On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 7:00 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> You're just repeating the definition of the Born Rule, and everyone >> agrees it works, but some of us would like to know WHY it works and WHY >> it's even necessary given the fact that Schrodinger's equation is >> deterministic * > > > *> Well if you don't think it's "necessary"* > *Don't be ridiculous! I said the Born Rule was necessary. What I asked is WHY is it necessary? * *> science can only answer "why" questions if there is some more > fundamental theory on which to base the answer. * > *And that theory was introduced by Hugh Everett in 1957 and improved by Sean Carroll and David Deutsch and many many others over the last 68 years. * > *just taking Schroedinger's equation as the basis is not sufficient. So > it clashes with the MWI mantra of "Just the Schroedinger equation* *Everybody agrees that Schrodinger's equation works, and everybody agrees it says something about what is going on at the deepest level of reality, but some believe it can't be the entire story and there must be something more that was happening. Many Worlds asks us to imagine what would be the result if there was NOT something more going on and it was just Schrodinger's equation.* *Would an observer have enough information to make a prediction with an arbitrary level of precision?* * No, and the fundamental reason why is that the observer himself must also obey Schrodinger's equation, not just the thing he is trying to predict. So there is no alternative but to resort to probability. * *Is there a way to get a real number out of the complex 4-D wave that the equation produces such that it's always between 0 and 1 and the probabilities always add up to exactly 1? * *Yes, take the absolute value of the wave function and then square it.* *Mathematically is there another way to produce a set of numbers from Schrodinger's wave that have the properties that a probability must have? No, not if the complex wave is 3-D or higher.* *What should a rational observer do if he wants to make bets about the future? * *Follow the Born Rule. * * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* dx5 -- 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/CAJPayv3sTJ%2BEp05xo27uWWTEeriNUNeqUhjoNZYnythQKsd%2B%3Dw%40mail.gmail.com.
