«

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
> Unless QM is nonlinear somewhere, in which case it might allow communications
> across parallel worlds. And that would mean a whole heap of "supernatural"
> style problems and phenomena

This all very fascinating and all, and I'm sure you are proud of how much of a
genius you're making yourself seem and all, but could we please talk about,
oh, I don't know, Java - seeing as how this is a Java newsgroup and all?

I hate to disrupt your little egofest and all, but really,
comp.lang.*java*.programmer, hm-k?

Thank you, dear.

--
Lew

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
> Lew wrote:
>> Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
>>> You need the true randomness to prevent temporal paradox arising
>>
>> Oops. Too late.
>>
>> I knew I shouldn't have gone for that generic randomness.
>>
> I think you will find that paradox has a way of canceling itself out

Not if you sustain it. I dwell in paradox.

--
Lew

On 30/03/2011 5:35 AM, Michal Kleczek wrote:
> javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
>> Non sequitur.
>
> How about: if a theory leads to conclusions that are not verfifyable by (or
> even contradictory to) "common sense" ( Myself ) - it means the theory is
> useless (hence parallel world assumption is useless - hence there are either
> a) other sentences more useful "falling out" from QM or b) QM is useless
> ).

But there is no parallel world "assumption". There is a parallel world
*conclusion* from the Schroedinger equations, *absent* a *collapse*
assumption.

And there is no evidence for the need for a collapse assumption.

Ockham's Razor applies to the complexity of the theory's *hypotheses*,
not its *conclusions*.

In fact, the general preferred theory for phenomenon X should be:

* Of those that do not make already-falsified predictions
* Of those that explain the most already-observed phenomena
* Of those with the fewest hypotheses
* The one with the greatest number of consequences

The first point eliminates outright-wrong theories.

The second prefers the theories that predict not only X but as many
other phenomena as possible -- so, Maxwell's electromagnetism to
separate theories of electricity and magnetism, and quantum
electrodynamics to either. Essentially, the ones with greatest
explanatory power regarding what we already know.

The third is Ockham's razor.

The fourth prefers, among equally-simple theories, the one that will
have the greatest predictive power regarding what we still *don't* know.
In particular, it's probably the easiest to falsify, because the more
yet-untested consequences the theory has, the more opportunities the
universe (or an experimenter) has to prove it wrong.

Whereupon it gets eliminated by the first point in the list above, the
is replaced by its first runner-up in the competition.

> My point is that if "parallel world" theory cannot get rid of "the noise" in
> "this world" it is of no use to me. There is no difference between
> uncertainty of
> a) which world I am in
> b) the cat was dead or not a couple of hours in the past

Funnily enough, there is. In case a), but not in case b), you can
potentially create interference patterns in cat alive-or-dead-ness.

> But I think don't really follow and I am not capable of discussing it
> further. It may be because:
> a) my English is not good enough to comprehend such advanced discussions
> b) I don't have enought background - do you have some pointers that would
> introduce me to the concepts you're talking about?

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Q...ysics_Sequence

--
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.

On 30/03/2011 7:38 AM, Lew wrote:
> This is a Java newsgroup.

It's an interesting tangent and anyone who doesn't agree can killfile
this thread. This isn't a very high traffic group.

> Snarky-boy won't have anything useful anyway.

In the immortal words of the tholenbot, "What does your classic
unsubstantiated and erroneous claim have to do with Java, Lew?"

Indeed, this quantum stuff might be used to implement super-fast
computers some day, and maybe someone will port the JVM to one.

>> Until it is more understandable to me I think I won't add "the noise"
>> anymore
>
> You understand it better than those trying to argue with you.

Another "classic unsubstantiated and erroneous claim".

--
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.

On 05/04/2011 01:26, javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
> On 30/03/2011 5:35 AM, Michal Kleczek wrote:
>> javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
>>> Non sequitur.
>>
>> How about: if a theory leads to conclusions that are not verfifyable
>> by (or
>> even contradictory to) "common sense" ( Myself ) - it means the theory is
>> useless (hence parallel world assumption is useless - hence there are
>> either
>> a) other sentences more useful "falling out" from QM or b) QM is
>> useless
>> ).
>
> But there is no parallel world "assumption". There is a parallel world
> *conclusion* from the Schroedinger equations, *absent* a *collapse*
> assumption.
>
> And there is no evidence for the need for a collapse assumption.
>
> Ockham's Razor applies to the complexity of the theory's *hypotheses*,
> not its *conclusions*.
>
> In fact, the general preferred theory for phenomenon X should be:
>
> * Of those that do not make already-falsified predictions
> * Of those that explain the most already-observed phenomena
> * Of those with the fewest hypotheses
> * The one with the greatest number of consequences
>
> The first point eliminates outright-wrong theories.
>
> The second prefers the theories that predict not only X but as many
> other phenomena as possible -- so, Maxwell's electromagnetism to
> separate theories of electricity and magnetism, and quantum
> electrodynamics to either. Essentially, the ones with greatest
> explanatory power regarding what we already know.
>
> The third is Ockham's razor.
>
> The fourth prefers, among equally-simple theories, the one that will
> have the greatest predictive power regarding what we still *don't* know.
> In particular, it's probably the easiest to falsify, because the more
> yet-untested consequences the theory has, the more opportunities the
> universe (or an experimenter) has to prove it wrong.
>
> Whereupon it gets eliminated by the first point in the list above, the
> is replaced by its first runner-up in the competition.
>
>> My point is that if "parallel world" theory cannot get rid of "the
>> noise" in
>> "this world" it is of no use to me. There is no difference between
>> uncertainty of
>> a) which world I am in
>> b) the cat was dead or not a couple of hours in the past
>
> Funnily enough, there is. In case a), but not in case b), you can
> potentially create interference patterns in cat alive-or-dead-ness.
>
>> But I think don't really follow and I am not capable of discussing it
>> further. It may be because:
>> a) my English is not good enough to comprehend such advanced discussions
>> b) I don't have enought background - do you have some pointers that would
>> introduce me to the concepts you're talking about?
>
> http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Q...ysics_Sequence
>

MWI subjectively verifiable by suicide

--
Dirk

http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology

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.

On 30/03/2011 8:15 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message<imsh0v$11t$>, javax.swing.JSnarker wrote:
>
>> Actually, QM randomness is a symptom of indexical uncertainty about
>> which exact universe you're in out of many that look identical up to a
>> certain point in time and then diverge, more or less.
>
> The “multiple universes” interpretation doesn’t really explain anything. How
> does it deal with entanglement, for example?

Entanglement is just correlation across universes.

If we have an ensemble of universes in half of which electron A is
spin-up and electron B is spin-down and in the other half of which
electron A is spin-down and electron B is spin-up, if an observer in the
ensemble examines their local copy of electron A, then B, or vice versa,
they will see opposite spins every time. On the other hand until they
examine one or the other, they don't know which half of the ensemble
they're in and so whichever they test first appears to be spin-up or
spin-down completely at random.

--
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.