On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 5:41 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> Schrodinger's Equation is 100% deterministic, so why is it necessary to >> resort to probability at all?* > > > *Because one thing of many possible happens.* > *Why is that "one" thing special? I can answer that; because it's not special, many things happen, everything that is not forbidden happens. You have no answer to that question other than "because it is". * * > I can write an equation for the toss of die that shows that the > probability of each face is 1/6. That equation is deterministic. It > determines probabilities. And probabilities tell you that some things > happen and some don't. Not that every face of the die comes up on every > throw.* *Schrodinger's equation produces a complex-valued wave that evolves in time, the square of the absolute value of the amplitude of that wave determines probabilities. You just take the Born Rule as a given because experimenters tell you that it works. Many Worlds can tell you why it works and why you need it. * *And unlike Schrodinger's Equation your dice equation directly determines a probability; classical physics doesn't have or need a counterpart to the Born Rule (although the square of the absolute value of an electromagnetic wave is proportional to its energy). Classical physics can provide us with an excellent approximation of how the orientation of the die will change in time, so why do we need to use probability? The reason for that is practical not fundamental, sometimes in classical physics tiny changes in initial conditions lead to exponentially diverging trajectories over time, and you're never going to know the initial conditions exactly, and even if you did you don't have the computing capacity to use them.* *> And you have no answer to what probability means, until you resort to > "uncertainty of self-location",* > *Resort to? If I'm not allowed to give the correct answer then my answer is going to be wrong. Many Worlds says everything always obeys Schrodinger's equation including the observer, therefore there will always be self-location uncertainty, it can't be avoided. If anybody finds a quantum equation that does not produce self-location uncertainty, which is equivalent to making an exact prediction not a probabilistic one, then the Many Worlds idea would have been proven wrong. I'm not holding my breath.* *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 94t -- 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/CAJPayv1HofZ8Dbx_Yh9jPR8nDPL%3DbvQNKAa7rZPOVNEPHPqe8A%40mail.gmail.com.
