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Re: The halting problem revisited

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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

But I think don't really follow and I am not capable of discussing it 
further. It may be because:
a) my English is not good enough to comprehend such advanced discussions
b) I don't have enought background - do you have some pointers that would 
introduce me to the concepts you're talking about?

Until it is more understandable to me I think I won't add "the noise" 
anymore :)

-- 
Michal

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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

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