Re: wheeler walked away from MWI
ok thanks HF for the clarification. I didnt realize all the recent threads on tegmark were also referring to a tegmark-wheeler article. fyi, here is the quote from gribbin. I havent noticed, but is everyone aware of this book? good stuff.. from 1984, a bit dated, but it keeps getting reprinted apparently because its so superb. gribbin is a big advocate of MWI in a later chapter & cites a lot of early science fiction ideas relating to it. he's got a phd in astrophysics. very good on the conceptual history/foundations of QM. p246 >perhaps it is only fair, at this point, >to mention that wheeler himself has recently expressed >doubts about the whole business. in response to a questioner >at a symposium held to mark the centenary of einstein's birth, >he said of the MWI, "I confess that I have reluctantly >had to give up my support of that POV in the end, >much as I advocated it in the beginning--because I m >afraid it carries too great a load of metaphysical baggage." >this shouldnt be read as pulling out the rug from under >the everett interpretation; the fact that einstein changed >his mind about the statistical basis of QM didnt pull >the rug from under that interpretation. as for your point in your post about wheeler attaching his name to the theory, I think its ok for proponents and not originators of a theory to be named along with it. for example lately Ive been referring to the fredkin-wolfram thesis. fredkin is far more the originator; wolfram is far more the proponent. seems to me the everett-wheeler theory can be fairly seen in the same way. btw, I recently finished deutschs "fabric of reality" which imho is really outlandish & unfocused in places. after reading it I thought he earned the nickname "mad scientist" heh heh
Re: wheeler walked away from MWI
VZ Nuri writes: > hi all. I just read an amazing factoid in john gribbins > "search for sch.cat". it says that wheeler, in spite > of his initial enthusiasm for MWI & promoting it, and being > the advisor to everett, eventually abandoned > it, feeling it "carried too much metaphysical baggage" > or something like that. I was not aware of that. is > everyone else? I wonder if there are other refs on the > subject. I will quote the gribbin section if ppl are interested. Yes, I'd heard this. I wrote last June about my perceptions of Wheeler's shifts of positions at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3699.html. My speculation was that he didn't like being known as just a supporter of someone else's theory, that he wanted to come up with his own idea. However in the recent Scientific American article co-authored with Max Tegmark, they seemed to endorse the MWI pretty strongly. Hal Finney
wheeler walked away from MWI
hi all. I just read an amazing factoid in john gribbins "search for sch.cat". it says that wheeler, in spite of his initial enthusiasm for MWI & promoting it, and being the advisor to everett, eventually abandoned it, feeling it "carried too much metaphysical baggage" or something like that. I was not aware of that. is everyone else? I wonder if there are other refs on the subject. I will quote the gribbin section if ppl are interested.
Re: From Hardegree to Chellas for Joyce + Restall
At 14:49 -0400 25/09/2002, Wei Dai wrote: >I recommended Joyce more for its philosophy rather than its mathematics, >but I'm glad you found that useful too. I am indeed less sure about its philosophy. I guess this should have been apparent from my comment of Newcomb paradox, which I have made before I got Joyce book, of course, so I have not yet a definite opinion. I am still think about it. At 14:49 -0400 25/09/2002, Wei Dai wrote: >Here's a new question for you, Bruno. What interpretation of probability >theory do you subscribe to? I've been saying that the meaning of >probabilities come from decision theory and specificly a probability only >has meaning if it actually is relevant to making a decision. Originally the passage from the first person to the first person plural was done in reaction to my ex-boss wanting an explanation of the comp indeterminacy in term of betting games. I think I can apply the move to make the comp indeterminacy coherent with decision based interpretation of probability. Bruno
Re: MWI of relativistic QM
Title: Re: MWI of relativistic QM At 13:09 -0400 25/09/2002, Wei Dai wrote: Is there a paper or book that describes this discrete minkowski multiverse in more detail? Tim gives some interesting references. A formidable paper on discretization is "Foundations of Discrete Physics (Working Document January 1999)", by Kauffman. Click on Discrete at http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/ANPA-98.ps 1Oth line from the bottom. > If you call being stuck in front of a white page working y're right. Sorry. I don't understand your difficulty. Why don't you just take your thesis and all of the posts you've written for this list, put them into some logical order, edit, and publish? Thanks for the suggestion. My "stucking" is more psychological and linked to "things of life sort of things". I don't want bore you with that. I'am just asking some patience and indulgence for my slowness Thanks for the list of prerequisites, BTW. I'm going to read Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Quantum Logic in Algebraic Approach, and Mathematics of Modality, and get back to you. OK. Nice choice. The last two are rather technical, reading will not be enough! Don't forget to look at Ziegler web page for a nice summary of Quantum Logic. Also Ziegler makes the link with quantum probability. Not all quantum Logician are aware of the importance of linking logic and probability. Ziegler = http://lagrange.uni-paderborn.de/~ziegler/qlogic.html Miklos Redei makes the link with probability also. And also with Stalnaker Lewis approach to counterfactuals (like Joyce). Bruno
Re: Tegmark's TOE & Cantor's Absolute Infinity
At 12:51 -0400 25/09/2002, Wei Dai wrote: >If we can take the set of all deductive consequences of some axioms and >call it a theory, then why can't we also take the set of their semantic >consequences and call it a theory? In what sense is the latter more >"technical" than the former? It's true that the latter may require more >computational resources to enumerate/decide (specificly it may require the >ability to compute non-recursive functions), but the computability of the >former is also theoretical, since currently we only have access to >bounded space and time. > I would say the difference between animals and humans is that humans make drawings on the walls ..., and generally doesn't take their body as a limitation of their memory. It is also the difference between finite automata, and universal computers: those ask always for more memory; making clear, imo, the contingent and local character of their space and time bounds. >Some would argue that it's first-order theory that's misleading. See >Stewart Shapiro's _Foundations without Foundationalism - A Case for >Second-Order Logic_ for such an argument. I have read and appreciate a lot of papers by Shapiro. He has edited also the north-holland book "Intensionnal Mathematics" which I find much interesting than its "case for Second-order Logic". It is not very important because, as you can seen in Boolos 93, basically the logic G and G* works also for the second order logic. Only the restriction to Sigma_1 sentences should be substituted by a substitution to PI^1_1 sentences. This can be use latter for showing the main argument in AUDA can still work with considerable weakening of comp, but I think this is pedagogically premature. Bruno
