> On 27 Jan 2021, at 08:36, Alan Grayson wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at 9:27:43 AM UTC-7 Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> On 15 Jan 2021, at 23:34, Alan Grayson > > wrote:
>>
>> Why not assume the wf applies only before the measurement?
>
> That’s Bohr idea. But it means that measurement are no more describe by QM,
> and this introduces a dualism in the the possible theory of mind that you
> need to use. The élégance if the MWI is that QM applies to both the observed
> and the observer, again, like it has to do assuming mechanism.
>
>
>
>> Or why not withhold judgement on a phenomenon not yet understood? Instead
>> you totally dismiss empirical evidence that no one ever observes a split. AG
>
> We still observe the result predicted when accepting the superposed wave
> going through all slit. The fact that we don’t feel the split is entirely
> explained by the wave evolution and the self-duplication thought experiment.
> Occam razor favours the simplest conceptual explanation, or we add add as
> many “epicycle” to favour any interpretation, up to the super determinism,
> which I take as an abandon of rationality…
>
> Bruno
>
> Yeah, "entirely explained", except for the huge gorilla in the room. Where's
> the beef, I mean the energy to create those other worlds? Is it in the
> non-computable irrational numbers? AG
The term “world” is hard to define. For logician, it usually mean an element of
some non empty set, for a metaphysician, it means the objet of the ontological
commitment.
The problem here is that some metaphysical assumption are done implicitly. I
prefer to avoid any ontological commitment bigger than what we need when we do
metaphysics, and with Mechanism, I can explain that we need only a universal
machinery (in the sense of the logicians, Turing, Kleene). It happens that for
the ontology, the very elementary arithmetic is enough. It is given by the
usual classical predicate calculus and the axioms:
1) 0 ≠ s(x)
2) x ≠ y -> s(x) ≠ s(y)
3) x ≠ 0 -> Ey(x = s(y))
4) x+0 = x
5) x+s(y) = s(x+y)
6) x*0=0
7) x*s(y)=(x*y)+x
Then an observer is defined by any machine/number having those axioms as
belief, together with the scheme of axioms of induction, the set of
rationally-believable proposition of the agent contains all formula, with A an
arbitrary arithmetical formula:
[A(0) & for all n (A(n) -> (A(s(n)) ] -> for all n A(n)
Note that the observer has many more axioms than what we need for the ontology.
In the ontological theory, we can define what is a universal machine, and what
is a computation. The Digital Mechanist hypothesis entails that the ontology is
enough to get *all* computations, and it makes the machine non determined with
respect to which computations support it. But the machine can do reasoning, and
indeed the observer can prove that if mechanism is correct, the observable
(“physics”) can arise only from a statistic on all computations, and the math
indicates already that this will obey a quantum logic quite close to the
quantum logic based on the Hartle-Graham, or Griffith-Omnes (see also Isham)
logic of alternate (but first person fungible) histories.
It is up to a materialist (or a believer in some god) to explain how matter (or
god) can select histories in the set of all histories.
An history here is defined by a computation as seen by some observer (as
defined above, with observable being defined by an intensional (modal variant
of the Gödel-Löb-Solovay logic G* (in the study of arithmetical self-reference).
We cannot use the usual brain-mind identity principle (it is false with
Mechanism, and unclear in most interpretation of QM). We can attach some person
to a machine, but no person can attach his own mind to a “particular machine”,
only to all digital machines occurring in arithmetic and getting the state of
that observer (there are infinitely many).
The “beef” is what I want to explain, and the result is that there is no beef,
only sets of “dreams of beef”, and the math explain why such set get structured
into physical persistent observable.
Einstein said that time is an illusion, albeit a persistent one! Mechanism go
farer, and explains that the whole physicalness is an illusion by number, and
explain its persistence and its apparent localisation as part of the machine
reference and self-reference relatively to infinitely many universal numbers.
The advantage of this approach is twofold:
1) it does not rely on an ontological commitment different than the term we
need to define a machine (of course, we have to still postulate elementary
arithmetic (this can be explained not deducible from less or equivalent).
2) we get a natural explanation of the difference between quanta and qualia.
Both are measurable numbers, but only the quanta are first person plural
sharable. The qualia are irreducibly NON sharable, and not perceivable as
numbers, but as different sort of sensations.
It is hard for me
