By trusting Eliezer on MWI, aren’t you trusting both his epistemology and his mathematical intuition?
Eliezer believes that the MWI interpretation allows you to derive quantum physics without any additional hypotheses that add complexity, such as collapse or the laws of movement for Bohm’s particles. But this belief is based on mathematical intuition, according to the article on the Born probabilities. Nobody knows how to derive the observations without additional hypotheses, but a lot of people such as Eliezer conjecture it’s possible. Right?
I feel like this point must have been made many times before, as Eliezer’s quantum sequence has been widely discussed, so maybe instead of a response I need a link to a previous conversation or a summary of previous conclusions.
But relating it to the point of your article… If Eliezer is wrong about quantum mechanics, should that lower my probability that his other epistemological views are correct? This is important because it affects whether or not I bother learning those views. The answer is “yes but not extremely”, because I think if there’s an error, it may be in the mathematical intuition.
To generalize a bit, it’s hard to find pure tests of a single ability. Though your example of stopping rules is actually a pretty good one, for understanding the meaning of all the probability symbols. But usually we should not be especially confused when someone with expertise is wrong about a single thing, since that single thing is probably not a pure test of that expertise. However we should be confused if on average they are wrong as many times as people without the expertise. Then we have to doubt the expertise or our own judgments of the right and wrong answers.
Nobody knows how to derive the observations without additional hypotheses, but a lot of people such as Eliezer conjecture it’s possible. Right?
I would not expect it to be possible to derive the observations without additional postulates; I think that it’s possible to do it with any of some partially known set of possible postulates, and the hunt is on for the most palatable postulate. At the time that the QM sequence was written, Eliezer was aware of multiple proposed solutions, none of which he found fully satisfying.
For example, consider this new argument whose additional postulate is a specific version of ‘locality.’ I don’t know whether or not Eliezer finds that one satisfying (note that MrMind has a whole list of limitations associated with that argument!).
By trusting Eliezer on MWI, aren’t you trusting both his epistemology and his mathematical intuition?
Eliezer believes that the MWI interpretation allows you to derive quantum physics without any additional hypotheses that add complexity, such as collapse or the laws of movement for Bohm’s particles. But this belief is based on mathematical intuition, according to the article on the Born probabilities. Nobody knows how to derive the observations without additional hypotheses, but a lot of people such as Eliezer conjecture it’s possible. Right?
I feel like this point must have been made many times before, as Eliezer’s quantum sequence has been widely discussed, so maybe instead of a response I need a link to a previous conversation or a summary of previous conclusions.
But relating it to the point of your article… If Eliezer is wrong about quantum mechanics, should that lower my probability that his other epistemological views are correct? This is important because it affects whether or not I bother learning those views. The answer is “yes but not extremely”, because I think if there’s an error, it may be in the mathematical intuition.
To generalize a bit, it’s hard to find pure tests of a single ability. Though your example of stopping rules is actually a pretty good one, for understanding the meaning of all the probability symbols. But usually we should not be especially confused when someone with expertise is wrong about a single thing, since that single thing is probably not a pure test of that expertise. However we should be confused if on average they are wrong as many times as people without the expertise. Then we have to doubt the expertise or our own judgments of the right and wrong answers.
I would not expect it to be possible to derive the observations without additional postulates; I think that it’s possible to do it with any of some partially known set of possible postulates, and the hunt is on for the most palatable postulate. At the time that the QM sequence was written, Eliezer was aware of multiple proposed solutions, none of which he found fully satisfying.
For example, consider this new argument whose additional postulate is a specific version of ‘locality.’ I don’t know whether or not Eliezer finds that one satisfying (note that MrMind has a whole list of limitations associated with that argument!).