I don’t understand how many worlds can be a slam dunk for someone who doesn’t understand all the math behind quantum physics.
If a significant number of people who do understand this math believe that many-worlds is wrong, then no matter how convincing I find your non-mathematical arguments in favor of many-worlds isn’t it rational for me to still assign a significant probability to the possibility that many worlds isn’t correct?
Doesn’t physics all come down to math, meaning that people who can’t follow the math should put vastly more weight on polls of experts than on their own imperfect understanding of the field?
Slam dunk in reality, not in the mind. You’re not looking for people who only get easy slam dunks, you’re looking for people who are actually right. So you should start with items that you’re sure are actually right—not that are easy. It’s the respondents’ job to get there, whether by choosing the right physicists to trust, or doing the math on their own… it’s not your job to decide in advance how they find the truth, maybe you’ll learn something! But the items you use as keys do have to be true.
Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn’t high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics. So I can’t do the math myself, or figure out which physicist to trust when the physicists disagree.
Given your IQ and information set many worlds might be a slam dunk. But I submit that anyone with my IQ or lower would necessarily be irrational to think that many worlds is a slam dunk.
Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn’t high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics
This may be a tangential point, but I need to say this somewhere: claims like this are quite likely false. (Notice how rarely they’re accompanied by justification.)
Quantum mechanics is new (in the scheme of things). So, of course, we see right now that the only people who understand it are very smart people: the ones who first thought of it and their students and associates. But that doesn’t mean that no one else can understand it; it just hasn’t had time to trickle down into everyone’s general education yet.
300 years ago, you could have replaced “quantum” by “classical” in that sentence, and it would have seemed reasonable: at that time, only a few dozen people in the world understood the differential and integral calculus. Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers. Taking an Outside View approach here, I don’t see any reason not to expect that the same trend will continue into the future, with quantum mechanics eventually being considered a grade-school subject (even without recourse to transhumanist solutions such as intelligence enhancement, which will immediately come to the minds of many readers).
Going back further, once upon a time literacy was an elite skill. Now we take it for granted, but how much do you really think our IQs have improved in the last couple thousand years?
And let’s not forget that even now, we already know that the fundamental mathematical ideas behind quantum mechanics are actually quite simpler than you would have thought from listening to physicists—little more than linear algebra over complex vector spaces.
You should look at the SAT math test to get an estimate of the percentage of Americans for which “linear algebra over complex vector spaces” can ever be simple.
Going back further, once upon a time literacy was an elite skill. Now we take it for granted, but how much do you really think our IQs have improved in the last couple thousand years?
A lot! Western IQ scores have improved by ~30 points since IQ tests were invented around a century ago. And literacy is probably part of a positive feedback loop that historically boosted IQ: increased literacy improves IQ, and higher IQ increases literacy. That feedback loop likely hasn’t been going for two thousand years, but it’s been going for at least two hundred years, which is more than enough time for a feedback loop to go nuts.
Still, though I suspect IQs have improved massively in the last couple thousand years, I definitely agree with your comment. I think the rise in average IQ over time doesn’t mean we’ve gotten qualitatively smarter, more that our environment has—and one aspect of that is the trickle-down effect of mental tools like literacy, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics.
Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers
This seems factually false to me. For starters, the average IQ of college freshman (all colleges, all majors) is more like 115 or 120 (choose the reference you please from Google). And math or physics majors are a cut far above that average, with GRE scores indicating an average around 130. (Prospective grad students, yes, but the ranking fits with high school SAT scores.)
I don’t think very many schools make relativity-level mathematics (or even just multi-variate calculus sufficient to solve Newtonian problems) a core requirement rather than major-specific...
The number 110 was just a guess, of course, but the point clearly stands even if the average IQ of people taking business calculus is 120.
The 17th-century counterparts of these folks would have been illiterate peasants or possibly, in a few cases, local merchants; they would not have been Newton and Leibniz.
http://betterexplained.com/ may change your opinion of some of the “hard” mathematics you have learned. Teaching methods are technology and can be improved.
In effect, you’re encouraging rationalist posers to signal agreement with you on these signature issues. By talking about the signal and its interpretation, you weaken it.
If a significant number of people who do understand this math believe that many-worlds is wrong, then no matter how convincing I find your non-mathematical arguments in favor of many-worlds isn’t it rational for me to still assign a significant probability to the possibility that many worlds isn’t correct?
It is. However, a useful cc-factor metric would focus on topics for which you have a confident belief. If those you get the right answer to those slam dunk topics that you do happen to be confident in then your cc-factor will be high.
But even if I could understand it, do you really think someone with an IQ below 100 could? Trust me, as a college professor I know that you need an above average IQ to have a good understanding of even calculus. So I can’t imagine that the math behind quantum physics is accessible to over 50% of humanity.
C.f. above: You need an above-average IQ to learn calculus in spite of the American educational system. We have no idea what genetic IQ is required to learn calculus.
I’ve personally lowered the IQ needed to understand Bayes’s Theorem by browsing online, and if I rewrote the page today I bet I could drop it another 10 points.
From what I’ve seen of the actual math, if you can understand the content of a typical Calc 3 course (which covers multivariable calculus), you can understand the math of quantum mechanics. If you can get an engineering degree (which is not an easy feat, but it’s something an awful lot of people manage to do), you should be smart enough to do quantum mechanics calculations.
Electrical engineering occasionally relies on quantum mechanical properties of semiconductors and other materials in their products. Then again, EE is one of the hardest engineering disciplines (or so I hear).
In many cases, engineers can get by with relatively simple empirical models to describe devices that depend on quantum mechanics to actually work. (Case in point: permanent magnets, which, according to classical electrodynamics, really shouldn’t be able to exist.)
Actually the math of quantum mechanics is much more complicated than, say, the Three Body Problem of classical mechanics, which is still unsolved today. It’s not so much because calculus is that hard (assuming someone willing to spend the effort to learn it), but rather that doing any math with undefined functions doesn’t work as well as you might think. What I’m trying to say is that, for all but the simplest quantum mechanics calculations, you can’t actually do the math and instead need to have a computer do a huge amount of calculations for you—and I think that qualifies as hard. (The same, of course, applies to classical problems like the Three Body Problem)
In any case, the math has nothing to do with this question, as you would know if you actually knew about the topic instead of wanting to brag. After all, the different interpretations of the model give the same predictions, and so use the same (or equivalent) math. The difference is in the assumptions behind the interpretation—why do we need to assume a special “non-quantum reality” or worse “special observers” when we get the same results by applying the theory to the whole world such that when we observe a quantum event, we also become entangled with it (with all the usual results).
I don’t understand how many worlds can be a slam dunk for someone who doesn’t understand all the math behind quantum physics.
If a significant number of people who do understand this math believe that many-worlds is wrong, then no matter how convincing I find your non-mathematical arguments in favor of many-worlds isn’t it rational for me to still assign a significant probability to the possibility that many worlds isn’t correct?
Doesn’t physics all come down to math, meaning that people who can’t follow the math should put vastly more weight on polls of experts than on their own imperfect understanding of the field?
Slam dunk in reality, not in the mind. You’re not looking for people who only get easy slam dunks, you’re looking for people who are actually right. So you should start with items that you’re sure are actually right—not that are easy. It’s the respondents’ job to get there, whether by choosing the right physicists to trust, or doing the math on their own… it’s not your job to decide in advance how they find the truth, maybe you’ll learn something! But the items you use as keys do have to be true.
Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn’t high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics. So I can’t do the math myself, or figure out which physicist to trust when the physicists disagree.
Given your IQ and information set many worlds might be a slam dunk. But I submit that anyone with my IQ or lower would necessarily be irrational to think that many worlds is a slam dunk.
This may be a tangential point, but I need to say this somewhere: claims like this are quite likely false. (Notice how rarely they’re accompanied by justification.)
Quantum mechanics is new (in the scheme of things). So, of course, we see right now that the only people who understand it are very smart people: the ones who first thought of it and their students and associates. But that doesn’t mean that no one else can understand it; it just hasn’t had time to trickle down into everyone’s general education yet.
300 years ago, you could have replaced “quantum” by “classical” in that sentence, and it would have seemed reasonable: at that time, only a few dozen people in the world understood the differential and integral calculus. Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers. Taking an Outside View approach here, I don’t see any reason not to expect that the same trend will continue into the future, with quantum mechanics eventually being considered a grade-school subject (even without recourse to transhumanist solutions such as intelligence enhancement, which will immediately come to the minds of many readers).
Going back further, once upon a time literacy was an elite skill. Now we take it for granted, but how much do you really think our IQs have improved in the last couple thousand years?
And let’s not forget that even now, we already know that the fundamental mathematical ideas behind quantum mechanics are actually quite simpler than you would have thought from listening to physicists—little more than linear algebra over complex vector spaces.
You should look at the SAT math test to get an estimate of the percentage of Americans for which “linear algebra over complex vector spaces” can ever be simple.
I don’t disagree, but keep in mind that these people went through horrible learning processes to get there.
I simply refer you again to my comment above. It applies to linear algebra as much as quantum mechanics.
Comments edited for clarification.
A lot! Western IQ scores have improved by ~30 points since IQ tests were invented around a century ago. And literacy is probably part of a positive feedback loop that historically boosted IQ: increased literacy improves IQ, and higher IQ increases literacy. That feedback loop likely hasn’t been going for two thousand years, but it’s been going for at least two hundred years, which is more than enough time for a feedback loop to go nuts.
Still, though I suspect IQs have improved massively in the last couple thousand years, I definitely agree with your comment. I think the rise in average IQ over time doesn’t mean we’ve gotten qualitatively smarter, more that our environment has—and one aspect of that is the trickle-down effect of mental tools like literacy, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics.
This seems factually false to me. For starters, the average IQ of college freshman (all colleges, all majors) is more like 115 or 120 (choose the reference you please from Google). And math or physics majors are a cut far above that average, with GRE scores indicating an average around 130. (Prospective grad students, yes, but the ranking fits with high school SAT scores.)
I don’t think very many schools make relativity-level mathematics (or even just multi-variate calculus sufficient to solve Newtonian problems) a core requirement rather than major-specific...
The number 110 was just a guess, of course, but the point clearly stands even if the average IQ of people taking business calculus is 120.
The 17th-century counterparts of these folks would have been illiterate peasants or possibly, in a few cases, local merchants; they would not have been Newton and Leibniz.
http://betterexplained.com/ may change your opinion of some of the “hard” mathematics you have learned. Teaching methods are technology and can be improved.
They don’t have to think it’s a slam-dunk. They just have to choose “Yes” if the choices are “Yes” or “No”.
In effect, you’re encouraging rationalist posers to signal agreement with you on these signature issues. By talking about the signal and its interpretation, you weaken it.
You obviously don’t poll Less Wrong readers using those keys!
Does that mean you’re holding some in reserve?
It is. However, a useful cc-factor metric would focus on topics for which you have a confident belief. If those you get the right answer to those slam dunk topics that you do happen to be confident in then your cc-factor will be high.
A physicist’s overview of MWI’s problems
And another
The math isn’t actually -that- hard. It would be far better to apply yourself to learning it.
I have been told by physicists that it is.
But even if I could understand it, do you really think someone with an IQ below 100 could? Trust me, as a college professor I know that you need an above average IQ to have a good understanding of even calculus. So I can’t imagine that the math behind quantum physics is accessible to over 50% of humanity.
C.f. above: You need an above-average IQ to learn calculus in spite of the American educational system. We have no idea what genetic IQ is required to learn calculus.
I’ve personally lowered the IQ needed to understand Bayes’s Theorem by browsing online, and if I rewrote the page today I bet I could drop it another 10 points.
Please do.
From what I’ve seen of the actual math, if you can understand the content of a typical Calc 3 course (which covers multivariable calculus), you can understand the math of quantum mechanics. If you can get an engineering degree (which is not an easy feat, but it’s something an awful lot of people manage to do), you should be smart enough to do quantum mechanics calculations.
Electrical engineering occasionally relies on quantum mechanical properties of semiconductors and other materials in their products. Then again, EE is one of the hardest engineering disciplines (or so I hear).
In many cases, engineers can get by with relatively simple empirical models to describe devices that depend on quantum mechanics to actually work. (Case in point: permanent magnets, which, according to classical electrodynamics, really shouldn’t be able to exist.)
Consider the signaling incentives they have. Do physicists look better or worse if the math they do is seen as harder or as easier?
Contrariwise, I (like many people here) associate mostly with very smart people, so greatly overestimate average intelligence.
Actually the math of quantum mechanics is much more complicated than, say, the Three Body Problem of classical mechanics, which is still unsolved today. It’s not so much because calculus is that hard (assuming someone willing to spend the effort to learn it), but rather that doing any math with undefined functions doesn’t work as well as you might think. What I’m trying to say is that, for all but the simplest quantum mechanics calculations, you can’t actually do the math and instead need to have a computer do a huge amount of calculations for you—and I think that qualifies as hard. (The same, of course, applies to classical problems like the Three Body Problem)
In any case, the math has nothing to do with this question, as you would know if you actually knew about the topic instead of wanting to brag. After all, the different interpretations of the model give the same predictions, and so use the same (or equivalent) math. The difference is in the assumptions behind the interpretation—why do we need to assume a special “non-quantum reality” or worse “special observers” when we get the same results by applying the theory to the whole world such that when we observe a quantum event, we also become entangled with it (with all the usual results).