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Of course one can. If you make a choice, you are responsible. That's the way reality is. It doesn't matter whether the choice was rationally made or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philosofer123
If you open the metaphysical box, stand up, stretch, step outside and take a deep breath, you will see that the regress argument is nonsense built out of a misunderstanding of determinism and chance.
Then why is insanity a legitimate legal defense for one who has committed a crime?Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
If you sincerely explain to the judge the regress argument, I agree that this should help the insanity plea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philosofer123
In the article you cite, Robin Hanson writes this:Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
We have done enough tests by now that if the many worlds view were right, the worlds where the tests were passed would constitute an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the set of all those worlds where the test was tried. So the key question is: how is it that we happen to be in one of those very rare worlds? Any classical statistical significance test would strongly reject the hypothesis that we are in a typical world.
I agree with this. We should not be experiencing ourselves in this exceptional world where QM works the way it does, if many worlds were true. I don't think he's right in claiming that the probability should be uniform across this universe of worlds, but if he wants to avoid introducing something else, he has to have a uniform distribution. However, that just makes the rarity of our experienced world more evident. It is evidence that something is wrong with many worlds concept.
It seems as if the "mangled" worlds are a way to get rid of those other worlds to explain why we don't ever experience ourselves there.
To the extent that many worlds predicts that all results happen in some world, it predicts what CI predicts for one world. It doesn't need the Schrodinger equation to do that. But that makes it a weaker theory because it is harder to falsify than the CI interpretation.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
All of this is wrong, which just confirms my suspicion that you don't understand most of what you read on this subject.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Exactly, so they are experimentally indistinguishable.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Actually, it's the reverse; MW is quite easy to falsify and CI is near impossible to falsify. MW's key assumption that QM works all the way down is falsifiable if we find any split between he micro and macro world predicted by CI's collapse. However, there's nothing you can "find" to falsify CI, although finding said split would prove it.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
You have failed to answer my question. The question is designed to show that society holds people responsible only to the degree that they are capable of action that is based on rational deliberation. According to your conception of "free" action, one's choices have no explanation and are therefore non-rational. As a result, it makes no sense to hold one responsible for one's choices, and the conclusion of the regress argument stands.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I enjoyed reading your philosophy and plan on re-reading it. It is a very thorough and accurate for everything it claims to be; one man’s understanding of his surroundings based on his experiences, emotions, perceptions, etc. which were all built by him, occasionally using blocks from others but nonetheless molded completely to himself and his immediate wants and desires.
One more thing, I love you.
Thank you for your kind words, stymontgomery. I am glad that you enjoyed reading the document.Quote:
Originally Posted by stymontgomery
Should you have any additional feedback, please do not hesitate to share.
Does society let most people off because of an insanity plea?Quote:
Originally Posted by Philosofer123
The individual's intention could be one explanation for the choice that individual made. Now that the choice has an explanation, although not a deterministic explanation, it is "rational". The regress argument fails again.
MW claims that it gets every result. Because of that, it doesn't need the Schrodinger equation to get any particular result the way CI does. However, it makes an assumption, that is unacknowledged, that this splitting actually avoids uncertainty. MW supporters just hope it does.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Why should one doubt that uncertainty is removed in a MW metaphysics? It is highly unlikelihood that we should find ourselves in a universe where the probabilities obtained by CI are not uniform unless the probabilities in all the other worlds are not uniform either. But then all those other worlds are uncertain like ours, and the MW program fails to deliver on its promise of restoring determinism.
MW is too vague to falsify, because there is no result that can happen that it would not claim to be one of those it covers.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I have no idea what you're saying here. The "every result" MW gets is determined by Schrodinger (SWE). SWE describes what the WF does; MW says it does it by decoherence across worlds. Without SWE MW wouldn't be interpreting anything, so I don't know what you can possibly mean by "MW doesn't need SWE;" that's nonsensical.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Also don't know what you mean by an assumption that "this splitting avoids uncertainty." The only "splitting" happens in CI, not MW. Decoherence is not the split/collapse.
I've explained this about a billion times; uncertainty can be had on the subjective level, ie what we experience, because the only way to experience the determinism of the SWE would be to be outside all of the worlds themselves. As Hanson says, it may be possible to derive Born, thus explaining why the probabilities aren't uniform, by finite world-counting. Whether this is possible to experimentally do is another matter entirely.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
What's vague about "the wavefunction is real and everything is in superposition?" That's not vague in the least, and it's falsifiable by finding a level of organization in which groups of particles are not in superposition. CI's collapse if far more vague; what is it? What causes it? How does it cause it? At what size-point does it happen? None of these questions can be (or at least has been) answered experimentally.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Absolutely false. If any result shows that a group of particles are not in superposition, that would falsify MW.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Irrelevant.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
A mere intention in no way implies a rational thought process. Insane people have intentions, but are not rational.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
The regress argument stands.
A flea is born and struggles to survive in a harsh and brutal world. Somehow in its struggle it finds its way to the back of a passing dog and begins its flea destiny of feeding and procreation. In short order there are thousands of fleas on dog, each with their own views on existence and the nature of the dog on which they exist.
The flea who found his way to the dog after a struggle is forever grateful for what dog provides: shelter, sustenance, protection from the evils of a dog less world.
The fleas born on dog have never known life away from Dog and therefore take Him for granted, even questioning whether dog still has meaning to them.
Those fleas at the base of dog's neck and muzzle, protected alike from the elements and from dog's own movements, love Dog and see him as benevolent.
Those at Dog's *** who are frequently bitten, kicked at and shat on by Dog fear his wrath and live by his whim and the luck of capricious fate. But they do not doubt his presence.
Dog, if he thinks of fleas at all, sees them as an annoyance and an irritant, something he'd just as soon be rid of. Occasionally they annoy him enough to bite at them and given time they bleed him to the point of illness; but mostly dog has no thoughts on the existence of fleas.
And herein lies the deep flaw in your philosophy on the nature and existence of God. It presupposes that any such being capable of omnipotence would still somehow be answerable to the ethics, mores and questions of us fleas.
It is extremely unlikely that a god would require or notice our belief in him/them/it. It is even more unlikely given the nature of man that we are the pinnacle life form in this universe. A God made in the image and ego of man does not likely exist. But a god beyond our Ken and understanding almost certainly must.
So you agree that it is highly unlikely that the God of classical theism exists.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dono
But then you claim that "a god beyond our ken and understanding almost certainly must" exist. How do you support that claim?
I said your philosophy is flawed in a number of ways, foremost that your own prejudice of what a god ought to be and do is reason enough for discounting its existence. You spend an awful lot of time quoting "isms" and various texts, all of whom are perfectly good reads and yet none of whom are any more or less valid than the texts which support theism (of any kind). Therefore, your philosophy is incomplete and only accepts data that agrees with the notion you brought into it: that God doesn't exist. You don't actually prove anything. You just cite sources that support your thesis. And in the process ignore entire bodies of work to the contrary view. In order to include or discount a specific work as a reference I'd like to know what criteria you used. Certainly Buddha is no more or less relevant than the hearsay teachings of the apostles?
My assertion is that logic dictates in an infinite universe all things must be possible. In our immediate universe there is strong evidence to support likely tampering with our own evolutionary process. My claim is merely that antiquated writing, bad translations and fanciful opinionated church leaders have obscured the being of God into something not actually described in ancient texts.
I have considered a very wide range of viewpoints in formulating my philosophy. And I have found some viewpoints that I feel are strongly supported by the arguments and evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dono
Nothing in your posts refute anything in my philosophy.
Unless you can provide persuasive arguments and/or evidence that supports positions that are not consistent with my own, I see no reason to continue this discussion.
You mention "evidence to support likely tampering with our own evolutionary process", but you fail to elaborate.
What do you mean by "infinite universe?" The closest thing we get in modern science is a multi-verse or many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Our own universe is not infinite. Even in a multi-verse or many worlds all things that are possible will happen; this doesn't mean everything is possible. One still has to consider that entropy is likely something you can't get away from anywhere, and it's impossible to reconcile entropy with any classical conception of God. I have no idea what you mean by there being evidence of tampering with our evolutionary process because there is no such thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dono
Why "almost certainly must" exist? FWIW, I agree with this if one is willing to consider quantum fields a god.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dono
An infinite universe, or an infinite amount of time, does not mean that all things are inevitable.
Firstly, impossible things will never happen. Secondly, there is no law that says possible things have to happen eventually. The universe might be infinite, but it could just repeat itself infinitely, without anything interesting happening. I daresay a lot of very unlikely things will happen in the course of eternity, but they don't have to.
If there is an infinite amount of possible worlds/moments (and if the possible is as valid as the actual), then every possible thing does exist. But we couldn't say anything about God's influence on us. Only the moment (your moment) would meaningfully exist, and it would have some possible reasons, histories and futures which required a God, and some which didn't. This is assuming that God is also subject to the law of infinite possibilities, but then if he wasn't, and if all possible worlds exist, then he would be a spectacularly impotent God, hardly worth of the name.
Many worlds, even with Hanson's conjectures, is not able to compute the probability amplitudes that form part of the Schrodinger wave equation (SWE) since they are not a uniform distribution. So MW does not have the SWE. Does it need it? Here I am trying to cut MW as much slack as possible. I don't think it actually does need it because every event occurs in MW.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
However, that raises the question of why QM can get the answers right in the single world we are in now. There are multiple problems:
1) Why do we continue to experience ourselves in one world? We should experience ourselves in multiple worlds.
2) Why are the Born probabilities not uniform in the world we experience ourselves to be in? If chance is driving these probabilities they should be a uniform distribution as Hanson explains.
3) Why do we experience any "superpositions" at all in a single world? After decoherence, the superpositions should stop.
Hanson did not get Born's results, as I recall. It was only a close approximation to them and required additional assumptions. Maggie McKee, in her article (http://hanson.gmu.edu/press/NewScientist-2-23-06.htm) cited by Hanson, states the problem clearly that Hanson is trying to solve:Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
"And this idea, called the "many worlds" interpretation, raises other problems. Some theorists say it suggests that physicists doing a quantum experiment would find themselves in a random world, such that they would have an equal chance of seeing the bell ring or not ring. But this does not match the well-tested Born rule, which may predict that the bell should ring 70% of the time, for example."
I don't see how one can practically do finite "world counting" without taking a supernatural position outside the universe of many worlds.
What I don't understand, given many worlds, is why we can experience the superpositions of anything today in a single world. Those superpositions should have been resolved into many worlds at the beginning of the universe.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
But, again, there's a difference between deriving/explaining SWE and using SWE. Go back to my examples of aliens modeling how a car works VS explaining how it works. SWE models how the wavefunction behaves; MW interprets what SWE says, it just doesn't explain it as Born does. So you should rephrase your "MW doesn't need SWE" to "MW doesn't need TO EXPLAIN SWE." There's a difference. MW needs SWE since that's what it's interpreting.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Of these, only 2. is an actual problem. Hanson's "mangled words" MAY explain why the probabilities in the world we experience isn't uniform, but, again, we have no way to currently test it experimentally. It's just a possibility (one amongst many).Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
1) Because we are a quantum system ourselves; we decohere along with whatever other system we become entangled with. When we decohere, we subjectively find ourselves in one world. In a sense, one can look at our uncertainty prior to decisions/results as a kind of metaphorical superposition (they made a joke about this on The Big Bang Theory not too long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCOE__N6v4o). Anyway, asking why we wouldn't experience multiple worlds is a bit asking why we can't be in two places at the same time. It's a similar principle. If one world goes left and another goes right, we can't very well can't go right and left simultaneously, can we? The closest we can get is pondering whether to go right or left before we go left in one world and right in another.
3) Our "single world" is constantly decohering. Even if a single particle decoheres and becomes fixed in one world that doesn't meant there aren't countless others still in superposition, or even that that particle can't be in superposition again. For particles to stop being in superposition and stop decohering would essentially be for them to stop existing at all. They only seem to stop being in superposition and stop decohering when we observe them because we've become entangled with them. That's two quantum systems entangling out of a near infinity of possible quantum systems that can become entangled.
No, and I didn't claim he did; the point is that he's presenting one possible way of getting Born, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I don't see why you think the superpositions should've resolved themselves at the beginning of the universe for... Let's assume the beginning of the universe gave rise to 1,000,000^1,000,000 particles, and that may be conservative; assuming these things are decohering temporally by interacting with each other, why do you think they'd be done at the start of the universe?Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
That sounds like a gigantic overestimation, really. What kind of particles are you talking about? Presently the high end estimate for particles in the observable universe is 10^82. I realize you did not say observable. Still, I don't know how one gets from 10^82 to 1,000,000^1,000,000 for a universe with a diameter of 46 billion light years. Homegeneity would demand a much smaller number, unless you are talking about sub atomic particles--quarks, leptons, etc. I still think it would be a smaller number than a million to the millionth power.Quote:
Let's assume the beginning of the universe gave rise to 1,000,000^1,000,000 particles, and that may be conservative;
I was, and perhaps you're right about the overestimate; but one thing to consider is that particles are constantly popping in and out of existence as well, so the total number is not fixed. I not only had in mind those that exist in a fixed state, but those that have existed and disappeared as quickly. Probably impossible to estimate. Anyway, the actual number isn't all that important to the point.Quote:
Originally Posted by desiresjab
Quote:
I not only had in mind those that exist in a fixed state, but those that have existed and disappeared as quickly.
Hmm...those fireflies could add up all right, but their weak identities and sheer numbers dazzle me. For your conception of particles in this case, you may have erred on the conservative side.
Interestingly, the number of permutations (individual orders) of a fifty-two card deck of cards weighs in at around 10^70, and ought to easily the fill the Grand Canyon top to bottom, end to end with grains of average earth beach sand. It's a runaway.
Below is the actual number of orders of our deck of cards.
80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883 277824000000000000
Widely more than an octillion octillions, just in a deck of cards.
In a well randomized deck of cards it is not very likely that particluar arrangement has ever been shuffled up in earth's history.
That was my minor interjection and irrelevancy.
As I understand it, Born interprets the norm of the coefficients of the SWE as probabilities. Those coefficients are complex numbers, but if you multiply them by their conjugates you get a real number. That product is what I'm calling the norm of the coefficients (maybe there's a better term). Whatever the name for this product is, this converts the "probability amplitude" to a probability for that event. Finally, if you sum all of these probabilities, you get 1. This is what you would expect if they were probabilities. Then one checks experimentally that this is the distribution of events. I think that is all the Born assumption is that the norm of the coefficients is the probability of the event occurring if it is measured.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
I don't understand how MW interprets these coefficients, but it seems that Born's interpretation works experimentally, so why reject it?
Are you implying that we can't be in two places at one time? I thought the current MW position was saying we were in many places at one time. We must be experiencing ourselves in those other worlds like we are in this world.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Bohm and Hiley describes Everett's original version as a many minds rather than a many worlds position. Basically, the worlds didn't physically split, but our minds split and we only remember one of these splits. They claim this requires other assumptions about mind that have not been verified making MW rejection of the Born assumption nothing more than a replacement of one assumption with other assumptions that cannot be verified. And there goes the Occam's Razor argument that MW claims is in its favor.
If the particle can go back into superposition (which it seems to do), why can't we experience those other worlds we were in before decohering the first time? My suspicion is that MW doesn't remove uncertainty and so what is the point of it?Quote:
Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
This a simple scenario about spin that I don't understand how MW interprets. Suppose we measure the spin of a particle in direction X and get a result, say -1. At this point we don't know what the spin would be in some other direction, call it direction Y, because the uncertainty principle says we can't know both of these at the same time. Those other potential results are still in superposition unlike the X direction which we now know. Then we measure the spin in direction Y and let us say we get the value 1. With that measurement the superposition Y decoheres. What about the spin in the original X direction? Is it still -1? No one knows. It is back in superposition. We have to measure it again. Rather than -1, it could now be 1.
How does having many worlds resolve this situation to make it deterministic?
What does all this have to do with the topic of this thread?
Philosofer123 seems to assume there is a mutually exclusive dichotomy between determinism and chance. If something is not deterministic then it must have a chance distribution, which must be a uniform distribution if we do not want to involve panpsychism of some sort. From there he gets a regress argument, which I admit works in his preferred metaphysics. My challenge is that his preferred metaphysics does not fit reality and one of the ways to argue that (there are others) is to reference quantum mechanics.
Yes, but it comes back to the issue of whether probabilities are something that exist in reality or in the mind, and whether there's a difference between this on the macro or micro level. Going back to the old coin-flip example, if you add up the probabilities of the two sides it also comes out to 1; but is it REALLY 50/50 or is the 50/50 only generated by our inability to mentally calculate the deterministic forces involve that would make the result of any coinflip 100/0 rather than 50/50? The correct answer is the latter in the macro world, since applying General Relativity in the span of the flip and the landing would give you the right answer every time (the problem would be being able to do the calculations before the landing!). So, the question becomes whether Born is to SWE as the coin-flip is to us; is it expressing an ACTUAL probability or just showing that the SWE decoheres across worlds unequally.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Right now, there's no way to experimentally tell, but it's worth pointing out that Born itself is silent on the Copenhagen/MW issue. It just gives us a means to do calculations based on our experiences, which is compatible with both views.
Nobody is rejecting Born; as you say, it's needed experimentally. Right now MW DOESN'T interpret the coefficients as it has no means to. CI only interprets them by assuming a single world and that the Born probabilities are an objective part of that single world. The problem with this are all of the problems this creates between CI and macro physics that have yet to be solved. The question is whether CI's assumption that "gets Born" (the single world collapse) is justifiable.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I don't know how to explain it any simpler than that: CI "gets Born" by assuming a collapse into a single world; this collapse creates all the problems/paradoxes associated with CI that are currently unsolved. MW "doesn't get Born" by assuming the objectivity of the SWE, which gives no reason why decoherence would happen more often one way than another. So, again, "where does Born come from?" is THE problem for MW. It's one myself (and all other MW proponents) admit exists; but it's no worse than the problems that exist for CI. I'm not sure what about this you don't get...
This is just a language barrier thing: the "us" in the other worlds are not "us" in this world. Let's say I'm driving a car and am not sure whether to turn left or right. MW says in one world "I" turn right and in another "I" turn left, but the "me" that turns left is not the "me" that turns right, and neither are either the "me" that wasn't sure whether to turn right or left. The point is that the "me" that isn't sure whether to turn left or right can never experiencing having turned both left and right simultaneously. Subjectively, I experience turning left in one world and right in another.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Few things here:Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
1. There's no justification for assuming that the mind operates any differently from the world around it. In fact, this creates other problems since it still has the implications that nothing is happening in the world unless there is a mind to perceive it... so what was happening on the quantum level for all those billions of years before there were any intelligent minds?
2. MW doesn't reject Born; MW just can't explain where Born comes from.
3. Don't know what you mean about "there goes the Occam's Razor argument for MW." Occam's Razor will always be on MW's side since MW basic claim is that everything (including us) operates according to QM. This is demonstrably simpler than CI that has to assume a collapse or even the above many minds that assumes that mind is somehow distinct/different from everything else in the universe.
In a sense, we can. Going back to my above driving example, let's say you turn left. Even if you can't turn right AND left, you can go back to that same street and turn right the next time and see what it would've been like. So, in a sense, you have experienced both the "worlds" of having turned left and right. That said, because both events happened at different times having been separated by many subsequent decoherences, the experiences may be slightly different than they would've been the first time.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Here's another visual illustration: http://www.askamathematician.com/201...r-many-worlds/
Go down to "simplified example" right before the red/blue arrow diagrams. You can see how the different worlds intersect.
I've explained this about a billion times: it removes uncertainty on the OBJECTIVE level, but SUBJECTIVELY we will always experience uncertainty because we can never be in both worlds simultaneously. At each decoherence point we subjectively find ourselves in one world or the other, and this creates uncertainty TO US.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I don't know what you mean by "what is the point of it?" The "point of it" is that it seems to be right! The problems with CI are well-documented and seemingly unsolvable. MW removes those problems by saying "everything is QM." If everything is QM, that includes us, and if we are quantum systems than we'd experience uncertainty due to decoherence. Is it really so radical that how things objectively work are so different than how things seem to us subjectively? Subjectively it seems like we're walking on a flat Earth and the sun moves in the sky. Objectively the Earth is round and we're the ones moving. Does us not being able to "experience" a round and moving Earth mean that the Earth isn't round and isn't moving?
It says it's both, and that with our measurement we (along with the particle) decohere, so we get both results if we consider both "us"es measuring the particle in both worlds. This basically Schrodinger's Cat: when we open the door, we decohere along with the cat, and A(us) in A(world) sees A(cat) as dead and B(us) in B(world) sees B(cat) as alive. Perhaps you don't understand that upon measurmeent we decohere along with the particles? Decoherence is about two quantum systems interacting; we are a quantum system ourselves, so we decohere when we "measure" because "measurement" is a type of interaction. Before measurement we can only see the possible interactions and measure it to a certain extent (Heisenberg).Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I downloaded your PDF. I want to revisit this topic after I read it. I've written my own philosophical works, but I can't post them here yet ;/