On 2/22/2020 2:10 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 7:17 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 2/21/2020 10:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 4:50 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything
List <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, Zurek is hard to follow since he seems to use unusal
terminology sometimes. Attached is a good discussion of his
method by Schlosshauer and Fine which I find useful
Yes, Zurek is sometimes quite opaque, and I found the
Schlosshauer-Fine discussion of Zurek's additional, hidden,
assumptions useful. In their conclusions, they state: "We cannot
derive probabilities from a theory that does not already contain
some probabilistic concept; at some stage, we need to 'put
probabilities in to get probabilities out'."
This is perhaps my basic worry with Zurek, as with other attempts
to derive the Born rule from the SWE. Zurek simply assumes that
probabilities are relevant, and necessarily a property of the
quantum state -- the amplitudes are then an obvious place for
these probabilities to reside. Everything else then follows. But
this is not a derivation without additional assumptions: where
did the probability notion creep in? If you take the SWE
straight, the amplitudes (coefficients) just go along for the
ride and have no influence at all on the final state after
measurement.
I have always found this a worrying aspect of Everett.
But isn't that just a matter of it's proponents overselling it.
If you say, well it's a probabilistic theory, then that the Born
rule is the way to get a probability is fairly compelling.
Many-world proponents certainly oversell Everett. I have not seen
anybody admit openly that there is a problem with getting probability
into a deterministic theory so it just has to be put in by hand. If,
as you say, people admit that what they really want is a probabilistic
theory, even if they have to force it in by hand, then at least some
of the arguments for the Born rule make sense. But if you insist that
your theory is pure SWE/Everett, then all attempts at deriving the
Born rule from this deterministic position fail.
The arguments that I have developed here, based on Kent's insight,
take Many-worlds at face value. Then the theory is clearly incoherent,
or at least incompatible with observation. However, if you take a
classical deterministic theory, such as Bruno's WM-duplication thought
experiment, then there is no way you can sensibly interpret such a
theory probabilistically.
You don't think copying of persons has a probabilistic implication for
copies?
Brent
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