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.Originally Posted by YesNo
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.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers
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.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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
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."
Shall I introduce you to hundreds of other articles supporting MWI NOT written by Tipler?"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?
Laugh Out Loud.
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.
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?
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?
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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/
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers
[QUOTE]
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.
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
Again this is not correct because it does not fit with the sequence of a=x=y.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.
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.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
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.
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.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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.
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: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.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers
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.
Last edited by YesNo; 11-28-2012 at 01:38 AM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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.
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).
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers
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.
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.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
"I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers
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.
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.
Last edited by YesNo; 11-29-2012 at 10:09 AM.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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