The notion of accusation should be clear from context—“designed to be untestable” is tantamount to ‘intellectually dishonest’ in science. It’s not a personal attack for me to describe this as an accusation.
That’s the “shut up and calculate” version, no MWI necessary.
Then what happens to the components of the wavefunction that we do not observe? If you just stick with QM, then nothing special happens to them. They go on being themselves. If this is real—if you take it seriously—then they’re still out there doing their respective things.
This is Many Worlds. It follows directly from just doing “QM, no exceptions”. Calling it MWI is calling it by one particular consequence, but the real heart of it is to take Quantum Mechanics seriously on its own terms. I’d call it Quantum Realism.
Anyway, my mental model of you is that you think that there is some fixed objective reality behind what we model and measure, not a useful concept when dealing with the quantum world.
Quantum Realism—now quite explicitly called out on its own as ‘some fixed objective reality behind what we model and measure’ is not a useful concept? ? ?
WHAT?
I’ve done QM. I nearly ended up doing a quantum computation post-doc. If I tried to burden my mind with anything more complicated than realism while thinking about what was going on in that system, I would have gone mad.
~~~~
I get the feeling I’m saying, “This is the ground state, we’re all out of energy.” and you’re saying “It has h-bar omega over two energy left!”
I’m not sure its fair to pretend any scientific theory can make statements about things other than what we observe. Keep in mind, what you are saying is that encountering an experiment that seems to be fundamentally probabilistic (I can develop theories that predict probabilities, but NOT theories that predict exactly what will happen) is proof that a. the world is deterministic, b. this determinism is hidden from us in such a way as to make it ‘seem’ like things are probabilistic.
If we are properly Bayesian, shouldn’t we instead update by saying that the existence of experiments where we can only predict probabilities should push us in the direction of the existence of fundamental probability?
That’s cute, and if there weren’t such a thing as interference, you’d be totally right. But there is. It clearly indicates that this isn’t simply probability we’re talking about, here.
I’m not sure ‘cute’ is a useful word in facilitating a rational conversation. I certainly had an emotional reaction to it (feeling like I was being patronized) that I had to fight with in order to think clearly.
Anyway, maybe its best to see where we might be disagreeing. Do you believe its true that: 1. there exist experiments where we cannot predict what will happen
In those experiments we can predict what will happen if we run large ensembles of experiments in the same class
If you agree with that- do you think it MIGHT be problematic to use these facts to update in the direction of a fully deterministic theory?
Looks like we are rehashing our positions without getting through to each other… I guess I’ll stop here. Thank you for trying. If you like, you can often find me on freenode in either lesswrong or physics channels, some immediacy in the discussion might help clear up the hidden differences that seem to prevent us from reaching any common ground.
The notion of accusation should be clear from context—“designed to be untestable” is tantamount to ‘intellectually dishonest’ in science. It’s not a personal attack for me to describe this as an accusation.
Then what happens to the components of the wavefunction that we do not observe? If you just stick with QM, then nothing special happens to them. They go on being themselves. If this is real—if you take it seriously—then they’re still out there doing their respective things.
This is Many Worlds. It follows directly from just doing “QM, no exceptions”. Calling it MWI is calling it by one particular consequence, but the real heart of it is to take Quantum Mechanics seriously on its own terms. I’d call it Quantum Realism.
Quantum Realism—now quite explicitly called out on its own as ‘some fixed objective reality behind what we model and measure’ is not a useful concept? ? ?
WHAT?
I’ve done QM. I nearly ended up doing a quantum computation post-doc. If I tried to burden my mind with anything more complicated than realism while thinking about what was going on in that system, I would have gone mad.
~~~~
I get the feeling I’m saying, “This is the ground state, we’re all out of energy.” and you’re saying “It has h-bar omega over two energy left!”
I’m not sure its fair to pretend any scientific theory can make statements about things other than what we observe. Keep in mind, what you are saying is that encountering an experiment that seems to be fundamentally probabilistic (I can develop theories that predict probabilities, but NOT theories that predict exactly what will happen) is proof that a. the world is deterministic, b. this determinism is hidden from us in such a way as to make it ‘seem’ like things are probabilistic.
If we are properly Bayesian, shouldn’t we instead update by saying that the existence of experiments where we can only predict probabilities should push us in the direction of the existence of fundamental probability?
That’s cute, and if there weren’t such a thing as interference, you’d be totally right. But there is. It clearly indicates that this isn’t simply probability we’re talking about, here.
I’m not sure ‘cute’ is a useful word in facilitating a rational conversation. I certainly had an emotional reaction to it (feeling like I was being patronized) that I had to fight with in order to think clearly.
Anyway, maybe its best to see where we might be disagreeing. Do you believe its true that: 1. there exist experiments where we cannot predict what will happen
In those experiments we can predict what will happen if we run large ensembles of experiments in the same class
If you agree with that- do you think it MIGHT be problematic to use these facts to update in the direction of a fully deterministic theory?
Looks like we are rehashing our positions without getting through to each other… I guess I’ll stop here. Thank you for trying. If you like, you can often find me on freenode in either lesswrong or physics channels, some immediacy in the discussion might help clear up the hidden differences that seem to prevent us from reaching any common ground.