On Fri, 12 May 2006, Saibal Mitra wrote:
Einstein seems to have believed in ''immortal observer moments''.
In a BBC documentary about time it was mentioned that Einstein consoled a
friend whose son had died in a tragic accident by saying that relativity
suggests that the past and the
On who invented quantum suicide, the following is from the biography of
Hugh Everett by Eugene B. Shikhovtsev and Kenneth W. Ford, at
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/
Atheist or not, Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory
guaranteed him immortality: His consciousness,
On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Norman Samish wrote:
Jonathan Colvin wrote: If I take a loaf of bread, chop it half, put one
half in one room and one half in the other, and then ask the question where
is the loaf of bread?, we can likely agree that the question is ill-posed.
Depending on definitions,
On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Hal Finney wrote:
Jonathan Colvin writes:
There's a question begging to be asked, which is (predictably I suppose, for
a qualia-denyer such as myself), what makes you think there is such a thing
as an essence of an experience? I'd suggest there is no such thing as an
[Russell Standish wrote]:
The AP is a statement that observed reality must be consistent with
the observer being part of that reality.
Famously, this can be interpreted as either a trivial tautology (Brandon
Carter's original intention, I think), or an almost-obviously false
principle of
On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Russell Standish wrote:
Hal dealt with this one already, I notice. 2^\aleph_0 = c. \aleph_1 is
something else entirely.
d'oh!
snip
Now an observer will expect to find a SAS in one of the descriptions
as a corrolory of the anthropic principle, which is explicitly
On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Russell Standish wrote:
I am beginning to regret calling the all descriptions ensemble with
uniform measure a Schmidhuber ensemble. I think what I meant was that
it could be generated by a standard dovetailer algorithm, running for
2^\aleph_0 timesteps.
It can't!
On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Jesse Mazer wrote:
Norman Samish wrote:
If the universe started contracting, its entropy would get smaller,
which nature doesn't allow in large-scale systems. This seems to me an
argument in support of perpetual expansion.
From what I've read, if the universe began
--in fact there
is no agreed-upon answer to the question of what, if anything, came
before
the Big Bang or caused it.
Patrick Leahy wrote:
Maybe Norman is confusing the rather more legit idea that the
fluctuations
in the Big Bang, that explain why the universe is not completely uniform,
come
I read his book a year or so ago, so may be a bit hazy, but:
Pour Bruno: he definitely does not want to talk about space-time capsules.
Partly this is motivated by his metaphysical ideas about time, partly by
the technicalities of the 3+1 (i.e. space+time, not persons!) approach to
GR and
As an exercise I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what is wrong with
Plaga's paper. For anyone who doubts that it *is* wrong, note that it
proposed 10 years ago an experiment which he said was feasible with what
was then state-of-the-art equipment. This technology has now massively
On Thu, 26 May 2005, Alastair Malcolm wrote:
An example occurs which might be of help. Let us say that the physics of
the universe is such that in the Milky Way galaxy, carbon-based SAS's
outnumber silicon-based SAS's by a trillion to one. Wouldn't we say that
the inhabitants of that galaxy
On Thu, 26 May 2005, Brent Meeker wrote:
I agree with all you say. But note that the case of finite sets is not
really any different. You still have to define a measure. It may seem
that there is one, compelling, natural measure - but that's just
Laplace's principle of indifference
It looks as though you advocate a role for each of these:
observables
measurements
detectors
and for all I know
observers
It seemed to me that MWI allowed me to get away with a considerable
simplification. Gone were observers and even observations. Even
measurements, I discard.
On Wed, 25 May 2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
SNIP
Consider these two parallel arguments using a version of the anthropic
principle:
(a) In the multiverse, those worlds which have physical laws and
constants very different to what we are used to may greatly predominate.
However, it is no
On Wed, 25 May 2005, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 10:10:19PM +0100, Patrick Leahy wrote:
Lewis also distinguishes between inductive failure and rubbish
universes as two different objections to his model. I notice that in
your articles both you and Russell Standish more
On Wed, 25 May 2005, Benjamin Udell wrote:
The induction-friendly universe with so much detectable rubbish that a
wide variety of phenomena cannot be unified into a simple theory sounds
like a universe where induction works but surmise, or inference to the
simplest explanation, faces grave
On Mon, 23 May 2005, Brent Meeker wrote:
-Original Message-
From: Patrick Leahy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
SNIP
NB: I'm in some terminological difficulty because I personally *define*
different branches of the wave function by the property of being fully
decoherent. Hence reference
On Tue, 24 May 2005, aet.radal ssg wrote:
See http://decoherence.de ? It was good for a laugh, not much else.
Funnily enough, that was my thought about your friend Plaga, whose paper
is rubbish because he doesn't know the first thing about decoherence,
and fails to notice that his
On Tue, 24 May 2005, Alastair Malcolm wrote:
Perhaps I can throw in a few thoughts here, partly in the hope I may learn
something from possible replies (or lack thereof!).
- Original Message -
From: Patrick Leahy [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 23 May 2005 00:03
.
SNIP
I know this one!
I had a friend who published a magazine called Zorn printed on pale
yellow paper... ;)
Paddy Leahy
On Sun, 22 May 2005, rmiller wrote:
I'm approaching this as a sociologist with some physics background so I'm
focusing on what the behavior system perceives (measures). If all possible
worlds exist in a superpositional state, then the behavior system should
likewise exist in a
On Sun, 22 May 2005, Hal Finney wrote:
Regarding the nature of Tegmark's mathematical objects, I found some
old discussion on the list, a debate between me and Russell Standish,
in which Russell argued that Tegmark's objects should be understood as
formal systems, while I claimed that they
QM is a well-defined theory. Like any theory it could be proved wrong by
future experiments. My point is that R. Miller's suggestions would
definitely constitute a replacement of QM by something different. So would
aet.radal's (?) suggestion of information tunnelling between macroscopic
On Mon, 23 May 2005, Hal Finney wrote:
I'd like to take advantage of having a bona fide physicist on the list to
ask a question about decoherence and its implications for the MWI.
SNIP
If this is true, then how can a physicist not accept the MWI?
Beats me...
Isn't that just a matter of
On Mon, 23 May 2005, scerir wrote:
Do you agree we can have branches (or histories) in space
(in a space) but also branches (or histories) in time?
I guess there is an implicit not only in this question :)
You have an atom, excited (ie by a laser).
This atom can radiate a photon in two
On Mon, 23 May 2005, Bruno Marchal wrote:
SNIP
Concerning the white rabbits, I don't see how Tegmark could even address the
problem given that it is a measure problem with respect to the many
computational histories. I don't even remember if Tegmark is aware of any
measure relating the
I looked into this mailing list because I thought I'd come up with a
fairly cogent objection to Max Tegmark's version of the everything
thesis, i.e. that there is no distinction between physical and
mathematical reality... our multiverse is one particular solution to a set
of differential
On Mon, 23 May 2005, Russell Standish wrote:
I think most of us concluded that Tegmark's thesis is somewhat
ambiguous. One interpretation of it that both myself and Bruno tend
to make is that it is the set of finite axiomatic systems (finite sets
of axioms, and recusively enumerated
I find this a very odd question to be asked on this list. To me, one of
the main attractions of the everything thesis is that it provides the
only possible answer to this question. Viz: as Jonathan pointed out,
mathematical objects are logical necessities, and the thesis (at least in
Tegmark's
Hi, I'm Paddy Leahy. I'm an astrophysicist and observational cosmologist
with a long-standing interest in the foundations of QM.
==
Dr J. P. Leahy, University of Manchester,
Jodrell Bank Observatory, School of Physics Astronomy,
Macclesfield,
I've recently been reading the archive of this group with great interest
and noted a lot of interesting ideas. I'd like to kick off my contribution
to the group with a response to a comment made in numerous posts that a
single observer-moment can have multiple pasts, including macroscopically
On Wed, 18 May 2005, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Le Mercredi 18 Mai 2005 17:57, Patrick Leahy a écrit :
SNIP
Of course, many of you (maybe all) may be defining pasts from an
information-theoretic point of view, i.e. by identifying all
observer-moments in the multiverse which are equivalent as perceived
On Wed, 18 May 2005, Hal Finney wrote:
Does anybody believe that this is consistent with the many-worlds
interpretation of QM?
First, welcome to the list.
Thanks!
SNIP
However, particularly as we look to larger ensembles than just the MWI,
it becomes attractive to define observers and
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