On Fri, Feb 7, 2025 at 5:28 PM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
*> Thus arbitrarily imposing a frequentist model on the world by imagining > an ensemble of universes. * > *Hugh Everett wasn't imagining, he was just taking seriously a prediction that Schrodinger's Equation makes; it's true that particular prediction can't be tested, but many other predictions that the equation makes can be and they've all passed with flying colors; therefore I see no reason why your default condition should be to assume that other prediction is pure nonsense, especially given the fact that it can explain why the quantum world is so weird.* > *> This is really unecessary. It's just a sop to intuition.* > *I don't know what you mean by that. If you can find a logical reason to justify your intuition that is not a "sop", it is a profound revelation. * > Why not accept that probabilities need not be frequencies? > *I do because you can't use that approach to assess the probability of a unique event, such as the probability that X will win the next election. The 4 meanings of the word "probability" that I mentioned, the ratio of favorable outcomes to all outcomes, the long run frequency of an event occurring, a degree of belief which can be updated when more information becomes available, and the square of the absolute value of a quantum wave function, are all valid and do not contradict each other; which one you use depends on the circumstances. However if you don't believe in Many Worlds then, although you know from experiment it works, it's very hard to understand why the square of the absolute value of a quantum wave function works and how it can **have any sort of relationship with the three other meanings of the word "probability".* *And it's always true that no matter how you calculate a probability, if you obtain new information you may have to change that number. Monty Hall asks you to pick a door and there is only one chance in three that you will pick the one that has the prize behind it, but later when Monty opens a door that you did NOT pick and you can see that it did NOT have the prize behind and gives you a chance to change your original pick you do because now that you've obtained new information your chance of getting the price increases from 1/3 to 2/3.* > *Did you not read my essay on the subject? * > *Yes and I couldn't find anything in it that was controversial, I agree with it; but I think you should have at least mentioned the square of the absolute value of a quantum wave function. **I especially liked it when you said: * *"So there are (at least) four ways to interpret a probability assignment"* *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* owa -- 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-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2zNnsE8NhyFrrMwsdJ_W%3DZcsdfyas4WWOU_cf7ziiqig%40mail.gmail.com.
