Brains, as far as we currently understand them, are not digital. For a neuron fire / not fire is digital, but there is a lot of information involved in determining weather or not a neuron fires. A leaky integrator is a reasonable rough approximation to a neuron and is continuous.
The point is that by the time two brains differ by a whole neuron firing, they are decoherent—far too many particles in different positions. That’s why you can’t feel the subtle influence of someone trying to think a little differently from you—by the time a single neuron fires differently, the influence has diminished down to an exponentially tiny infinitesimal. Even a single neurotransmitter in a different place prevents two configurations from being identical.
@Billswift: The point is that nothing happens differently as a result of distant events—no local evolution, no probabilistic chance, no experience, no “non-signaling influence”, nothing changes—until the two parties meet, slower than light. You can (I think) split it up and view it in terms of strictly local events with invariant states of distant entanglement.
@Recovering irrationalist: I haven’t encountered any stronger arguments for the untestable SR-violating single-world theory. Sure, no one knows what science doesn’t know. But given that I believe single-worlds is false, I should not expect to encounter unknown strong arguments for it. Do you have a particular stronger argument in mind?
@Jason: Bohm’s particles are epiphenomena. The pilot-wave must be real to guide the particles; the particles themselves have no effect. If the pilot-wave is real, the amplitude distribution we know is real, and it will have conscious observers in it if it performs computations, etc. And there is simply no reason to suppose it.
@Mitchell: Of Born I have already extensively spoken (your 1), and postulating a single world doesn’t help you at all; it is strictly simpler to say “The Born probabilities exist” than to say “The Born probabilities exist and control a magical FTL collapse” or “The Born probabilities exist and pilot epiphenomenal points [also FTL].” On your 2, it so happens that I don’t deny causal continuity, and plan to speak of this later. And regarding (3) quantum physics describes a covariant, local process so it seems like a good guess that there exists a covariant, local representation; but regardless the essence of Special Relativity is in the covariance and locality, whether we can find a representation that reveals it, or not.
Brains, as far as we currently understand them, are not digital. For a neuron fire / not fire is digital, but there is a lot of information involved in determining weather or not a neuron fires. A leaky integrator is a reasonable rough approximation to a neuron and is continuous.
The point is that by the time two brains differ by a whole neuron firing, they are decoherent—far too many particles in different positions. That’s why you can’t feel the subtle influence of someone trying to think a little differently from you—by the time a single neuron fires differently, the influence has diminished down to an exponentially tiny infinitesimal. Even a single neurotransmitter in a different place prevents two configurations from being identical.
@Billswift: The point is that nothing happens differently as a result of distant events—no local evolution, no probabilistic chance, no experience, no “non-signaling influence”, nothing changes—until the two parties meet, slower than light. You can (I think) split it up and view it in terms of strictly local events with invariant states of distant entanglement.
@Recovering irrationalist: I haven’t encountered any stronger arguments for the untestable SR-violating single-world theory. Sure, no one knows what science doesn’t know. But given that I believe single-worlds is false, I should not expect to encounter unknown strong arguments for it. Do you have a particular stronger argument in mind?
@Jason: Bohm’s particles are epiphenomena. The pilot-wave must be real to guide the particles; the particles themselves have no effect. If the pilot-wave is real, the amplitude distribution we know is real, and it will have conscious observers in it if it performs computations, etc. And there is simply no reason to suppose it.
@Mitchell: Of Born I have already extensively spoken (your 1), and postulating a single world doesn’t help you at all; it is strictly simpler to say “The Born probabilities exist” than to say “The Born probabilities exist and control a magical FTL collapse” or “The Born probabilities exist and pilot epiphenomenal points [also FTL].” On your 2, it so happens that I don’t deny causal continuity, and plan to speak of this later. And regarding (3) quantum physics describes a covariant, local process so it seems like a good guess that there exists a covariant, local representation; but regardless the essence of Special Relativity is in the covariance and locality, whether we can find a representation that reveals it, or not.
“it will have conscious observers in it if it performs computations”
So your argument against Bohm depends on information functionalism?