On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> > On 23 Apr 2014, at 13:33, Pierz wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 11:12:53 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 4/22/2014 4:54 AM, Pierz wrote: >> >> Thanks Brent. I read Mermin and am both wiser and none-the. It seems to >> me in this paper he is chickening out by saying that QM shouldn't really >> think about the conscious observer, because that leads to the "fairy tale" >> of many worlds. Instead it should consider consciousness to reside outside >> the competent scope of a physical theory. >> >> >> I don't think he means that. He just means that it's a separate question >> from the interpretation of QM and that it's a mistake to mix them together. >> >> It's kind of like his answer is to say "don't ask those questions". And >> he explicitly repudiates the notion that "it's all in your head" or that a >> quantum state is a "summary of your knowledge of the system". The >> correlations are objective. What I liked about the paper though was the >> notion of correlations without correlata (which Garrett invokes) - the idea >> that quantum theory is about (and only about) systemic relationships makes >> a lot of sense. To take the answer to "what is QM telling us?" just a >> little further philosophically than what Mermim is prepared to, I'd say >> it's telling us (for one thing) that we've hit the limits of atomism. We're >> bouncing off the boundary of the reductionistic epistemology. >> >> Anyway, sadly I haven't yet seen anything that could supply a cogent >> alternative to MWI. I'll move on to the other papers tomorrow night... :) >> >> >> Chris Fuchs is the main proponent of quantum Bayesianism, which also >> takes the wave-function to just be a summary of one's knowledge of the >> system - and so there is nothing surprising about it "collapsing" when you >> get new information. >> >> Of course another alternative is an objective collapse theory like GRW. >> I'm just now reading a book by Ghirardi,"Sneaking a Look at God's Cards" >> which surveys the experiments that force the weirdness of QM on us and the >> various interpretations. Of course he devotes a special chapter to GRW >> theory, but he is very even handed. >> >> I'm not sure why you're worried about MWI though. Is it because you read >> "Divide by Infinity"? I don't think that's what MWI really implies. >> >> No I never read that, but hell yeah, MWI worries me! Doesn't it worry > you? I mean I know at one level that in a very real sense it doesn't matter > whether it's true or not, since the other universes can never affect me, > but at another the reality that everything happens to me that I can imagine > is just plain terrifying. And the 'me' isn't just the versions of me that > are still called by my name, I can't escape the conclusion that I am > everyone and everyone is me and that *everyone's* experience is my > experience at some level. If MWI ever does become the accepted conception > of reality, we have a huge amount of philosophical reorientation ahead of > us. For instance, if I take some risk (like drink-driving, a relevant topic > on another thread), and 'get away with it', MWI suggests I am still > responsible for other realities in which I crashed and injured or killed > myself and/or others. > > > That reminds me on a difference that someone made between, I think, > catholic and protestant (say). > - A catholic go to heaven if and only if he do only good, or at least not > bad, things during his life. > (of course this can lead to unfairness, as some people can do the bad only > due to contingent factors in their life, like a war, or a trauma, etc.) So, > apparently: > - A protestant go to heaven if and only if he do only the good in his life > but also in all its lives. > > It is easy to do only the good when you get an happy family, in a > economically working society so that you get a nice job, and a nice love > partner and nice kids, and when you can drink and smoke what you want, even > drink raw milk! > > Apparently some God want to examine closely what you "would" do in a world > with catastrophic family, in perverse economy where eventually you can't > even drink raw milk! > > > > > My whole approach to risk management becomes quite different if all > outcomes are realised. It no longer makes sense to think about "if" > something will happen to me in the future. I have to accept that it all > will happen, it's just that all those future mes won't know about the other > ones, so they will all have the impression of a single outcome. It's a > disorienting and disturbing thought. Of course it should't lead to > fatalism, since one's choices are part of the deterministic system that > determines the 'weight' of certain futures - > > > OK. > > > > > and I suppose it should actually lead to a kind of 'radical acceptance'. > > > But then you have to accept the "non-acceptance" too. It is where we can > get close to inconsistency, if not insanity. > > > > There's no point thinking "why me?" or "what bad luck", since your > experiencing this, and indeed everything, is inevitable. But then I console > myself by thinking that any human-level qualitative interpretation of this > level of reality is mistaken, a kind of confusion of levels. And still it > horrifies me... > > > > As I mentioned before, when I ask my father what is truth, he said that it > is what the humans fear the most. > > I found this quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson (an american > journalist 1937-2005): > > "The truth, when you finally chase down, is almost always far worse than > your darkest visions and fears". > > But personally, I am not sure. > Thompson isn't either; hence the "almost". And as journalist covering politics from a freak point of view... > I might think that atheism (the strong non agnostic form) can lead to such > thought. > Well, he yells "no obedience to gods, none of them" in all his writing. But to say the man was devoid of a sense of transcendental is to simply ignore his history: When running for mayor in Aspen, and almost winning btw, the symbol of his campaign was an Indian fist holding up a peyote button. To say that such man lacks sense of transcendental, you go too far; he just had the good taste to not talk about it. And this, as a writer of pseudo journalism/fiction. That's disciplined sense of restraint and not materialism to me. But I guess one has to read more of his oeuvre to make a judgement on this. PGC > No god is close to no sense, non "afterlife" is also (in its positive > belief) close to nonsense. Such vision encourages irresponsibility and > "après moi le déluge" sort of mentality. That is well illustrated by > author like LaMettrie and Sade, but also by the materialist eliminativists > (Churchland, almost Dennett). That is even politically dangerous: it > question the human right by questioning the human person. Materialism + > Mechanism might lead to Nihilism. > > > > > (But like Bruno, my dedication to truth keeps me from rejecting it purely > because I hate it. The logic is very compelling.) > > > > Ah! :) > > Bruno > > > > > > >> Brent >> >> >> On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 3:36:16 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote: >>> >>> Read Mermin who has written some popular papers on "The Ithaca >>> Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", e.g. >>> http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9801057.pdf and the paper by Adami and >>> Cerf, which is where Garrett gets his talk, >>> arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0405005** >>> >>> They take an information theoric approach to the quantum measurement >>> problem and show that a measurement can only get you part of the >>> information in the quantum state. From the MWI standpoint this 'other >>> information' is in the other world branch. Mermin and Adami and also Fuchs >>> (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.5209.pdf<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F1003.5209.pdf&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNESAnRXSOhSA3Y_kMt1kkshVPgd_w>) >>> take a more instrumentalist approach in which your conscious perceptions >>> are fundamental and QM is a way to compute their relations. The >>> wave-function is just a summary representation of your knowledge of the >>> system. That's why he refers to it as the zero-worlds interpretation; it's >>> all in your (our) mind. >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> On 4/21/2014 5:03 PM, Pierz wrote: >>> >>> Just came across this presentation: >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc >>> >>> It's a bit long, but I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts who >>> is knowledgeable on QM. I don't follow the maths, but I kind of got the >>> gist. What intrigued me was his interpretation of QM and I'm wondering if >>> anyone can throw any more light on it. He makes a lot of jumps which are >>> obviously clear in his mind but hard to follow. He says that MWI is >>> supportable by the maths, but that he prefers a "zero universes" >>> interpretation, according to which we are classical simulations in a >>> quantum computer. I'm not sure I follow this. I mean, I can follow the idea >>> of being a classical simulation in a quantum computer, but I can't see how >>> this is different from MWI, except by the manoeuvre of declaring other >>> universes to be unreal because they can never practically interact with >>> 'our' branch. I guess what interested me was the possibility of a coherent >>> alternative to MWI (because frankly MWI scares the willies out of me), but >>> in spite of what he said, I couldn't see what it was... >>> >>> -- >>> 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-li...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >>> >>> -- >> 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-li...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> > -- > 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/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > 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/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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