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[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I'm still not sure what any of this even is.

Hmm... do you know QM? I can explain MWI, but I have to tailor it to your knowledge of QM, or it'll make no sense/be obvious and boring in many parts.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Okay. How much do you know about quantum mechanics?

[inteuniso]

“THIS WAS GOD’S MACHINE FOR CREATING THE WORLD,” said Uriel. “IT HAD MANY PROBLEMS. SO I HACKED INTO IT AND MADE IT EMULATE A DIFFERENT MACHINE WHICH RUNS THE WORLD MY WAY. IT INVOLVES MANY FEWER SURPRISES. IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE STRUCTURE OF THE ORIGINAL MACHINE BOTH IN ORDER TO CONTROL THE EMULATION, AND BECAUSE THE EMULATION IS NO LONGER COMPLETE.”


God would write a few more lines pf code but bisy driving/wants yo go to sleep

Funny jow thay seems so similar to npw eisten e actially wprls1

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Ah, you take the "shut up and calculate" approach? Very well; I cannot much criticize that method, save that it's a bit uninteresting and doesn't try to look behind the statistical laws. A bit like the gas laws vs the atomic theory.

[Sergarr]

Copenhagen and MWI are both interpretations, and produce exactly the same experimental predictions. You are saying "MWI works just like Copenhagen anyway," but you could also say "Copenhagen works just like MWI anyway."

Ah, but you contradict yourself:

But since we can't distinguish MW and the Copenhagen interpretation through experiment yet, Science keeps Copenhagen because it came first. Whyyyyyyyyyy?

Since you believe that it can be distinguished from Copenhagen interpretation through experiment, you thus believe that it is not just an equivalent interpretation.

But the entire rest of physics is deterministic!

No, they actually aren't. Quantum mechanics is fundamental, one of the two most fundamental of currently existing prediction-giving theories about the universe. And it's inherently probabilistic - you cannot learn both the precise position and the momentum of a free-moving particle at the same time, for example. There's always a cloud of probability/psi-function distribution associated with a combination of these variables, it never equals a single pair of numbers. Since the rest of physics depends on the particles, they're all probabilistic, too.

Anyway, this is a blatant "my opponent is emotionally/etc. motivated to say this, ergo their point is invalid" argument, also known as Bulverism.

I have an analogy. A spaceship flies beyond the cosmological horizon. The normal laws of physics, applied as usual, say that the spaceship still exists, even though we can't see it. The Copenhagen interpretation says that it disappears.

What. No it doesn't. A ship can "observe" (i.e. interact) with itself. Even if it didn't, like if it was just a single photon, it wouldn't be actually gone.

Alexander isn't the same as Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky wrote the Sequences, including the QM sequence.

Ah, so you've read Yudkowsky, too!

Is this about decoherence? Also, why would interaction destroy parts of the wave-function?

It is, and it doesn't destroy it, it just compresses it. You know, in a way like when you roll a dice, you only get a single number out of six possible.

That's not a mechanism! You should just say, "I don't know how the equations work, but they do," not "some magic being is using the equations."

It certainly is a mechanism. It's obviously a bit of a joke, but dice rolling is the best intuitive analogy I can find for a wave function collapse. And really, can you rule it out? If the so-called "Bayesian Superintelligence" can model a universe, then it basically performs the role of a God as I've described it.

Identical results to Copenhagen.

As abovementioned, you contradict your previous statement by saying so.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha, this is great. "It's okay to suddenly cut off parts of the wave-function, because spin is discrete." You don't understand the difference between a discontinuity in the wave-function and discrete values for spin. Just because they're named similarly doesn't mean that they're actually physically related.

...They're both properties of an object that behave in a discrete manner under certain circumstances? I mean, with spin, it's always discrete, but with, for example, position of a particle in a one-dimensional world where the potential field's energy is zero in the range of [-1,1] and equals U outside of it, it's discrete if it doesn't have sufficient energy to escape to infinity (i.e. if its kinetic energy is lower than U), and continuous otherwise. Same with wave-function - without interactions, it continues to propagate and expand in a continuous manner, but with interactions, it discretely collapses into a different form.

Ah, you don't think that the wave-function is physically real. Is that it?

No? How could you've possibly interpreted my words that way? Wave-function is physically real. It defines probabilities and probabilities are physically real as demonstrated by the two-slit experiment, how can wave-function be not physically real?

[inteuniso]

There was a similar thing in the same program, of some organization that set up various random-number generators across the world using atmospheric noise.

Here is the Noosphere/Global Consciousness Project you're talking about. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

What statistical laws? There's no statistics involved until you get to the "interpretation" part.

The Born rule. That's a statistical law, right?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Copenhagen and MWI are both interpretations, and produce exactly the same experimental predictions. You are saying "MWI works just like Copenhagen anyway," but you could also say "Copenhagen works just like MWI anyway."

Ah, but you contradict yourself:

But since we can't distinguish MW and the Copenhagen interpretation through experiment yet, Science keeps Copenhagen because it came first. Whyyyyyyyyyy?

Since you believe that it can be distinguished from Copenhagen interpretation through experiment, you thus believe that it is not just an equivalent interpretation.

I said: "since we can't distinguish MWI and Copenhagen." That's the exact opposite of what you're claiming I said.

But the entire rest of physics is deterministic!

No, they actually aren't. Quantum mechanics is fundamental, one of the two most fundamental of currently existing prediction-giving theories about the universe.

"Everything but QM is deterministic!"
"No, that's wrong. QM is probabilistic."

And it's inherently probabilistic - you cannot learn both the precise position and the momentum of a free-moving particle at the same time, for example. There's always a cloud of probability/psi-function distribution associated with a combination of these variables, it never equals a single pair of numbers.

You're not looking at it the right way. Configuration space and complex amplitudes and whatnot, those are the fundamental thing of reality. And they act deterministically, not probabilistically. The only probabilistic part is the Born rule.   

Since the rest of physics depends on the particles, they're all probabilistic, too.

That's cheating. The rest of physics takes, perhaps, a probabilistic input, but they act deterministically on that input.

Anyway, this is a blatant "my opponent is emotionally/etc. motivated to say this, ergo their point is invalid" argument, also known as Bulverism.

I have an analogy. A spaceship flies beyond the cosmological horizon. The normal laws of physics, applied as usual, say that the spaceship still exists, even though we can't see it. The Copenhagen interpretation says that it disappears.

What. No it doesn't. A ship can "observe" (i.e. interact) with itself. Even if it didn't, like if it was just a single photon, it wouldn't be actually gone.

And the other worlds can observe themselves. The analogy holds.

Alexander isn't the same as Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky wrote the Sequences, including the QM sequence.

Ah, so you've read Yudkowsky, too!

...yes?

Is this about decoherence? Also, why would interaction destroy parts of the wave-function?

It is, and it doesn't destroy it, it just compresses it. You know, in a way like when you roll a dice, you only get a single number out of six possible.

But why would some parts of the wave-function go away just because they've been looked at?

That's not a mechanism! You should just say, "I don't know how the equations work, but they do," not "some magic being is using the equations."

It certainly is a mechanism. It's obviously a bit of a joke, but dice rolling is the best intuitive analogy I can find for a wave function collapse.

No, you're just saying "it's random". That's a statistical law, not a mechanism.

And really, can you rule it out? If the so-called "Bayesian Superintelligence" can model a universe, then it basically performs the role of a God as I've described it.

"Does the evidence explicitly rule out this hypothesis" is perhaps the worst question ever asked.

Identical results to Copenhagen.

As abovementioned, you contradict your previous statement by saying so.

You're misrepresenting me. You're claiming that I said that there was an experimental difference between the two, but I actually said that there wasn't an experimental difference.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha, this is great. "It's okay to suddenly cut off parts of the wave-function, because spin is discrete." You don't understand the difference between a discontinuity in the wave-function and discrete values for spin. Just because they're named similarly doesn't mean that they're actually physically related.

...They're both properties of an object that behave in a discrete manner under certain circumstances?

A banana and the Sun are both yellow, but I'm not going to say that a banana works by nuclear fusion.

I mean, with spin, it's always discrete, but with, for example, position of a particle in a one-dimensional world where the potential field's energy is zero in the range of [-1,1] and equals U outside of it, it's discrete if it doesn't have sufficient energy to escape to infinity (i.e. if its kinetic energy is lower than U), and continuous otherwise. Same with wave-function - without interactions, it continues to propagate and expand in a continuous manner, but with interactions, it discretely collapses into a different form.

I'm a little confused here.

Ah, you don't think that the wave-function is physically real. Is that it?

No? How could you've possibly interpreted my words that way? Wave-function is physically real. It defines probabilities and probabilities are physically real as demonstrated by the two-slit experiment, how can wave-function be not physically real?

You see the wave-function as a probability-determiner for the basic stuff of the universe, I see the wave-function as the basic stuff of the universe.

[misko27]

I'm a little confused here.

So are the rest of us.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Anyway! Scott makes analogies. Analogies are connections. Scott is good at making connections, so he is a good kabbalist. It makes sense that he would write Unsong.

Scott wrote Anglophysics, which is a world where the basic stuff of the world runs on language, not mathematics. It makes sense that he would write Unsong.

[Sergarr]

I said: "since we can't distinguish MWI and Copenhagen." That's the exact opposite of what you're claiming I said.

You've omitted a very important part of your original sentence - the word "yet". Let's see the definition of that word:

Definition of yet

1
    a :  in addition :  besides gives yet another reason
    b :  even 2c  a yet higher speed
    c :  on top of everything else :  no less
        had wells going dry. Between two large lakes, yet — J. H. Buzard

2
    a (1) :  up to now :  so far hasn't done much yet —often used to imply the negative of a following infinitive have yet to win a game (2) :  at this or that time :  so soon as now not time to go yet
    b :  continuously up to the present or a specified time :  still is yet a new country
    c :  at a future time :  eventually may yet see the light

Definition (2, c) seems to be the most appropriate here. This implies that you firmly believe that there is a point at a future where the Copenhagen's Interpretation and the Many-Worlds Interpretation would be distinguished by an experiment. Since laws of physics don't change over time, this means that you believe that Copenhagen and MWI are not just interpretations at any point of time, including the present.

"Everything but QM is deterministic!"
"No, that's wrong. QM is probabilistic."

"Everything but QM" only looks deterministic, because the probabilities involved are usually too small for detection, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, actually, probabilistic. Anything that interacts with a probabilistic thing inevitably becomes probabilistic itself, and there's nothing physical that doesn't come into contact with QM.

You're not looking at it the right way. Configuration space and complex amplitudes and whatnot, those are the fundamental thing of reality. And they act deterministically, not probabilistically. The only probabilistic part is the Born rule.

I don't think it's really fair to say "the only probabilistic part", when almost any interaction between two objects in QM involves it happening.

That's cheating. The rest of physics takes, perhaps, a probabilistic input, but they act deterministically on that input.

As abovementioned, that's an illusion.

And the other worlds can observe themselves. The analogy holds.

Except for the part where you've claimed that Copenhagen's interpretation makes the ship disappear, but sure, whatever.

But why would some parts of the wave-function go away just because they've been looked at?

They don't. First, it's interaction and not "looked at", second, if I may so ask a counter-question, why does gravity attract things together and not, say, repel them? The only possible answer here is, ultimately, "that's how universe works". All interpretations are simply artificial explanations we make in order to try and make "logical" sense out of what we observe, and to me, an interpretation that doesn't require to store an infinite number of fundamentally unobservable states of the world, even if it involves axiomatically introducing probability into the system, is much simpler than the one that does.

But as long as they are just interpretations, they're all technically equally valid, nullifying my point that you can't calculate stuff with it. I guess I was wrong there.

Of course, since you've made that fateful "yet" and claimed that it was "better", that means that you believe that it's more than just an interpretation, which is probably the part which I was against at in this argument.

No, you're just saying "it's random". That's a statistical law, not a mechanism.

What do you mean by "mechanism", then? No, really, what is a mechanism? Is it supposed to be something inherently deterministic?

You're misrepresenting me. You're claiming that I said that there was an experimental difference between the two, but I actually said that there wasn't an experimental difference.

If you've meant that, then you've not managed to convey it properly.

I mean, with spin, it's always discrete, but with, for example, position of a particle in a one-dimensional world where the potential field's energy is zero in the range of [-1,1] and equals U outside of it, it's discrete if it doesn't have sufficient energy to escape to infinity (i.e. if its kinetic energy is lower than U), and continuous otherwise. Same with wave-function - without interactions, it continues to propagate and expand in a continuous manner, but with interactions, it discretely collapses into a different form.

I'm a little confused here.

Oh right, sorry, I've seriously confused some things here. I meant the possible energies for an electron in a hydrogen-like atom. The energy spectre is discrete where the total energy of the system is below zero, and continuous when it's above zero. Something like that. It's both discrete and continuous at the same time.

You see the wave-function as a probability-determiner for the basic stuff of the universe, I see the wave-function as the basic stuff of the universe.

I guess you could do that, but then you'd have to work with a wave-function in an infinitely-large state space defined with an infinitely-long number of arguments. Starting from a limited quantity of particles and then going to wave-functions as determined by their parameters and, when necessary, their interactions, seems much simpler to me.

But if that's what is simpler for you, then sure. Just don't claim that it's objectively better.

[Sergarr]

If the OP is anything to go by, that's completely intended. The rails are there, they're just, you know, quantum. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

[inteuniso]

If it makes us feel any better, we can probably develop the technology to ride these rails like BEASTS.

Go go Kabbal Rangers.

[Tawa]

Still 100% confused at everything going on in this thread.

You're not alone, at least.

I understand what is being said but not how we got here.

[penguinofhonor]

I also have no clue what is going on here, but I am transfixed by it.