On 31/05/2017 4:40 pm, Pierz wrote:
On Wednesday, May 31, 2017 at 3:28:18 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:
Sorry. Something funny with my verizon account.
Brent
On 5/30/2017 8:09 PM, Pierz Newton-John wrote:
> Brent, are you replying from a mobile? I’m still receiving your
replies, as others are, on my private email. That’s what happens
to me when I try to reply using my iPhone. The "reply to all"
button is missing. I’ll reply to your remarks on the list if you
post it there...
>
>
>> On 31 May 2017, at 1:05 pm, Brent Meeker <meek...@verizon.net
<javascript:>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/30/2017 7:30 PM, Pierz wrote:
>>> Thanks for these clarifications Bruce. I find your
explanations to be very lucid and helpful - they also confirm my
own understanding. IIRC, you weren't a particular fan of MWI when
I last conversed with you on this list. I wonder if you'd care to
comment on my original argument on this thread - which has of
course now been swamped by the usual brawls. Does not a single
history + the physical insignificance of the notion of a current
moment mean that there is also only a single possible future?
>> I don't see how that follows. In the usual model of forking in
the future direction every current moment has a single history,
but multiple futures.
Multiple futures = MWI, surely.
Not necessarily. If you insist on Schrödinger determinism, then yes, by
reification of the wave function. But if the wave function is only
epistemological, then there is only one probabilistic future.
When I say a single history, I mean that from the Big Bang forward,
the universe only followed one branch.
And that can lead into the future, only one probabilistic future.
>>
>>> And if the future is predetermined in this way, isn't this a
serious issue for single universe models of QM? How can the
outcome of quantum events be both inevitable and random?
>> Having a single future isn't the same as being determined. A
single future in which situation A is sometimes followed by B and
sometimes by C is still random.
It depends on perspective. It's true that from 1p, it looks random.
But from 3p, it is static and always the same, and in this sense
determined.
Not true, the 3p view of the future is still just a single probabilistic
world line. It is only the bird view, from outside space and time, that
gives the appearance that there are multiply existing futures. Neither
we from the 1p perspective, or from outside ourselves in the 3p
perspective, can we ever see any of the other branches predicted by MWI.
The question is, what determined (from the 3p view) that the universe
followed that particular path and not any of the others?
Why do you reject out of hand that the universe might be probabilistic?
It is possible 'nothing' determined which path from the possibilities
was actually followed. All that is known are the probabilities for each
path. We do not know that the other paths are followed, either 1p or 3p.
My assumption here is that "now" does not exist from the 3p POV and
therefore the physical structure (whether it branches or not) of the
past and the future is the same.
That can certainly be the case, whether there are existing alternative
branches or not.
Bruce
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