Irreducible randomness in QM

[Alan Grayson]

Can it be directly inferred from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? TIA, AG

[Alan Grayson]

It might be inferred from Bell's theorem, which says that local hidden variables don't exist. But irreducibly random was what Bohr thought, way before Bell theorem was published. Did Bohr just make a good guess? TIA, AG

[Brent Meeker]

Born (not Bohr) saw that Heisenberg's matrix mechanics predicted numbers for the transitions between energy levels.  It was known from the intensity of spectral lines that some were more common than others.  Born guessed that the amplitudes measured the probability.  After the paper that he and Jordan wrote was already in the process of being published he realized it should be the squared amplitude, so the paper says the amplitude, but with a foot note correcting this to the squared amplitude.

Brent

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[Alan Grayson]

On Friday, December 18, 2020 at 11:36:58 PM UTC-7 Brent wrote:

Born (not Bohr) saw that Heisenberg's matrix mechanics predicted numbers for the transitions between energy levels.  It was known from the intensity of spectral lines that some were more common than others.  Born guessed that the amplitudes measured the probability.  After the paper that he and Jordan wrote was already in the process of being published he realized it should be the squared amplitude, so the paper says the amplitude, but with a foot note correcting this to the squared amplitude.

Brent

I meant Bohr, not Born. Didn't Bohr come up with the idea that QM is irreducibly random? Regardless, who came up with the idea and how was it justified? AG 

[scerir]

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.07068

Randomness? What randomness?

Klaas Landsman

This is a review of the issue of randomness in quantum mechanics, with special emphasis on its ambiguity; for example, randomness has different antipodal relationships to determinism, computability, and compressibility. Following a (Wittgensteinian) philosophical discussion of randomness in general, I argue that deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics (like Bohmian mechanics or 't Hooft's Cellular Automaton interpretation) are strictly speaking incompatible with the Born rule. I also stress the role of outliers, i.e. measurement outcomes that are not 1-random. Although these occur with low (or even zero) probability, their very existence implies that the no-signaling principle used in proofs of randomness of outcomes of quantum-mechanical measurements (and of the safety of quantum cryptography) should be reinterpreted statistically, like the second law of thermodynamics. In appendices I discuss the Born rule and its status in both single and repeated experiments, and review the notion of 1-randomness introduced by Kolmogorov, Chaitin, Martin-Lo"f, Schnorr, and others.

.

[Alan Grayson]

This might be helpful, but more likely over my head. What I want to know is WHO originally came up with the interpretation of QM that it is irreducibly random -- meaning that in principle there is no way to predetermine outcomes of experiments -- and WHAT was the justification. I think it was Bohr, and what was his reasoning for this interpretation, which is the "end of the road" for any theory better than QM. AG 

[scerir]

I think that Bohr might have said that we cannot know, because when we try to measure (or observe) something we perturb it, at the same time. We - according to Bohr - cannot follow the causal course of a quantum through space-time. The important concept (Bohr) is "what we can *say* about nature" and not "what nature *is*".

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[Brent Meeker]

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects and most physicists saw randomness as the more likely, less disruptive choice.

Brent

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[scerir]

"Again an idea of Einstein’s gave me the lead. He had tried to make the duality of particles - light quanta or photons - and waves comprehensible by interpreting the square of the optical wave amplitudes as probability density for the occurrence of photons. This concept could at once be carried over to the psi-function: |psi|^2 ought to represent the probability density for electrons (or other particles). It was easy to assert this, but how could it be proved?"--Max Born, Nobel lecture, 1954

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[Alan Grayson]

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 11:50:58 AM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

Can it be directly inferred from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? TIA, AG

No, irreducible randomness is NOT directly inferred from the HUP. But it IS inferred from Bohr's claim that quantum systems do not have pre-existing (objective) properties such as spin, etc., until they are measured. AG

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness. It is only deterministic theories like MWI and Bohm that eliminate randomness, but MWI does not solve the locality issue either. Besides, MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule; and the Born rule, while consistent with Bohm, cannot be derived from Bohmian mechanics.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.

If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than light.

Brent

It is only deterministic theories like MWI and Bohm that eliminate randomness, but MWI does not solve the locality issue either. Besides, MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule; and the Born rule, while consistent with Bohm, cannot be derived from Bohmian mechanics.

Bruce

and most physicists saw randomness as the more likely, less disruptive choice.

Brent

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.

If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than light.

True, but irrelevant to what I said. There is no theory that gives a local account of the Bell correlations. Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signalling. This seems to rule out local deterministic theories.

Bruce

[smitra]

On 20-12-2020 07:57, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
>> <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation
>>> of the equations as expressing probabilities. But there was (and
>>> maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly
>>> random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the
>>> randomness of ignorance. For most physicists this was resolved by
>>> the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell
>>> inequalities. At that point the choice was irreducible randomness
>>> or nonlocal effects
>>
>> That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and
>> non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the
>> apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but
>> at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that
>> non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the
>> presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.
>
> If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of
> that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than
> light.
>

That can indeed be done in Bohm theory. There the Born rule requires the
assumption of so-called "quantum-equilibrium", and that condition can be
violated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_non-equilibrium

Saibal

> Brent
>
>> It is only deterministic theories like MWI and Bohm that eliminate
>> randomness, but MWI does not solve the locality issue either.
>> Besides, MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule; and the Born rule,
>> while consistent with Bohm, cannot be derived from Bohmian
>> mechanics.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>> and most physicists saw randomness as the more likely, less
>>> disruptive choice.
>>>
>>> Brent
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[Bruce Kellett]

First find your violation of this "Quantum equilibrium" -- a stupid construct if ever if heard of one!

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 12:52:26 AM UTC-7 Bruce wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.

If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than light.

True, but irrelevant to what I said. There is no theory that gives a local account of the Bell correlations. Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signalling. This seems to rule out local deterministic theories.

Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signaling. Wow! That's a breathtaking claim. How is it justified? What is the argument? TIA, AG 

[scerir]

Uncontrollable signaling. https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/25643

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:38 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

How do you figure that?  

John K Clark      To see my new list go to  extropolis

[Lawrence Crowell]

Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem are indications of an irreducible randomness to measurement outcomes in QM.

LC

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 10:56 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:38 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

How do you figure that?  

It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every outcome happens, with probability one. The Born rule says that different outcomes have different probabilities. So MWI + Born gives two incompatible results for outcome probabilities. Hence Everett is incoherent -- incompatible with the Born rule.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

The probability that an outcome happens and the probability that an observer will see a particular outcome are two different things.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Only if you say so -- Nature doesn't care what you say! There is an observer for every outcome. Or do you really believe in a dualist model?

Bruce

[scerir]

> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

How do you figure that?  

It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every outcome happens, with probability one. The Born rule says that different outcomes have different probabilities. So MWI + Born gives two incompatible results for outcome probabilities. Hence Everett is incoherent -- incompatible with the Born rule.

Bruce

"The compulsion to replace the *simultaneous* happenings, as indicated directly by the theory, by *alternatives*, of which the theory is supposed to indicate the respective *probabilities*, arises from the conviction that what we really observe are particles - that actual events always concern particles, not waves."

-Erwin Schroedinger, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Dublin Seminars (1949-1955) and Other Unpublished Essays (Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, Connecticut, 1995), pages 19-20.

[Bruce Kellett]

What are the "actual events"? Maybe the waves are the actuality -- particles being only superficial appearances.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

Can you actually define "irreducible randomness" in order to prove it's the underlying reality of the universe? If so, what is it? TIA, AG

[Brent Meeker]

Science doesn't deal in proofs, only in evidence.  And the reality it deals with is that which can be tested...i.e. is not "underlying".

Brent

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[Alan Grayson]

Bullshit; Counterexample; the derivation of the LT from the principle of the invariance of the SOL.AG

[Alan Grayson]

Gee; is physics an experimental science?. I didn't know that. I never had a clue! AG

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Nature agrees that different observers will see different outcomes, since they are not in telepathic communication.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Which observer are you? What outcome do you see?

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

I am potentially any of them, but only one, which is why it is probabilistic. This is independent of consciousness and quantum mechanics. A rational character in a computer game that branches would reason the same way.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Yes, it is a problem inherent in all indexical reasoning. Either you are all of the copies, and hence the probability for you to see any particular outcome is unity, or you are only one of the copies, and the rest are zombies. That is the dualist position, and it is necessary if you want to get probabilities other than unity for outcomes.

The reasoning is like that in the many minds model of QM of Albert and Loewer, and they now explicitly acknowledge that the reasoning underlying that model is manifestly dualist.

Bruce

[Telmo Menezes]

Nice sophism you got there Bruce.

Telmo.

Bruce

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

All the copies could be conscious or all could be zombies; none are privileged.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

What difference does that make? One has to be privileged in some way if there is to be a probability different from zero.

Bruce

[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 4:51 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

 

>> How do you figure that?

 

> It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every outcome happens, with probability one.

The Schrodinger equation is unitary, if it wasn't then it wouldn't be able to give probabilities because to be meaningful probabilities must be unitary, that is to say the sum of all the probabilities must always add up to 1. So Schrodinger's Equation says when an electron encounters a photon there are an infinite number of things the electron could end up doing, but when you add up all the probabilities it will always equal to exactly 1. Many Worlds says the same thing, when an electron encounters a photon everything that could happen, everything that does not violate the laws of physics, does happen. In other words the probability that an observer will see *something* happen when the electron encounters a photon is exactly one.

 

> The Born rule says that different outcomes have different probabilities.

Yes, and in Many Worlds the probability Bruce Kellett will see the electron go left rather than right depends entirely on how many Bruce Kelletts there are; and there are certainly more than one, a great many more than one.

> Which observer are you? What outcome do you see?

It's amazing how much confusion that simple personal pronoun causes. In Many Worlds there are a great many observers who would have a legitimate claim to the same name, John K Clark for example, even if some of them have one atom of Carbon-13 in a particular fat cell in their left big toe and others have Carbon-12 instead.  

> There is an observer for every outcome.

No, sometimes an outcome has many observers, even many with the same name, and sometimes an outcome has no observers at all. Many Worlds doesn't care if an outcome is observed or not and that is its one enormous strength, unlike Copenhagen it doesn't have to explain what exactly an "observation" is because consciousness has nothing to do with it. 

 

> do you really believe in a dualist model?

I have no opinion on that, I know little about pistols or sword fighting.  

John K Clark

[smitra]

>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [1]Quantum_non-equilibrium [1]

>
> First find your violation of this "Quantum equilibrium" -- a stupid
> construct if ever if heard of one!
>
> Bruce

The point is that it exists if Bohm theory is correct. It's worthwhile
to look into this sorts of things, regardless of experimental evidence
to see what sort of experiments would be worthwhile to do in the first
place.

Saibal

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Telmo,

I comment Bruce, and add some more. Feel free to try to explain what the machine’s theory of consciousness is missing, if you think something is missed (besides the infinity of theorem in this open branch of mathematical logic or machine theology).

On 22 Dec 2020, at 10:35, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

Am Mo, 21. Dez 2020, um 21:35, schrieb Bruce Kellett:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 10:56 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:38 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

How do you figure that?  

It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every outcome happens, with probability one.

That is an exemple of confusion between the third person pictured where indeed MWI keep all superposition “intacte”, and that all possible quantum outcome are realised, and the first person account where that does not happen, as each brain is correlated to the terms of the superposition.

The MWI predicts that John will see a cat alive + John will see a cat dead, but still makes impossible the prediction “John will see the cat alive and dead”. Once John looks at the cat, the schroedinger equation predict that both the superposed John will agree on seeing the cat being definitely dead XOR alive.

In the mathematical theory of self-reference, this confusion mix []p and ([]p & p). Despite []p & ([]p & p) are provided equivalent by G*, they cannot be proved equivalent by G, and they obey different mathematics, and the p get different probabilities.credibilities, ...

The Born rule says that different outcomes have different probabilities. So MWI + Born gives two incompatible results for outcome probabilities. Hence Everett is incoherent -- incompatible with the Born rule.

Nice sophism you got there Bruce.

It could be called the Lucas-Penrose sophism, in this context, or perhaps the Clark-Kellet sophism.

To be sure, the []p and []p & p difference is fundamental, notably to understand that “consciousness” is partially explained, as we (the universal machines) can define “[]p” in arithmetic, but we (the universal machines)  cannot define []p & p. That is used to show that consciousness and first person experience are not definable (which is stronger than just “non-provable”) without invoking a self-encompacing notion of of truth (commonly “called" God).

With Mechanism, all the terms, or concepts, like consciousness, can be defined in ZF, except one “natural number”, which would need a standard model of ZF, which today are just defined by using the notion of standard natural number.

The consciousness of the universal machine is *dissociated*. To associate it to “us”, we have to link the induction axiom to the “physical time”, and make the machine handling well a model of itself through short term memories and long term memories. It could be that we need a “circular neural nets” learning this through experience, to get it right, but the machines, like us, will always improved and develop this (using wall, paper, magnetic band, computer, etc.)

Bruno

Telmo.

Bruce

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[Brent Meeker]

That seems to imply dualism.  All the bodies exist, but your soul only goes with one.

Brent

This is independent of consciousness and quantum mechanics. A rational character in a computer game that branches would reason the same way.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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[smitra]

On 22-12-2020 08:20, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 5:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou
> <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 08:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 8:47 AM Stathis Papaioannou
>> <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 08:35, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 10:56 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:38 AM Bruce Kellett
>> <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>

>> _> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule_

>>
>> How do you figure that?
>
> It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every
> outcome happens, with probability one. The Born rule says that
> different outcomes have different probabilities. So MWI + Born gives
> two incompatible results for outcome probabilities. Hence Everett is
> incoherent -- incompatible with the Born rule.
>
> The probability that an outcome happens and the probability that an
> observer will see a particular outcome are two different things.
>
> Only if you say so -- Nature doesn't care what you say! There is an
> observer for every outcome. Or do you really believe in a dualist
> model?
>
> Nature agrees that different observers will see different outcomes,
> since they are not in telepathic communication.
>
> Which observer are you? What outcome do you see?
>
> Bruce

If the MWI were false and only one outcome would be realized in a given
region of space containing one observer, you can still end up with an
ensemble of all possible outcomes in an infinitely large universe.
Verifying the Born rule obviously doesn't falsify theories that predict
an infinite universe, like eternal inflation theory. Therefore, we can
conclude that Bruce's arguments here holds no water.

Saibal

[scerir]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

All the copies could be conscious or all could be zombies; none are privileged.

"In truth there is only one mind. Oneness it is the doctrine of the Upanishads." As far as I remember Schroedinger wrote something like that. Does that "Oneness" could resolve our problem? :-)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Why did you say it was dualist if it doesn't make a difference that it isn't dualist?

The probability calculated where there are multiple copies is the probability that one randomly sampled copy will see a particular outcome. I am one randomly sampled copy.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

I think you have overlooked the implications of linearity.

> do you really believe in a dualist model?

I have no opinion on that, I know little about pistols or sword fighting. 

And you can't even spell!

Bruce

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 2:37 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

Am Mo, 21. Dez 2020, um 21:35, schrieb Bruce Kellett:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 10:56 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:38 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule

How do you figure that?  

It's easy enough. MWI from the Schrodinger equation says that every outcome happens, with probability one.

That is an exemple of confusion between the third person pictured where indeed MWI keep all superposition “intacte”, and that all possible quantum outcome are realised, and the first person account where that does not happen, as each brain is correlated to the terms of the superposition.

The 1p/3p distinction does not help you here. There are many 1p views, and for each the probability of that particular observation is one, contradicting the Born rule calculation of the probability in every case. This follows from the linearity of the Schrodinger equation. The Born rule cannot be deduced from the Schrodinger equation -- they are incompatible.

Bruce

[Bruce Kellett]

It makes no difference if all copies are conscious, or if all are zombies -- you are still making a dualist assumption.

The probability calculated where there are multiple copies is the probability that one randomly sampled copy will see a particular outcome. I am one randomly sampled copy.

And that is precisely the dualist assumption that  is intrinsic in all self-location (indexical) arguments. I think Brent has understood this when he says "That seems to imply dualism.  All the bodies exist, but your soul only goes with one."

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

I could say that my soul is duplicated and I want to know the probability that I am one randomly sampled soul. I could say that the carrots are duplicated and I want to know the probability that I get a particular randomly sampled carrot. I don't have a problem with it; you do, and there seems to be no way around it.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Think of it like this: take a randomly shuffled deck of cards and hand one card from the deck to each of 52 people. The probability that one of the people will get the 3-of-Spades is one. The probability that 'You' will get the 3-of-Spades in a fair shuffle is 1/52. The difference is that you have identified yourself in advance. The dualist assumption is equivalent.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

The probability that one particular randomly sampled person will get the 3 of spades is 1/52.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

As I said. But who or what does the random sampling so that you are the selected person? You cannot escape the dualist implications that easily.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Let's say you are copied 10^100 times. One copy will end up in a place where they use euros and the rest will end up in a place where they use dollars. Do you put euros or dollars in your wallet before duplication?

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Let's say I wait and see! and go to the money exchange if necessary. You are posing a different problem, one in which the number of copies on a particular branch is increased. That is incompatible with MWI and Everett with non-degenerate eigenvalues.

You don't avoid the dualist implications of self-selection by increasing the number of copies: the example with 52 cards says everything that is necessary.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

From what I understand of your position, you would claim that the 1 in 10^100 copy will screw up the very concept of probability. If that extra copy did not exist, you would take dollars, because you will certainly need dollars; but with the extra copy you would just throw up your hands and say you don't know what to do, because it is certain you will need dollars and euros.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

My complaint about your example is that you are changing the problem -- you are changing the probabilities in a way that is incompatible with both the Schrodinger equation and the Born rule. But there could be more moderate examples of branch duplication that would be more in line with what is proposed by some people. For example, both Sean Carroll and Zurek propose a procedure whereby they expand the number of branches so that all branches have equal amplitudes (weights, or Born probabilities). This is incompatible with the Schrodinger equation, but if we leave that aside for the moment, it gives a branch-counting solution to the probability question. The idea then is that you self-select from a uniform random distribution over this expanded set of branches.  However, the expansion of the number of branches in this approach is, in fact, unnecessary, since random self-selection from a distribution would give the same result if the distribution were determined directly by the Born rule.

But this is still inconsistent with the Schrodinger equation because there is nothing in the SE that tells you that you have a probability distribution given by the Born weights. You can impose the Born rule by fiat, but that is then incompatible with the fact that every outcome in the Schrodinger equation occurs with probability equal to one. (Which is where we started).

The self-selection idea, whether from an expanded set of branches with equal weights, or from the original number of branches weighted by the Born rule, still involves the idea of a random selection from a distribution. This is not part of the Schrodinger equation, and it is still essentially dualist since it requires the selection of one unique individual who is not specified by the equations -- it assumes that just one of the individuals involved is uniquely specified to be YOU -- by virtue of an immortal soul or some such. None of this is in the physics.

Bruce

[smitra]

imposing the Born rule by fiat is not incompatible with each outcome
being realized. Your identity at any time is specified by all the
information that specifies your physical state. After each observation,
your identity changes. But this is only by a few bits of information,
allowing us to ignore that change. However in the sort of discussion
like this one about the MWI this change of identity due to different
outcomes of the measurements in the different sectors is of crucial
importance. The Born rule then specifies a measure on the space of all
possible observers, where we also distinguish two observers who split
off from the same observer after a measurement.

Saibal

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 2:53 PM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:

imposing the Born rule by fiat is not incompatible with each outcome
being realized.

It is, actually. The Born rule gives probabilities that are incompatible with every outcoming occurring on every trial. If every outcome always occurs you are led to statements such as "This low probability outcome is certain to occur", which is nonsense. If something is certain to occur, it has probability one, but the Born rule never gives unit probability to a single outcome from the set.

Your identity at any time is specified by all the
information that specifies your physical state. After each observation,
your identity changes. But this is only by a few bits of information,
allowing us to ignore that change. However in the sort of discussion
like this one about the MWI this change of identity due to different
outcomes of the measurements in the different sectors is of crucial
importance. The Born rule then specifies a measure on the space of all
possible observers, where we also distinguish two observers who split
off from the same observer after a measurement.

But the Born probabilities are inconsistent with unit probability for every possible outcome.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 6:36:53 AM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 12:52:26 AM UTC-7 Bruce wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.

If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than light.

True, but irrelevant to what I said. There is no theory that gives a local account of the Bell correlations. Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signalling. This seems to rule out local deterministic theories.

Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signaling. Wow! That's a breathtaking claim. How is it justified? What is the argument? TIA, AG 

I'm not disputing your claim. But it's hugely profound, if true. Can you say something, anything about how you've reached this conclusion? TIA, AG 

Bruce

It is only deterministic theories like MWI and Bohm that eliminate randomness, but MWI does not solve the locality issue either. Besides, MWI is incompatible with the Born Rule; and the Born rule, while consistent with Bohm, cannot be derived from Bohmian mechanics.

Bruce

and most physicists saw randomness as the more likely, less disruptive choice.

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

If micro reality is irreducibly random, why isn't it appropriate to refer to it as the "underlying reality"? You seem to be splitting hairs to no avail. AG

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 9:27:20 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

Bullshit; Counterexample; the derivation of the LT from the principle of the invariance of the SoL. AG

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 9:03:14 PM UTC-7 Brent wrote:

Science doesn't deal in proofs, only in evidence.  And the reality it deals with is that which can be tested...i.e. is not "underlying".

Brent

On 12/21/2020 6:49 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

Can you actually define "irreducible randomness" in order to prove it's the underlying reality of the universe? If so, what is it? TIA, AG

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 9:25:57 AM UTC-7 Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem are indications of an irreducible randomness to measurement outcomes in QM.

LC

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 12:50:58 PM UTC-6 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

Can it be directly inferred from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? TIA, AG

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[scerir]

AG asked: does randomness imply no-FTL-signaling?

Let me ask: does determinism imply FTL-signaling?

A is one of the two wings of a Bell apparatus

i is the observable to be measured in A

x is the possible value of i

B is the other wing of a Bell apparatus

j is the observable to be measured in B

y is  the possible value of j

Lambda are hidden variables

p are probabilities

If we write

p_[A,Lambda] (x|i,j) = p_[A,Lambda] (x|i)

p_[B,Lambda] (y|i,j) = p_[B,Lambda] (y|j)

the above is a sort of "locality" condition,

since the value x only depends on the observable i,

and the value y only depends on the observable j.

In a (hypothetical) deterministic theory (but reproducing QM)

the above "locality" condition is violated.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 13:29, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 12:45 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 10:58, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 10:45 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 09:15, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 9:07 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 09:02, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:32 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 21:31, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 9:19 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

All the copies could be conscious or all could be zombies; none are privileged.

What difference does that make? One has to be privileged in some way if there is to be a probability different from zero.

Why did you say it was dualist if it doesn't make a difference that it isn't dualist?

It makes no difference if all copies are conscious, or if all are zombies -- you are still making a dualist assumption.

The probability calculated where there are multiple copies is the probability that one randomly sampled copy will see a particular outcome. I am one randomly sampled copy.

And that is precisely the dualist assumption that  is intrinsic in all self-location (indexical) arguments. I think Brent has understood this when he says "That seems to imply dualism.  All the bodies exist, but your soul only goes with one."

I could say that my soul is duplicated and I want to know the probability that I am one randomly sampled soul. I could say that the carrots are duplicated and I want to know the probability that I get a particular randomly sampled carrot. I don't have a problem with it; you do, and there seems to be no way around it.

Think of it like this: take a randomly shuffled deck of cards and hand one card from the deck to each of 52 people. The probability that one of the people will get the 3-of-Spades is one. The probability that 'You' will get the 3-of-Spades in a fair shuffle is 1/52. The difference is that you have identified yourself in advance. The dualist assumption is equivalent.

Let's say you are copied 10^100 times. One copy will end up in a place where they use euros and the rest will end up in a place where they use dollars. Do you put euros or dollars in your wallet before duplication?

Let's say I wait and see! and go to the money exchange if necessary. You are posing a different problem, one in which the number of copies on a particular branch is increased. That is incompatible with MWI and Everett with non-degenerate eigenvalues.

You don't avoid the dualist implications of self-selection by increasing the number of copies: the example with 52 cards says everything that is necessary.

From what I understand of your position, you would claim that the 1 in 10^100 copy will screw up the very concept of probability. If that extra copy did not exist, you would take dollars, because you will certainly need dollars; but with the extra copy you would just throw up your hands and say you don't know what to do, because it is certain you will need dollars and euros.

My complaint about your example is that you are changing the problem -- you are changing the probabilities in a way that is incompatible with both the Schrodinger equation and the Born rule.

I thought you were talking about probabilities in general where the observer is duplicated because you have a problem with self-sampling. Do you think it makes a difference if there is a 1/2 event, a 1/52 event or a 1/10^100 event? Would the 1/10^100 event cause your metaphysical problem, such that ignoring it requires an assumption of an immaterial soul?

But there could be more moderate examples of branch duplication that would be more in line with what is proposed by some people. For example, both Sean Carroll and Zurek propose a procedure whereby they expand the number of branches so that all branches have equal amplitudes (weights, or Born probabilities). This is incompatible with the Schrodinger equation, but if we leave that aside for the moment, it gives a branch-counting solution to the probability question. The idea then is that you self-select from a uniform random distribution over this expanded set of branches.  However, the expansion of the number of branches in this approach is, in fact, unnecessary, since random self-selection from a distribution would give the same result if the distribution were determined directly by the Born rule.

But this is still inconsistent with the Schrodinger equation because there is nothing in the SE that tells you that you have a probability distribution given by the Born weights. You can impose the Born rule by fiat, but that is then incompatible with the fact that every outcome in the Schrodinger equation occurs with probability equal to one. (Which is where we started).

The self-selection idea, whether from an expanded set of branches with equal weights, or from the original number of branches weighted by the Born rule, still involves the idea of a random selection from a distribution. This is not part of the Schrodinger equation, and it is still essentially dualist since it requires the selection of one unique individual who is not specified by the equations -- it assumes that just one of the individuals involved is uniquely specified to be YOU -- by virtue of an immortal soul or some such. None of this is in the physics.

Bruce

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:49 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 13:29, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 12:45 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

From what I understand of your position, you would claim that the 1 in 10^100 copy will screw up the very concept of probability. If that extra copy did not exist, you would take dollars, because you will certainly need dollars; but with the extra copy you would just throw up your hands and say you don't know what to do, because it is certain you will need dollars and euros.

My complaint about your example is that you are changing the problem -- you are changing the probabilities in a way that is incompatible with both the Schrodinger equation and the Born rule.

I thought you were talking about probabilities in general where the observer is duplicated because you have a problem with self-sampling. Do you think it makes a difference if there is a 1/2 event, a 1/52 event or a 1/10^100 event? Would the 1/10^100 event cause your metaphysical problem, such that ignoring it requires an assumption of an immaterial soul?

As I suspected, you are simply avoiding the basic question, which is "Is MWI (Everett) consistent with the Born rule?". In order to approach this problem, we have to look at probabilities and duplication as implied by Everettian QM. You have lost track of this by making up extreme examples and asking the wrong questions.

We can return to the initial problem if you are interested. But I doubt that you are really going to engage with the case that I have made. If every outcome occurs on every trial, each outcome individually has unit probability -- it certainly occurs. This is incompatible with the Born rule. (Do low probability outcomes certainly occur?)

Bruce

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Dec 2020, at 17:25, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem are indications of an irreducible randomness to measurement outcomes in QM.

That is clear for me when you assume one and only one physical universe, or one measurement outcome.

It is less clear if we assume 0 physical universe (like we have to if we want biologie and Darwin to keep their explanation power, as they use mechanism and this is hard to sustain with any (weak) form of materialism.

Keep in mind that Mechanism introduce already an irreducible randomness in self- measurement in the self-duplication/multiplication (in arithmetic, or anywhere).

Normally, the quantum weirdness is simply the canonical weirdness met by all universal numbers in arithmetic, and due to its intrinsic lack of ability to determine which computation run her, among the infinities of computation in any “universal-Turing system”.

Bell’s theorem and Kochen-Specker theorem are part of the confirmation that the quantum MWI is just the arithmetical multi-computations reality, structured by the modes of self-reference of the universal machine (an arithmetical concept).

This per se does not solve the mind-body problem, but is the beginning of its formulation. The solution is in the consequence of the (counter-intuitive) theory of machine self-references (which applies also to some “gods” (non Turing emulable entity) which exist also in the arithmetical reality (called “oracle” by Turing).

Some evidences for some type of hidden variable in the physical reality would give some evidence that Mechanism is false, but I have not yet seen such evidences.

Bruno

LC

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 12:50:58 PM UTC-6 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

Can it be directly inferred from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? TIA, AG

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 22 Dec 2020, at 05:03, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Science doesn't deal in proofs, only in evidence.  And the reality it deals with is that which can be tested...i.e. is not "underlying”.

I sort of agree. To believe in an underlying reality, or in a fundamental reality is not physical science, but theology. But we can do theology with a scientific attitude, and find criteria to test the existence and nature of the underlying reality that we postulate.

Today, when we do that, the evidences are in favour of Plato, not in favour of Aristotle. 

We can say that we have looked carefully to Nature, and that the evidence is that Nature is not an ontological, “underlying” reality, but the emergent product from the arithmetical relations.

Unfortunately, many people confuse the many evidences for the physical reality with an evidence that the physical reality would the underlying reality. That move *is* Aristotle postulation or act of faith. It works well for many applications, but is not sustained, neither by facts, nor by most of our current theories, which, like Darwin Evolution, relies on the Mechanist assumption (even implicitly on the Church-Turing these part of Mechanism).

Bruno

Brent

On 12/21/2020 6:49 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

Can you actually define "irreducible randomness" in order to prove it's the underlying reality of the universe? If so, what is it? TIA, AG

On Monday, December 21, 2020 at 9:25:57 AM UTC-7 Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem are indications of an irreducible randomness to measurement outcomes in QM.

LC

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 12:50:58 PM UTC-6 agrays...@gmail.com wrote:

Can it be directly inferred from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? TIA, AG

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 4:52 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There are many 1p views

Yes.

> and for each the probability of that particular observation is one

 

Yes, AFTER Bruce Kellett has observed that the electron went left rather than right then the probability the electron had gone left rather than right is exactly precisely 1. And that proves that making accurate predictions is very very easy if one is permitted to make the predictions AFTER the events in question have happened.

> contradicting the Born rule calculation of the probability in every case.

No, the Born rule Is about making a prediction BEFORE the event has happened not AFTER.

 

> The Born rule cannot be deduced from the Schrodinger equation

That is true. The Schrodinger equation just says for every particle there is a wave that is associated with it, the equation says nothing about what is waving, it doesn't even say if that wave has any observable consequences; for that you need a quantum interpretation. The Born Rule is a quantum interpretation. Max Born advanced the idea because from experiments it was shown to have worked and for no other reason. Max Born noticed that if Max Born took the square of the absolute value of the wave function at a point it would provide the probability that Max Born would be able to observe that particle at that point.

For example, Max Born noticed that if Max Born assumed that the square of the absolute value of the wave function at a point was a probability and if it said the electron was 60% likely to go left and 40% likely to go right under the specified experimental conditions and the experiment was repeated many times with the same conditions then Max Born would observe the electron go left about 60% of the time and right about 40% of the time, and the more times the experiment was repeated the closer it would get to that 60/40 ratio. 

> they are incompatible.

If there is one thing that we know for certain about Quantum Mechanics it's that the Born Rule WORKS, so if the Schrodinger Equation was incompatible with the Born Rule then the Schrodinger equation would be a useless piece of garbage. It's not.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 5:15 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Think of it like this: take a randomly shuffled deck of cards and hand one card from the deck to each of 52 people. The probability that one of the people will get the 3-of-Spades is one. 

 

If Many Worlds is correct then the probability that somebody named Bruce Kellett who has memories and a personality identical with the person that wrote the email this is a response to will get a 3 of spades is 1, and
the probability that somebody named Bruce Kellett who has memories and a personality identical with the person that wrote the email this is a response to will NOT get a 3 of spades is also 1 because in Many Worlds everything that can happen, that doesn't violate the laws of physics, will happen.

> The probability that 'You' will get the 3-of-Spades in a fair shuffle is 1/52. 

If Many Worlds is correct then the above statement is OK if looked at from a everyday strictly close up local perspective, but from a global viewpoint it would be neither true nor false, it would be gibberish because the personal pronoun is gibberish.   

> The difference is that you have identified yourself in advance. 

John Clark identifies "you" as anyone who has the memories and personality of Bruce Kellett; there are an astronomical number of John Clark's, maybe even an infinite number, but so far none of them have ever observed more than one chunk of matter that has those characteristics. But there is no reason in principle why that state of affairs couldn't change. 

> The dualist assumption is equivalent.

That question would be better dealt with on a list about the martial arts not this one.  

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 9:29 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> this is still inconsistent with the Schrodinger equation because [blah blah]

The Schrodinger Equation is not holy writ, but the Born Rule is because it has been shown over and over again to work. The Schrodinger Equation Is useful only because it provides the function that the Born Rule says you should take the square of the absolute value of.

John K Clark

[Stathis Papaioannou]

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Lawrence Crowell]

There is a correspondence between the geodesic deviation equation and the Schrodinger equation. A unitary operator U(t) acts on a wave function so that U(t)ψ(0) = ψ(t) and U obeys the Schrödinger equation 

iU_t = HU.

This Schrodinger equation may be re-expressed as iU_tU^{-1} = H or iU_tU^† = H. We can take an overall time derivative to get

iU_{tt} = H_tU + HU_t 

or

iU_{tt} = i∂_t(U_tU^†) + iU_tU^†U_t.

The term ∂_t(U_tU^†) or ∂_tH is equal to the commutator [H, H] = 0 and so we have the elementary equation

U_{tt} = U_tU^\dagger U_t.

This equation is analogous to 

d^2x^α/ds^2} = R^α_{μβν}U^μx^βU^ν.

which is like the unitary evolution equation. The curvature terms may be absorbed into the U^μ where the geodesic equation this is a real valued analogue of unitary evolution.

LC

[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 2:00 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a correspondence between the geodesic deviation equation and the Schrodinger equation.

Wouldn't geodesic deviation be more relevant when dealing with gravity and General Relativity than with Quantum Mechanics?

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

The equation I derived is a geodesic deviation equation! 

LC

[Bruce Kellett]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

On Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at 1:45:06 AM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 6:36:53 AM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 at 12:52:26 AM UTC-7 Bruce wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 12/19/2020 10:38 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:48 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As far as I know, it was Born who came up with the interpretation of the equations as expressing probabilities.  But there was (and maybe still is) controversy over whether this was irreducibly random or whether there were hidden variables and it was just the randomness of ignorance.  For most physicists this was resolved by the experimental confirmation of the violation of Bell inequalities.  At that point the choice was irreducible randomness or nonlocal effects

That is not quite right. The choice is not between randomnesss and non-locality. Non-local hidden variables (Bohm) do reduce the apparent randomness to ignorance of the detailed quantum state, but at the price of non-locality. Bell's result implies that non-locality is unavoidable, and this has nothing to do with the presence or absence of intrinsic randomness.

If there were not intrinsic randomness then the extra correlation of that violates Bell's inequality could be used to signal faster than light.

True, but irrelevant to what I said. There is no theory that gives a local account of the Bell correlations. Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signalling. This seems to rule out local deterministic theories.

Intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signaling. Wow! That's a breathtaking claim. How is it justified? What is the argument? TIA, AG 

I'm not disputing your claim. But it's hugely profound, if true. Can you say something, anything about how you've reached this conclusion? TIA, AG 

Maybe your claim is so profound that it's sacrilege to say anything about it? Could be. AG 

[John Clark]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 7:51 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes

In Many Worlds it's meaningless to ask which one is the original, there is nothing original about "the original ''. If you've seen one John Clark you've seen them all.  

> Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities,

Predictions may have different probabilities but outcomes always have exactly the same probability,  if X is observed to have happened then the probability that X had occurred is always exactly 1. If Many Worlds is right and there are an astronomical number of John Clarks then about half of them will see the coin land heads and about half will see it land tails and a very very small number of them will see neither, they will defy the odds and see the coin land on its edge. But before the flip all of them predicted that the odds would be 50-50.  

> the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

Yes, just as all copies of an email sent out via a mailing list are identical with the original that was typed on the author's computer. If we were arguing about something it would be silly for me to say I failed to convince you because you only saw a copy of my email not the original. 

John K Clark

[smitra]

On 23-12-2020 05:17, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 2:53 PM smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> wrote:
>
>> imposing the Born rule by fiat is not incompatible with each outcome
>>
>> being realized.
>
> It is, actually. The Born rule gives probabilities that are
> incompatible with every outcoming occurring on every trial. If every
> outcome always occurs you are led to statements such as "This low
> probability outcome is certain to occur", which is nonsense. If
> something is certain to occur, it has probability one, but the Born
> rule never gives unit probability to a single outcome from the set.

The probability of 1 here is what you get when you consider the entire
multiverse, but this is not the probability that one measures in
experiments to which the Born rule refers to. This probability is
contained in the statistics of the outcome of many experiments, and this
exists in a physical form accessible to the observer. So, if 100 spin
measurements experiments have been done then the outcomes of these exist
in each sector in the form of a physical record.


Saibal

[Lawrence Crowell]

I have recently thought of something a bit odd, which is related to MWI. If we consider the universe, say multiverse and well everything possible, as a set of of possible quantum outcomes, say Hadamard gate operations etc, and these may be infinite then there are two oddities. This means the universe, including all possible states of the universe, is a set of outcomes in some order, say (0100101110100110110101011...  , 1010010101001010001110101... , etc. then two things are evident. This is a power set and not enumerable. The second is there are an infinite number of such strings outside the list and third this leads to a paradoxical decomposition of the Bloch sphere. These symbol strings are the set of all possible outcomes that can exist in something like and MWI setting. I am also assuming, at least for the sake of argument, that this may be infinite.

The first two of these are not hard to see. In fact they are related. The Cantor diagonalization trick leads to the result there can never be an enumeration of this set. The third is not as easy to see. If we list these outcomes in some ordering, say listing those with N zeros before those with N-1 zeros, it is not hard to those with N-1 0s contain a reduced set equivalent to those with N 0s. Because of this by performing the SU(2) group operations on the sphere we can separate it into 5 sets, where 3 of these complete the sphere and the other two complete it as well. In effect this is the Banach-Tarski paradox. This leads to a conundrum, for this duplication means there is some redundancy or indefinability with probabilities. 

There are three possible ways out this problem of course. One is to say these string must be finite and thus the set of them enumerable. The other is to abandon the axiom of choice which permits the ordering I mention above. The third would be to abandon MWI. This looks to be an informal demonstration that MWI + QM(with Born rule) is not consistent with there being an infinite set of possible outcomes. This is motivated in part by Carroll's demonstration that MWI is consistent with Born rule by his throwing out symbol strings with a large number of redundant outcomes, say a million 1's in a row. I ponder whether the only hope for MWI with an infinite possible outcomes is if there is some regularization or renormalization of this sort that "pushes" this decomposition of the Bloch sphere into non-physics, much as renormalization of charge and mass does.

LC

[Stathis Papaioannou]

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life. I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that the essence of that person has  been transmitted to me now. But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done, no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well, and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories of being me.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life.

It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment. If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.

[scerir]

BTW at last I've found that quotation.

It seems nteresting that Schroedinger writes: 'Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.' 

Unfortunately I cannot understand the following statement: 'I should say: the over-all number of minds is just one.'

"The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as a part of it. But, of course, here we knock against the arithmetical paradox; there appears to be a great multitude of these conscious egos, the world is however only one.

There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses, Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads.

The doctrine of identity can claim that it is clinched by the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.

Mind is by its very nature a singulare tantum. I should say: the over-all number of minds is just one. I venture to call it indesctructible since it has a peculiar time-table, namely mind is always now. There is really no before and after for mind. There is only now that includes memories and expectations. But I grant that our language is not adequate to express this, and I also grant, should anyone wish to state it, that I am now talking religion, not science – a religion, however not opposed to science, but supported by what disinterested scientific research has brought to the fore."

Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter

Chapter 4: The Arithmetical Paradox: The Oneness of Mind

Il 22/12/2020 21:14 'scerir' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> ha scritto:

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

All the copies could be conscious or all could be zombies; none are privileged.

"In truth there is only one mind. Oneness it is the doctrine of the Upanishads." As far as I remember Schroedinger wrote something like that. Does that "Oneness" could resolve our problem? :-)

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life.

It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment. If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.

I’m not throwing it away, but I am acknowledging that it is a psychological artefact, not a dualistic soul. Apply this psychological artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities. The copies each say “I know logically that all the copies are identical, but I feel that I am the only real me, continuing from the original”.

I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that the essence of that person has  been transmitted to me now. But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done, no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well, and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories of being me.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:44 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life.

It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment. If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.

I’m not throwing it away, but I am acknowledging that it is a psychological artefact, not a dualistic soul.

It is not merely a psychological artefact -- it is a matter of physical continuity. Your theory of personal identity is letting you down here.

Apply this psychological artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities.

I think you need a little more than this hand-waving in order to get probabilities. They have a physical origin and are objective, after all.

Bruce

The copies each say “I know logically that all the copies are identical, but I feel that I am the only real me, continuing from the original”.

I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that the essence of that person has  been transmitted to me now. But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done, no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well, and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories of being me.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:55, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:44 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life.

It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment. If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.

I’m not throwing it away, but I am acknowledging that it is a psychological artefact, not a dualistic soul.

It is not merely a psychological artefact -- it is a matter of physical continuity. Your theory of personal identity is letting you down here.

Physical continuity is neither necessary nor sufficient for continuity of personal identity.

Apply this psychological artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities.

I think you need a little more than this hand-waving in order to get probabilities. They have a physical origin and are objective, after all.

There is an objective way to calculate probabilities, but when questions like “what will I see tomorrow” are asked a theory of personal identity is introduced, which is a contingent fact about our psychology.

The copies each say “I know logically that all the copies are identical, but I feel that I am the only real me, continuing from the original”.

I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that the essence of that person has  been transmitted to me now. But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done, no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well, and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories of being me.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

Confusing how you measure the probability with how it is calculated as the mod-square of the amplitude is something of a mistake.

However, the inherent contradiction cannot be pushed off into the multiverse as you seem to think. The branch we are on is part of the multiverse, and it exists with probability one. But the mod-squared amplitude of the branch is less than one, so there are two distinct calculations of the probability for the existence of our branch, and they don't agree. The same holds for every branch, so the contradiction is present in every branch of the multiverse -- not easily dispatched!

Bruce

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 10:47 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:55, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

It is not merely a psychological artefact -- it is a matter of physical continuity. Your theory of personal identity is letting you down here.

Physical continuity is neither necessary nor sufficient for continuity of personal identity.

 

But personal identity cannot be sensibly defined without taking account of physical continuity.

 

Apply this psychological artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities.

I think you need a little more than this hand-waving in order to get probabilities. They have a physical origin and are objective, after all.

There is an objective way to calculate probabilities, but when questions like “what will I see tomorrow” are asked a theory of personal identity is introduced, which is a contingent fact about our psychology.

I think you are being seriously misled by your deficient understanding of personal identity.

In the MWI of QM, the linearity of the Schrodinger equation means that the whole person, physical and psychological, is duplicated into every branch of the wave function -- with probability one. Even though the Born probability for each branch is strictly less than one.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

One is the probability that a certain branch exists, the other is the subjective probability that a being with the feeling that he is a unique individual persisting through time will experience a particular branch. You may say that this feeling is based on a delusion but we still have it.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

According to the individual on the branch, the Born probability is the probability that that branch will exist -- it is an objective property of the branch. It is a subjective probability only to the extent to which the individual believes in Lewis's Principal Principle!

You may say that this feeling is based on a delusion but we still have it.

I have not said that the feeling of continuous existence in time is a delusion. It seems that you are trying to claim that our continued existence as persons is a delusion, but that is patent nonsense.

Bruce

[spudb...@aol.com]

For "physical continuity" information as a stored coherent process, may be provided by the study of cosmology in the interaction of photons and gravity. It's a long shot, especially from the vantage point of our gloomy age, but it may be baked-in to the cosmos. Some have advocated that quantum foam may "scrub" the data away, and this may be true, but I'd like to have a physics model for this action. 

https://turingchurch.net/the-infrared-memory-of-the-universe-hints-at-future-akashic-physics-3f9a072f0ca6

So, in this fashion storage provides continuity. 

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[Brent Meeker]

That the Born rule doesn't derive from the Schroedinger equation doesn't bother me.  Gleason's theorem guarantees it's the only consistent probability measure in the eigenstates of an observable.  The question seems to be why is there probability at all.  But I see the unpredictability of measured values and that intrinsic randomness is necessary to protect relativity theory.  So randomness per the Born rule seems to be the obvious theoretical choice.  But then why would I entertain the multiverse.  If I know when I've made a measurement then I know when the wave funcion "collapsed".  If I don't know when I've made a measurement, then I have more serious problems than just the interpretation of QM.

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

On 12/24/2020 1:43 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 8:04 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 11:51, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

You suspected right, I am asking a more basic question about self-sampling and the validity of probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes.

There is a problem here -- or maybe it is just careless phrasing. You say there is a question about probabilities when a version of the observer sees all possible outcomes. The question is whether it is merely a version of the observer, a copy of the observer, or the actual observer who sees all possible outcomes? A "version" is somewhat ambiguous. Different 'versions' of an operating system, for example, differ in some way. Whereas the duplicates under consideration here are, by hypothesis, all identical copies of the original.

As John Clark is fond of pointing out, the trouble with self-sampling from a set of identical duplicate persons is that the personal pronoun 'you' loses its unique reference. All copies have an equal claim to be identified as the original 'you', so there is a real sense in which 'you' see all outcomes, with probability one. If you attempt to single out a particular individual by some random sampling procedure, you immediately make a dualist assumption -- the selected individual is different from the rest (by virtue of a 'soul', or some such, conferred by the sampling process itself).

Since there is a sense in which 'you' certainly see all possible outcomes, there is an immediate conflict with the Born rule, according to which different outcomes have different probabilities, and 'you' can't see more than one such outcome.

There is no magical “you” persisting from moment to moment even in ordinary life.

It's not magical -- that is what it means to be a person-- you have physical and psychological continuity from moment to moment. If you throw this away, it is hard to know what you are talking about.

I’m not throwing it away, but I am acknowledging that it is a psychological artefact, not a dualistic soul. Apply this psychological artefact where there is copying, and you get probabilities. The copies each say “I know logically that all the copies are identical, but I feel that I am the only real me, continuing from the original”.

Artefact implies that it is constructed.  And I agree that if I were creating an artificial mind to be like the human mind, one of the things it would include is a module that produces a simulation of itself as it might exist in various imagined circumstances.  This is essential to have foresight and rational planning.

Brent
"Math is a cybervirus that lives in human minds, evolves therein and reproduces itself via language."
    --- Stephen Paul King

I now have memories of being someone yesterday, I feel that the essence of that person has  been transmitted to me now. But it’s a delusion, and if I were copied many times each of the copies would of course have the same delusion. They can’t help it, it’s the way human psychology works. So thinking about probabilities if I am copied amounts to this: how should I reason about those future copies who share the delusion that they are uniquely me, given that I have the delusion that I will become one and only one of those copies? You propose that I drop the delusion and then there is no reasoning to be done, no question of probability. But to be consistent, I should then drop the delusion in a single thread universe as well, and not be concerned about the outcomes fir the person tomorrow who thinks that he is me just because he has memories of being me.

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 3:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

That the Born rule doesn't derive from the Schroedinger equation doesn't bother me.

It doesn't bother me, either. If one needs probabilities, one can simply impose the Born rule. The problem is that you can't do this consistently when every outcome occurs on every trial -- there is no sensible definition of probability in that case.

Gleason's theorem guarantees it's the only consistent probability measure in the eigenstates of an observable.  The question seems to be why is there probability at all.

That lies at the heart of the problem. You can't get probabilities out of a deterministic theory.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

Now I raise a similar question I posed to Bruce, thrice, with no replies. Why does the unpredictability of measured values and the intrinsic randomness protect relativity theory? This is really a huge conceptual leap. How would you argue for that conclusion, as distinguished from asserting it? TIA, AG

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 5:29 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

Now I raise a similar question I posed to Bruce, thrice, with no replies. Why does the unpredictability of measured values and the intrinsic randomness protect relativity theory? This is really a huge conceptual leap. How would you argue for that conclusion, as distinguished from asserting it? TIA, AG

You need to do some research on the no-signalling theorems. This list does not exist to answer your elementary questions.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

Well, if what you're sure of, that is "guarantees" -- that intrinsic randomness guarantees no FTL signaling -- the issue would have already been settled. But apparently it isn't. Time to get off your high horse. I'd say that time arrived long ago. Instead you prefer indulging silly issues like Born's rule in the context of MWI. No accounting for taste. AG

[Stathis Papaioannou]

The probability that the branch exists under MWI, as you have rightly pointed out, is 1. The probability that an entity that can randomly land in any branch lands in one particular branch is given by the Born rule. Due to the nature of their psychology, humans feel themselves to be such entities.

You may say that this feeling is based on a delusion but we still have it.

I have not said that the feeling of continuous existence in time is a delusion. It seems that you are trying to claim that our continued existence as persons is a delusion, but that is patent nonsense.

The feeling of continuous existence in time as a unique entity would persist despite copying, where it is objectively false. Maintaining this feeling, which I claim is impossible to shake off, results in the subjective probabilities we have been discussing.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[scerir]

Il 25/12/2020 07:29 Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> ha scritto:

Now I raise a similar question I posed to Bruce, thrice, with no replies. Why does the unpredictability of measured values and the intrinsic randomness protect relativity theory? This is really a huge conceptual leap. How would you argue for that conclusion, as distinguished from asserting it? TIA, AG

there is some literature, under the name of 'uncontrollable signaling' (Abner Shimony)

https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0177

https://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2178

https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3714

https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0351

https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.15059

[Alan Grayson]

In fact, if you could set your arrogance and ego aside for a moment, you'd see that I am raising a serious issue, albeit INDIRECTLY. Even if no FTL signaling is possible in QM according to the no-signaling theorems (and thereby saving relativity), this is "guaranteed" by assuming "intrinsic randomness". That is, the "guarantee" flows from that which is inherently unintelligible!  Why unintelligible? Why does the King have no clothes? Because for human beings "intelligible" anything requires some definable PROCESS to account for the observations. In effect, I claim that knowledge requires determinism, in the absence of which we find ourselves with a non-explanation of observations, and no way to find one.  Assuming the non-existence of LOCAL hidden variables (that is, affirming Bell's theorem), there must be NON-LOCAL hidden variables whose existence restores explanatory value to physical theories. So I think Bohm's project was on the right track, but nonetheless remains a work in progress. AG

As for why the Born's rule discussion is, from my pov, silly, is because the MWI is easily demonstrated as having no merit. So what's to be gained from establishing its incompatibility from an interpretation of QM that has zero merit? AG

[Alan Grayson]

FY interest and information, the two prior links you supplied are within my pay grade and have high priority on my reading to-do list. The same hopefully applies to your links below. Also, of course, I will be studying the no-go theorems suggested by Bruce. TY, AG

[Bruce Kellett]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 6:27 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 at 12:29, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 12:13 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

One is the probability that a certain branch exists, the other is the subjective probability that a being with the feeling that he is a unique individual persisting through time will experience a particular branch.

According to the individual on the branch, the Born probability is the probability that that branch will exist -- it is an objective property of the branch. It is a subjective probability only to the extent to which the individual believes in Lewis's Principal Principle!

The probability that the branch exists under MWI, as you have rightly pointed out, is 1. The probability that an entity that can randomly land in any branch lands in one particular branch is given by the Born rule.

In other words, you have a dualist interpretation of personhood. There is an exact copy of 'you' on every branch. 'You' do not randomly land on any branch unless there is a unique 'you' specified in some dualst manner.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Like everyone, I feel that I am a unique individual persisting through time, which does not cause conceptual problems if there is only one extant version of me at a time, but does if there are multiple versions. I know that this feeling I have is just a contingent fact about human psychology. If I were a dualist, I would believe that it was some sort of metaphysical truth.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruce Kellett]

It can be a metaphysical truth without there being any dualist underpinnings. The problem, as you point out, is when there are multiple copies of you extant at a single time. If you consider yourself to be a random selection from this reference class, then you have made the dualist assumption that there is something that picks you out -- something that distinguishes you from all the other copies. Whereas, in reality, all the copies are the same and must think the same: they can deduce that they are not special, and that the probability for the existence of each copy is exactly one -- the Born probabilities have no bearing on their existence because they inevitably exist regardless of the magnitude of the mod-squared quantum amplitude. There is no process that selects just one individual copy at random from a distribution, whether it be the uniform distribution over branches, or the probability distribution obtained by Born weighting each branch.

Bruce

[Stathis Papaioannou]

I know that all the other copies feel as I do, that they are the unique continuation of the original. For an entity that feels this way, the Born probabilities apply. Call it delusional, call it dualist, but it’s the way everyone’s mind works.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 11:37 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>That the Born rule doesn't derive from the Schroedinger equation doesn't bother me. 

We don't need to derive the Born Rule from the Schroedinger equation or from anything else to know it's true because we already know from experimentation that it's true. But Copenhagen, Many Worlds, Pilot Wave and every other quantum interpretation needs to derive the Born Rule to prove that it has the right interpretation. If Many Worlds hasn't managed to achieve that high goal it has at least come closer to doing so than any other interpretation, at least so far.

> Gleason's theorem guarantees it's the only consistent probability measure in the eigenstates of an observable.  The question seems to be why is there probability at all. 

Yes!

 

> But I see the unpredictability of measured values and that intrinsic randomness is necessary to protect relativity theory. 

 

I see it is simply a result of the fact that you can't be sure where you are until you open your eyes and look, aka make an observation. If I use Bruno's patented You Duplicating Machine then even after Brent Meeker has been duplicated "You" will not know if "you" are in Moscow or Washington until "you" open the door of the duplicating chamber and look out; until that point "you" could be said to exist in both cities, or in neither city, or in whatever place you happen to be thinking about because contrary to what generations have been taught in grammar school "you" Is not a pronoun, "you"  is an adjective; you are the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Brentmeekerian way. And until the instant the doors are open and the 2 see 2 different things those 2 chunks of matter have the same memories and behave exactly the same way.

John K Clark