Quantum Theory and The Many Worlds Theory

More from Frank Tipler: Many Worlds is not only EASILY TESTABLE, it is an essential idea for many areas of biology, physics and engineering.

Tipler on the Many Worlds, fwiw:

Quote:

---

I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels: not just atoms, but also humans are quantum mechanical objects. So if the MWI is actually false, then quantum mechanics must also be false at some level of complexity. All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well.

---

I'm still reading Tipler's article, but your comment that Many Worlds being "easily testable" makes me wonder how such a test would be done.

I don't trust Tipler's statement that you quote: "All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well." Nor the idea that MWI is "not an option". Here is the Wikipedia article on Tipler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

I'm still reading Tipler's article, but your comment that Many Worlds being "easily testable" makes me wonder how such a test would be done.

I don't trust Tipler's statement that you quote: "All competent mathematical physicists know this perfectly well." Nor the idea that MWI is "not an option". Here is the Wikipedia article on Tipler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler

---

Classic ad hominen attack.

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again. And I have pointed out your confusion over and over, and you have not met these points. I suggest you educate yourself more fully on these ideas and then comment on them. There is a huge literature on the Many Worlds in the academic/scientific/mathematical community, by people other than Tipler who have less controversial ideas on other matters. You can find deep technical papers, and papers more geared toward laymen, all over the Internet. That you would Google Tipler and try to find something personally to discredit him is not just classic ad hom, but demonstrates to me that you have no interest in actually learning about this subject and, like so many Internet interlocutors, you are primarily interested in defending a view you hold because you want to doggedly stick to what you believe whether there are good grounds for your beliefs or not. This is not a discussion. It's a game of one-upmanship.

Tipler's ideas on the Omega Point are of course wholly irrelevant to the validity of Many Worlds. This is a useless discussion. A typically retarded Internet discussion

ETA: Just to be specific, let's identify your implied ad hom. It is, after all, clearly why you made the Wiki link. It is this:

Quote:

---

Frank Jennings Tipler (born February 1, 1947) is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University.[2] Tipler has authored books and papers on the Omega Point, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead. Some have argued that it is pseudoscience.

---

So obviously this "resurrection of the dead" bit and "pseudoscience" bit got you all hot and bothered. Yet what about the fact that Tipler is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane? Are his professional credentials irrelevant? Of course, his professional credentials don't make his ideas right, any more than his more irreverant ideas make him wrong. All of this is classic ad hom.

Can you address the substance of his discussion on how Many Worlds solves the problem of quantum non-locality and indeterminism, or not? I expect not. I also expect you never read his book on the Omega Point, and indeed never even heard of Tipler, until you Googled him. So you also have no idea on whether his ideas on the Omega Point have any validity or not, obviously! But all it takes is a quick link cherry-picked up from Google to try to discredit someone in order to support ideas you have no grasp of anyway.

Disgusting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cioran

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again.

---

I think you're doing very well in digging into this material YesNo - especially that article about which interpretation physicists believe, and showed the wide variety of views held, some even changing their views. Copenhagen on Monday, MWI on Tuesday,...

Tipler is another fringe figure, like Everett, as comments by serious physicists make plain: "George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline"... Physicist Sean M. Carroll thought Tipler's early work was constructive but that now he has become a "crackpot".

So when Tiper says, "I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels.", how can you trust him? You can spend many years studying Theoretical physics to MSc level to check out his views, or you can look at what mainstream physicists say, and it certainly isn't that MWI is the only necessary theory and not an option! Some of the physics he did, as Sean M. Carroll points out, was constructive, but how can a lay person sort out the constructive from the crackpot?

P.S. Sean M. Carroll and George Ellis really are world-class figures, well worth exploring them on Wikipedia... Carroll has written the most recent MSc level textbook on GR to gain general applause. YesNo, you can get a free online version if you want a challenge...its gentler and clearer than most other texts at that level... Ellis co-authored the classic monograph the Large Scale Structure of Space and Time with Hawking (but that book is *really* tough... if you finish Caroll maybe try it...)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Logical fallacies like ad hominems are synonymous with "illogical arguments" because that's literally what they are

---

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED, but I think I like the other better, it's just "personal". So an "ad hominem attack" is simply "a personal attack".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED, but I think I like the other better, it's just "personal". So an "ad hominem attack" is simply "a personal attack".

---

I thought a fallacy is a false statement and an argument is when two views collide.
They collide because there is no understanding between the interlocutors themselves and not what is actually being said or discussed.
When there is a failure to connect between two standing people there is no understanding from either part and therefore the blame is past on to the argument rather then the argumentees themselves. This is how I see it.
And so there is no fallacy of an argument as such but only misunderstanding of two minds not being able to connect. Failure to connect is what I call it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED

---

It's a term from logic, so you really need to quote a dictionary of logic that has categories and sub-categories of fallacies listed. Here's one I found online.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cioran

YesNo, honestly, you don't understand these ideas. You've got everything mixed up, as you've demonstrated over and over again. And I have pointed out your confusion over and over, and you have not met these points. I suggest you educate yourself more fully on these ideas and then comment on them.

---

I admit that I don't understand these ideas and that's why I find the thread interesting. I'm trying to un-mix things in my mind.

The only reason I mentioned the Wikipedia article is that I thought you were quoting him as an authority. He's doesn't have much authority, but I don't actually care. Regardless of who he is, I'm still trying to make sense out of the ideas in the article he posted. I don't consider the Wikipedia article evidence that he is wrong in the particular article you cited.

Essentially the article says, if you accept MWI, the EPR paradox loses its non-locality and anti-realist features. That's not a surprise claim for an MWI proponent to make. I'm still confused by the argument since it seems to involve the confirmation step as well to make this work. In other words, and I might have this wrong, MWI would always lead one to think that one got the nonlocal answer, even if one didn't, after the experiment was confirmed, but it is only the local answer in the appropriate world. That part I'm still puzzled by because I don't think the confirmation should matter. Of course, I might be completely misunderstanding it.

One thing I've learned from the article is that I didn't understand what the term "realism" meant before. Here's what I think it means based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality:

Local realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the "realistic" assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made. And so be time independent.

I started searching the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy rather than Wikipedia for information. Here's an initial link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Regarding the Tipler article, I've run into two problems:

ONE

With entangled particles separated by great distances where spin up or down is being measured, I realize that there are two outcomes predicted by EPR but there are four worlds involved. We get the following four outcomes:

(up)(up) + (up)(down) + (down)(up) + (down)(down)

Only the ones in red are permitted by QM for the entangled particles since their outcomes are initially entangled to give opposite results. My problem is I don't see what happens to the other two worlds in the final result. How are they eliminated so that MWI agrees with QM results?

TWO

It appears having probabilities that cannot be represented as rational numbers is a problem for MWI based on this comment from Tipler:

Applying the Principle of Indifference to this new set of coefficients yields the BI for the coefficients in the original basis. Continuity in the Hilbert space of wave functions yields the BI for irrational coefficients (although it is a presupposition of the MWI that only coefficients with rational squares are allowed since irrational squares would imply an irrational number of worlds). In particular, the percentage of worlds with the value of a given basis vector is given by the square of the coefficient.

The WMI technique of simulating probabilities in the universe is to assume that the probabilities are represented as rational numbers. They use the Principle of Indifference and take the least common multiple of the denominators of the probabilities and construct the appropriate number of worlds for each outcome. If the probabilities can only be represented as irrational numbers then there is no least common multiple of the denominators since the probabilities cannot be represented in that manner. This is the problem emphasized in bold above.

There are two concerns with this MWI view of probability:

1) Why can't probabilities be represented as irrational numbers in a universe where realism is supposed to be true? Even a 50-50 chance may only be an approximation. One cannot assume for any coin in one's pocket that it has not been irregularly worn enough that the real probability is not something like 50.000000001-49.999999999 or something requiring even infinitely many decimals to correctly represent it. It seems that WMI requires reality to come in rational numbers.

2) Why does MWI think it can get out of problems such as probability, non-locality, or realism by just creating additional worlds whenever it feels like?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

[...]that article about which interpretation physicists believe, and showed the wide variety of views held, some even changing their views. Copenhagen on Monday, MWI on Tuesday,...

Tipler is another fringe figure, like Everett, as comments by serious physicists make plain: "George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline"...

So when Tiper says, "I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels.", how can you trust him? You can spend many years studying Theoretical physics to MSc level to check out his views, or you can look at what mainstream physicists say, and it certainly isn't that MWI is the only necessary theory and not an option! Some of the physics he did, as Sean M. Carroll points out, was constructive, but how can a lay person sort out the constructive from the crackpot?

---

The above lines I snipped highlight the reason why I don't even try reading this stuff, even though I would in theory find it interesting. It seems this field is almost entirely made up of people who spend their time writing and trying to sell books that point out why everyone else's theory is wrong and mine works, all about things that nobody knows for certain. It seems to be all about being as convincing as possible and recruiting as many believers/followers as possible, and claiming right that way. That's religion, not science.

Can anyone here summarize what's actually known, through verifiable and repeatable experimentation, what we have good reason to believe is true though we haven't quite nailed it down yet, and what's simply speculation that sounded good to someone?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Calidore

Can anyone here summarize what's actually known, through verifiable and repeatable experimentation, what we have good reason to believe is true though we haven't quite nailed it down yet, and what's simply speculation that sounded good to someone?

---

I was hoping someone would have answered this since I'd like to know as well. I look at all of these threads as exercises in expository prose so I'll try to answer the question as an exercise.

There are at least two related puzzles of quantum mechanics that lead to these disagreements and stimulate further research.

First, quantum particles make wavelike interference patterns on a detector even if one sends a single particle through a barrier with two slits in it. Does that mean that a single particle interfered with itself by going through both slits? If one closes one of the slits, the wavelike pattern disappears. If one measures the particle before it hits the detector to see which slit it went through, the wavelike pattern also disappears.

That is the problem of "realism". Realism expects that whatever measurement one gets says something about the particle-wave prior to the measurement. But these experiments make it look as if the particle-wave is either making a choice right when the measurement occurred or the measurement itself forced a state on the particle-wave that it didn't previously have. The evidence shows that scientific realism does not seem to work for quantum-sized particles.

How does one make sense out of that?

On one extreme, the end of realism is just accepted. That is the "anti-realistic" position. On the other extreme, there are some who claim that there are many particles in many worlds, one in the real world and the others in shadow worlds each having a distinct possible value. This claims to restore realism, because each particle would have its value prior to measurement, but it does this in an "unrealistic" way. In the middle are the people who use quantum mechanics for practical purposes only and don't care about the philosophy. They might be called the indifferent, uncommitted, "non-realistic", or "shut up and calculate" engineers.

The second problem carries this measurement issue to two particles that have been "entangled" so that if one particle is ultimately measured to have spin up the other is forced to have spin down. These two particles have been correlated. Now separate the particles across some distance and check to see what their spins are. The experiments show that their spins are still correlated even if they have been separated so far apart that any communication between them to synchronize the results would have to go faster than light. The experiments also show that there are no hidden variables that are shared between these particles to help them determine what the spin of the other particle would be before the measurement occurred.

That is the problem of "localism". Localism expects causality to flow slower than the speed of light, but these entangled particles are determining each others' measurements across distances implying causality to have seemingly instantaneous effects.

So how does that happen?

On one extreme, nonlocalism is just accepted. That's the way things are. On the other, many worlds are set up to avoid this issue in some way that I don't understand. In the middle are the engineers who use quantum mechanics and don't worry about it. They leave it for the theoretical physicists, philosophers or people on forums such as this to sort out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Calidore

The above lines I snipped highlight the reason why I don't even try reading this stuff, even though I would in theory find it interesting. It seems this field is almost entirely made up of people who spend their time writing and trying to sell books that point out why everyone else's theory is wrong and mine works, all about things that nobody knows for certain. It seems to be all about being as convincing as possible and recruiting as many believers/followers as possible, and claiming right that way. That's religion, not science.

---

I think it's more about selling books, since Hawking publishers have realised they can get best sellers in this area. To get an easy sell they push interpretations like Many Worlds and Omega Point that are zany and instantly appealing. They are like fairground callers: "Come and see the many universes!", "Live forever!". "Come and see the dead radioactive cat!" For non-scientists the briefest, to the point book, I've seen is:

The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

It's a bit light, and ironic, about "the particle zoo" and "time beginning with the Big Bang", but that's probably a good thing :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

First, quantum particles make wavelike interference patterns on a detector even if one sends a single particle through a barrier with two slits in it. Does that mean that a single particle interfered with itself by going through both slits? If one closes one of the slits, the wavelike pattern disappears. If one measures the particle before it hits the detector to see which slit it went through, the wavelike pattern also disappears.

That is the problem of "realism". Realism expects that whatever measurement one gets says something about the particle-wave prior to the measurement. But these experiments make it look as if the particle-wave is either making a choice right when the measurement occurred or the measurement itself forced a state on the particle-wave that it didn't previously have. The evidence shows that scientific realism does not seem to work for quantum-sized particles.

How does one make sense out of that?

On one extreme, the end of realism is just accepted. That is the "anti-realistic" position. On the other extreme, there are some who claim that there are many particles in many worlds, one in the real world and the others in shadow worlds each having a distinct possible value. This claims to restore realism, because each particle would have its value prior to measurement, but it does this in an "unrealistic" way. In the middle are the people who use quantum mechanics for practical purposes only and don't care about the philosophy. They might be called the indifferent, uncommitted, "non-realistic", or "shut up and calculate" engineers.

---

What's the difference between "anti-realistic" and "non-realistic/shut-up and calculate"?

Quote:

---

On one extreme, nonlocalism is just accepted. That's the way things are. On the other, many worlds are set up to avoid this issue in some way that I don't understand. In the middle are the engineers who use quantum mechanics and don't worry about it. They leave it for the theoretical physicists, philosophers or people on forums such as this to sort out.

---

Again, what's the difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and the "pragmatic engineer"? The theoretical physicists, philosophers, and paperback writers, are nowhere near to sorting out these mysteries... they make lots of money by befuddling us all though...

If you want to go deeper than Dawkins, on quantum in particular, then try Feynman's "The Character of Physical Law":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAgcqgDc-YM

The most famous quote in modern physics is at 8:05...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

What's the difference between "anti-realistic" and "non-realistic/shut-up and calculate"?

Again, what's the difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and the "pragmatic engineer"? The theoretical physicists, philosophers, and paperback writers, are nowhere near to sorting out these mysteries... they make lots of money by befuddling us all though...

If you want to go deeper than Dawkins, on quantum in particular, then try Feynman's "The Character of Physical Law":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAgcqgDc-YM

The most famous quote in modern physics is at 8:05...

---

Most definitely I want to go deeper than Dawkins.

That Feynman lecture was great. He was actually using real chalk and blackboards. His accent and humor were perfect. The mathematical description of interference as the overall intensity not being equal to the sum of the intensities that would occur through each individual hole is something I didn't realize. "Nobody understands quantum mechanics."

After thinking about it, I realize there isn't much difference between the "acceptor of the mystery" and a "pragmatic engineer" except the pragmatic engineer tries to pretend that there might be some middle ground on which to avoid the controversy. There probably isn't any.

I don't know why we're mentioning Dawkins (evolutionary biologist) in a discussion of theoretical quantum physics (he's already admitted his limited knowledge in the field).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

That Feynman lecture was great...

---

Yeah. Probably the best way, and certainly the most fun way, to go deeper is "more Feynman". Though, as he says in the lecture, you can't go deeper, only broader. Start with the book of those lectures "The Character of Physical Law", follow it up with his wonderfully light autobiographies, and the popular out-takes from his famous "lectures on physics". Also check out the other lectures on utube - the Horizon interviews are other BBC classics. His full set of "lectures" is quite heavy, it was aimed at top Caltech physics undergraduates and went over their heads several times, but it's worth dipping into. When doing my physics degree we were recommended other textbooks, and to dip into Feynman to *really* understand certain difficult concepts, but not to worry if he lost us now and again - this was good advice. I've browsed a few university physics websites recently and many (of the best), I see, still make that recommendation. After reading all his popular stuff you might want to dive into the third volume of the lectures, which is all on quantum physics. To get into his own seminal work on QED you might attempt his semi-popular book of that name, and then (if you are really keen) his PhD level text book, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, recently republished in Dover. The following site is also interesting, it stresses the use being made of Feynman's approach to QM by one of the most admired educators in the physics community:

http://www.eftaylor.com/quantum.html

Note that, although Feynman didn't mention it in his lectures, he did invent a very popular interpretation of his own:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-Richard...ntum-mechanics

But he's great enough not to feel the need to mention this, it would just confuse the main message: "no one understands..."

YesNo about the center of the universe not in existence it just occurred to me how does one explain the moon phenomena?
In the sense that it increases and decreases.

I didn't realize Feynman was so accessible, mal4mac. I'll have to read and watch more of this. The Edwin Taylor site looks like it can keep me busy for a while as well.

Regarding Dawkins, MorpheusSandman, I agree he has little to do with this thread. I assume he was introduced because his style seems quite different from Feynman's. From my limited experience with Dawkins, he seems ready to pontificate about stuff he knows little about while Feynman humorously will say things like "We call it a probability amplitude because we don't know what it means."

I don't think a specific center of the universe should exist based on relativity, cacian, but perhaps each inertial frame of reference could be considered a center of the universe at least for the purposes of aligning a coordinate system with that frame of reference.

Here are some links I've found on related subjects in this thread:

1) The Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy has an interesting article on Everett: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-everett/

This provides some history and mentions five modifications to Everett's relative state interpretation of QM that have tried to overcome problems with the original theory. We have only discussed the "many world" modification, but there are also the "Bare Theory", "Many Minds", "Many Histories" and "Relative Facts" modifications. The article makes me wonder if any of these modified theories actually model QM adequately. I previously assumed that Many Worlds did so.

2) Deutsch challenged people to explain where the quantum computer's calculations occurred. Deutsche seemed to think one would have to say they occurred in many worlds. A. M. Steane has a different answer in "A quantum computer only needs one universe": http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/quant-ph/0003084v3.pdf The title says it all, but the body gives the explanation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

From my limited experience with Dawkins, he seems ready to pontificate about stuff he knows little about

---

I haven't noticed that myself. What he writes most about is how morality is linked with genetics as opposed to something supernatural/divine. He's never spoken at length on theoretical physics AFAIK.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I haven't noticed that myself. What he writes most about is how morality is linked with genetics as opposed to something supernatural/divine. He's never spoken at length on theoretical physics AFAIK.

---

I don't know. I just prefer Feynman to Dawkins.

If I haven't misunderstood, I think you are in favor of the Many Worlds position. I wonder how someone comes to accept such a position. One of the things I've learned from this thread is that there are people who do take it seriously and that's good because it gives everyone a chance to clarify what they are talking about.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Regarding Dawkins, MorpheusSandman, I agree he has little to do with this thread. I assume he was introduced because his style seems quite different from Feynman's. From my limited experience with Dawkins, he seems ready to pontificate about stuff he knows little about...

---

Dawkins is worth listening to on science in general, including quantum mechanics. Someone was complaining about having all these different interpretations imposed on them, so I thought I'd mention a book that doesn't bother with them much, but stresses other (more interesting) areas of science - "The Magic of Reality". And he's good on Quantum; he's at least read Feynman's popular stuff, and puts things so well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Wr-nmXIFk

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

I think you're doing very well in digging into this material YesNo - especially that article about which interpretation physicists believe, and showed the wide variety of views held, some even changing their views. Copenhagen on Monday, MWI on Tuesday,...

Tipler is another fringe figure, like Everett, as comments by serious physicists make plain:

---

This is just more ad hom, but also false. Tipler and Everett are not fringe figures. There is a huge literature devoted to Everettian MWI that you can find in science and philosophy journals online. Have you checked any of it out? I know the answer. It is "no."

Quote:

---

"George Ellis, writing in the journal Nature, described Tipler's book on the Omega Point as "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline"... Physicist Sean M. Carroll thought Tipler's early work was constructive but that now he has become a "crackpot".

So when Tiper says, "I definitely accept the MWI. The MWI is not an option, but as I show in my book, a necessary mathematical consequence of quantum mechanics applying at all levels.", how can you trust him?

---

Shall I introduce you to hundreds of other articles supporting MWI NOT written by Tipler?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

I admit that I don't understand these ideas and that's why I find the thread interesting. I'm trying to un-mix things in my mind.

The only reason I mentioned the Wikipedia article is that I thought you were quoting him as an authority.

---

Laugh Out Loud.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

There are multiple definition of this term. I quoted one from the Concise OED, but I think I like the other better, it's just "personal". So an "ad hominem attack" is simply "a personal attack".

---

I'm sorry, but you are wrong again.

Ad ad hominem attack is not a personal attack. In fact, ad hom can even be praise.

As stated before: ad hom is the logical fallacy of supposing that an argument is false because of some personal characteristic of the person making the argument.

Here are two ad hom arguments:

First:

1. Hitler praised eating vegetables.

2. Hitler was an evil man.

3. Therefore, eating vegetables is bad.


Second:

1. Cassandra advocates voting for Republicans.

2. Cassandra is much too intelligent to really believe in such advocacy.

3. Therefore, one should not vote for Republicans.

Are you able to process ad hom now? Are you able to understand it's just not an "insult"?

I'd guess not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

I think it's more about selling books, since Hawking publishers have realised they can get best sellers in this area. To get an easy sell they push interpretations like Many Worlds and Omega Point that are zany and instantly appealing.

---

To conflate MWI with Tipler's Omega Point speculation is just breathtakingly dishonest, isn't it? One has nothing to do with the other. But I guess you don't care about honesty.

Mal4Mac, does the sun revolve around the earth, or not?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cioran

Laugh Out Loud.

---

I'm glad you're back! I don't understand how Many Worlds proponents handle the entanglement of particles, but I've run into a new problem with it.

After mal4mac's introduction to Feynman, I started reading Six Easy Pieces. On page 34, Feynman asks, "Why are atoms so big?" Then he gave an answer that surprised me:

What keeps the electrons from simply falling in? This principle: If they were in the nucleus, we would know their position precisely, and the uncertainty principle would then require that they have a very 'large' (but uncertain) momentum, i.e., a very large 'kinetic energy'. With this energy they would break away from the nucleus. They make a compromise: they leave themselves a little room for this uncertainty and then jiggle with a certain amount of minimum motion in accordance with this rule.

What that means is the uncertainty principle is what makes atoms so large. Now Many Worlds does away with the uncertainty principle. The probabilities are illusions that we calculate. That must mean that for any particular world, there is no uncertainty and so there is no need for the electrons to jiggle around.

So, here is the next question I've got: How does Many Worlds account for the fact that atoms are so big? How do these worlds jiggle in superposition to generate the illusion of the atom's size?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

I think you are in favor of the Many Worlds position. I wonder how someone comes to accept such a position.

---

To put it simply, the physicists I trust most seem to support that interpretation. I'm certainly willing to change my position if any of the other interpretations begin coming out clearly ahead, but right now I'd echo Yudkowsky's arguments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/q8/many_worlds_one_best_guess/

[QUOTE]

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cioran

I'm sorry, but you are wrong again.

Ad ad hominem attack is not a personal attack. In fact, ad hom can even be praise.

As stated before: ad hom is the logical fallacy of supposing that an argument is false because of some personal characteristic of the person making the argument.

---

Hi Cioran what I am not getting how does a personal enters into an argument?
How does it make a jump? In any argument no one cares about who you are or what you did.
It is about what you say there and there that counts.

Quote:

---

Here are two ad hom arguments:

First:

1. Hitler praised eating vegetables.

2. Hitler was an evil man.

3. Therefore, eating vegetables is bad.

---

This does not look like an argument. It looks like a set of facts being listed as some kind of a CV to jusfiy a third unrealate subject/conets whatever you call it.

How does one move from to 1 to 2? Where is the link?

For example:
1. I speak Spanish
2. I speak French
3. I don't speak Japanese or I speak Chinese.

You can see that 1 and 2 and 3 eventually are all related because they make sense.
So because 1 and 2 are it must mean 3 is in either I do not speak Japanese or I speak Chinese.
so in sequencial logic:
1=2=3 is perfect because they all link.
And since we know that the answer in mathematical is this
a=x
a=y
then a=x=y is the ONLY correct answer and all argument must adhere to this.

So your argument is incorrect because they do not fit with the sequence of a=x=y

Quote:

---

Second:

1. Cassandra advocates voting for Republicans.

2. Cassandra is much too intelligent to really believe in such advocacy.

3. Therefore, one should not vote for Republicans.

Are you able to process ad hom now? Are you able to understand it's just not an "insult"?

I'd guess not.

---

Again this is not correct because it does not fit with the sequence of a=x=y.

YesNo just to point about parallel worlds existing or not there is in fact NO SYMMETRY in reverse and therefore there are no parallel universe.
In other words a shape in reverse is dissimilar to its original shape.
Parallelism is also dissimilar when put in reverse.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

To put it simply, the physicists I trust most seem to support that interpretation. I'm certainly willing to change my position if any of the other interpretations begin coming out clearly ahead, but right now I'd echo Yudkowsky's arguments: http://lesswrong.com/lw/q8/many_worlds_one_best_guess/

---

Thanks for the link to Yudkowsky's blog. In anything I might say that would disagree with Yudkowsky, my intention is not to try to convince you to change your mind. I'm just trying to clarify what is at stake by making it conscious.

Yudkowsky doesn't present arguments as much as make claims that MW is true. It is more rhetoric than science. Here is an example:

Could there be some as-yet-unknown fundamental law, that gives the universe a privileged center, which happens to coincide with Earth—thus proving that Copernicus was wrong all along, and the Bible right?

In this the "privileged center" is the one world that he opposes. He is associating the acceptance of one world as claiming that we accept the existence of a privileged center and that we want to prove Copernicus wrong and that we support the Bible. I don't see why anyone should bring the Bible into this discussion. Is he trying to portray the Copenhagan Interpretation as being Christian and perhaps reactionary? This is rhetoric, not science.

Here is another example of rhetoric rather than science:

So too with asking whether there might be only one world. It betrays a sentimental attachment to human intuitions already proven wrong. The wheel of science turns, but it doesn't turn backward.

Notice how he portrays people supporting the Copenhagen Interpretation as being "sentimental" and "backward"? That sounds like an ad hominem argument to me, but then he is just being rhetorical.

This type of paragraph is as close as he gets to giving some information:

There is no experimental evidence that the macroscopic world is single (we already know the microscopic world is superposed). And the prospect necessarily either violates Special Relativity, or takes an even more miraculous-seeming leap and violates seemingly impeccable logic. The latter, of course, being much more plausible in practice. But it isn't really that plausible in an absolute sense. Without experimental evidence, it is generally a bad sign to have to postulate arbitrary logical miracles.

The claim that there "is no experimental evidence" is pure pseudo-science. It makes a scientific sounding claim to rhetorically convince someone without providing evidence to accept one position over the other. The "we already know", the "necessarily" and the "miraculous-seeming" are more of the same.

The information he does provide relates to special relativity supposedly being violated with the EPR experiments although I think there are various "no-go" theorems that make the CI consistent. They also provide a challenge for the MWI since one of the no-go theorems is a no cloning theorem. That would violate the possibility of making copies of us and put in doubt the existence of many worlds.

If anything, the MWI appears to me reactionary and backward. The reason I say that is because it is trying to maintain the deterministic physics of the 17th century in the 21st century in spite of the evidence from quantum mechanics to the contrary.

In a recent post, I mentioned Feynman's claim that the size of the atom seems dependent upon the uncertainty principle. I suspect the size of the atom allows chemistry to work the way it does. MW does not have the uncertainty principle. It needs to explain how an atom can be as big as it is without the uncertainty principle that is part of the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cacian

YesNo just to point about parallel words existing or not there is in fact NO SYMETRY in reverse and therefore there are no parallel universe.

---

The idea of no symmetry is interesting, but I don't understand. It does seem that a deterministic universe should have laws that would not only predict any future state, but also describe any past state. I don't know if that would work in a MWI multiverse or not.

In order to properly understand what is being discussed here, one must first have a basic grasp of what quantum mechanics is, and why it was developed in the first place.

Fortunately, the Web is a wonderful place to employ Google for reasons other than digging up invalid ad hominen attacks on one's intellectual betters. It's also a place to learn. There is a wonderful article that first appeared in 2004 in Scientific American which takes the layman, in easy-to-understand way, through the history of QM from its inception. Here it is: 100 Years of the Quantum

The article explores all of the interpretations of QM, including Copenhagen and Many Worlds. It was written by Max Tax Tegmark and John Archibald Wheeler, the former whose work I linked earlier in this thread, and the latter one of the most prominent physicists in history. Tegmark is a Many Worldist; Wheeler is not. Because Wheeler accepts the reality of wave-function collapse, which Tegmark and other Many Worldists deny, Wheeler concludes that human beings bring the universe into existence, including its distant past, by acts of observation made in the present. And Many Worlds is strange? How strange are Wheeler's beliefs?

However, the strangeness of a belief has no bearing on its merits. Also, to link to a work by an authority on a subject is NOT to commit (as was laughably charged earlier) the fallacy of appeal to authority. Like ad homimen, the fallacy of appeal to authority is an informal (inductive) logical fallacy that comes in two forms. In the first form, y is presented as an expert, and it is noted that y claims x. The fallacy arises when x is now claimed to be correct just because y says so; after all, y is an expert.

Of course, no matter how great an authority y is, x cannot be correct solely on y's say-so. The second appeal to authority fallacy lies in justifying some claim in one field by appealing to an expert in another: We should believe some claim in biology, for instance, because a physicist supports it.

Other than those two fallacies, it is perfectly legitimate to invoke the writing of an expert on a subject, to explain the subject. That is what I did in linking to Tipler. That is NOT a fallacious appeal to authority. And, of course, as already noted, that Tipler may have a controversial theory on some other topic besides QM has no bearing whatsoever on his QM arguments. Just as his QM arguments are not correct just because he is an authority on QM (fallacy of appeal to authority), so too his arguments are not WRONG because he has controversial beliefs on another subject (fallacy of ad hominem).

Those who read the "100 Years of the Quantum" article that I linked will discover that the central mystery of QM lies in wave function collapse. In addition to wave function collapse being totally unexplained in its own right, the other mysteries fall out directly from it: quantum indeterminism (God "playing dice" that Einstein abhorred); non-locality ("spooky action at a distance," as Einstein scoffed) and non-realism: "Do you really mean to say," as Einstein asked a colleague, "that the moon doesn't exist if no one is looking at it?"

The paper by Tipler (and there are many others on the same topic) shows why all these mysteries go away under the Many Worlds Interpretation: He shows, in his paper, mathematically, why there is no spooky action at a distance, no non-locality and no anti-realism. All the QM mysteries go away under MW, simply be dispensing with the so-called wave function collapse. if one clings to wave function collapse, one is left in the position, like Wheeler, of suggesting that the human mind is somehow central to reality, and that the past did not actually exist until our measurements conjured it up out of nothing!

Basically, all collapse-postulate metatheories of QM treat the classical world and the quantum worlds as distinct; that there is a "cut" between the two realms, called the Heisenberg Cut. However, no one knows where this cut is, and in fact it doesn't exist. We have now put objects as big as Buckyballs and molecules with 240 atoms into superposition. Since the entire world is quantum and not classical, Many Worlds falls out of this. We get Many Worlds because there is no wave-function collapse which means that everything is always in superposition. When John sees result x, his doppelgänger, John', sees y because two different versions of John are quantum entangled with two different results.

Contrary to what has been claimed here, Many Worlds is very mainstream now, especially in conjunction with a phenomenon known as decoherence. Lest there by any doubt about this, I invite those who are interested to visit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and read the following article: Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Notice that at the end of the article, there are supplementary links, including to preprint archives at arVix.org and the archives of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. These archives give a wealth of additional information on MW, and show just how deeply imbedded it is in modern physics and philosophy.

With that I absent myself from further discussion on this topic; the level of discourse in this thread is far too primitive and ill-informed for me to waste any more time on. Also, blatantly dishonest claims have been made, such that my linking to Tipler's article constituted an "appeal to authority" and also the extraordinarily risible (and outrageously false) contention that I said Hugh Everett was right because he was treated badly! In a properly moderated forum, these falsities would not be allowed to stand. I do hope, though, that those who are interested in this topic will explore the fruitful links I have given. From this thread alone you will learn nothing, except from me, but I won't participating any longer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Yudkowsky doesn't present arguments as much as make claims that MW is true. It is more rhetoric than science.

---

I was linking to his summary. If you want to read his entire QM science and the reasons why he's come to believe MW is the winner, start here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quant...sics_sequence/ Of course his summary is more rhetorical than scientific because he assumes his reader has already made it through the posts on the actual science. He also links to some preliminary articles that are necessary to understand where he's coming from. I still think this is essentially the strongest argument to be made for MW:

Quote:

---

When we turn our attention to macroscopic phenomena, our sight is obscured. We cannot experiment on the wavefunction of a human in the way that we can experiment on the wavefunction of a hydrogen atom. In no case can you actually read off the wavefunction with a little quantum scanner. But in the case of, say, a human, the size of the entire organism defeats our ability to perform precise calculations or precise experiments—we cannot confirm that the quantum equations are being obeyed in precise detail.

We know that phenomena commonly thought of as "quantum" do not just disappear when many microscopic objects are aggregated. Lasers put out a flood of coherent photons, rather than, say, doing something completely different. Atoms have the chemical characteristics that quantum theory says they should, enabling them to aggregate into the stable molecules making up a human.

So in one sense, we have a great deal of evidence that quantum laws are aggregating to the macroscopic level without too much difference. Bulk chemistry still works.

But we cannot directly verify that the particles making up a human, have an aggregate wavefunction that behaves exactly the way the simplest quantum laws say. Oh, we know that molecules and atoms don't disintegrate, we know that macroscopic mirrors still reflect from the middle. We can get many high-level predictions from the assumption that the microscopic and the macroscopic are governed by the same laws, and every prediction tested has come true.

But if someone were to claim that the macroscopic quantum picture, differs from the microscopic one, in some as-yet-untestable detail—something that only shows up at the unmeasurable 20th decimal place of microscopic interactions, but aggregates into something bigger for macroscopic interactions—well, we can't prove they're wrong. It is Occam's Razor that says, "There are zillions of new fundamental laws you could postulate in the 20th decimal place; why are you even thinking about this one?"

...

The existence of other versions of ourselves, and indeed other Earths, is not supposed additionally. We are simply supposing that the same laws govern at all levels, having no reason to suppose differently, and all experimental tests having succeeded so far. The existence of other decoherent Earths is a logical consequence of the simplest generalization that fits all known facts. If you think that Occam's Razor says that the other worlds are "unnecessary entities" being multiplied, then you should check the probability-theoretic math; that is just not how Occam's Razor works.

---

I find it hard to follow Yudkowsky, MorpheusSandman, but I do find him interesting. I did read some of his other posts that you linked to earlier in this thread.

In Six Easy Pieces, page 135, Feynman tried to show that there is no way around the wave phenomenon in the double slit experiment. He wrote:

Suppose we were to assume that inside the electron there is some kind of machinery that determines where it is going to end up. That machine must 'also' determine which hole it is going to go through on its way. But we must not forget that what is inside the electron should not be dependent on what 'we' do, and in particular upon whether we open or close one of the holes. So if an electron, before it starts, has already made up its mind (a) which hole it is going to use and (b) where it is going to land, we should find P1 for those electrons that have chosen hole 1, P2 for those that have chosen hole 2, 'and necessarily' the sum P1 + P2 for those that arrive through the two holes. There seems to be no way around this. But we have verified experimentally that that is not the case.

I see MWI as a claim that there actually is some way around the wave phenomenon, some kind of machinery within the electron based on many worlds, each deterministically knowing which hole the electron in that world will go through and where it will end up. That means that there would be no interference pattern, no wave pattern, when we are not looking at the electrons. But there is a wave interference pattern. MWI contradicts QM rather than interprets it.

And so I conclude, since QM has been experimentally verified, that the MWI is false.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

I find it hard to follow Yudkowsky, MorpheusSandman, but I do find him interesting.

---

If you read him from the very beginning, including those essential preliminary posts, then he's much easier to follow. Yudkowsky is a Bayesian, first and foremost, and I'd recommend getting a firm understanding of how Bayes' Theorem works and how it can be used in assessing evidence, especially in cases like QM where we still don't have a decidedly definitive interpretation. One of great difficulties in understanding QM to begin with is understanding how our mind intuitively interprets reality, and how this interferes with our understanding of how reality actually functions. Yudkowsky is actually an AI Researcher, so his posts on cognition and rationality are very helpful in overcoming many of the various biases that we are hard-wired with that prevent us from accurately understanding reality. I had trouble at some points of his QM sequence, but he's probably the best combination I've found online of thorough yet laymen friendly, so I'd recommend really trying to work your way through him, perhaps with the assistance of someone who is actually studying QM that can address your questions/points as they come up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

And so I conclude, since QM has been experimentally verified, that the MWI is false.

---

No. At its basic level, MW is saying that what is observed happening on a quantum level is happening at all levels, that the macro level is nothing but an aggregate of QM. It's the classic one-world view that states that there is some break between the quantum level and the macro level, the level we observe, despite the fact we have no reason to think this besides our already-proven wrong intuitions. It's the classic interpretation that is proposing some hidden mechanisms that are determining why the wave collapses as it does. MW is not getting around the wave phenomenon, it's just stating that there's no collapse, and what we observe is nothing but one particular world that the electron is ending up in (if Cioran's still reading this, he can correct me if necessary; it's been a while since I was reading about this).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

No. At its basic level, MW is saying that what is observed happening on a quantum level is happening at all levels, that the macro level is nothing but an aggregate of QM. It's the classic one-world view that states that there is some break between the quantum level and the macro level, the level we observe, despite the fact we have no reason to think this besides our already-proven wrong intuitions.

---

At the macro level, trying to convince someone that there are many worlds would be like trying to convince an atheist that there is a God. It would require a lot of evidence and then once it is assembled the atheist would dismiss the evidence without considering it anyway. It is rather futile.

If one looks at many worlds and the uncertainty principle as opposites, individual "free will" might be at stake. Again, those who believe we have free will are not likely to accept a many worlds argument so there is no point in bringing it up. Besides, if the many world proponents are right and we have no free will, they won't be able to change anyone's mind anyway since no one's mind is free to change. So why bother?

However, the arguments against many worlds that I'm interested in are not at the macro level but at the micro level.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It's the classic interpretation that is proposing some hidden mechanisms that are determining why the wave collapses as it does. MW is not getting around the wave phenomenon, it's just stating that there's no collapse, and what we observe is nothing but one particular world that the electron is ending up in.

---

The "wave collapse" simply means that the electron or other particle-wave object no longer acts as a wave but only as a particle. That occurs when it rams into the detector wall at the end of a double slit experiment and a click is detected or when light is shone on the electron as it passes through one or the other slits and flashes. After that flash occurs a particle pattern appears on the detector wall rather than an wave interference pattern.

The collapse of the wave function is a pretty natural way to describe what actually happens to the particle.

But my arguments against many worlds come before the wave function collapses.

If many worlds and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are at odds, then many worlds needs to explain some things about the behavior of these particles while they still act as waves, that is, while they are functioning as parts of atoms and while they are heading unobserved toward the detector wall in a double slit experiment. There are two places where Feynman in Six Easy Pieces makes me think that many worlds will have problems:

1) Feynman claims the uncertainty principle is responsible for why atoms are as big as they are. How would a many world proponent explain that without the uncertainty principle? See page 34.

2) Feynman claims if there were a deterministic mechanism, such as many worlds, manipulating the behavior of the electron then there wouldn't be a wave interference pattern in the double slit experiment when no one was looking, but there is one. How does a proponent of many worlds explain that? See page 135.

This is from the last paragraph, page 138:

The uncertainty principle "protects" quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure the momentum and the position simultaneously with a greater accuracy, then quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that it must be impossible.

If many worlds wants to replace the uncertainty principle with a deterministic solution, it must first get rid of quantum mechanics. Since QM has been experimentally verified, that is not likely to happen.

The fact that you're bringing up both theology (convincing people of MW is like convincing atheists of God? Huh?) and philosophy (MW threatens "free will?" Huh?) into this discussion suggests to me you have ulterior motives behind your "research" to begin with. As for this question: "if the many world proponents are right and we have no free will, they won't be able to change anyone's mind anyway since no one's mind is free to change. So why bother?" This conflates a lack of free will with the obtaining of omniscience. If we found out for 100% sure tomorrow that we had no free-will, this wouldn't change our ignorance of what world we will find ourselves in.

As for the others, I don't see how 1) is a problem for MW since it's not even addressing that, and, as for 2), the interference can be explained by the interactions of the many worlds. MW doesn't need to "get rid of" QM, and that's a rather absurd thing to state. MW is just interpreting one aspect of observed QM (the wave function "collapse") and that's it. I can see why Cioran decided to exit this conversation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

The fact that you're bringing up both theology (convincing people of MW is like convincing atheists of God? Huh?) and philosophy (MW threatens "free will?" Huh?) into this discussion suggests to me you have ulterior motives behind your "research" to begin with. As for this question: "if the many world proponents are right and we have no free will, they won't be able to change anyone's mind anyway since no one's mind is free to change. So why bother?" This conflates a lack of free will with the obtaining of omniscience. If we found out for 100% sure tomorrow that we had no free-will, this wouldn't change our ignorance of what world we will find ourselves in.

---

Of course there are ulterior motivations. We wouldn't be discussing this issue on a literature forum if there weren't.

What I am trying to emphasize is something obvious. To try to convince people that parallel universes exist in which there are copies of them running around that they conveniently cannot see and verify is like trying to convince them to believe in a God they do not want to believe in. That is all.

Regarding free will, it if does not exist, how can people obtain omniscience or even know they have obtained it? They have to move from a state of ignorance to a state of omniscience, but they have no free will to move from one state to the other.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

As for the others, I don't see how 1) is a problem for MW since it's not even addressing that, and, as for 2), the interference can be explained by the interactions of the many worlds. MW doesn't need to "get rid of" QM, and that's a rather absurd thing to state. MW is just interpreting one aspect of observed QM (the wave function "collapse") and that's it. I can see why Cioran decided to exit this conversation.

---

How is the interference explained by the interactions of the many worlds? That is the heart of the matter. The reason why this is unlikely is that the many worlds interpretation is deterministic, but QM is not. All I am asking for is an explanation how this deterministic theory simulates the non-deterministic theory at the micro level.

In some ways, I think MWI piggy-backs on the Copenhagen Interpretation. It doesn't offer anything of its own except to claim that the CI non-determinism is an illusion of some sort that it doesn't know how to adequately explain.

I hope you don't leave the discussion. We should not hope to convince each other, because we probably won't. All we can do is clarify our individual positions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

The fact that you're bringing up both theology (convincing people of MW is like convincing atheists of God? Huh?) and philosophy (MW threatens "free will?" Huh?) into this discussion suggests to me you have ulterior motives behind your "research" to begin with. As for this question: "if the many world proponents are right and we have no free will, they won't be able to change anyone's mind anyway since no one's mind is free to change. So why bother?" This conflates a lack of free will with the obtaining of omniscience. If we found out for 100% sure tomorrow that we had no free-will, this wouldn't change our ignorance of what world we will find ourselves in.

As for the others, I don't see how 1) is a problem for MW since it's not even addressing that, and, as for 2), the interference can be explained by the interactions of the many worlds. MW doesn't need to "get rid of" QM, and that's a rather absurd thing to state. MW is just interpreting one aspect of observed QM (the wave function "collapse") and that's it. I can see why Cioran decided to exit this conversation.

---

Right, this is why I've dropped out of the conversation. It's the usual message board malady. A profoundly interesting topic is raised and right away the usual suspects move in to muck it up either with willful misunderstanding or some ulterior motive. Thanks for helping me to try to clear up these issues, but I judge the endeavor futile.

It's not that anyone must accept MWI. It's that, if someone wants to discuss it, then one must make at least a minimal effort to comprehend the material in question and not make blatantly asinine assertions, such as, for example: "And so I conclude, since QM has been experimentally verified, that the MWI is false." Uh, no. I explained this many times. MWI is an interpretation, a meta-theory, of QM. Everything about QM is perfectly consistent with MWI, and vice versa. If this were not so, why would MWI be so deeply woven into current academic discussions of QM?

For the last time, MWI is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that resolves all of the mysteries originally raised by QM. For instance, indeterminism in QM exists only if one accepts wave function collapse. The same is true of nonlocality and anti-realism. If one removes the wave function collapse postulate then all these mysteries go away. Unless one can understand this simple point, conversation is futile. And it's such a simple point to understand, backed up by me with so much linked reference material, then I conclude that the failure to grasp the point is deliberate and bespeaks ulterior motives.

Your explanation, btw, in your previous post of what MWI entails is absolute correct. But don't bang your head against a wall. All you'll get is a headache in addition to the same stupid comments over and over from your interlocutors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The "wave collapse" simply means that the electron or other particle-wave object no longer acts as a wave but only as a particle.

---

How do you know there is a wave to collapse?

Quote:

---

The collapse of the wave function is a pretty natural way to describe what actually happens to the particle.

---

In what way is this pretty natural? Waves and particles are natural terms that everybody uses, but a wave function? I think this is the big problem in explaining this stuff to the layman; watch Feynman again and see how he is, rightly, laughing at tech. speak like 'wave function'. He talks about bullets and water, so even escapes the abstraction of particles and waves

By talking about a wave function collapsing you get oneself in a tiswas trying to visualise a wavey thingy folding up into a ball like thingy - but there is no wavey thingy! There is only the "particle of light' that you actually see, many of these particles of light build up into a dark light pattern in some situations, a "pile of particles" pattern in others. Why bother with interpretations at all, they only confuse, as is shown by there being so many, just describe what happens in experiments.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Of course there are ulterior motivations. We wouldn't be discussing this issue on a literature forum if there weren't.

---

What does discussing this on a literary forum have to do with ulterior motives? When it comes to science, I'm interested in learning the truth; I have no ulterior motives, I want to align my beliefs with reality. Attempts to make reality align with one's prior beliefs is where reality-distortion biases come from. Again, read Yudkowsky who writes primarily about these reality-distorting biases that are hard-wired in our brains.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

To try to convince people that parallel universes exist in which there are copies of them running around that they conveniently cannot see and verify is like trying to convince them to believe in a God they do not want to believe in.

---

I don't know why it would be any harder to convince them of that then that there are mechanisms they cannot see and verify making particle waves collapse in a certain way that is indeterministic. Either way, we're dealing with aspects of reality that seem very strange to our natural intuitions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Regarding free will, it if does not exist, how can people obtain omniscience or even know they have obtained it?

---

I think you misunderstood me. People often bring up the argument that "if we have no free-will, then what we do does not matter." Well, that assumes several things: one being a single world, two being a predestined outcome in that world, three being that any actions lead to that predestined end, and finally it implies an omniscience in the person that realizes they have no free-will. All of these things are relevant to the argument that "it doesn't matter what one does because they have no free-will," and none of them may be relevant to the world we actually live in. Our belief or disbelief in free-will and what it means for our actions and, further, what it means regarding the world we end up in is probably more important than whether we ACTUALLY have "free-will" or not. Again, see Yudkowsky: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/ Let's assume for a moment that MW is correct and all you know is that you don't know which world you will find yourself in but you can envision what world you WANT to find yourself in. Well, there are well established means for choosing the path that is mostly likely to lead to the world you want to live in. I utilize this philosophy in the real world in my profession of poker. I never know the result of any hand going into it, but I know the odds of each outcome, and I choose the odds that are most likely to end in the outcome, the world, I want it to. The same is true for our actions influencing others. We have an established pattern of what actions are most likely to get others to believe something, so it's only a matter of taking those actions and having the best chance at ending up in the world we want to be in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

How is the interference explained by the interactions of the many worlds?

---

Again, Cioran can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's David Deutsch that has written about this. He could probably give you links, but you seemed to have ignored many he's given you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The reason why this is unlikely is that the many worlds interpretation is deterministic, but QM is not.

---

QM is only indeterministic if the wave-function is actually collapsing into a single world.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

QM is only indeterministic if the wave-function is actually collapsing into a single world.

---

Exactly! How many times does this elementary point need to be explained? Has YesNo read the links I have provided? Has he read some of them? Even ONE of them?

The answer is NO, isn't it, YesNo? So you can remove the first part of your user name and just call yourself No!

But keep on blathering without understanding!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

... I think it's David Deutsch that has written about this. He could probably give you links, but you seemed to have ignored many he's given you.

---

He may have better things to do than chase incomprehensible links all day. Why not just answer his question?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

Why not just answer his question?

---

Because I really don't feel knowledgeable enough to try and paraphrase the people that have devoted their lives to studying and explicating this subject. YesNo asked why I favored the MWI and I stated it as simply as possible. I'm sorry that you and he find many of these physicists "incomprehensible," but I'm not sure what else you want from Cioran, much less myself who is much less knowledgeable. Probably the only way to understand how the many worlds could interact would be to dig into the mathematical arguments.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cioran

Exactly! How many times does this elementary point need to be explained? Has YesNo read the links I have provided? Has he read some of them? Even ONE of them?

The answer is NO, isn't it, YesNo? So you can remove the first part of your user name and just call yourself No!

But keep on blathering without understanding!

---

I'm glad you're back, Cioran!

I have read every link you posted, some more than once.

I look at this as a jigsaw puzzle with over a thousand pieces in it. Sometimes you have to look at the piece more than once to understand it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

How do you know there is a wave to collapse?

---

I suspect there isn't a wave out there. That is just the equation used to describe the particle's probabilistic behavior.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

In what way is this pretty natural? Waves and particles are natural terms that everybody uses, but a wave function? I think this is the big problem in explaining this stuff to the layman; watch Feynman again and see how he is, rightly, laughing at tech. speak like 'wave function'. He talks about bullets and water, so even escapes the abstraction of particles and waves

By talking about a wave function collapsing you get oneself in a tiswas trying to visualise a wavey thingy folding up into a ball like thingy - but there is no wavey thingy! There is only the "particle of light' that you actually see, many of these particles of light build up into a dark light pattern in some situations, a "pile of particles" pattern in others. Why bother with interpretations at all, they only confuse, as is shown by there being so many, just describe what happens in experiments.

---

I guess the wave portion only comes from the Schrodinger equation. I am reading more of Feynman. Thanks for the references to him. They have helped clarify this issue for me.

The reason I mentioned that the wave function collapse seemed natural was because after the light saw which slit the electron went through something changed about it. The probability seemed to go away and it behaved as a particle would. So the wave function that generated probabilities collapsed into a deterministic situation. That seemed like a reasonable way to describe that actually happened.

I don't think there is a universal world wave equation for the universe as a whole. These wave equations only work for specific quantum objects. What do you think?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The reason I mentioned that the wave function collapse seemed natural was because after the light saw which slit the electron went through something changed about it. The probability seemed to go away and it behaved as a particle would. So the wave function that generated probabilities collapsed into a deterministic situation. That seemed like a reasonable way to describe that actually happened.

---

How can an equation collapse into a thing? I thought only things collapsed into things. Would you say the VAT equation collapsed into a pile of five pound notes? It just seems a strange way to describe things. It can only be metaphor, and a bad one at that.

Also, how can light see anything?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

What does discussing this on a literary forum have to do with ulterior motives? When it comes to science, I'm interested in learning the truth; I have no ulterior motives, I want to align my beliefs with reality. Attempts to make reality align with one's prior beliefs is where reality-distortion biases come from. Again, read Yudkowsky who writes primarily about these reality-distorting biases that are hard-wired in our brains.

---

I have at least two ulterior motives that stimulate my participation in these threads. They could be seen as jigsaw puzzles that I am working on.

The first puzzle could be generically called "consciousness", or in this particular thread, it might be aliased as "free will". I think we actually have it, MWI would claim that we don't. The second puzzle could be called "authority vs evidence". I am interested in how authority uses literary devices to convince others even if the evidence does not support what the authority has to say.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I don't know why it would be any harder to convince them of that then that there are mechanisms they cannot see and verify making particle waves collapse in a certain way that is indeterministic. Either way, we're dealing with aspects of reality that seem very strange to our natural intuitions.

---

It would be easier to convince people that Gods, or superhuman intentional agents, exist than it would be to convince them that parallel universes exist. Essentially, developmental psychologists have found that children prior to being taught seem to believe in these agents. Since the MWI would reject free will or intentionality, it would go against this aspect of our nature.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think you misunderstood me. People often bring up the argument that "if we have no free-will, then what we do does not matter." Well, that assumes several things: one being a single world, two being a predestined outcome in that world, three being that any actions lead to that predestined end, and finally it implies an omniscience in the person that realizes they have no free-will. All of these things are relevant to the argument that "it doesn't matter what one does because they have no free-will," and none of them may be relevant to the world we actually live in. Our belief or disbelief in free-will and what it means for our actions and, further, what it means regarding the world we end up in is probably more important than whether we ACTUALLY have "free-will" or not. Again, see Yudkowsky: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/

---

We have a lot of constraints on our behavior and free will is not absolute. I've noticed that Yudkowsky does not believe in the reality of free will, but he does believe in the reality of many worlds. Consider actually doing the assignment he makes:

Your homework assignment is to write a stack trace of the internal algorithms of the human mind as they produce the intuitions that power the whole damn philosophical argument.

But instead of the "damn philosophical argument" being whether we have free will or not, let it be whether many worlds exist or not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Let's assume for a moment that MW is correct and all you know is that you don't know which world you will find yourself in but you can envision what world you WANT to find yourself in. Well, there are well established means for choosing the path that is mostly likely to lead to the world you want to live in. I utilize this philosophy in the real world in my profession of poker. I never know the result of any hand going into it, but I know the odds of each outcome, and I choose the odds that are most likely to end in the outcome, the world, I want it to. The same is true for our actions influencing others. We have an established pattern of what actions are most likely to get others to believe something, so it's only a matter of taking those actions and having the best chance at ending up in the world we want to be in.

---

In the case of playing poker, when do the worlds split? In one world you win the game in the other you don't.

Also if Yudkowsky is right, you don't "want" anything. That's an illusion. That's a feeling. That is just a program running in your mind in this particular world giving you a deterministic outcome based on input values making you feel that you made some sort of choice. In some other world, you will have different input values or maybe even a different program running in superposition of some sort with this world which will make you do something else.

Don't forget, you have no free will in the MWI world. Most everything you experience to the contrary of that belief is by definition an illusion and should have some sort of "stack trace" to explain it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Again, Cioran can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's David Deutsch that has written about this. He could probably give you links, but you seemed to have ignored many he's given you.

QM is only indeterministic if the wave-function is actually collapsing into a single world.

---

The indeterminism occurs prior to the wave function collapse. It is only after the collapse that one has a deterministic system. That is one of the things I learned from Feynman.

This indeterminism, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in action, is what makes the atom as large as it is according to Feynman. That's why I wanted to know how many worlds handles that without the uncertainty principle. The atom is in a state prior to any collapse of a wave function. Also, if there was some deterministic mechanism that could tell that this electron will go through hole 1 and line up in position P and another electron will go through hole 2 and line up also in position P, then the number of electrons that one will find in position P is P12 = P1+P2 which means there was no interference pattern. That contradictions QM. If we have not collapsed the wave function with an experiment, we should see an interference pattern. That means P12 <> P1+P2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

How can an equation collapse into a thing? I thought only things collapsed into things. Would you say the VAT equation collapsed into a pile of five pound notes? It just seems a strange way to describe things. It can only be metaphor, and a bad one at that.

Also, how can light see anything?

---

Light seeing something is a bad metaphor. Sorry.

How would you describe what happens to the electron after a measurement has been made?