. >> >> >> So if the experiment is to toss a coin six times, there will be a branch >> of the MW where HTHHTHHHHH is observed >> > > If you observe that result on six tosses, then something is seriously > wrong :-). > > and this will confirm the theory that H's are four times as probable as >> T's. But there will be many more branches where it is found that P(H)=P(T) >> (252 vs 45). And in the limit of large experiments almost all >> experimenters (in the MW) will find P(H)~P(T). Hence almost all >> experimenters will conclude something close to the presumed true value. >> > > But experiments are not conducted by polling all possible observers. One > cannot communicate with those on other branches, so this is just silly. The > experimenter has only his own data to work with, and he must make whatever > deductions he can using only that data. > > > Right. So he may, depending on the branch, infer the wrong conclusion. > But such observers are small in number in the limit of many experiments and > longer experiments. So we too make our deductions based on the data we > observe. And the above analysis gives us reason to think we will be among > those getting the data that supports the right theory. > The result at the heart of this is that no matter what set of results you get from your series of trials you will think that the number who get contrary results is small. The laws of large numbers that you are relying on do not apply only to some 'preferred' set of results that conform to the 'correct' theory. Everyone in the Many-worlds will think that they are among those getting data that supports the right theory. Did you not follow Kent's argument? If all results occur on every trial, the same overall sequences of results from a large number of trials will be obtained, whatever the probabilities in the underlying theory. So one cannot conclude anything about the probabilities from the observed data -- the probabilities have no effect on the data. One can get probabilities only by restricting one's attention to a subset of trials, and there is no principled way to do this in Many-worlds. 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/CAFxXSLTq_MJ7KESqzQB%3DZSsPBYtnk4P65msF4yrXB206Sj4vUg%40mail.gmail.com.
