My brain's not working hard enough to grok this. You seem to me to be imposing an instrumentalist interpretation on the MWI realism. :confused: — 180 Proof

The basic principle of MWI is: whatever the math says is what's happening. So you follow the math, and there ain't no observer-dependence in there.

We did this little dance a while back — 180 Proof

Ah it was YOU!!! What are the odds. Aye, that. Reminds me, I said I'd dig out a post for Andrew.

We need a matrix... But I just can't MathJax on this crappy phone :cry:

Pluralism:
"The cat is dead" is true for Wigner's friend but not for Wigner.
is equivalent to
"The cat is dead [is true] for Wigner's friend" — magritte

Yes, I think this is what I meant. The first is relativism, the second pluralism, and they are equivalent. As I said, I encountered this first in a discussion on moral relativism versus objectivity, including pluralism, and I understood how the latter isn't just the former insisting it's the latter.

It seems to me that in the MWI observers and observations are identical. — 180 Proof

No, not at all. Branching occurs when a system in superposition is "decohered" (not necessarily by a mind, just whatever is sufficient to cause collapse or branching). Basically as long as the superposition coheres, you can get interference effects (e.g. in the double slit experiment, there isn't branching as the electron goes through each slits, as each branch must evolve as if the other didn't exist, so you couldn't get that interference pattern), but once it decoheres, no interference can occur (such as on the back screen of the double slit experiment, where the prior possibility of finding the electron in one position cannot impact the probability of finding it in another).

In MWI, when the friend measures the cat, he can only measure one possible outcome, which is a sign of decoherence. In one branch he measures alive cat, in the other dead cat. In each of these branches, Wigner then comes along and measures his friend's results. In alive branch, Wigner must measure the alive result; in the dead branch he must measure the dead result. So one wouldn't expect in either branch for Wigner to be able to detect interference patterns (a sign of coherence) or, to put it another way, one wouldn't expect any observer-dependence: in each branch, the state of the cat is an objective fact.

It delivered the worst humans have ever done. Slavery, Genocide, Illegal Downloading... — Cheshire

This is a bit too silly.

People didn't enslave others because they believed the rightness or wrongness of it was relative, that doesn't even make sense as an explanation (as Isaac has pointed out). They did it because they believed that their superiority over the races they enslaved and their God-given right to do with the natural world as they pleased were objectively true and irrefutable. Same goes for genocide. I'm not sure illegal downloading, the odd one out in the list, causes much suffering at all.

I actually had moral pluralism versus relativism in mind when I asked, but I see no reason not to translate to something more on-topic.

The difference as I understand it is this:

Relativism
"The cat is dead" is true for Wigner's friend but not for Wigner.

Plural realism
"The cat is dead is true for Wigner's friend" is true for everyone.

In one, the facts are observer-dependent; in the other, everyone has their own observer-independent facts. (An actual observer isn't necessarily required in either case, just a frame of reference.)

MWI doesn't help here because it branches on observations, not observers. When Wigner's friend makes a measurement of a superposed cat, the universal wavefunction branches into alive and dead branches. Wigner later makes his measurement but a version of him does so in each one of those branches. There is no observer-dependence here since, within a given branch, nothing is in superposition any more. In fact, MWI was formulated in part to explicitly exclude observer-dependence.

If I follow him rightly, @Andrew M is arguing for a conceptually modified MWI in which branching is observer-dependent, something along the lines of: before Wigner makes his measurement, his part of the wavefunction remains separable from the lab's. Within the lab there's a sort of miniverse that's cut off from the rest of the universe, within which the alive and dead branches evolve independently, but from the outside it's the whole that's evolving, including cross-terms | alive > | dead > and | dead > | alive > (which is where the interference effects come from). I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but could be the kind of pluralist realist thing you're looking for.

Not annoyed, but thank you for the thought. — ssu

Out of interest, and before the real third and final part of my pomo triptych, what did they say? (Why am I anticipating the answer "They said as long as he doesn't do a third"? :rofl: )

So tell me what's wrong with this pluralism/relativism conception or why it doesn't work for interpreting fundamental physics. — 180 Proof

I was just asking what the difference is.

There is nothing to explain. — god must be atheist

Then there's nothing I can do with that since I don't understand wtf you're talking about anymore. If you can't explain it either, then we're in the same boat.

My latter point was simply that you may (soon) be right that incest is currently/will be less taboo than rape. Nonetheless up until recently that wasn't the case. There's nothing difficult to grasp about this.

Sorry to see that, maybe he will get better. I wish him good luck with his health. — god must be atheist

Ummm... Thanks, I guess. This is my fault for engaging, I guess.

I'm not sure whether we're referring to the same experiment. — Andrew M

So the experiment has actually been done several times and, unless I made a mistake, one of the links was to one of those reports. So yes, same thing.

So the upshot is that the friend has made a definite measurement and reported that she has done so to Wigner, without telling him what the result was. At the same time the lab remains in superposition for Wigner, per your (B). — Andrew M

But at this point at the very latest Wigner and his friend should be entangled as they are exchanging information, i.e. they are not two independently evolving systems. This is how they'd appear, for instance, to an outside observer whose lab includes Wigner and Wigner's lab. In reality, Wigner and his friend were correlated well before. But then in reality we don't expect humans to be entangled at all (classical limit).

KK is a waste of time. Mr. Kid isnt intellectually honest and reading their posts insults one's intelligence. — Harry Hindu

:rofl:

I am not responsible for your immediately forgetting what you had said in a one previous post. — god must be atheist

Not suggesting that, I'm trying to figure out these two histories you're talking about. Explain.

Do you think there is a postmodern condition as distinct form a merely modern? — Janus

Yes, I think so. The killer blow in terms of the condition is how predictive _The Postmodern Condition_ was: it reads like a history book.

In terms of it being non-modern, also yes. I think that, aside from anything else, and despite a lot of good (mathematics, empiricism), modernism is first and foremost a faith in the power of superior man (both 'human' and 'male'), his language, and his tools: an inherent rightness of his thinking, his writing, and his transformation of his environment.

I think we are more pluralistic, relativistic, even nihilistic now. We're right to treat governments, ideologies, authorities, and technologies like AI with suspicion, because the myth of the inherent rightness of their tokens is rightly exploded. Information is available to debunk or undermine anything now, and it's no longer a question of the right-est but the least wrong: which micronarratives have to give way when they conflict (under the full understanding that any choice is to some extent arbitrary)?

I can't see you make an argument to show that recorded history now is less indicative in this set of ethical questions than the recorded history of say, 500 years ago. — god must be atheist

Eh?

I don’t recall you asking me to clarify anything. — TheHedoMinimalist

Great. You know you can follow the posts back by clicking the name of the person in the quote?

So now that you agree with me, I'm wrong? — god must be atheist

No no, now that you're right I disagree with you. I still haven't actually tallied them up, but even so the point was that incest has been more taboo since records began. It might be that right now or in the near future it isn't, but that doesn't change the past.

Interestingly, in the context of the OP, same-sex incest is legal in Germany. They're still worried about genetics it seems...

I agree, right now it's about regulating capitalism and using science and technology to undo as much damage as we can.

Yeah I'm in the green technology camp (my energy provider is 100% renewable, for instance), but to be fair that's to deal with a problem _caused_ by capitalism. Technology is what has to save us from irresponsible use of technology.

As their population has boomed it's hard to see how one would return to small scale sustainability. — ChatteringMonkey

And yet the more people, the less of a share of the Earth's resources they should have. But yeah I understand your point about poorer countries levelling up, and this only reinforces the need for richer countries to recede. The growing emissions of the third world are principally a problem while the first world is already unsustainably over-emitting. If we drop back, there's wiggle room to approach equilibrium.

part of the point that we still would need a system that could provide "prosperity/flourishing" stands I think. — ChatteringMonkey

I dunno. Maybe because now we're anchored to the myth of sustainable growth, it might be difficult to sell real sustainability. But again I feel that this is something that's been indoctrinated rather than meeting some demand. There is a very powerful (I can't say "good") capitalist reason to compel earners to exchange their salaries for luxuries, so if you live in a capitalist democracy, no one's going to allow the electorate to labour under the belief that keeping more of their earnings for the future is a good idea. But we used to do just that. Saving and thrift were virtues once.

Lame come-back, as usual. Having sex after 40 is an act, like having sex with your cousin is an act. :roll: — Harry Hindu

Having sex is an act that is not under dispute. Having sex with your own close relative is a particular sex act that can lead to offspring with e.g. learning difficulties (your parents can attest). Having sex after 40 is just having sex. That is, if you're 43, you cannot choose to have sex as a 33 yr old instead, whereas you can choose to have sex with someone who isn't a close relative. Too difficult for you?

It's your word against mine. — god must be atheist

Not really. Research will elaborate, just look up incest laws and rape laws by country. I haven't done a count, but given the number of countries that decriminalised incest in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the growing number of countries that have criminalised spousal rape in the 20th and 21st centuries, right now or in the near future, it might be that incest is actually more accepted than rape (go you). Of course, there's the prior millennia to take into account too.

Another point worth mentioning on the pro-capitalism side is that the promise capitalism makes of luxury is a just another way of framing a basic human desire for prosperity, flourishing, and not really something unique to capitalism. — ChatteringMonkey

If you have to manipulate your customers to want the luxury in the first place, and the means by which organisations do this are varied, sly and grim, then this doesn't really hold up.

It's a good idea. It might rather change the tone for the better of the equivalent of those discussions already taking place, perhaps making thread starters less defensive and thread contributors less aggressive?

I mean, quick literary examples. Modernist authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Marinetti. Real fuckin' weird, huge emphasis on experimentation with form, a response to dramatic changes in the world around them. Anyone not paying attention might mistake their work for 'postmodern'. And then postmodern: Pynchon, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ashbury. — StreetlightX

Beckett is the transitional writer here. Postmodern literature is generally thought to start with him, albeit with outliers (e.g. The Third Policeman).

A proper reading would flesh this out with concrete examples but I'm lazy so. In a formula: the postmodern is the modern become self-conscious. — StreetlightX

:up:



Part of my motivation for these threads was a dissatisfaction with those wheeled-out pomo criticisms. I was hoping to see where, starting from the first obvious question (is/was there a postmodern condition), pomo was perceived to fail. But that doesn't appear to be a conversation we can have: we skipped right to the end, the conclusion, straight away. For instance, 0 posts in support of the leading poll option on this thread. It seems hysterical to me.

For MWI, merging as well as splitting is entailed by the unitary dynamics. From the friend's perspective he has, for all practical purposes, performed an irreversible measurement - he measures spin-up in his world while his doppelganger measures spin-down in another world. But from Wigner's perspective, the friend (and his measurement) is simply in superposition (i.e., within Wigner's single world) and he can always apply a unitary transformation that reverses the friends' measurements, thus merging the friends' worlds back into one. — Andrew M

What you're describing art the start is two unentangled systems (B). That is not what the experiment is describing, in which Wigner and his friend are correlated (should be (C), but isn't).

As I said above, the alternative is to insist that entanglement doesn't occur just when two systems exchange information, but when an observer makes a measurement, which is not justified by the experimental setup.

As for merging, in this experiment Wigner is simply performing an interferometer experiment. Also since, in his frame, the lab is still in superposition, there's nothing to be undone. From the friend's point of view, there's nothing Wigner can do to find a different outcome: in the alive branch the cat is alive and this is what Wigner must find; in the dead branch the cat is dead and this is what Wigner must find.

I would be interested in the quote if you can locate it. — Andrew M

Will do.

I think Rovelli's relational interpretation is helpful here. It provides a clean abstraction around the idea of reference frames that covers all the issues raised by Wigner's friend: — Andrew M

Yes, I think relational comes out strong.

I entirely agree. In fact, I see we had a brief discussion on this a year back! — Andrew M

Well remembered!

This is a handwaved concept of entanglement. Wigner and Wigner's friend have lots of states that are entangled. What constitutes being "unentangled" to you? — InPitzotl

It's not a point of view. Can you at least look it up on Wikipedia or something?

What the Wigner's friend experiment show is that, after entanglement, after the friend has made his measurement, but before Wigner has made his measurement, when we would expect something like (C),
— Kenosha Kid
No. We would expect (B). — InPitzotl

"after entanglement" here refers to Wigner's entanglement with the lab, not his friend's entanglement with the cat. Again you would understand it if you just bothered to read the paper containing the experiment rather than taking this course of adopting a strong position out of ignorance and me having to repeatedly point out where you're being irrelevant.

There are bigger taboos: child molestation, rape, murder, overthrowing the government, picking your toes during dinner — god must be atheist

You know 'widespread' doesn't mean 'in my country' though, right? There are lots of countries where incest is more taboo than paedophilia, rape, revolution, etc. America had a revolution. France had a revolution. As far as I know they didn't start railing their siblings.

No, I was wondering why you think the risk of bad pregnancies posed by incest is a major concern and a reason to condemn incest while also not thinking that the increased transmission of HIV by homosexual men doesn’t also give us reason to condemn male homosexuality. — TheHedoMinimalist

That seems, alarmingly, to be the second option, although despite being asked you refused to clarify. Not comparable on any level for reasons that are abundantly clear by reading what I wrote, not what you wished I wrote.

Deleuze, for example, is a self-avowed metaphysician, so does he count as a postmodernist? Some of the strong critics of PM find value in Deleuze and in Foucault, and yet the latter, at least, is generally considered to be a postmodernist philosopher, even an archetypal example. — Janus

Derrida shirked the label postmodernist too. As I said, I don't think it matters whether one considers a particular philosopher to be a postmodernist or a proto-pomo. These are equivalent to saying: I set an arbitrary delineation _here_. Whether you start at Lyotard, or Derrida, or Wittgenstein, or the French existentialists, or Darwin, or Kant is entirely up to you.

My view is that there's no real boundary between late modernists (taking Descartes as the start of modernism) and early postmodernists/protopomos. The latter evolved from the former. When one species evolves into another, there is rarely a particular individual that marks the start of a new species.

However, if you cannot proceed on this basis and are open to an arbitrary nominal beginning, understanding that it is arbitrary, you could follow Steven Hicks and start with Kant, including (by my reckoning) Wittgenstein, the phenomenologists, and the existentialists.

But despite these people being the seeds of postmodernism, it will outrage many who'd claim them purely for modernism, labouring under the illusion that there _is_ a non-porous boundary between modernism and postmodernism. In which case maybe start with Derrida. This would outrage Derrida, but he's dead, so...

Nobody is saying it's MWI. — InPitzotl

Your initial objection was to my comment that MWI doesn't hold up any more if we accept the observer-dependence interpretation of the Wigner's friend experiments. If you agree that what you're proposing is not MWI, how is this progressing your counter-argument?

for clarity I've underlined Wigner's state and bolded Wigner's friend's states. — InPitzotl

prior to entanglement. But as I've told you, Wigner and his friend are not unentangled immediately prior to Wigner's measurement of his friend.

Of course, in practice, Wigner and his friend ought to have been entangled even at this stage, since their actions are correlated and entanglement _is_ correlation.

So what do you mean by it? — InPitzotl

The OP is asking for your views about the purported observer-dependence of facts (collapse/branching) in light of the recent strengthening of the validity of non-destructive measurement techniques.

What the Wigner's friend experiment show is that, after entanglement, after the friend has made his measurement, but before Wigner has made his measurement, when we would expect something like (C), Wigner is still seeing the world as per (B). Wigner is entangled with the lab insofar as communication and coordination about the experiment is ongoing between he and his friend, but Wigner still sees the lab in a superposition: the lab has branched for the friend, but both branches are evident to Wigner, contrary to MWI.

but you apparently agree the branches are not universal in the sense that Wigner branches when Wigner's friend branches: — InPitzotl

But that's not MWI, that would be some pretty meaningless compromise. The whole point of MWI is a single, real, universal wavefunction.

No, rather that it is not even wrong is the fault they find with it. — Janus

It's more what you'd expect as a conclusion to a more fundamental fault. But yeah it does seems like that kind of leap to me. It's been interesting reconciling the responses to the two questions with the polls, which is what this was all about.

Homosexuals have contributed to higher rate of AIDS in our society though. I have heard that roughly 80% of people in the US that have AIDS are homosexual men. — TheHedoMinimalist

Depends what you mean. If you mean that someone who knew they were HIV and therefore had a strong chance of harming another but had sex with them anyway, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a liberal who would disagree. If you mean that, since HIV was particularly rife among the gay community that they would, by my reasoning, be somehow retrospectively culpable, then you have not payed attention to my reasoning.

I don't see how the former is any more deliberate than the latter. — Down The Rabbit Hole

I can't help you with that.

The difference at hand is about knowing what the probable outcome of one's actions will be, vs. not knowing. — baker

It's about reasonable expectation. Having a child at all does not lead to a reasonable expectation that the child will have genetic defects. Having a child with your own sibling or parent or offspring does.

I don't see how the incestuous couple using protection against pregnancy would be the cause of a child with a genetic disorder, but a non-incestuous couple actively trying to have a child are not the the cause of a child with a genetic disorder. — Down The Rabbit Hole

You're saying you cannot tell the difference between a deliberate act and happenstance?

Women over 40 stand an increased chance of having children with birth defects. — Harry Hindu

Being over 40 isn't an act. Incest is.

those trying for a baby get special treatment — Down The Rabbit Hole

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause.

I don't know about prehistoric times. I also don't know how you get your information from 5000-plus years ago when there were no recordings of social customs. — god must be atheist

It's an inference from the fact that incest is the most widespread taboo in the world. The alternative reading would be a great, near-simultaneous but actually uncoordinated change of heart across the entire globe.

I speak from hopes! — TheMadFool

From the bottom of my heart, I hope that your daughter-cum-granddaughter is not a total munter.

In my view, there is no common goal of human beings, individually or collectively, in this or any age. We each have our own interests, those interests change over time, circumstance, context. Those interests are influenced by family, social groups, and media, perhaps giving an impression of commonality, but identifying for instance the most common goal is saying nothing more than "At this time, more people are interested in X than Y."

For instance, right now a very prominent goal is to stop governments from using a made-up virus to microchip people for purposes of monitoring and control. No people had this goal two years ago; far fewer people will have it a few years hence. But right now that is the most important and urgent matter to millions of people sharing a particular context: having no functioning brains.

For other people it's halting manmade climate change. For others it's rebuilding the Russian empire. For others it's finding their next meal. For others it's beating that deadly pandemic. For others it's getting justice, liberty and equality for them and their community. For others it's the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few.

It's a pluralism, right down to not just the individual but the individual in a given time or context.

"Hormonal contraceptives are safe and effective." Don't you know you're suposed to chant that mantra? — baker

But not 100% effective.

By all means, it's the woman who should risk her health and life with hormonal contraceptives and abortions. — baker

Wow! You really proceed with maximal unjustifiable assumptions, don't you. And you just got through saying hormonal contraceptives are safe.

I would assume there to be more genetic disorders from non-related couples actively trying for a baby, compared to an equal sample of related couples using protection against pregnancy. — Down The Rabbit Hole

But those are not directly caused by the peculiar sex act taking place. Genetic disorders resultant from incest are caused specifically by incest, not luck of the draw.

there's certainly nothing universal happening — InPitzotl

In MWI there is a single, universal, objectively real wavefunction. Any branching is universal: it is a branch in the universal wavefunction.

If they are heterosexual and having sex, and are taking steps to prevent a pregnancy and plan for an abortion should a pregnancy occur, then they are making a point of not procreating. — baker

If you mean using contraception, then no. There's no contraception that leads to no procreation, only less procreation.

If they are homosexual close blood relatives having sex, is it incest? — baker

The example I gave was sterility, but this compounding of things we historically thought icky is much better. No harm, no foul if it's a case-by-case ethic.

The counter-argument would be that an ethic that allowed for same-sex or other non-reproductive incest would be discriminatory, in which case one still has to choose between personal liberty and not hitting the genetic self-destruct button. Personally I'm fine with non-reproductive incest, which is why I had a vasectomy*.

* Absolutely not true, DO NOT QUOTE THIS! :rofl:

A better question imo is: do we have the right to prohibit incest to avoid infant suffering and genome degradation? If so, do we have a right to take babies off smokers and ban gingers from reproducing?

they make a point of not procreating — baker

How? If they're having sex, they're not making a point of not procreating. If they're not having sex, it isn't incest.

What I mean to clarify is that "universe branching" is "subject relative"; what looks like different universes to the cat isn't necessarily different universes to Schrodinger. — InPitzotl

Okay you're talking about subjectivities across branches, yes? That's not what's meant by observer-dependence here: it's not about different versions of you across different branches seeing different facts, rather that different observers will disagree within a branch/unbranched universe.

The equivalent in MWI if what's happening here is that friend measures cat, friend term in wavefunction branches, Wigner entangles with friend, but Wigner can still access both branches. This is a nonsense. We could modify the concept of entanglement to ensure that it can only be said to occur when Wigner makes an actual measurement, but then we're back in magical consciousness territory, contrary to the point you made earlier that observers are just examples of physical systems.

Schrodinger need not be entangled with the substance or the cat; Schrodinger sees W1+W2. — InPitzotl

Okay, now I see you don't understand. No one is saying that Wigner has to be entangled. The point is that he can be entangled (as per the paper) and still observe the friend in superposition (also as per the paper). Not meaning to sound harsh, but you need to grasp what the paper is saying first, because everything you're countering with is irrelevant.

But once the unhealthy babies are not an issue, the actual question is, Why rely on legal tradition, why adhere to it? — baker

Why are babies not an issue? I guess if you're sterile/barren, but otherwise the probability of pregnancy is always 0 < p < 1.