On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 03:42:48AM +0000, chris peck wrote: > >>how can facts exist that are not grounded in observation at some point? > > Russell and Liz are wandering around the countryside and Liz points at the > ground and says: > > "there's a gold coin buried right there." > > Russell says: > > "no there isn't" > > They both walk on without looking. And in the subsequent march of history no > - one ever looks. > > Surely, at least one unobserved fact was stated? Maybe even 2 if you are an > MWIer.
Nice example. I would say it is not a fact (in this universe). Of course, in the Multiverse, there will be observers of both facts, as well as worlds, like ours, in which it is not a fact (a superposition in other words). But I can see that someone like Deutsch would say that the Multiverse is decohered, and that there is a matter of fact about whether the coin is there, even if we don't know it. I just happen to disagree with Deutsch, and can think of no experiment to distinguish whether he's right or I'm right. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
