Adrian Hey commenting Michael Hobbs:
> > ... if you describe 'IO a' values simply
> > as _unevaluated_ imperative actions and throw away notions of
> > referential transparency and World states, then *poof* no more nasty
> > philosophy debates. :-)
>
> This agree with this, though I would use a word like 'unexecuted' rather
> than 'unevaluated'. A critisism often made of the 'many worlds'
> interpretation of quantum physics is that it's superfluous.
> You can't disprove it, but there's nothing that can be explained with
> it that can't be explained just as well without it. I feel this way
> about 'functions' operating on 'world values'.
In both cases (IO and Everett model of QM) you may, and in physics you
*should* distinguish between "explaining", "modelling", "predicting",
etc.
Many worlds model has the conceptual elegance of getting rid of the
acausality, the theory becomes fully deterministic. It is not true
that you cannot explain anything, on the contrary, you "explain why",
(sometimes "unexplain", throwing away such questions as why the
electron turned left)
but you cannot *predict* anything, you cannot falsify the model,
violating thus the basic laws of Saint Popper.
The IO issue is really different, and your analogy is too philosophical
(and that's why I enjoy it, who dared to use the word "nasty"?!).
The World must be really implemented, and even if you provide to the
Functional User the strict minimum of knowledge, there exist people
who know much more than speculators, people who really put their
fingers into the implementation, as Mark Jones or Lennart.
BTW. Hobbs term "_unevaluated_ imperative action" is something as
nice and meaningful for me as, say "revolutionary justice", or
"popular democracy". [[appropriate smiley, please.]]
Jerzy Karczmarczuk
Caen, France.
