Quentin, you are perhaps too generous to believe in discussion here. Consider halting the defense of many histories and go on offense: What principle selects that singular outcome? What privileges it above all others and by what means/mechanism? There is no coherent answer without invoking a god, a Brent, an Alan, Cosmin, Trump, Spud, Giulio, it just happens etc. who just proclaim it on some creation day - and it was good. Closet bible worshippers. Apologies, but the types of fallacious argument (ad verecundiam) they rely on, are the same, even if not regarding this exact proposition. On Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 8:51:18 AM UTC+1 Quentin Anciaux wrote:
> Brent, > > You're leaning heavily on the idea that probability is meaningful simply > because it's applied before knowing the outcome. But that doesn't address > the real problem: in a single-history world, probability isn’t describing > actual potentialities—it’s describing imagined ones that were never part of > reality. You claim that "they did have a chance of being real," but in a > framework where only one history ever unfolds, that’s just wordplay. They > never happened, and they never were going to happen, because the one > sequence of reality had already been determined. > > You mock the idea of unobservable branches in MWI, but at least those > branches correspond to real structures in the wavefunction. In contrast, > your framework uses probabilities that refer to nothing but hypothetical > scenarios that never had any ontological status. You want probability to > describe "a chance," but in a single-history universe, those chances were > never real—they were just numbers assigned before the event, with no deeper > meaning beyond prediction. > > Your card game example doesn’t help you. You ask what odds I’d give if my > opponent draws a 6 of Spades. Fine. But in a single-history world, only one > game will ever be played, and only one sequence of cards will ever be > drawn. No matter what probability I assign beforehand, if in this single > history I never draw a card higher than a 6, then those probabilities were > just empty formalism. They described something that never had a chance of > occurring because it never did and never would. > > You dismiss MWI’s branches as "unobservable," yet you rely on equally > unobservable "chances" in a single-history world. The difference is that in > MWI, probabilities describe distributions over real branches, while in a > single-history world, probability is just a way of pretending that things > that never happened somehow mattered. > > In short, your position requires believing that probability describes > possibilities that never existed and never will, yet somehow remain > meaningful. That’s incoherent. If probability is supposed to describe > reality, it needs something real to refer to—not just imagined alternatives > that were never anything more than numbers in an equation. > > Quentin > > Le jeu. 6 févr. 2025, 05:01, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit : > >> >> >> >> On 2/5/2025 12:36 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: >> >> Brent, >> >> I went through the document you sent, and it outlines the different >> interpretations of probability: mathematical, physical symmetry, degree of >> belief, and empirical frequency. But none of these resolve the core issue >> in a single-history universe—where probability is supposed to describe >> "possibilities" that, in the end, never had any reality. >> >> "in the end" implies post-hoc judgement. When you calculate and apply >> probabilities you don't know which events will be realized. That's why >> they are probabilities. >> >> >> Your frequentist approach assumes that, given enough trials, outcomes >> will appear in proportions that match their theoretical probabilities. >> >> Which is why some philosophers of mathematics tried to define >> probabilities as long-run (-> infinity) frequencies. >> >> But in a finite, single-history universe, there is no guarantee that will >> ever happen. >> >> And there's no guarantee some possibility you've overlooked will occur. >> Forget histories. Suppose your friend has drawn a card, 6 of Spades, and >> now you're going to draw a card and high card wins. What odds are you >> willing to give him? >> >> Some events with nonzero probability simply won’t occur—not because of >> statistical fluctuations, but because history only plays out one way. In >> that case, were those possibilities ever really possible? If something >> assigned a probability of 10% never happens in the actual course of the >> universe, then in what meaningful way was it ever a possibility? >> >> It's an application of a theory. Of course it can be mis-applied. You >> might leave out a possibility that actually happens. >> >> >> You argue that if all possibilities are realized, probability loses its >> meaning. But in a single-history world, probability is just as meaningless >> because it describes outcomes that never had a chance of being real. >> >> How is that different that describing outcomes that occur where nobody >> can check that they happened, that are, in your words, just abstractions. >> And they did have a chance of being real, which you would realize if you >> knew what " a chance" means." >> >> If probability is supposed to quantify potential realities, then in a >> framework where only one reality exists, probability is nothing more than a >> retrospective justification—it has no actual explanatory power. >> >> The math remains internally consistent, but it becomes an empty >> formalism, detached from anything real. >> >> Don't take any money to a poker game. >> >> The whole structure relies on pretending that unrealized events still >> "exist" in some abstract sense, >> >> Which is better than pretending that whole unobservable, inaccessible >> really, really exist for real...they just don't make any difference to >> anything. >> >> Brent >> >> -- >> > 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 everything-li...@googlegroups.com. >> > To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dd78e99d-0384-45e0-b072-4d820a3c53dc%40gmail.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/dd78e99d-0384-45e0-b072-4d820a3c53dc%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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