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Re: The halting problem revisited

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On 30/03/2011 10:41 AM, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
> I think the whole problem of modern physics is that it has gone up
> alleyways populated with the untestable.

Interesting you should say that.

The various collapse postulates that have been proposed are, in 
principle, testable, but so far no-one has found any evidence for collapse.

So, MWI wins by default, since it avoids making a hypothesis that is 
difficult to test and for which no evidence exists.

If you posit just the Schroedinger wave equation (well-tested and 
basically proven to govern subatomic phenomena) MWI falls out 
automatically. Only if you posit an additional hypothesis, a collapse 
mechanism, do you NOT have MWI.

It is the testability of that additional hypothesis that is perhaps in 
question here. The wave equation itself has been very well tested by now.

> The most notorious example is String Theory. For all the testable
> scientific predictions it makes it might as well be a branch of theology.

Er, not quite. All variants of string theory have in-principle-testable 
consequences at very high energies. Of course, we're nowhere near having 
particle accelerators that can probe that region -- yet. In the 
meantime, there may be consequences detectable in deep space, since 
those energies were reached during the universe's birth.

But one prediction of (most) string theories is supersymmetry, and 
supersymmetry should probably result in certain new, heavy particles 
being found by the LHC soon. If the LHC finds new particles with 
particular properties it would prove supersymmetry and give a boost to 
the odds that a superstring theory is correct; on the other hand, if 
this doesn't happen after a while of running the LHC, it casts serious 
doubt on superstrings (and the non-super string theories have their own 
problems).

-- 
public final class JSnarker
extends JComponent
A JSnarker is an NNTP-aware component that asynchronously provides 
snarky output when the Ego.needsPuncturing() event is fired in cljp.

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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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