Why do you think wave functions are part of the map but electric charge is part of the territory? (I’m assuming you agree with scav’s claim that electric charge is an example of negative integers occurring in nature.)
Hmm… I don’t have a good answer. My intuition is that integers are “simple enough” and, in particular, sufficiently unambiguous, to be part of the territory, but complex numbers are not. However even a tiny bit of reflection shows that my idea of “simple enough” is arbitrary.
I guess we’ve fallen into the “is mathematics real?” tar pit. Probably shouldn’t thrash around too much :-)
Why do you think wave functions are part of the map but electric charge is part of the territory? (I’m assuming you agree with scav’s claim that electric charge is an example of negative integers occurring in nature.)
Hmm… I don’t have a good answer. My intuition is that integers are “simple enough” and, in particular, sufficiently unambiguous, to be part of the territory, but complex numbers are not. However even a tiny bit of reflection shows that my idea of “simple enough” is arbitrary.
I guess we’ve fallen into the “is mathematics real?” tar pit. Probably shouldn’t thrash around too much :-)