On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 12:02 AM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> I am quite certain "entities" is NOT the word William of Ockham used >> because he was born in the 13th century and spoke Middle English (which >> sounds more like German than English to a speaker of modern English) and >> wrote exclusively in Latin. And whatever Latin word he used instead of >> "entities" it must've meant a thing that has not been proved, a.k.a. an >> assumption,* > > > *> pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, “plurality should not be > posited without necessity.”* > *The dictionary on my Mac says the definition of the word "posited" is "assumed as a fact". Assumed! * > * > He doesn't say plurality of what.* > *Yes, and I am quite certain that was because he thought the answer was obvious. And he was right, it is. And the definition of "plurality" is the numerousness of a thing. And an assumption is a thing.* > *> He makes no reference to proof. * > *William of Ockham was a philosopher, a learned man, so he must've been familiar with Euclid and the concept of proof. Do you really think he was suggesting that if you had difficulty solving a geometric problem you should just make up a new axiom besides the ones that Euclid assumed if it makes it easier for you to complete your proof?! * > *>>> That it refers to assumptions is a modern interpretation.* >> >> > *>> I mean, what else could he have meant? Why in the world would he >> object to taking things that HAVE been proven into account when forming a >> theory? * >> > > *> You have gratuitously assumed it had to do with proof.* *You never answered my question. What else could he have meant? Why in the world would he object to taking things that HAVE been proven into account when forming a theory?* *>> This is what Wikipedia has to say about Ockham's Razor:* >> *"The Razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about >> the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one >> should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions"* > > > *> And Wikipedia just records current thoughts on Occam's razor*. > *It's odd, although it was on a completely different subject, only about a week ago another person on this list also insisted that I was wrong and Wikipedia was wrong and the AI Claude was wrong but they were right. And this is what Claude said when I started a new session and simply asked it "What can you tell me about "Ockham's Razor?"":* *"While often stated as "the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,"a more accurate formulation would be that among competing hypotheses that explain the observed data equally well, we should select the one requiring the fewest assumptions."* *>> Maybe Worlds is wrong but it is not unclear, if the laws of physics >> allow for an air molecule to bounce two different ways and Many Worlds is >> right then the world splits. If it's wrong then it doesn't. * > > *> I thought the big advantage of MWI in your view is that it told you what > really happens.* *All quantum interpretations do equally well at predicting what "you" will see, or rather what "you" will probably see, but with the exception of Shut Up And Calculate and Many Worlds they all require additional assumptions to explain why their prediction method works. * > > *So when the molecules can bounce two different ways, what > Schroedinger's equation predicts a is a superposition. Not a mixture. * > *Schroedinger's equation predicts neither a superposition nor a mixture, it exactly predicts how a complex wave in Hilbert space will evolve; and we know from experiment that if we assume an electron has such a complex wave associated with it and take the square of the absolute value of that wave we can get a probability that an experimenter will observe that an object will be at a particular point and have a particular momentum at a particular time. We know for a fact that this works, but the big question is why does it work? * *Copenhagen needs an additional assumption to explain it and insists that unlike the electron the experimenter has NO such complex wave associated with him and thus is a classical object. Many Worlds does not need that assumption, it says everything always obeys Schrodinger's equation, no exceptions. * *>> According to Many Wolds there might be an infinite number of worlds or >> there might only be an astronomical Number to an astronomical power of >> them, it takes no position in the finite versus infinite debate. And as I >> keep telling you, Hugh Everett didn't just conjure up all those worlds >> because he thought they were neat and made good science fiction stories, he >> did it because it's an inevitable consequence of believing that >> Schrodinger's equation means what it says. * > > > *> Hugh Everett didn't conjure them up at all. His was the "relative > state" interpretation. Bryce Dewitt is mainly responsible for the many > worlds idea.* > *Most physicists knew nothing about Hugh Everett or his 1957 PhD thesis, Bryce Dewitt is the one who brought it to their attention. Unfortunately John Wheeler, Everett's thesis advisor, made him cut out about half the stuff in his original 137 page thesis and tone down the language so it didn't sound like he thought all those other universes were equally real when in fact he did. For example, Wheeler didn't like the word "split" and was especially uncomfortable with talk of conscious observers splitting, most seriously he made him remove the entire chapter on information and probability which today many consider the best part of the work. His long thesis was not published until 1973, if that version had been published in 1957, instead of the truncated Bowdlerized version, things would have been different; plenty of people would still have disagreed but he would not have been ignored for as long as he was.* *Here is an example of something that Everett wrote that Wheeler made him remove from his thesis: * *"As an analogy one can imagine an intelligent amoeba with a good memory. As time progresses the amoeba is constantly splitting, each time the resulting amoebas having the same memories as the parent. Our amoeba hence does not have a life line, but a life tree."* *> **Schoedinger's equation produces a lot of complex values until you make > a measurement (which is NOT described by the Schroedinger eqn).* > *Huh?* * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 7t6 -- 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/CAJPayv1TSV6%3DDAo_4rAAt3ev1A40xsvKQg2%2B-hsRHA_rysgApw%40mail.gmail.com.
