Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!feeder.news-service.com!94.75.214.39.MISMATCH!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "javax.swing.JSnarker" Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: The halting problem revisited Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:34:29 -0400 Organization: media lab? Lines: 43 Message-ID: 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> <8vgtoiFikcU3@mid.individual.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: cSaA1Ciwnz/i+ORWJNRxkg.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:2871 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.