I reckon this thread should be called "The Emperor's New Absence".
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I reckon this thread should be called "The Emperor's New Absence".
Taking the example of what Joe Blow had for dinner in 1211 is better than my other universe example, Ecurb. Unless we invent a time machine (which I highly doubt), we shouldn't be able to find this out.
I was thinking about Sasquatch when you mentioned him or her earlier in this thread. It all depends on how one defines "Sasquatch" as to whether examples exist or not. For example, Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasquatch) Bigfoot is "large, hairy, bipedal humanoid". Well, a human is a humanoid by default and most of us are bipedal. Some of us are hairier than others and some of us can get quite large. So maybe Sasquatch is a subset of the human species who likes to walk through the woods and is larger than most of us get.
And that was part of the point I was trying to make with the joke... "Wireless" communication is a broad term, but we take it to mean "radio" communication, though of course that would include every other form of communication that doesn't involve sending and receiving electrical signals over conductive wires.... The joke was a bit off topic, but not entirely... To be on-topic, the archeologist should not conclude that the absence of found wires indicates anything more than that the ancient Peruvians (probably) did not use electrical wires. It was just a joke meant to illustrate sloppy reasoning. In fact, the archeologist would have more logically concluded that the lack of evidence for wires indicated that the ancient Peruvians had no electrical technology whatsoever, let alone radio technology. Would it still be possible that they did have some electrical technology? Perhaps, though the burden of proof would be on the one making that assertion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawkman
(1) Incorrect. What you're talking about gets into the nature of "what is evidence?" rather than if evidence exists for non-existing things. It's true that certain information can LOOK like evidence for non-existing things, but because these things are non-existent, it's our interpretation of the information that's at fault, because it's not really evidence for the thing we think it is. That's why it's important to have a good grasp/understanding of what evidence is before one starts talking about whether such-and-such piece of evidence is evidence at all. To go back to Ecurb's Sasquatch example, one hidden assumption behind the "absence of evidence" phrase is that people aren't faking evidence to begin with, and when it comes to things like Sasquatch, that's not necessarily true. This relates to one Yudkowsky article that nicely summarizes this by saying "we'd expect UFO cults whether UFOs existed or not, so the existence of UFO cults are not evidence UFOs exist." Same with Sasquatch footprints; we expect them because we know certain people believe they exist and want to convince others.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
(2) Incorrect again, because you're making multiple assumptions that you can not be 100% sure of:
a) other universes exist
b) other creatures exist in these universes
c) we will never have any evidence about the nature of these other universes
So even when you consider the probabilities of these three things you can't set 2. at 100%, because then you'd just be assuming things you have no reason to assume. But, even if I was to grant your assumption, I think it's safe to say that we're most always only concerned about things that exist within our universe OR things that may exist outside our universe but affect our universe in some way or another. In both cases there would be evidence of their existence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Now you guys are having the same difficulty Hawkman had in coming up with examples that aren't even relevant to the phrase itself. "Evidence of absence" means "evidence that something exists/existed," not "evidence that someone once ate something" or "evidence that someone will eat something" or (to use Hawkman's example) "evidence that something can be invented that doesn't currently exist." You guys need to think about examples of things that exist NOW or DID for which there COULD be evidence for. Obviously people eat and the "evidence" of what they eat gets digested and disappears; obviously we can't have evidence NOW for what someone will eat; obviously there would be no evidence now for what someone might invent in the future; all of these things have nothing to do with the phrase itself or what it pertains to. My dice example, or coin example, or book example, et al. pertains to things that potentially exist now and would potentially leave evidence for itself existing.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Just as I said in my last post that one hidden assumption in the phrase is that people aren't faking the evidence, another assumption is that there would/could be some kind of evidence for the thing that exists/existed. Instead of what someone ate 30 years ago, consider, instead something like a global flood, a myth present in many cultures in texts; if such a thing happened, we'd expect certain Geological evidence for it; yet, not only is there no evidence for such a flood, there is evidence of erosion at varying rates in different parts of the world, which is what you WOULDN'T expect if such a catastrophic event happened on a global scale. That's a legitimate example from something in the past because it's something that we would expect to leave evidence were it true. Things people ate or might eat or things we can invent don't leave evidence for itself now, so the phrase is rather irrelevant.
I guess it's my fault for not clarifying this in the OP, but I thought these assumptions were rather implicit. So, for full disclosure, here are the relevant details:
1. Something potentially exists now, or existed/happened in the past.
2. Something that would/could leave evidence for itself
Any talk of "future" events/things is not relevant, nor are things that we know leave no evidence for their existence, like what Joe Blow ate 30 years ago.
You're getting there. That is another admission that the hypothesis only works with concrete examples where there is already knowledge. It is therefore an almost-useless axiom.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
You show that again here:
Nice moving of the goalposts. If you'd said that at the start, I probably would have agreed with you.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
As opposed to abstract examples where there is no knowledge? Such as?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Well, there's two different axioms being discussed: one insists AOE IS EOA, and the other insists that AOE IS NOT EOA. The former is a useful axiom in that it aligns itself with Bayes' Theorem and can teach people how to think in terms of expectations given their beliefs or hypotheses; the latter is useless in that the only things it pertains to are things we don't fuss about to begin with.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Elaborating further:
It's not INTENTIONALLY moving the goalposts. If you want to blame me for not stating those things explicitly, then fine, I'm guilty as charged; but I figured that those elements were already implicit in the phrase since it would patently obvious that for things we KNOW leave no evidence the absence of evidence wouldn't matter one way or another. Yet, I've never heard anyone use the phrase as it pertains to things for which we KNOW leave no evidence, like what Joe Blow ate 30 years ago. Rather, the phrase is always used pertaining to things for which we would EXPECT there to be evidence for (or, at least, potential evidence) if they existed; then, after finding no evidence, instead of people admitting that such absence of evidence is evidence of the thing's absence, they insist that it's not.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
As I recall, the evidence for the existence of WMDs was satellite images. That seems like valid evidence for the existence of WMDs, however, when confronted with on the ground inspections that satellite evidence should have been dismissed.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
In general, I don't think it makes sense to use something like "absence of evidence is (or is not) evidence of absence" too strictly. If you do, you should reject many worlds since there is no evidence for it. All this phrase is is a reminder that we could get things wrong if we don't have adequate evidence.
I do think it is useful to use Bayesian analysis where appropriate, but I don't think it is very useful if we can't determine those probabilities with much confidence.
It's been too long and my memory is too fuzzy to get into too deep of a debate, but, IIRC, most all experts at the time said that the satellite photos were not even decent evidence that there were WMDs in Iraq because there were simply far too many other possible explanations behind what the images were. This is in contrast with, eg, the data that was built-up/developed about Bin Ladin's whereabouts when Seal Team 6 went in; even then, the experts could only say it was maybe a 66/33 chance he was there, which was far higher than the likelihood of those images being evidence of WMDs.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
You mean there's no evidence for Copenhagen, since it's the interp making extra assumptions present nowhere in the math. MW is just taking the math at face value, so the math IS the evidence for MW.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Really, the essence of Bayes is how to properly reason. We have beliefs, we experience new evidence; how should this new evidence effect our beliefs? Bayes gives us a formula for how evidence affects beliefs. Yet we all believe things for which we can't determine the probabilities of our confidence level, and we all experience new evidence with which we can't influence our confidence levels; so, what is one to do? You might as well apply what you've said to reasoning, in general, because if we can't determine such probabilities with confidence to our beliefs or evidence, we can't really reason at all except in extremely nebulous ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I think Bayes can be used practically. As I've repeated many times, I use it in my profession of poker. I don't have EXACT probabilities of how often players make plays with certain hands. Yet, I can always remind myself that the question "given they just did this, what is the probability they have that?" is best answered with two others: "given they have that, what is the probability they would've done this; and given that they don't have that, what is the probability they would've done this." Online, most sites give you 30 seconds for each decision, so you can't do high level math in your head; you basically just have to learn how to intuitively ask these questions and come to rough answers based on very rough data. Yet... it works. Despite the inevitable inaccuracies due to my limited human brain, Bayes can work even without being able to determine probabilities with a high level of confidence. It's much better than nothing at all.
There’s really no difference between “someone ate something” and “something existed in the past”. It seems that one is a statement about an activity, and the other is a statement about the existence of something, but someone ate something could (obviously) be translated into a statement about existence (“Joe Blow’s stomach contained partially digested food at 12:00 noon on May 12, 1211.”)
In any event, I think we are in basic agreement that an absence of the evidence that one would suspect could be found if something existed constitutes evidence of its absence. Medical studies, for example, involve falsifying the “null hypothesis” (the notion that a drug has the same effect as a placebo). The null hypothesis is equivalent to the notion that something (Sasquatches, for example) does not exist. It can be falsified by certain kinds of evidence, but not by others (because of the problems previously outlined).
The further question of what constitutes “evidence” is a touchy one. If we find Joe Blow’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, that has evidentiary value – although it hardly proves that Joe is the murderer. There could be any number of reasons his fingerprints are on the blunt object.
The same is true for “evidence” about Sasquatch (or about God, for that matter). We need not claim that the eye witness reports, the footprints and the photographs have no evidentiary value to find them unpersuasive. To return to the notion of probability – it is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that any giant, hairy, non-human hominids roam the Pacific Northwest. However, given the evidence that they do, it’s MORE likely that Sasquatches roam Oregon than that giant bipedal crocodiles wearing top-hats and spats roam Oregon. That’s because we DO have evidence (albeit unpersuasive) for one, but not for the other. Similarly, it’s more likely that Lazarus rose from the dead than that Joe Blow did (although I find both highly, highly unlikely).
The American crocodile is a declining species that is only found on mainland USA in small numbers in the south of Florida. While it might be reasonable to assume that they are not bipedal or wear top-hats and spats, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
This was actually a two-part joke, and I omitted the first half. For completeness, here's the whole joke:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli
An archeologist published a report of his many-years excavation of ancient Egyptian burial sites, in which he found artifacts made of copper wire. He concluded that this meant that the ancient Egyptians understood electricity and used it to "communicate" over wires, as in telegraphy or telephonic communication.
Another archeologist, who had conducted "digs" in ancient Andean sites noted that he had never found any sort of metallic wire, such as the type used in wired telegraphy. He concluded that this proved that the ancient Andean societies he was studying must have had "wireless" communications."
Which is more likely the existence of Sasquatch or the existence of Many Worlds?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I'll say! Let me give you some examples from the animal kingdom. We live in an area that is partly suburban, partly wildly rural. Couple of years ago my bitter half and yours fooly spotted a mountain lion in a field adjacent to a supermarket parking lot. When we got home, we checked the Internet, only to be informed that no mountain lions exist in the area of the U.S. where we live. But the feline we saw could have posed for the photos on the Web; that's how strong the resemblance was.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Similarly, this morning about 4:30 am, when I looked out the window onto the brightly-lit front lawn I saw a creature I'd never seen before. It was extremely fat, between 2 and 3 feet long, and covered from snout to tail with gray fur, with a few black and white markings. It didn't look at all like a skunk or a ferret or anything other than a badger. I went online to look up "badgers" and the photos depicting that mammal looked exactly like the creature I'd seen early this morning, but various websites insist that badgers are found in the Mid- and far-west of the U.S., and not in my state.
On both occasions, I didn't have a camera. Both times, I was completely sober.
Well, I know what I saw. As far as I'm concerned, that's "evidence" that both mountain lions and badgers can be found this far east. To quote the Marx Brothers --"Who are you gonna believe --me or your lying eyes?" The state wildlife department wouldn't even let me email them!
In the end, people are only going to believe what they want to believe. (But I still know what I saw.)
I recommend always carrying a camera and bottle of booze :D
They aren't really comparable; the idea that there are these giant harry ape-like things roaming the forests of certain parts of the US that nobody has been able to capture either alive or dead is just preposterous; on the other hand, like I say, MW is what you get when you take the math that models QM as real and add nothing else. MW doesn't "exist" in our world except in the QM mathematical models, so it's hardly similar to a possibly living being.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Where do you live? Cougar sightings are becoming more common east of the Mississippi. Cougars have always lived in Florida (The Florida Panther). I've heard about well-confirmed cougar sightings in Illinois, Georgia, and some other states (I can't remember which, but some cougars have been captured or killed in these states). However, there are no sustainable populations of cougars in the East; the cougars that have been killed or captured are all young males, driven out of their birth-lands and roaming after food. Cougars are famous for traveling as much as 30-50 miles in a day, prowling for food. Increased deer populations in urban areas have led to more cougars in towns.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Here in Eugene, cougars killed two goats and several chickens within the last two weeks, right in town. Two cougars (a mother and her year-old cub) were trapped and killed (the local newspaper reported that the cougars had been "euthanized", but it seems to me they were simply killed). In any event, if a lone, young male cougar is prowling about in Eastern states that does not mean cougar populations have returned to the area -- breeding pairs have NOT been found east of the Mississippi. (How the cougars cross the Mississippi is another question, for which I do not have the answer.)
All I was comparing was their likelihood, not Sasquatch and Many Worlds. What do you say P(S), the probability of Sasquatch is? What is P(MW), the probability of Many Worlds. Those numbers are comparable. My view is the following: P(S) > 0; P(MW) = 0. Unlike Sasquatch there really is no evidence for MW.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
As we've argued in the past, my position is when "you take the math that models QM as real and add nothing else" you no longer get an interpretation of QM. What you get is an interpretation of a deterministic fantasy land that might have made some minor sense in the 19th century, but is obsolete today. So the "math" is not evidence that I would accept any more than you would accept the sightings of Sasquatch.
Aunty, that sounds very much like the notorious Badgecabra the result of cross breeding gone bad between a Badger and Chupacabra. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChupacabraQuote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Around these parts, its the wood ape aka Big Foot that I keep an eye out for.
Absence of evidence=I just haven't run across it yet. Evidence of absence= he just ain't passed through my creek yet
but when he does I'll be ready for him with my Sasquatch Field Guide signed by Dr. Jeff Meldrum-something I picked up at the 2013 Texas Bigfoot Convention.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps940c5bb1.jpg
Just a few years ago, police killed a cougar here on the North Side of Chicago in the Roscoe Village neighborhood. That's an upper-middle class yuppie neighborhood well inside the city and nowhere near any forest preserves or anything. The location the cougar was killed was about a mile from Wrigley Field, less than half a mile from Lane Tech High School, and just a block away from a grade school.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Sightings are reported occasionally in the northern suburbs, but having one appear in the city itself, especially a heavily populated neighborhood soon after evening rush, was pretty startling.
I'd say P(S) is less than 1% (I don't give anything a 0%), while P(MW) is true is 90% or so.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
The math is the evidence. The fact that every test has yet to find any split between the quantum and macro world is the evidence. Occam's Razor is the evidence. Every empirical test we have points towards MW and not anything else.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
You can vehemently disagree with MW all you want, but to call it "not an interpretation" is just egregiously ignorant and does nothing but show your bias. I think Copenhagen is equally stupid and wrong, but I don't call it "not an interpretation" because it is. You don't get to redefine scientific terms to fit your tastes.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Also, you have no rational reason for rejecting the math of QM or for stating that it's unreal except your deification of our sense-experience, which has proven so fallible and limited over the course of centuries I have no idea why you'd feel it's more reliable than a mathematical model that has withstood every test science has thrown at it for almost 100 years now. MW explains both the objective determinism of Shrodinger and the subjective indeterminism of Heisenberg; you have presented absolutely no substantial logical (much less mathematical or scientific) arguments against either of these.
How are we going to argue using probabilities if our assessment of the probability of something existing is so different? You say P(MW) = 90 and I say P(MW) = 0.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Don't worry. I don't want to change your mind.
My problem with Sasquatch, on the other hand, is cultural. When I think of him (or her--I suppose there should be a female version), I think of a humanoid with three characteristics: (1) big, (2) hairy, and (3) nonexistent.
So, if I should happen to see Hagrid coming out of his cottage behind Hogwarts, I wouldn't call him Sasquatch because he exists. In the same way, when I see Uncle Fred on his monthly trip back to town for supplies, I wouldn't (dare) call him Sasquatch because he exists. Culturally built into the very definition of Sasquatch for many people (and I'm trying not to be one of them) is his nonexistence. No wonder they don't go looking for him.
That's why I put P(S) > 0.
There is definitely at least one female; pretty sure she's named Penny.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
There's a famous Bayesian saying that true Bayesians cannot agree to disagree because any difference in their priors indicate a difference in knowledge that, if they both possessed the same knowledge, would not be different (their priors I mean). In our case, the difference is clearly in your desire to believe in indeterminism and choice, and how this bias has lead you repeatedly to misunderstand QM or what MW actually is; I have no such bias. My only desire is to believe the truth. If a scientific experiment came out tomorrow that proved Copenhagen right I would believe it instantly and drop MW. I only think MW is true based on the available evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Well, it's a bit silly to think of nonexistence as being a quality of thing. I mean, we DO discover new species rather frequently, and there are still parts of the Earth that are quite hard for us to access and study, so there's always the possibility that there's something out there that is LIKE a bigfoot we still haven't found. It's unlikely, given its size and how much myth has been built up around it (most of the strange creatures near the bottom of the ocean are stranger than any man-made fiction; see the Basking Shark or Goblin Shark).Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJDeZIMoEUwQuote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
If that is the Penny one is likely to find when looking for Sasquatch, I don't see why more people aren't looking for her.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I plan on calling mine Betsy Bigfoot assuming I can find her and she doesn't feed me to the little Sasquatches.
The scientific experiments that validate Copenhagen as an interpretation for QM are the various double slit experiments.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
One problem with MW is that it removes the Born assumption and so it can't calculate the coefficients of the Schrodinger wave equation. That is not an asset for an interpretation but a liability. Because of that MW doesn't even reach the level of an interpretation for QM. In effect, it is false. That is why I have assessed P(MW) to be zero.
The Heisenberg principle requires "uncertainty" and this is a mathematical consequence of the Schrodinger wave function. This is in conflict with both "randomness" and "determinism". This is not to say that the Schrodinger equation itself is not deterministic. It is. But what does it determine? It determines a set of probabilities that an individual particle might have based on the group of particles. In this case the group of particles is primary, not the individual particle. Because MW can't see that and insists on preserving an obsolete billiard ball model of reality, its grasp on reality is weak. This is another reason for P(MW) = 0.
Bohm and Hiley brought up other unacknowledged assumptions related to Hilbert space that the various MW proponents make. From their perspective, MW loses the Occam Razor's argument on MW's own terms.
The only way one might bring determinism back into QM is to add assumptions, such as Bohm has done, not remove them. However, the cost of these added assumptions based on Bell's inequality is accepting non-locality.
EDIT:
To bring this back to the OP. I don't understand how anyone who believes in MW can also believe in the strict validity of the saying that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence". MW has no empirical evidence supporting it, nor even a rational foundation. Using that maxim as a guide is another way to see that P(MW) = 0.
Absolutely false. There is nothing in a double slit that confirms a collapse postulate. MW explains the double slit results better than CI.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Yeah, I'm the one that pointed you toward this problem and admitted it as such. But as a problem it's no more severe (I'd say much less so) than those facing Copenhagen. However, it's ridiculously wrong to state that without Born MW doesn't count as an interpretation. I explained this in another thread that even theories being incomplete (like gravity or evolution) don't invalidate them. Being inconsistent, like CI, is worse than being incomplete, like MW).Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
The HUP requires subjective/observer uncertainty, not objective uncertainty since, as you said, Shrodinger (SWE) itself is deterministic. Trying to say that SWE is deterministic of indeterminism is an oxymoron and is only reoncilible via MW. I have no idea what you mean by "set of probabilities... based on the group of particles." WHAT "group of particles?" The double slit experiments were done both with groups and individual particles with the same results.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Well, you'd have to clarify what these assumptions are rather than just assert they exist.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Yes it does. Every QM experiment done so far is evidence for MW since every one confirms that the math, which MW takes as real and sufficient in itself, is accurate, while none have supported any of the assumptions present in CI or anything else.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
If you could ever get past all these falsities you insist on repeating, maybe you could see this issue with some clarity.
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo