On 12/11/2012 9:23 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:05 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/11/2012 6:58 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And
Calculate),
That's not an interpretation at all.
Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes. His view
is
that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the density
matrix
(either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just assumed per Bohr)
then
you have predicted probabilities. QM is a probabilistic theory - so
predicting probabilities is all you can ask of it.
Is science just about its applications or about understanding the
world? I
would argue that science would not progress so far as it has if we
thought
finding the equation was the be all and end all of science. The "shut
up
and calculate" mindset can be translated as "don't ask embarrassing
questions", it is the antithesis of scientific thinking.
Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the
planets
merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting
planetary
motion, so shut up and calculate!
Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.
So what's your objection to Omnes? That the world just can't be
probabilistic? So instead there must be infinitely many inaccessible
worlds
- which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.
It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory. Where I disagree with him is
in his
belief that we can never go beyond that in our understanding of it. I am
not
sure how accurate this statement is, since it is a secondary source, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s says: "We will never, Omnès
believes, find a common sense interpretation of quantum law itself." To
me, it
almost seems as if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer. I lean
more towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding good
explanations.
Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and defense of
the
MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter, he insist that we have
to be
irrational, in fine, and select one reality. This is really
cosmo-solipsism, and
makes QM indeed no more rational at all.
What's not rational about it? I think 'rational' just means 'being able to
give
coherent reasons'. There's a perfectly good coherent reason for
'selecting' one
reality - we experience one reality.
But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat
earth, we see
the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force to keep the same
speed, etc.
And all those inferences were perfectly rational. The fact that later, more
comprehensive theories were found doesn't change that. Rational is not
the same as
'always right'.
Usually when we refer to experience we are wrong
We're not wrong about the experience, although we may be wrong about it's
extrapolations.
(and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot mention experience in
experiment ...).
Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
(consciousness,
mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from theories already
extrapolated.
I agree. But the model of reality we build should comport with experience.
We
don't experience many worlds, so a valid model must include that.
We don't (in this present) experience our conscious state of 5 minutes ago. Would you
reject the idea that "the universe is a 4-dimensional static structure with no objective
present" on this basis?
No, but I would expect a theory of conscious experience to include that.
Brent
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