1) Receiving a single downvote is usually not worth making another comment asking “why the downvote??” It is just one person’s opinion and you should not pay much attention to it, not the community’s. People who ask this question are often seen as whiners and downvoted more for it.
2) People saying things like “Danger! Un-LW-orthodox opinion follows!” are also at risk of downvotes, because they come of as passive-aggressive. Substantive, reasoned criticisms of LW-orthodox opinions are welcome.
(Note that I am not calling you a whiner or passive-agressive—I’m taking a guess as to how certain kinds of comments are perceived by the community.)
3) The comments on this thread by shminux, tomblake and paper-machine do not express any definite position of their own on QM foundations. They are trying to clarify what the issues at stake are, what is this new paper really saying and how relevant it is, criticizing what they see as errors of interpretation in Motl’s reading of the paper, and criticizing Motl’s general tone as overheated and unhelpful.
4) I’m not sure about the other two, but I’m certain that shminux’s position on quantum foundations is not at all representative of LW. Shminux is an instrumentalist, who adopts to QM and to science in general a shut-up-and-calculate/”reality”-is-meaningless approach. The more common LW position is realism in philosophy of science and Many Worlds in QM foundations, though there are spirited dissenters and no enforced orthodoxy.
5) I would add that contrary to your pronouncement, there is no general scientific consensus on quantum foundations questions. There is general agreement on some things, e.g. that there is no physical, objective collapse, or that there are no local hidden variables, but no consensus on more philosophical questions like MW realism vs instrumentalism.
Several points here:
1) Receiving a single downvote is usually not worth making another comment asking “why the downvote??” It is just one person’s opinion and you should not pay much attention to it, not the community’s. People who ask this question are often seen as whiners and downvoted more for it.
2) People saying things like “Danger! Un-LW-orthodox opinion follows!” are also at risk of downvotes, because they come of as passive-aggressive. Substantive, reasoned criticisms of LW-orthodox opinions are welcome.
(Note that I am not calling you a whiner or passive-agressive—I’m taking a guess as to how certain kinds of comments are perceived by the community.)
3) The comments on this thread by shminux, tomblake and paper-machine do not express any definite position of their own on QM foundations. They are trying to clarify what the issues at stake are, what is this new paper really saying and how relevant it is, criticizing what they see as errors of interpretation in Motl’s reading of the paper, and criticizing Motl’s general tone as overheated and unhelpful.
4) I’m not sure about the other two, but I’m certain that shminux’s position on quantum foundations is not at all representative of LW. Shminux is an instrumentalist, who adopts to QM and to science in general a shut-up-and-calculate/”reality”-is-meaningless approach. The more common LW position is realism in philosophy of science and Many Worlds in QM foundations, though there are spirited dissenters and no enforced orthodoxy.
5) I would add that contrary to your pronouncement, there is no general scientific consensus on quantum foundations questions. There is general agreement on some things, e.g. that there is no physical, objective collapse, or that there are no local hidden variables, but no consensus on more philosophical questions like MW realism vs instrumentalism.
Very nice points, all 5 of them!
More like a recovering realist, slowly drifting toward anti-realism, but your description will do, too.