On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 11:35 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 2/21/2020 4:19 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 11:11 AM smitra <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 16-02-2020 06:34, Bruce Kellett wrote: >> > >> > The probabilistic interpretation of QM arose in a single-world, >> > collapse, model. Attempting to graft probability on to many-worlds is >> > a failure, as my arguments against Everett show. If the data for any >> > sequence of trials are independent of the amplitudes, then some ad hoc >> > probability interpretation of the amplitudes is not going to affect >> > the data. But the data is what we use to infer that Born rule >> > probabilities are what we observe. This is a single-world result. >> > >> > Bruce >> >> It's only a failure when attempting to describe the state in the >> multiverse in that particular way where you can argue that the >> amplitudes don't matter. It's not an argument against the multiverse >> idea, as whether or not you have a large number of copies should not >> affect the statistical outcome observed in any experiment. >> > > No. And it has not been suggested that it will. But that is just to take a > single-world approach: statistics work fine in each branch of the > multiverse (each world), but the concepts of probability and the Born rule > break down when every result is obtained in experiments because the data > obtained in each world are independent of the amplitudes of the original > state. > > > This objection seems to rest on the idea that the set of sequences (across > all the worlds) cannot be regarded as an ensemble from which one is picked > by self-location. > I am not sure what this means. The set of all sequences (all branches or worlds) is just the set of all 2^N possible binary strings, so any set of results that an individual might obtain is a selection from this set. If you want to regard this as self-location, then fine, but I don't know what that gains you. Otherwise applying probability theory to the ensemble recovers the > one-world statistics. Right? > In the two-outcome case, any branch of the ensemble is just a one-world set of Bernoulli trials, so the statistics of that branch correspond to the binomial distribution with a probability characteristic of the branch. Different branches will, in general, correspond to different p-values. The argument against Everett is that this set of binary strings is independent of the amplitudes of the initial quantum state so there is no room for the Born rule. > Of course you can say there really is no ensemble (that is accessible to > anyone), but that's true of the hypothetical ensembles invoked in > statistics all the time. > I can't really grasp what your objection to the case I have made is. Is it anything more than that the result goes against your basic intuitions? 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/CAFxXSLQBd9%3DwkC7aw6GUxhLFg_%2BCcVz-toqLP5O1Ghs%2BmwZtLg%40mail.gmail.com.
