Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #2594

Re: The halting problem revisited

Show key headers only | View raw

On 30/03/2011 09:41, javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
> On 30/03/2011 4:05 AM, Michal Kleczek wrote:
>> javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
>>> Or we can posit that Wigner's friend is also a "material device", in
>>> which case you realize that Wigner's friend just gets replicated into
>>> parallel worlds, and so does Wigner, and so does everyone eventually.
>>
>> I'm not an expert in all this stuff at all but my thinking is:
>> If existence of parallel Wigners cannot be disproved experimentally (by
>> definition of "parallel") the whole idea is not really science anymore.
>> Since Wigner is not able to verify existence of parallel Wigners then by
>> applying Ockham's razor he should just ignore them (and try another
>> explanation which would be more scientific).
>
> Ockham's Razor requires us to accept the *simpler hypothesis*. If we
> assume only what's already proven about QM, e.g. the Schroedinger
> wave-function evolution, then parallel Wigners fall out of that
> naturally. We have to posit something *extra* (a collapse mechanism) to
> get *rid* of them.
>
> Absent experimental evidence one way or the other we should prefer the
> theory *without* a collapse postulate.
>
>> You cannot easily say "commonsense intuition is wrong" because then your
>> sentences about real world become meaningless.
>
> Non sequitur.
>
>> It is not that easy to get rid of "the existence of some dude whose name
>> rhymes with Todd" :)
>
> How about the observation that any phenomenon in the universe that has
> no detectable effect at all has no practical significance and may as
> well not exist; whereas if it has detectable effects, those effects can
> be partially modeled, at least statistically. The model, if made as good
> as possible, should end up as a mixture of structured behaviors, with
> patterns to them, and a random noise source of some sort.
>
> The model of the structured behaviors, however, amounts to a
> naturalistic explanation of those aspects of the phenomena more or less
> by definition. And what's left over is unstructured noise!
>
> This leaves no room for the supernatural in *any* form. A sufficiently
> good model crushes it between the parts explained naturalistically and
> the parts that are just noise. In fact, MWI QM even gets rid of the
> noise, simply making it a lengthy bit-string parameter that varies
> across the many worlds; the noise we observe is then just a reflection
> of our uncertainty as to which bit-string our particular universe has
> (even after we've observed an arbitrarily long prefix of it).
>

Unless QM is nonlinear somewhere, in which case it might allow 
communications across parallel worlds. And that would mean a whole heap 
of "supernatural" style problems and phenomena

-- 
Dirk

http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology

Back to comp.lang.java.programmer | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-29 14:05 -0400
  Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-29 20:43 +0100
    Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-03-29 20:24 -0400
      Re: The halting problem revisited Michal Kleczek <kleku75@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 10:05 +0200
        Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-03-30 04:41 -0400
          Re: The halting problem revisited Michal Kleczek <kleku75@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 11:35 +0200
            Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 07:38 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:48 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <lew@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 10:35 -0700
                Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 19:46 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <lew@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-30 13:24 -0700
                Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-31 00:04 +0100
                Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-31 00:00 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:28 -0400
            Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:44 +0100
            Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:26 -0400
              Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-04-05 01:32 +0100
          Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:42 +0100
            Re: The halting problem revisited Lew <noone@lewscanon.com> - 2011-03-31 08:31 -0400
        Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:41 +0100
          Re: The halting problem revisited "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-04-04 20:34 -0400
      Re: The halting problem revisited Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 15:38 +0100

csiph-web