So for you the "shut up and calculate" approach of some of those who support CI is no longer an option under these new "Bayseian" interpretations?Some say it is going back to CI. But for me, that is ontic in that it puts the observer - or at least, points of view - in the spotlight as the critical factor.
she can still control those probabilities by means of the prior set up. — Pierre-Normand
I'm over my head here. But I've seen MWI described as superdeterministic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
The future of all measurements is already known it's just that you happen to be in the one where the train of thought has completed. — JupiterJess
Presumably the worlds where your train of thought gets completed are the ones that are relatively normal with the illusion of the higher level regularities (breathable atmosphere ect). In that sense notions of identity and control are eliminable or instrumental.
I understand some say that it is not true and the state of things are that there are more (normal) worlds which is why when you think: "I raise my arm" the arm does go up rather than say your leg because there are more of the former than the latter. But I'm not sure why that is (more worlds of a certain kind than others).
The constraint based physics being posted by Apokrisis here makes more intuitive sense to me but what seems intuitive might not be true
Quantum Mechanics Unscrambled.
Just read it. Overly complicated - one suspects that at some points he is just showing off that he's technically proficient with QM formalism and complex analysis - and it is almost entirely devoid of any metaphysics, so I wouldn't bother wasting your time, unless you are interested in the technical idea that QM theory can be reshaped as a new kind of probability theory. At a couple of points he touches on the idea that what these "novel" approaches are proposing is just some kind of instrumentalism/operationalism, but he does nothing to actually argue that they should not be taken in precisely that kind of way. — jkg20
So, can it be affirmatively asserted that QM affirms the concept of having a 'free will'? — Posty McPostface
The Schrödinger equation describes the (deterministic) evolution of the wave function of a particle. — Wikipedia
So for you the "shut up and calculate" approach of some of those who support CI is no longer an option under these new "Bayseian" interpretations? — jkg20
And QM is moving towards that kind of interpretation with the quantum information or quantum reconstruction projects. MWI and Bohmian Mechanics are the last gasp of an out-dated way of conceiving of physicalism. Their advocates are especially passionate probably because they know they are a passing story. :) — apokrisis
I’d also say that I don’t see how reconstruction could reduce the need for interpretation. Ultimately, however we reconstruct quantum mechanics, we’re either going to end up saying (i) that the mathematical structure thus reconstructed represents physical reality faithfully (in which case we end up with the Everett interpretation or something like it), or (ii) that it represents physical reality incompletely or inaccurately (in which case we need to fix it, which leads us to hidden-variable or dynamical-collapse theories), or (iii) that it’s not in the business of representing physical reality at all (which leads us to operationalist or neo-Copenhagen or physics-is-information approaches). — Interview with David Wallace
And yet infinitely often, the zero-amplitude strikes will also happen in some worldline of the observer. Which screws any claim to have done something which has constrained the probabilities to these observed bands. — apokrisis
Under MWI, there will be infinitely many worlds in which all the bands are composed of the least likely events. So the bands will be exactly where they shouldn't be for an infinity of observers.
If you take MWI seriously, you can't take the probabilistic success of QM seriously. Everything that can happen, happens infinitely often. — apokrisis
Yet real numbers, with their infinitely many decimals, have infested almost every nook and cranny of physics, from the strengths of electromagnetic fields to the wave functions of quantum mechanics. We describe even a single bit of quantum information (qubit) using two real numbers involving infinitely many decimals.
Not only do we lack evidence for the infinite but we don’t need the infinite to do physics. — Infinity Is a Beautiful Concept – And It’s Ruining Physics - Max Tegmark
The effect from the manifold 'spitting' of observers over time ought not to be anymore troublesome to a compatibilist conception of free will than is the fact that, within any determinate history of a single observer, there are unlikely events that occasionally occur as the outcome of the uncontrolled amplification of quantum fluctuations. This is not sufficient to remove the agent's control where it matters, except in very restricted and artificial situations, since not all features of the emergent classical domain are subject to such uncontrollable fluctuations. — Pierre-Normand
Zero-squared is still zero, experimental imprecisions aside. — Andrew M
It doesn't have to be that way. You can reject actual infinities and consider limits such as Planck-length and light-speed to constrain the locations a particle can be in since it was last measured. As Max Tegmark, who advocates MWI, says: — Andrew M
... Does that make freewill now a quasi-classical phenomenon? Well no. As I argued earlier, freewill is a much higher level socially constructed deal. It is about the construction of a "thinking self" that negotiates between a set of established cultural norms around behaviour, and some set of needs and feelings that represent "our selves" as a biological and psychological individual within that wider framework. — apokrisis
Which is also why a quantum interpretation that focuses on the observer rather than the observables, the complex epistemic relation rather than the simple ontic facts or events, would be the way forward.
I'm over my head here. But I've seen MWI described as superdeterministic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism — JupiterJess
I am quite sympathetic also with the main drift of Apokrisis's constraint-based approach. But I think is it quite congenial to the pragmatist (or relational) interpretation of QM that I also favor over the alternative metaphysically 'realist' interpretations. It is indeed thanks to thermodynamical constraints that the structured and controllable 'classical world' emerges at all from the chaos of the homogeneous gas of the early expanding universe. — Pierre-Normand
Advocates of the Everett interpretation among physicists (almost exclusively) and philosophers (for the most part) have returned to Everett’s original conception of the Everett interpretation as a pure interpretation: something which emerges simply from a realist attitude to the unitarily-evolving quantum state.
How is this possible? The crucial step occurred in physics: it was the development of decoherence theory.
...
For decoherence is by its nature an approximate process: the wave-packet states that it picks out are approximately defined; the division between system and environment cannot be taken as fundamental; interference processes may be suppressed far below the limit of experimental detection but they never quite vanish. The previous dilemma remains (it seems): either worlds are part of our fundamental ontology (in which case decoherence, being merely a dynamical process within unitary quantum mechanics, and an approximate one at that, seems incapable of defining them), or they do not really exist (in which case decoherence theory seems beside the point).
Outside philosophy of physics, though (notably in the philosophy of mind, and in the philosophy of the special sciences more broadly) it has long been recognised that this dilemma is mistaken, and that something need not be fundamental to be real. In the last decade, this insight was carried over to philosophy of physics. — The Everett Interpretation - David Wallace
The value of relational QM, I think, is that it gives us a language for talking about the familiar world that we observe from our individual point-of-view rather than an idealized view-from-nowhere. Which is to say, we are each participants in a localized part of a much larger quantum universe that evolves unitarily. — Andrew M
The value of relational QM, I think, is that it gives us a language for talking about the familiar world that we observe from our individual point-of-view rather than an idealized view-from-nowhere. — Andrew M
Are neurons evolved to exchange signals or potentials?
Let’s stop mucking about.
Thanks for the reference to Wallace on Everett's interpretation. I just looked up his book The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation. The second part of the book, entitled Probability in a Branching Universe is of much interest to me. — Pierre-Normand
Let me just note that Rovelli and Bitbol both endorse relational approaches that share some features with Everett's interpretation. But they don't reify the multiverse anymore than they do its branches. — Pierre-Normand
Agreed. I will reread the paper and perhaps start a new thread. Whilst the author certain says that his position should be distinguished from what he refers to as "crude operationalism" (which may be a straw man in any case) just saying that his position should be so distinguished doesn't make it distinguishable.(We are veering a bit off-topic...)
For myself, I can only positivistically affirm quantum time and quantum energy. — Jonathan AB
One does not need QM to prove the absence of free will. Special relatively already achieves this without equivocation. Temporal shifts at high velocity travel have proven special relatively correct. The future already exists and as such free will is precluded. — Marcus de Brun
If the future exists apriori how can our personal future be open.? — Marcus de Brun
This multiverrse stuff sounds like a sophisticated version of the god delusion... A nice way of filling in gaps and silencing critics. Other Universes are not relavent to our universe and discussions as to their existence are just another example of atheistic gods. — Marcus de Brun
Bell himself felt the ultimate question is one of determinism, and the only problem with determinism is the fact that people are afraid of it and don't know what to do with it, and cannot reconcile it with thought, or free will. It (determinism) is readily reconcilable with SR and QM, it its less reconcilable with the fear of its intellectual import. — Marcus de Brun
It is impossible in principle to know which futures you will inhabit, not even a "god" can do that. Also, it is possible to set the quantum amplitude of certain futures to zero by the application of knowledge. — tom
QM is a fully deterministic theory. — tom
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.