On Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 4:00:34 PM UTC-7 Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2024 at 11:12 PM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: On Tue, Nov 12, 2024 at 8:30 PM Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: *>> And for every event, for every point in space and for every instant in time, the square of the absolute value of the quantum wave has a precise number, and it's a number that has profound physical significance. That sure sounds physically real to me! * *> Probability is not an entity!* *The dictionary on my Mac says an entity is "A thing with distinct and independent existence" and the definition of a thing is "**an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to**". Probability certainly exists, and it has a distinct and independent existence. It's true that you can't touch probability, but you can't touch entropy either, but both are "things" that exist in the physical world. * No. They are not 'things that exist in the physical world.' They are mathematical variables that can be calculated and applied to the description of things. To confuse these variables with the things themselves is to confuse the map with the territory. *> Depending on the initial conditions, the wave function might well be identically zero at most spacetime points.* *S**ure, but I don't see your point. At some places and at some times the needle on your Fahrenheit thermometer is pointing at zero and you observe it pointing at zero, and at other places and other times it's pointing at 90 and you see it pointing at 90. Zero is not nothing, it is something because being not zero is different from being zero; if that wasn't true computers wouldn't work.* *>> the only reason I'm a Many Worlds fan is that it doesn't need to explain what a measurement is, nor does it have to explain what consciousness is, because neither has anything to do with it.* *> So the Many-worlds theory is merely a fantasy, about nothing at all.* *So your claim is that any physical theory that does not explain consciousness, and that means every single physical theory discovered since Newton's day, is merely a fantasy and is about nothing at all. I respectfully disagree.* The fact that a theory does not claim to explain consciousness does not mean that it cannot be useful, or explain other things within its domain of application. The problem we have is that many-worlds theory does not actually explain anything that does not already have a simpler explanation in terms of some other, less extravagant, theory. For example, many-worlds theory does not explain why we get only one result on any measurement, and it does not explain why we get the observed result rather than any other. This observed fact is easily explained in standard quantum mechanics as the result of a stochastic process -- it is an axiom of quantum mechanics that we get only one result for any experiment, and that result is an eigenvalue of the measurement operator, randomly selected from the possible eigenvalues. Bruce It's hard to imagine, and contrary to observation, that we could get multiple results for a measurement, but an axiom it is not. AG -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8dfc3be5-176f-4311-a541-fafbdd97df39n%40googlegroups.com.
