Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Dirk Bruere at NeoPax Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: The halting problem revisited Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:44:52 +0100 Organization: Dirk Bruere at Neopax Lines: 75 Message-ID: <8vgtv1FikcU5@mid.individual.net> References: <8v727mF46lU1@mid.individual.net> <8vbuiaFbm7U1@mid.individual.net> <8vd51lFlq1U1@mid.individual.net> <8ve17fFto9U1@mid.individual.net> <8vedndFt19U1@mid.individual.net> <8vef1uF8n9U1@mid.individual.net> <8ver27F5ouU1@mid.individual.net> Reply-To: dirk.bruere@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net RaILmCAlVU4bBAsF12L9zg83NYjGFqcWQbIh4+b1g5hZdaYJO1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:tdwmfuyWlflA55B1fTQJl1rs+A8= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9 In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:2595 On 30/03/2011 10:35, Michal Kleczek wrote: > 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. >> > > How about: if a theory leads to conclusions that are not verfifyable by (or > even contradictory to) "common sense" ( Myself ) - it means the theory is > useless (hence parallel world assumption is useless - hence there are either > a) other sentences more useful "falling out" from QM or b) QM is useless :) > ). > >>> 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). >> > > My point is that if "parallel world" theory cannot get rid of "the noise" in > "this world" it is of no use to me. There is no difference between > uncertainty of > a) which world I am in > b) the cat was dead or not a couple of hours in the past The real problem coming is that theories are just data compression algorithms, and science looks for the most efficient. AIs may well do a far better job of creating them, but they won't be "human friendly" explanations of "whats going on". -- Dirk http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology