On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:47 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> If Many World is correct then ontological randomness can not exist but
> epistemological randomness certainly can and certainly does.*
>
> > *It's not just epistemological when it includes the whole world
> whether anybody else knows it or not. *
>
*It includes a whole world, but if Schrodinger's equation is right and it
doesn't suddenly stop working when some vaguely defined thing called a
"measurement" is made then it's an ontological fact that our world is not
the sum total of existence. I like Many Worlds because it's bare-bones, no
nonsense quantum mechanics with none of the silly bells and whistles tacked
on that are needed to make those other worlds disappear.*
> *> QBism is actually an epistemological interpretation*
*Yes, and "shut up and calculate" doesn't care if it's ontological or
epistemological. *
*>>* *you have to explain why Schrodinger's equation suddenly stops
>> working.*
>>
>
>
*> You have to explain when the worlds split*
*As I've explained before, you can either assume that the split propagates
outward from the point of the change at the speed of light or that it does
so instantaneously, it makes no observable difference. *
*> Measurement doesn't even have to include me or anybody else. The cat
> example just obfuscates the question. The measurement is done when the
> detector detects the atomic decay. A cleaner version has a clock stopped
> by the detection. *
>
*OK. T**he quantum wave consists of { A* (a running clock, the environment
the running clock is in, and you observing the running clock) + B*(a
stopped* clock*, the environment the stopped clock is in, and you observing
the stopped clock) } Where A is a real number* *and B *is a* imaginary
number* and together they *determine the quantum amplitudes, and the square
of the absolute value *of that *determines the probability. For example if
A=*1/*√2 and B= *1/*i√2 then the probability is 50-50*. A*nd if A= *1/*√0.75
and B=*i/*√**0.25 then the probability works out to be 75-25; so if I
hadn't opened the box yet and was asked to make a bet on what I would see I
would bet that I would probably be in the environment that contains a
running clock and therefore will observe a running clock. *
*When I look at a map of branching universes in my mind's eye I like to
think of the quantum amplitudes giving a little thickness to those 2D lines
making them a little bit 3-D, but that's just me. *
> *> I can see that it will eventually make different orthogonal worlds,
> only one of which we see. Carroll once joked that non-Everettians needed
> to explain the disappearing worlds.*
*Carroll was NOT joking! You agree that Schrodinger's Equation produces
worlds that are orthogonal to our own so you would not expect to be able to
detect them, and yet you insist, despite the fact that in every experiment
ever performed it is been proven to be extraordinarily
accurate, Schrodinger's Equation is wrong when it predicts those other
worlds. You just wave your hands and Schrodinger's equation stops working
and all those other worlds magically disappear. *
*It's true that you can't make an experimental test for those worlds but I
think a theory should be judged on the predictions that you can test not on
the predictions that you can't test, and on every prediction that we can
test Schrodinger's equation has been shown to be correct. *
> *branch counting doesn't work. *
*Obviously. *
*> It appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the
> Schroedinger equation.*
>
*Gleason proved in 1957 that if probability is involved in any way then the
only mathematically consistent way to do it it's for the probability to
equal the squared magnitude of the quantum amplitude, a.k.a. the Born rule.
So the real question is, Schrodinger's equation gives us an exact
description of the quantum wave, so why do we need probability at all?
Because until you open the box you won't know if you are in the environment
where the cat is alive or in the environment where the cat is dead, until
the box is opened you just don't have enough information to know for
certain what you are going to see, although you have enough information to
have a probability. *
*As for cases where things are not perfectly orthogonal you'd expect to see
some interference between the two worlds, and WE DO for very small objects
like electrons which can be kept isolated from their environment for a
measurable amount of time, but we should not expect to see interference
patterns in large microscopic objects like a cat that contains upwards of
10^24 atoms because something that big would become entangled with the
environment before you had time to look at it. *
*John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>*
42v
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