Apocryphal story about Schrodinger: he used his cat thought experiment as a litmus test to determine whether or not he should continue working on QM. When he got the result he didn’t want, he switched over to biology, and wrote a book that inspired Watson and Crick.
I think we answer those sorts of questions through being careful thinkers and collecting evidence. If quantum mechanics is correct, what is made incorrect by that statement? Why do we believe the things that QM suggests are incorrect?
The double-split experiment, if correct, shatters our beliefs about microscopic existence formed by our experience with macroscopic objects, and has a number of testable predictions. We can construct other experiments based on those predictions, and when we do them it turns out that the microscopic world and the macroscopic world actually behave differently, but in a way that is consistent instead of contradictory. It’s bizarre but it’s possible.
We can check why my priors for insanity are higher than my priors for magic. I have solid evidence that I am more likely to believe supernatural claims because of irrationality than because of rationality.
Did Thomas Jefferson have solid evidence that meteors didn’t exist? No- and it looks like he recognized that. He just had enough evidence to consider that the possibility discoverers of meteors were lying was stronger than the possibility they were telling the truth. The Platypus is another great example- many naturalists had enough evidence to believe it was a hoax rather than a real animal.
But the evidence against meteors and platypi is fairly small, and can be overcome relatively easily. What about the evidence against supernatural causation? It seems like the statement “you are insane if you believe in supernatural causality” might be true by definition.
What are the consequences if human porntuition is so strong that they predict where it’ll pop up 53% of the time instead of 50% of the time? Either that statistical significance needs to be statistically significant (hey, when I run the results 100 times, I get a result at the p=.01 level! Fascinating!), that there’s some systemic error in the setup, or that causality isn’t unidirectional. I don’t think I can express how much evidence we have against the last proposition.
If there were a precise theory of causality flowing backwards in time, that explained under what conditions it happened, and why we haven’t encountered those conditions before, and many different experiments were conducted to produce those conditions, and they confirmed the predictions, and were reliably replicated, and led to the development of new technology that use backwards causality, would that be sufficient evidence for you to accept backwards causality?
I think it would all hinge on why we haven’t encountered those conditions before. I think I can imagine there existing a reason why we haven’t encountered those conditions before which doesn’t trigger my suspicion of insanity, but that would dramatically limit how radically those technologies could impact life.
So that seems to boil down to a “yes, if that were true, I would believe it, but I have no reason to expect it is possible for that to be true in the world I reside in.” (i.e. I would believe in God if he existed throughout my life so far, but the spontaneous appearance of God would cause me to suspect I am insane.)
but that would dramatically limit how radically those technologies could impact life.
You say, using a device built out of transistors, so that nearly anyone in the world with a similar device can read it. How limited would you have predicted the technology based and quantum mechanics would be?
Conditions that we are unlikely to observe now in our daily lives could become prevalent if we deliberately seek them out.
I could have predicted personal telegraphs in 1900, and personal television-typewriter combinations in 1920. Knowing what I do about brain makeup now, the presence of telepathy would not suggest insanity to me (so long as there are sensors involved more sophisticated than the human brain).
What I’m saying is that my condition for reverse causality existing and me considering myself sane despite possessing evidence for it is that the impacts of said reverse causality are minimal. Maybe I could be eased into something more dramatic? I’m not sure.
Edit- a comment by Marx, that quantitative changes become qualitative changes, comes to mind. If I have evidence for quantitative changes underlying a qualitative change, I can be happy with it- if I don’t, it seems like evidence for insanity. Obviously, computers are more than super typewriters like Excel is more than a super abacus- but the differences are more differences of degree than of kind. Even QM and classical mechanics and relativity appear separated by quantitative changes (or, at least, we have good reason to expect that they are).
Actually, can you clarify that whole paragraph? What is the claim you are evaluating.
The word is a portmanteau of “porn” and “intuition,” and is from my brief-glance understanding of Bem’s recent psychic findings which people are aflutter about. He set it up so people would guess which side an erotic image would pop up on, then it would pop up randomly, and they were right 53% of the time, which was supposedly statistically significant (I did not see a standard deviation in my brief glance). I consider it unlikely that this is a reproducible effect.
Apocryphal story about Schrodinger: he used his cat thought experiment as a litmus test to determine whether or not he should continue working on QM. When he got the result he didn’t want, he switched over to biology, and wrote a book that inspired Watson and Crick.
I think we answer those sorts of questions through being careful thinkers and collecting evidence. If quantum mechanics is correct, what is made incorrect by that statement? Why do we believe the things that QM suggests are incorrect?
The double-split experiment, if correct, shatters our beliefs about microscopic existence formed by our experience with macroscopic objects, and has a number of testable predictions. We can construct other experiments based on those predictions, and when we do them it turns out that the microscopic world and the macroscopic world actually behave differently, but in a way that is consistent instead of contradictory. It’s bizarre but it’s possible.
We can check why my priors for insanity are higher than my priors for magic. I have solid evidence that I am more likely to believe supernatural claims because of irrationality than because of rationality.
Did Thomas Jefferson have solid evidence that meteors didn’t exist? No- and it looks like he recognized that. He just had enough evidence to consider that the possibility discoverers of meteors were lying was stronger than the possibility they were telling the truth. The Platypus is another great example- many naturalists had enough evidence to believe it was a hoax rather than a real animal.
But the evidence against meteors and platypi is fairly small, and can be overcome relatively easily. What about the evidence against supernatural causation? It seems like the statement “you are insane if you believe in supernatural causality” might be true by definition.
What are the consequences if human porntuition is so strong that they predict where it’ll pop up 53% of the time instead of 50% of the time? Either that statistical significance needs to be statistically significant (hey, when I run the results 100 times, I get a result at the p=.01 level! Fascinating!), that there’s some systemic error in the setup, or that causality isn’t unidirectional. I don’t think I can express how much evidence we have against the last proposition.
If there were a precise theory of causality flowing backwards in time, that explained under what conditions it happened, and why we haven’t encountered those conditions before, and many different experiments were conducted to produce those conditions, and they confirmed the predictions, and were reliably replicated, and led to the development of new technology that use backwards causality, would that be sufficient evidence for you to accept backwards causality?
I think it would all hinge on why we haven’t encountered those conditions before. I think I can imagine there existing a reason why we haven’t encountered those conditions before which doesn’t trigger my suspicion of insanity, but that would dramatically limit how radically those technologies could impact life.
So that seems to boil down to a “yes, if that were true, I would believe it, but I have no reason to expect it is possible for that to be true in the world I reside in.” (i.e. I would believe in God if he existed throughout my life so far, but the spontaneous appearance of God would cause me to suspect I am insane.)
You say, using a device built out of transistors, so that nearly anyone in the world with a similar device can read it. How limited would you have predicted the technology based and quantum mechanics would be?
Conditions that we are unlikely to observe now in our daily lives could become prevalent if we deliberately seek them out.
I could have predicted personal telegraphs in 1900, and personal television-typewriter combinations in 1920. Knowing what I do about brain makeup now, the presence of telepathy would not suggest insanity to me (so long as there are sensors involved more sophisticated than the human brain).
What I’m saying is that my condition for reverse causality existing and me considering myself sane despite possessing evidence for it is that the impacts of said reverse causality are minimal. Maybe I could be eased into something more dramatic? I’m not sure.
Edit- a comment by Marx, that quantitative changes become qualitative changes, comes to mind. If I have evidence for quantitative changes underlying a qualitative change, I can be happy with it- if I don’t, it seems like evidence for insanity. Obviously, computers are more than super typewriters like Excel is more than a super abacus- but the differences are more differences of degree than of kind. Even QM and classical mechanics and relativity appear separated by quantitative changes (or, at least, we have good reason to expect that they are).
*Eyebrow raise
Actually, can you clarify that whole paragraph? What is the claim you are evaluating.
The word is a portmanteau of “porn” and “intuition,” and is from my brief-glance understanding of Bem’s recent psychic findings which people are aflutter about. He set it up so people would guess which side an erotic image would pop up on, then it would pop up randomly, and they were right 53% of the time, which was supposedly statistically significant (I did not see a standard deviation in my brief glance). I consider it unlikely that this is a reproducible effect.