*Brent(?) wrote*: 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. 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 - and I suppose it should actually lead to a kind of 'radical acceptance'. 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... (But like Bruno, my dedication to truth keeps me from rejecting it purely because I hate it. The logic is very compelling.) *Stathis: * We accept as a society the risk of death by motor vehicle accident because there is a 1/10,000 chance per year it will happen to an individual, even though that means that in a large city a person will on average be killed every day. I think this situation is analogous to the moral question of MWI versus a single world interpretation of QM. *Me:* #1: I do not consider quantitative chance (probability) because of its unidentified sequence of occurrence . #2: I take MWI as a potentially valid idea - with the proviso that the unverses are DIFFERENT. In my narrative I give an idea to occur infinite universes of infinite qualia - ours seems to be a moderate one with no structural access to others, what does not mean the same vice versa. Hence: the "ZOOKEEPER" theories and the unexplained occurrences. #3: I take exception to any extension of anthropocentric ideas to the "everything" of which we are not equipped to know a lot. - That pertains to quantizing (math?) and drawing conclusions upon observations of phenomena we don't know indeed. JM
On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 12:17 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com>wrote: > > > > On 23 April 2014 21:33, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> 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. 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 - and I suppose it should >> actually lead to a kind of 'radical acceptance'. 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... >> (But like Bruno, my dedication to truth keeps me from rejecting it purely >> because I hate it. The logic is very compelling.) >> > > We accept as a society the risk of death by motor vehicle accident because > there is a 1/10,000 chance per year it will happen to an individual, even > though that means that in a large city a person will on average be killed > every day. I think this situation is analogous to the moral question of MWI > versus a single world interpretation of QM. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > 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. 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.
