for you elroch
Does True Randomness Actually Exist? ( ^&*#^%$&#% )
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Jan 31, 2020
0
#603
Looks like a good novel, but only available as paperback from the US, so not one I am going to be able to read here.
Jan 31, 2020
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#604
"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Albert Einstein
"Time travel will be experienced before the multiverse is observed" MustangMate
In other words - It ain't goin to happen.
Jan 31, 2020
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#605
I get it. Within closed systems, there can be the appearance of time slowing, Relativity and all that. But in the open system of the Universe, everything flows the same.
Feb 1, 2020
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#606
The only meaningful way that time can slow is by comparison with another scale of time (a special case of my beloved rule that the only genuinely meaningful quantities in physics are dimensionless ones. If that is bemusing, ignore it).
For example, the scale of time on the Earth's surface is slower than on a spaceship that is motionless relative to the centre of the Earth, due to gravitational redshift. (i.e. the ratio of a second on Earth to a second in the spaceship is a number greater than 1).
Elroch: "the choice of which branch you are in is random at every time branching occurs (which is all the time everywhere)."
the problem with this statement is that every time branching occurs you proceed to all of the branches. there is never a random choice.
this is an essential part of understanding this discussion and by no means nitpicking.
"Time travel will be experienced before the multiverse is observed" MustangMate
"In other words - It ain't goin to happen."
Never say never : ) btw, are you talking about multiverse or many-worlds? im asking because in the past people referred to them interchangeably, but they are totally different ideas as you probably know?
Feb 1, 2020
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#609
Sillver1 wrote:
Elroch: "the choice of which branch you are in is random at every time branching occurs (which is all the time everywhere)."
the problem with this statement is that every time branching occurs you proceed to all of the branches. there is never a random choice.
That is true AT THE MULTIVERSE LEVEL.
However, all agents (take yourself as an example) see a SINGLE outcome of each event, not all of them.
To use a classical analogy, it's like if you toss a coin N times, what you observe (and afterwards can remember having observed) is a single sequence of N heads and tails, not a superposition of 2^N sequences of N heads and tails.
It is the information an agent receives that is random, not what happens in the (unobservable) multiverse.
this is an essential part of understanding this discussion and by no means nitpicking.
Nor is the above, which makes it science, by relating it to observations.
Many worlds is drivel. Honest. Almost anything can be used as an attempt to make mathematics fit.
Feb 1, 2020
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#611
While that may be your honest opinion, quite a few of the most highly regarded physicists find it an appealingly elegant interpretation. Are you sure you even have a good understanding of it? (I certainly wouldn't claim a deep understanding of the mathematics, just the basic concepts and some characteristics).
All opinion is opinion, even what we "find" things to be. Firstly, I think the mathematics of it would be irrelevant, since mathematics is merely used to make models which are naturally fashioned to suit the idea but which always use the same system of dimensions that exist in the world, perhaps with enhancements, but which naturally fit those of all viable ideational models, making them all look as if they could reflect reality.
So without physical evidence, maths doesn't help to prove anything. What is more important than maths, but less important than physical evidence, is logical thinking based on principles that tend towards simplicity. So I'd be happy with a many worlds theory that was purely notional or statistical and which was merely used to represent the universe of probabilities of a web of outcomes. The idea that these things are real and simultaneously really exist is not at all elegant and is in fact an extremely childish attempt to get round the idea that an anomaly exists between theory and reality by inventing an entire universe composed of anomalies, so that the one that trips us up doesn't exist. It's a fantasy and moreover, can never be shown to be other than that. So I'm afraid that quite a few of the most highly regarded physicists are effete and more concerned with image than honesty.
Feb 2, 2020
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#613
Good mathematical models are elegant. This is the venerable notion of Occam's razor which has guided good hypotheses for all of history. It is also related to Bayesian reasoning, where there is a quantitative reason why simpler models are to be preferred.
The notion of complexity here is crucial. It is about the arbitrary choices in the model. For example, General Relativity is a model that replaces the flat 3+1 dimensional world by one with a complicated Riemannian manifold with 10 independent dimensions of variation, and predicts infinitely fine new structure associated with waves in this Riemannian manifold (none observed for 100 years after the theory was published). Yet General Relativity was such an excellent model based on Occam's razor that just one or two experimental confirmations was enough for strong confidence in its truth, because there are no arbitrary choices involved in its definition. It is in a mathematical sense the very simplest model that respects general covariance.
The many worlds interpretation can be derived with equal elegance as described in the following quote: "MWI is distinguished by two qualities: it assumes realism, which it assigns to the [universal] wavefunction, and it has the minimal formal structure possible, rejecting any hidden variables, quantum potential, any form of a collapse postulate (i.e., Copenhagenism) or mental postulates (such as the many-minds interpretation makes)."
It is also worth noting that Everett did not use the "many worlds" description. He expressed it all in terms of entanglement, a phenomenon which no-one really rejects any more, since all the experiments testing the EPR paradox.
It is impressive that such an interpretation both exists and is unique,
Feb 2, 2020
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#614
Math is abstract because, quite literally, mathematics is about abstraction. ... It helps to find a specific, concrete meaning for the abstract ideas
Mathematics makes it's predictions about reality. The idea these predictions actually are a true representation of what will occur or "what is out there" are false.
The only things that have occured in Reality - happened or is happening. That something other might have, is or will happen, might be out there or not, using mathematical models, is nothing more than a tool to be used in an attempt at understanding observation. Abstract thought is a tool of the mind, not a depiction of reality. A mathematical probability that such and such might happen, say 1/100 is not a true representation, but an abstract one.
Feb 2, 2020
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#615
The example of a coin flip, heads or tails, predicts 50/50. An abstract idea. Helps us make sense of our observations. 50/50 however does not represent what will happen, in this strange world of reality.
and s/t else. Math Theorists will try2get u to capitulate cuzza stuff like occams razor (only cuz they've caved & they want ur company). don't do it. wait for more.
Feb 2, 2020
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#618
That pigs might be flying, somewhere off in the unknown universe, can be expressed mathematically. (abstract thought). Does this mean the mathematics proves, is evidence of or represents the reality of it? I suggest emphatically no. I simply don't know if pigs are flying somewhere and simply don't care, as I've never observed anything that resembles such a phenomenon.
The argument that such and such is possible, citing nothing more than it's mathematics as proof, is invalid. Abstract thought can not prove anything but itself.
good, so if you entertain all interpretations maybe i wrongly tagged you with subjectivity. but still, how about the 'standard' many worlds interpretation?
I like it. It feels right to me as an "explanation" of self-interference.
i dislike it, but its fully deterministic.
The determinism is a nice feature, but of course it only exists from an unobservable point of view.
where do you find uncertainty there?
In every branch, because the choice of which branch you are in is random at every time branching occurs (which is all the time everywhere).
of course you uncertain about which branch you'll end up in, as an individual, but its meaningless to the universe as a whole, which already know that every possibility will be executed. the only thing that really matter is the starting point.
am i missing something?
Not sure, but all we have are individual viewpoints from a single branch.
quote from Stanford encyclopedia:
"The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics holds that there are many worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time as our own. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics."
That is a good argument why it is a good interpretation.