The Case for Moderation

[PGC]

On Wednesday, January 1, 2025 at 2:48:25 AM UTC+1 Quentin Anciaux wrote:

What pains me the most, is that this mailing list had I think the most influential and best thinkers of this century and we're left with that... this list had (and still has for those not in the mind bending dead state) hal finney, wei dai, jurgen Schmidhuber, Russell Standish,  Saibal Mitra, Jason Resch, Terren Suydam, Telmo Menezez,  Brent Meeker, Bruno Marchal and all of the nice non troll and truth seeking humans in this reality that I forgot,  happy new year, happy  new day to be alive to you all and happy discovering of this mind bending reality. I really love you all, even the ones who triggers that bad feelings in me.

Look, I am all for freedom and anti-censorship as the next guy but I think times have shifted from late 90s and early 2000s. This list is a target because some nuanced discussion takes place, people are jealous and want to be associated with that; abusing the list's original purpose of exchange on broad everything/ensemble type theories. The lack of moderation is why people leave because: why should anybody bother? You can't block one offender's posts, as they have mushroomed into too many spammers posting too much. Reading a good post is becoming like an annoying search mission. 

One solution is to create a curated mirror of the archive—preserving those two decades of thoughtful exchanges in a read-only format on a stable, publicly accessible platform—while simultaneously placing tighter controls on new posts. By instituting a simple vetting process for membership (I DON'T want to be admin or part of admin team, but what's happening here has reached a tipping point; even if I am not part of the list's future, there needs to be some admin work performed by more people) and routing all messages through a light moderation layer, administrator(s) can ensure that genuine contributions do not get overwhelmed by off-topic spam. Additional filters can help shield the discussion from the bs. 

This measured shift toward a moderated forum maintains access to the original trove of insights while keeping future debates civil, ensuring that valuable material remains easy to find and that new voices can join the conversation in a constructive atmosphere. There's a difference between naive posts and people willing to refine their positions with willingness to learn and abusive ideologues, trolls etc. Russell, Brent, Quentin etc. please consider beefing up admin and moderation, as we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. Another idea would be to move off grid and have parts be not publicly accessible. I don't post original thoughts anymore as trolls are stealing here to grow their audiences without crediting sources. 

Additionally, the list can defend itself by writing to troll audiences, their platforms, or their publication outlets and linking to the evidence, like https://groups.google.com/g/everything-list/c/RV_fof0nvKQ

I don't care what measures should be taken, nor am I ambitious in advocating anything. But imho the first step would be starting a general vetting procedure for who gets posting rights and not; both for old and new members alike, and let a team of old hands/moderators, who know the spirit of this list the way you describe it should perform it. Happy New Year to thos around here that matter.

[Cosmin Visan]

If you propose God, then I totally agree. But if you propose average Joe, moderation has always been and will always be the opportunity of average Joe to vent his sexual frustrations by banning everyone left and right.

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 6:09 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> If you propose God, then I totally agree.

A mailing list moderated by God, or one moderated by a steam shovel, would be indistinguishable from an unmodified list. And the question of list moderation would not be relevant at this time if one very recent list member didn't think page after page of nothing but "(:>)" characters was an intelligent rebuttal, and ALL scientific questions of the form "what is the nature of X?" can be answered by simply saying "X does not exist".  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

enx

 

[Cosmin Visan]

Of course, given that consciousness is all there is. Why would you waste time talking about things that don't exist ?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 8:04 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>>the question of list moderation would not be relevant at this time if one very recent list member didn't think page after page of nothing but "(:>)" characters was an intelligent rebuttal, and ALL scientific questions of the form "what is the nature of X?" can be answered by simply saying "X does not exist".

  

> Of course, given that consciousness is all there is. Why would you waste time talking about things that don't exist ?

So there's no point in doing cancer research because cancer does not exist? Do I have that right?  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

cbe
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[Cosmin Visan]

You make the classical confusion between epistemology and ontology. Only because you can watch a movie with Spider-Man (epistemology), it doesn't follow that Spider-Man exists (ontology).

[John Clark]

You didn't answer my question. Should cancer research be stopped, and if not why not? 

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[Alan Grayson]

Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

[Cosmin Visan]

You can continue cancer research. But is just like playing World of Warcraft in order to get the legendary gear.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:01:18 AM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

You can continue cancer research. But is just like playing World of Warcraft in order to get the legendary gear.

If you get cancer, which is not my wish, you can tell your doctor that the pain and suffering is purely imaginary, not to mention the possible early termination of your life. Now, do us all a favor and cease posting like a fool. AG 

[Cosmin Visan]

@Alan. You can do cancer research. But since that research is not based on fundamental ideas about reality, it will be just guesswork: Just try 1000 different drugs and cross fingers that one might work. Instead, if people would actually understand consciousness, they would cure cancer in 1 week.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:11:38 AM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

@Alan. You can do cancer research. But since that research is not based on fundamental ideas about reality, it will be just guesswork: Just try 1000 different drugs and cross fingers that one might work. Instead, if people would actually understand consciousness, they would cure cancer in 1 week.

 

I might believe that if you were able to contribute ANYTHING to ANY problem discussed here. All I read are grandiose claims with nothing practical forthcoming. AG

[Cosmin Visan]

How do you expect you can properly fix a car if you don't know how it function ? You just do guesswork, you give it a few kicks and maybe it starts. This is how present-day science works given that it doesn't work based on fundamentals, namely based on the working of consciousness. Sure, you can keep doing research this way: kick it till it works. And you might save a few lives. But if you were start from fundamentals, then you would know exactly what you were doing and you will save 8 billion lives. Not that it would matter at that point, given that at that level of development we will manipulate consciousness to such a degree that we will not even need bodies anymore.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 9:53:59 AM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

How do you expect you can properly fix a car if you don't know how it function ? You just do guesswork, you give it a few kicks and maybe it starts. This is how present-day science works given that it doesn't work based on fundamentals, namely based on the working of consciousness. Sure, you can keep doing research this way: kick it till it works. And you might save a few lives. But if you were start from fundamentals, then you would know exactly what you were doing and you will save 8 billion lives. Not that it would matter at that point, given that at that level of development we will manipulate consciousness to such a degree that we will not even need bodies anymore.

About 60 years ago I met a fellow with your philosophy, a Master of Yoga, an adept at "Traditional Science", author of several books, who claimed with great authority that the problem of cancer had been "solved". He never got cancer but died of a heart failure around age 80 in 2008. AG

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 10:44:42 AM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 9:53:59 AM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

How do you expect you can properly fix a car if you don't know how it function ? You just do guesswork, you give it a few kicks and maybe it starts. This is how present-day science works given that it doesn't work based on fundamentals, namely based on the working of consciousness. Sure, you can keep doing research this way: kick it till it works. And you might save a few lives. But if you were start from fundamentals, then you would know exactly what you were doing and you will save 8 billion lives. Not that it would matter at that point, given that at that level of development we will manipulate consciousness to such a degree that we will not even need bodies anymore.

About 60 years ago I met a fellow with your philosophy, a Master of Yoga, an adept at "Traditional Science", author of several books, who claimed with great authority that the problem of cancer had been "solved". He never got cancer but died of a heart failure around age 80 in 2008. AG

 

My point is that people with your philosophy often make huge claims, with rarely anything practical forthcoming. For example, during the Covid pandemic, a company named Moderna produced a vaccine in record time, using knowledge of DNA, viruses, etc. They couldn't have done that without the discovery of DNA, which no doubt required by the invention of the Electron Microscope. Talk is cheap. We can do great things in the absence of your vague philosophy. Can you actually DO something useful, or is it all talk? AG 

[Cosmin Visan]

I just opened a topic a while back about the definition of the word "useful" that you keep abusing. Let's remind you:

Useful = whatever increases happiness.

Useless = whatever doesn't increase happiness.

My philosophy, I guarantee you 100%, increases happiness, so is useful.

Getting cured of cancer might still let you depressed, so cancer cure is useless.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 11:27:28 AM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

I just opened a topic a while back about the definition of the word "useful" that you keep abusing. Let's remind you:

Useful = whatever increases happiness.

Useless = whatever doesn't increase happiness.

My philosophy, I guarantee you 100%, increases happiness, so is useful.

Getting cured of cancer might still let you depressed, so cancer cure is useless.

You can't be very conscious and make such a hugely stupid comment. Don't ya think that being cured of cancer is immensely happier than succumbing to it? AG

[Cosmin Visan]

It depends what kind of person you are. If you are a depressed person, curing you of cancer will not do any good. On the contrary, if you would have died you would havd gotten a chance at happiness in the next life.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 12:30:07 PM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

It depends what kind of person you are. If you are a depressed person, curing you of cancer will not do any good. On the contrary, if you would have died you would havd gotten a chance at happiness in the next life.

You have to be right. Stop your BS, assuming you know more than you actually do, or get a job, or jerkoff, but no more of your stupidity. AG 

[Cosmin Visan]

I'm millionaire, why would I need a job ? Also, if we were to understand consciousness fully, then we will know for sure what to expect after death. And in case we would expect happiness, then we will even stop finding any cure for cancer. We will celebrate cancer. All of our current decisions are made based on incomplete knowledge of the truth. As such, we make the decisions based on what we imagine reality to be, not on what it actually is.

[Terren Suydam]

Serious question - what's stopping you from killing yourself and speeding up the transition to happiness?

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[Cosmin Visan]

Where did I say that the next life will be better ?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

0o1

 

 

[ilsa]

Please assure me that I will be kept on the list whether you go not open to the public or public I approve your choices in advance

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[Alan Grayson]

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

0o1

 

 

[Russell Standish]

This has been proposed before - by my friend Duraid Madina, where he
forked the list into a moderated one. It did not fare well. Nobody
moved to the new list, it was as dead as a doornail. He is now working
on other things in his life

So sadly, we have to deal with trolls by ignoring them. It wouldn't be
so bad if people kept things on-topic, but even then it seems we can't
help ourselves. Every 4 years, this list gets dominated by discussion
of the US election, as does every other internet discuss fora. For us
non Americans, who have absolutely no influence on the outcome, it
does get a tad tedious.

Creating a curated repository of on-topic posts and debates is
certainly an interesting idea. It is a lot of work, though. I kind of
did that with my 2006 book "Theory of Nothing", although be a
synthesis, I may have failed in representing some of the opposing
ideas that I couldn't understand, in spite of trying my best. My main
concern was that Google Groups didn't archive the earliest posts, and
I don't think Wei Dai's original archive still exist, unless the
Wayback machine captured it.

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/4/2025 10:27 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> I just opened a topic a while back about the definition of the word
> "useful" that you keep abusing. Let's remind you:
>
> Useful = whatever increases happiness.
> Useless = whatever doesn't increase happiness.
>
> My philosophy, I guarantee you 100%, increases happiness, so is useful.
> Getting cured of cancer might still let you depressed, so cancer cure
> is useless.

An absurd conclusion implies an absurd argument.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/4/2025 12:04 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> I'm millionaire, why would I need a job ? Also, if we were to
> understand consciousness fully, then we will know for sure what to
> expect after death. And in case we would expect happiness, then we
> will even stop finding any cure for cancer. We will celebrate cancer.
> All of our current decisions are made based on incomplete knowledge of
> the truth. As such, we make the decisions based on what we imagine
> reality to be, not on what it actually is.

So that's how you decided to write that email.  You've proved your point.

Brent

[Russell Standish]

The premise that increasing happiness is the only goal for the human
race is absurd anyway. If Cosmin disappeared off this list, happiness
would increase for the vast majority of this list. Probably only
Cosmin would have less hapiness :).

[ilsa]

Thank you In this dismal world in a rainy day you bring mirth and a giggle Thank you thank you for your interesting arguments

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[Jesse Mazer]

There's an archive of posts from 1998-2009 at https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/ -- do you know if it's missing some of the older ones? If you sort by date, it does seem to have the oldest (introductory) posts.

I wonder about creating a spinoff that's a forum rather than a list (like a UBB forum or a reddit forum, the latter would be easy to create), to make it easier to follow the discussion on a given thread. I don't think it'd need heavy moderation but just something to make it clear to new people that the focus is on "theories of everything" in the specific sense of Schmidhuber or Tegmark that posit that that all mathematical structures of some type (whether just computational structures or a broader class) "exist", and our world (or our individual observer-moment) just happens to be one of them. There needs to be some way of discouraging people who see the term "theory of everything" and interpret it more broadly as a place to share any kind of all encompassing metaphysical or religious view of how reality works.

Jesse

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/4/2025 1:11 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN.

Basically it boils down to two things.  One, they think the Schoredinger equation is sufficient to described measurement so long as the world can separate into independent copies for each eigenvalue of the measurement.  Exactly how this separation proceeds and how it is originated is sort of hand wavy, but they're sure it can be squared.   Second, they want everything to be deterministic.  So having all but one of the world's go away would require randomness per the Born rule.  At one time they thought the Born rule was already implict in the Schoredinger equation.  But since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world?  How does the probability amplitude of a quantum event get to apply some kind of "weight" to you or to a world?  One my say "That's just the way it is.  If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic, not just Schroedinger's equation...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Brent

And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

0o1

 

 

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[Alan Grayson]

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll

I watched this video, but it is not as comprehensive as Carroll's book "Something Deeply Hidden".

However, something came up in the question period that might warrant a comment. Talking about the Born rule, Carroll justifies it by saying that if you measure the spin of 1000 unpolarized particles, you get 2^1000 different UP-DOWN sequences. However, the vast majority of these sequences will show proportions of UP vs DOWN close to the Born rule prediction of 50/50. In the limit, if such a limit makes sense, the proportion of sequences that show marked deviations from the Born Rule proportions will form a set of measure zero, and can be ignored.

That is just the law of large numbers at work, and is all very well if the amplitudes are such that the Born probabilities are equal to 0.5. But it is easy to rotate your S-G magnets so that the Born probabilities are quite different, say, 0.9-Up to 0.1-DOWN. Now take 1000 trials again.  According to Everett, you necessarily get the same 2^1000 sequences of UP-DOWN that you had before. The law of large numbers will then tell you that the majority of these will have approximately a 50/50 UP/DOWN split, which is grossly in violation of the Born rule result of a 90/10 split. In other words, MWI. or Everettian QM. has a problem reproducing the Born rule. It works in the simple case of equal probabilities, but fails miserably once one departs substantially from equal probabilities.

Bruce

[Quentin Anciaux]

Le dim. 5 janv. 2025, 01:18, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 1:11 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN.

Basically it boils down to two things.  One, they think the Schoredinger equation is sufficient to described measurement so long as the world can separate into independent copies for each eigenvalue of the measurement.  Exactly how this separation proceeds and how it is originated is sort of hand wavy, but they're sure it can be squared.   Second, they want everything to be deterministic.  So having all but one of the world's go away would require randomness per the Born rule.  At one time they thought the Born rule was already implict in the Schoredinger equation.  But since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world?  How does the probability amplitude of a quantum event get to apply some kind of "weight" to you or to a world?  One my say "That's just the way it is.  If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic, not just Schroedinger's equation...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because to me in itself, only one world is absurd... as absurd that my life is finite and preceeded by an infinite time in the past and infinite time in the future... I know reality doesn't have to please me, but one world theory is as absurd as absurd can be imo. Only a theory about information where everything exists seems lesz absurd, yeah there is a gazillion things in it, so there is also in one world,  thing is with MW like things, there is an explanation for you to be, you're one of the possibilities... in one world, you're one possibilities realised whatever that means against all not realised whatever that means, the realised thing is the absurd.

Quentin 

-- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Roy Betty, Rutger Hauer

Brent

And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

0o1

 

 

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[Cosmin Visan]

@Brent. "An absurd conclusion implies an absurd argument."

You clearly missed your Logic 1.0.1. class.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Russell. Are you a masochist ?

[Alan Grayson]

If the cat's wf isn't a valid wf in QM, which is now my belief, does the same apply to Decayed and Undecayed? That is, what is the operator which has Decayed and Undecayed as it eigenvalues? AG

Another question relates to the superposition which involves the Environment. Carroll claims the observer is contained in this superposition as part of the Environment without experience it's in such a state. Is this the origin of the Many Worlds in the MWI? If so, this seems independent of S's equation, and follows directly from the quantum definition of the wf as a linear sum of eigenvalues. AG 

[Alan Grayson]

Oddly,  after viewing Carroll's video, I can't recall where he argued that S's equation implies the MWI. I recall he spoke about decoherence, but where did he specifically argue for the MWI? TY, AG

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world? 

Yes. That wasn't so unclear was it. 

 

> If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic not just Schroedinger's equation.

 

No. If Many World is correct then ontological randomness can not exist but epistemological randomness certainly can and certainly does. Even in classical physics epistemological randomness exists whenever you lack the information needed to make an exact prediction, that's why you can't predict a coin flip or a roulette wheel .

Laplace's demon, which has knowledge of all initial conditions and has infinite computational capacity, does not need to think about "worlds" but can just contemplate how the quantum wave function of the entire universe evolves. Unfortunately we are not as smart or as knowledgeable as Laplace's demon, so we need to talk about worlds. 

For example: a box with Schrodinger's cat inside it, the environment, and you, are all quantum objects entangled together, so there are not 3 separate wave functions but only one. After one hour there is a 50% chance of the cat surviving, that means the quantum wave consists of {  (a live cat, the environment the live cat is in, and you observing the live cat) + ( a dead cat, the environment the dead cat is in, and you observing the dead cat) } .  After one hour you are either in the dead cat environment or the live cat environment with a 50-50 probability, but you lack the information needed to know which one and will only obtain it when you open the box.

 

> ...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because then you have to explain why Schrodinger's equation suddenly stops working. And then you have to explain exactly what a "measurement" is and why Schrodinger's equation treats you very differently than any other quantum object. 

Incidentally, the very first post sent to the Everything List was sent by the late great Hal Finney (he was cryonically frozen in 2014 and became Alcor's 128'th patient); his message was sent on January 16, 1998 and entitled "Infinite universe and many worlds".

Infinite universe and many worlds

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

fhf

[PGC]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 10:39:16 PM UTC+1 Russell Standish wrote:

This has been proposed before - by my friend Duraid Madina, where he
forked the list into a moderated one. It did not fare well. Nobody
moved to the new list, it was as dead as a doornail. He is now working
on other things in his life

Ok, but that was because the "level" of some posts were seen as objectionable or some feuds re issues were never put to rest.

 

So sadly, we have to deal with trolls by ignoring them. It wouldn't be
so bad if people kept things on-topic, but even then it seems we can't
help ourselves.

I agree there could be some component of lack of impulse control in denying engagement but this time it seems different: months, close to a year of continued ddos by several non-contributors with malicious/psychiatric overtones. Why would members who do care not stand up to it? This used to be (even in recent years; not just the golden era) at least a good filter for scientific news, with everybody's heads in different journals, consuming different media, and aggregating them here, aside from occasional stimulating discussion on ensemble theories. 

 

Every 4 years, this list gets dominated by discussion
of the US election, as does every other internet discuss fora. For us
non Americans, who have absolutely no influence on the outcome, it
does get a tad tedious.

Given the news landscape and all its noise, even if discussion has gone off topic, there was more value. But ddos and rigid, insecure, impulsive spamming of personal beliefs (of course, you can have and defend those on occasion, but...) should trigger some voting mechanism with the most senior list members (not counting myself among them, because I'm not). 

Just take the most recent example when one of our candidates, our resident god, a devout Christian celebrating the birth of Christ went home and had mom wash his underpants from the next life stains accumulated by months at his screen again: the list quieted down and didn't mess with everybody's zen as much.

IDK but solving this proactively could be the issue that prevents the list itself from becoming the abandoned fork... because it isn't the same.  

[Alan Grayson]

I just looked again at Carroll's video. He claims worlds come into existence by the decay of radioactive atoms. How is this related to S's equation? A lot of other stuff he claims seems murky at best, like the energy "thining" of branches. AG 

[Terren Suydam]

When you said this: "And in case we would expect happiness, then we will even stop finding any cure for cancer. We will celebrate cancer."  So instead of celebrating cancer, why not skip the painful parts?

[Cosmin Visan]

I also said: "if we were to understand consciousness fully, then we will know for sure what to expect after death." As of today, we don't understand consciousness fully.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Alan. "Existence" is synonymous with "consciousness", so particles cannot come into existence.

[Terren Suydam]

I think that's the first time you've ever admitted you don't understand something fully. I recommend you keep going in that direction.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f319c6fd-59c0-474d-a489-14eb3361024en%40googlegroups.com.

[Cosmin Visan]

I always admit everything. It seems to you that I don't because I keep saying "Consciousness is all there is". While that sentence is true, so while that proves with 100% certainty that there is no matter, it still doesn't give the full details of consciousness.

[Terren Suydam]

Prove that you admit everything. Admit that your assertion that consciousness is all that exists is metaphysical - it cannot be proved. The same is true of the claim that matter and energy are all that exists. Both are metaphysical statements.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b8898e6a-2803-42c6-9a2b-dfdc537b5d0en%40googlegroups.com.

[Alan Grayson]

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

I didn't find Carroll's video persuasive. For example, he alleges that decaying radioactive atoms in our bodies create branches when they decay, but doesn't link that claim with S's equation. I suppose he implicitly claims that decaying atoms obey S's equation even if they're not being observed. And his answer to energy requirements for these new worlds seems weak, that energy is somehow globally conserved while the energy in particular branches can decrease, or possibly increase. ISTM that he relies on his interpretation of superposition to get his many worlds, more than relying on S's equation. AG

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. What metaphysics ? Your existence is metaphysics ? Or is a matter of obvious fact ?

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> his answer to energy requirements for these new worlds seems weak, that energy is somehow globally conserved while the energy in particular branches can decrease,

It doesn't matter if Many Worlds is correct or not, we've known for a century that in an expanding universe, like the one we live in, energy is NOT conserved at the cosmological scale; photons of light gets stretched to the red end of the spectrum and red photons have less energy than blue photons. In fact, unlike classical physics or even special relativity, the very concept of conservation of energy is not rigorously defined in General Relativity. GR does have something called the "stress-energy tensor" that includes contributions from all non-gravitational fields and matter, but gravity is not included.  If you're interested Sean Carroll goes into much more detail here: 

Energy Is Not Conserved

   John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

csh

[Alan Grayson]

How could gravity be included as if it's something different from curvature of spacetime, which is caused by stress-energy tensor? I'm pretty sure Carroll said energy is conserved in the MWI, making it superior to the Copenhagan interpretations. AG 

[Alan Grayson]

If photons are losing energy as the universe expands, where does the lost energy go? AG 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 4:00 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> How could gravity be included as if it's something different from curvature of spacetime, which is caused by stress-energy tensor?

It can't be, that was my point.  

>  I'm pretty sure Carroll said energy is conserved in the MWI,

You're correct he did, but energy is conserved only if you look at things at the Multiverse level. And in EVERY quantum interpretation, not just many worlds, at the cosmological level energy is NOT conserved.  

  John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

  e4r

[Cosmin Visan]

@Alan you wouldn't ask such question if you would understand that energy doesn't exist. "Energy" is just an idea in consciousness. All these theories that people create are just random guesses. They work until they don't. Wondering where the energy goes and so on is pointless, for the trivial reason that you go beyond what that guess covered and you are back to square 1 of making another guess.

[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 2:25:42 PM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

@Alan you wouldn't ask such question if you would understand that energy doesn't exist. "Energy" is just an idea in consciousness. All these theories that people create are just random guesses. They work until they don't. Wondering where the energy goes and so on is pointless, for the trivial reason that you go beyond what that guess covered and you are back to square 1 of making another guess.

You're a stupid prick. AG 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 4:25 PM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 > you wouldn't ask such question if you would understand that energy doesn't exist.

How would things be different if energy did exist?  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

qqq

[Jesse Mazer]

David Z Albert mentions that if you define a measurement operator that just tells you the *fraction* of spin-up vs. spin-down in a large sequence of identical measurements, then even without any collapse assumption, in the limit as # measurements goes to infinity the wavefunction will approach an eigenstate of this operator that matches the probability that would be predicted by the Born rule. See his comments on p. 238 of The Cosmos of Science at https://books.google.com/books?id=_HgF3wfADJIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Then, even though there will actually be no matter of fact about what h takes the outcomes of any of those measurements to be, nonetheless, as the number of those measurements which have already been carried out goes to infinity, the state of the world will approach (not as a merely probabilistic limit, but as a well-defined mathematical epsilon-and-delta-type limit) a state in which the reports of h about the statistical frequency of any particular outcome of those measurements will be perfectly definite, and also perfectly in accord with the standard quantum mechanical predictions about what the frequency out to be."

Jesse

 

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 9:14 AM Jesse Mazer <laser...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 12:44 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll

I watched this video, but it is not as comprehensive as Carroll's book "Something Deeply Hidden".

However, something came up in the question period that might warrant a comment. Talking about the Born rule, Carroll justifies it by saying that if you measure the spin of 1000 unpolarized particles, you get 2^1000 different UP-DOWN sequences. However, the vast majority of these sequences will show proportions of UP vs DOWN close to the Born rule prediction of 50/50. In the limit, if such a limit makes sense, the proportion of sequences that show marked deviations from the Born Rule proportions will form a set of measure zero, and can be ignored.

That is just the law of large numbers at work, and is all very well if the amplitudes are such that the Born probabilities are equal to 0.5. But it is easy to rotate your S-G magnets so that the Born probabilities are quite different, say, 0.9-Up to 0.1-DOWN. Now take 1000 trials again.  According to Everett, you necessarily get the same 2^1000 sequences of UP-DOWN that you had before. The law of large numbers will then tell you that the majority of these will have approximately a 50/50 UP/DOWN split, which is grossly in violation of the Born rule result of a 90/10 split. In other words, MWI. or Everettian QM. has a problem reproducing the Born rule. It works in the simple case of equal probabilities, but fails miserably once one departs substantially from equal probabilities.

Bruce

David Z Albert mentions that if you define a measurement operator that just tells you the *fraction* of spin-up vs. spin-down in a large sequence of identical measurements, then even without any collapse assumption, in the limit as # measurements goes to infinity the wavefunction will approach an eigenstate of this operator that matches the probability that would be predicted by the Born rule. See his comments on p. 238 of The Cosmos of Science at https://books.google.com/books?id=_HgF3wfADJIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Then, even though there will actually be no matter of fact about what h takes the outcomes of any of those measurements to be, nonetheless, as the number of those measurements which have already been carried out goes to infinity, the state of the world will approach (not as a merely probabilistic limit, but as a well-defined mathematical epsilon-and-delta-type limit) a state in which the reports of h about the statistical frequency of any particular outcome of those measurements will be perfectly definite, and also perfectly in accord with the standard quantum mechanical predictions about what the frequency out to be."

But then Albert goes on to say that there are all sorts of reasons why this simple theory cannot be the answer to the origin of the Born rule. I have pointed out one of the most cogent of these. If you perform similar measurements on N identically prepared systems (say z-spin measurements on systems prepared in an x-spin-left state), then according to Everett, you get all 2^N possible sequences of UP/DOWN spins. This exhausts the possibilities for the outcome of N trials, and, significantly, you must get exactly the same 2^N sequences whatever the amplitudes of the initial superposition might be. So you get these 2^N sequences if the amplitudes are equal, and also if the amplitudes are in the ratio 0.9/0.1. This behaviour is incompatible with the Born rule, and hence with ordinary quantum mechanics.

Bruce

[Jesse Mazer]

You do get all these sequences but this tells us nothing about what their relative probabilities/frequencies are. I assume as an extension of his analysis, if we did repeated experiments where on each trial we performed exactly N measurements and this was repeated over many trials (approaching infinity), then you could define a measurement operator that would tell you the fraction with any specific N-sequence (for example, for N=3 there would be an operator giving the fraction of trials with result 000, likewise other operators for 001 and 010 and 011 and 100 and 101 and 110 and 111). If you had a setup where the relative probability of these sequences was not uniform according to the Born rule, then if the number of trials with that setup goes to infinity, it will presumably likewise be true that the state approaches the eigenstate of this operator with the frequency predicted by the Born rule, without ever actually invoking the Born rule.

Albert would presumably say that this still doesn't resolve the measurement problem because it doesn't give an outcome on any particular trial, only a sort of aggregate over many trials, but this is different from the criticism you are making. Even if we do use the Born rule in the above scenario, it's still true that each of the specific outcomes that are possible for a given trial with N measurements (eg the outcomes 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111) will occur in the long term, but that doesn't mean they are equiprobable.

Jesse

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 07:46:46AM -0500, John Clark wrote:
>
> Incidentally, the very first post sent to the Everything List was sent by the
> late great Hal Finney (he was cryonically frozen in 2014 and became Alcor's
> 128'th patient); his message was sent on January 16, 1998 and entitled "
> Infinite universe and many worlds".
>
> Infinite universe and many worlds
>

Fun fact - there was some speculation that Hal was actually the
mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. Maybe in some universe he really was!

https://web.archive.org/web/20140326104029/http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satoshi-nakamotos-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/#42e4aeba4a37

Cheers

[Bruce Kellett]

The trouble that I have pointed to is that if every possible outcome occurs for each measurement, then the sequences are all present whatever the amplitudes in the wavefunction. so the sequences 000...,001...,010...,100...,011...,... etc are all equiprobable, whatever the wave function. Thus, the operator that Albert talks about does not give the relative probabilities for each sequence. Actually, Albert is talking about the case where there is only one outcome for each measurement. So his argument does not apply in the MWI case. In that case, the argument that I have given obtains, and it shows that MWI is incompatible with the Born rule.

Bruce

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/4/2025 11:21 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Le dim. 5 janv. 2025, 01:18, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 1:11 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN.

Basically it boils down to two things.  One, they think the Schoredinger equation is sufficient to described measurement so long as the world can separate into independent copies for each eigenvalue of the measurement.  Exactly how this separation proceeds and how it is originated is sort of hand wavy, but they're sure it can be squared.   Second, they want everything to be deterministic.  So having all but one of the world's go away would require randomness per the Born rule.  At one time they thought the Born rule was already implict in the Schoredinger equation.  But since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world?  How does the probability amplitude of a quantum event get to apply some kind of "weight" to you or to a world?  One my say "That's just the way it is.  If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic, not just Schroedinger's equation...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because to me in itself, only one world is absurd... as absurd that my life is finite and preceeded by an infinite time in the past and infinite time in the future...

You think it absurd that you didn't exist in the past and after a finite time you will no longer exist??  Most people, and physicists, think that's the case.

I know reality doesn't have to please me, but one world theory is as absurd as absurd can be imo. Only a theory about information where everything exists seems lesz absurd, yeah there is a gazillion things in it, so there is also in one world,  thing is with MW like things, there is an explanation for you to be, you're one of the possibilities... in one world, you're one possibilities realised whatever that means against all not realised whatever that means, the realised thing is the absurd.

It's just improbable, which is quite different from absurd.  Every hand of bridge I've been dealt was improbable, but I never considered one absurd.

Brent

Quentin 

-- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Roy Betty, Rutger Hauer

Brent

And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

0o1

 

 

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[Brent Meeker]

You mean the one I taught?

Brent

On 1/4/2025 11:23 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:

@Brent. "An absurd conclusion implies an absurd argument."

You clearly missed your Logic 1.0.1. class.

On Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 00:07:36 UTC+2 Brent Meeker wrote:

On 1/4/2025 10:27 AM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> I just opened a topic a while back about the definition of the word
> "useful" that you keep abusing. Let's remind you:
>
> Useful = whatever increases happiness.
> Useless = whatever doesn't increase happiness.
>
> My philosophy, I guarantee you 100%, increases happiness, so is useful.
> Getting cured of cancer might still let you depressed, so cancer cure
> is useless.

An absurd conclusion implies an absurd argument.

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG

You're misinterpreting what I wrote.  I meant that being alive is a superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead.  In other words the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are recovering.  It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat.  I means that alive and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement operator.

If the cat's wf isn't a valid wf in QM, which is now my belief, does the same apply to Decayed and Undecayed? That is, what is the operator which has Decayed and Undecayed as it eigenvalues? AG

No, for a simple particle or atom the decayed and undecayed states are well enough know that we can create measurement operators.

Another question relates to the superposition which involves the Environment. Carroll claims the observer is contained in this superposition as part of the Environment without experience it's in such a state. Is this the origin of the Many Worlds in the MWI? If so, this seems independent of S's equation, and follows directly from the quantum definition of the wf as a linear sum of eigenvalues. AG

Eigenvalues of what...of the Schroedinger equation (including a measurement interaction).

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 4:46 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world? 

Yes. That wasn't so unclear was it. 

 

> If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic not just Schroedinger's equation.

 

No. If Many World is correct then ontological randomness can not exist but epistemological randomness certainly can and certainly does. Even in classical physics epistemological randomness exists whenever you lack the information needed to make an exact prediction, that's why you can't predict a coin flip or a roulette wheel .

It's not just epistemological when it includes the whole world whether anybody else knows it or not.  QBism is actually an epistemological interpretation which considers different wave functions for different people depending on what they know.

Laplace's demon, which has knowledge of all initial conditions and has infinite computational capacity, does not need to think about "worlds" but can just contemplate how the quantum wave function of the entire universe evolves. Unfortunately we are not as smart or as knowledgeable as Laplace's demon, so we need to talk about worlds. 

For example: a box with Schrodinger's cat inside it, the environment, and you, are all quantum objects entangled together, so there are not 3 separate wave functions but only one. After one hour there is a 50% chance of the cat surviving, that means the quantum wave consists of {  (a live cat, the environment the live cat is in, and you observing the live cat) + ( a dead cat, the environment the dead cat is in, and you observing the dead cat) } .  After one hour you are either in the dead cat environment or the live cat environment with a 50-50 probability, but you lack the information needed to know which one and will only obtain it when you open the box.

 

> ...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because then you have to explain why Schrodinger's equation suddenly stops working.

You have to explain when the worlds split; which amounts to the same thing.

And then you have to explain exactly what a "measurement" is and why Schrodinger's equation treats you very differently than any other quantum object.

Measurement doesn't even have to include me or anybody else.  The cat example just obfuscates the question.  The measurement is done when the detector detects the atomic decay.  A cleaner version has a clock stopped by the detection.  Then it's clear that the Schroedinger equation applied to the whole system is separating the world when the detection is made.  Exactly how this separation proceeds is somewhat hand wavy but I can see that it will eventually make different orthogonal worlds, only one of which we see.  Carroll once joked that non-Everettians needed to explain the disappearing worlds.  I don't see that as taking anymore explanation than he gives for them being orthogonal.  What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these worlds.  As Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of worlds find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger equation.

Brent

Incidentally, the very first post sent to the Everything List was sent by the late great Hal Finney (he was cryonically frozen in 2014 and became Alcor's 128'th patient); his message was sent on January 16, 1998 and entitled "Infinite universe and many worlds".

Infinite universe and many worlds

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

fhf

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[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these worlds.  As
> Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of worlds
> find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It
> appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger
> equation.
>
> Brent
>

Bruce's argument is too coarse. He is assuming that all worlds have
equal representation in the original experimental preparation, whereas
the preparation process can clearly set things up such that there is
90% up 10% down in the original sample, after which measurement is
performed. "Branch counting" can easily explain something like the
90/10 Stern Gerlach case.

Where things fail is explaining something like the violation of Bell's
inequality. I originally thought I had an answer to that, but after
surface from the rabbit hole of maths, I realised I had to think again
:).

[Terren Suydam]

The claim that "consciousness is all that exists" is metaphysics. You cannot prove that, but that doesn't stop you from saying things like "energy doesn't exist" as if it were a fact. 

The ultimate nature of reality is a mystery. I don't put much stock in people who speak in certainties about such things.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a8b9c897-3fd8-4840-9420-628ee48e7bacn%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 12:02 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these worlds.  As
> Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of worlds
> find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It
> appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger
> equation.
>
> Brent
>

Bruce's argument is too coarse. He is assuming that all worlds have
equal representation in the original experimental preparation, whereas
the preparation process can clearly set things up such that there is
90% up 10% down in the original sample, after which measurement is
performed. "Branch counting" can easily explain something like the
90/10 Stern Gerlach case.

No, that does not work, even if you make the extreme assumption that measurement is a process of discrimination between already existing worlds (a point of view for which we have no evidence whatsoever.)

In Everettian many worlds, every outcome is realized on every trial. So after one trial, there are two branches; after two trials, 4 branches; and so on; so that after N trials, there are 2^N branches. And this happens whatever the initial amplitudes are -- the Schrodinger equation does not act on the coefficients of each amplitude. It merely gives a branch for each existing amplitude (or eigenfunction in the superposition). So, as I said, you get the same 2^N sequences in every case. The majority of these will lead to a contradiction with the Born rule. (You get 50/50 probabilities whatever the initial superposition.)

Where things fail is explaining something like the violation of Bell's
inequality. I originally thought I had an answer to that, but after
surface from the rabbit hole of maths, I realised I had to think again
:).

I think you have to understand that Bell's theorem depends only on the assumption of locality. In other words, the inequalities that are derived depend only on the assumption of locality: considerations such as realism and/or determinism play no role whatsoever.

Since quantum mechanics violates the derived inequalities, it follows that QM is intrinsically non-local. And this is true for any interpretation of QM, including many-worlds. There is nothing really complicated about this.

Bruce

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>

> On 1/5/2025 4:46 AM, John Clark wrote:
>
>
> Because then you have to explain why Schrodinger's equation suddenly stops
> working.
>
> You have to explain when the worlds split; which amounts to the same thing.
>

The notion of einselection sounds quite plausible. The physics of the
situation (ie the preparation) is such that the tensor product of
wavefunction of the system being measured with the measurement
apparatus becomes asymptotically diagonal.

[Brent Meeker]

It goes into the expansion of the universe.  If the expansion reverses and the universe collapses those photons will become blue shifted and the energy will be recovered.  Since it's not expected to collapse the energy is effectively lost.

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 2:14 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 12:44 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll

I watched this video, but it is not as comprehensive as Carroll's book "Something Deeply Hidden".

However, something came up in the question period that might warrant a comment. Talking about the Born rule, Carroll justifies it by saying that if you measure the spin of 1000 unpolarized particles, you get 2^1000 different UP-DOWN sequences. However, the vast majority of these sequences will show proportions of UP vs DOWN close to the Born rule prediction of 50/50. In the limit, if such a limit makes sense, the proportion of sequences that show marked deviations from the Born Rule proportions will form a set of measure zero, and can be ignored.

That is just the law of large numbers at work, and is all very well if the amplitudes are such that the Born probabilities are equal to 0.5. But it is easy to rotate your S-G magnets so that the Born probabilities are quite different, say, 0.9-Up to 0.1-DOWN. Now take 1000 trials again.  According to Everett, you necessarily get the same 2^1000 sequences of UP-DOWN that you had before. The law of large numbers will then tell you that the majority of these will have approximately a 50/50 UP/DOWN split, which is grossly in violation of the Born rule result of a 90/10 split. In other words, MWI. or Everettian QM. has a problem reproducing the Born rule. It works in the simple case of equal probabilities, but fails miserably once one departs substantially from equal probabilities.

Bruce

David Z Albert mentions that if you define a measurement operator that just tells you the *fraction* of spin-up vs. spin-down in a large sequence of identical measurements,

then even without any collapse assumption, in the limit as # measurements goes to infinity the wavefunction will approach an eigenstate of this operator that matches the probability that would be predicted by the Born rule. See his comments on p. 238 of The Cosmos of Science at https://books.google.com/books?id=_HgF3wfADJIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false

He contemplates an example in which p=0.5 and then generalizes that since in the limit of large number of measurements will find p~=0.5 that this generalizes in sense that many measurements for p=h must converge to the right value!?  That's contrary to the branch counting as noted by Bruce.

Brent

"Then, even though there will actually be no matter of fact about what h takes the outcomes of any of those measurements to be, nonetheless, as the number of those measurements which have already been carried out goes to infinity, the state of the world will approach (not as a merely probabilistic limit, but as a well-defined mathematical epsilon-and-delta-type limit) a state in which the reports of h about the statistical frequency of any particular outcome of those measurements will be perfectly definite, and also perfectly in accord with the standard quantum mechanical predictions about what the frequency out to be."

Jesse

 

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 3:21 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 9:14 AM Jesse Mazer <laser...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 12:44 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll

I watched this video, but it is not as comprehensive as Carroll's book "Something Deeply Hidden".

However, something came up in the question period that might warrant a comment. Talking about the Born rule, Carroll justifies it by saying that if you measure the spin of 1000 unpolarized particles, you get 2^1000 different UP-DOWN sequences. However, the vast majority of these sequences will show proportions of UP vs DOWN close to the Born rule prediction of 50/50. In the limit, if such a limit makes sense, the proportion of sequences that show marked deviations from the Born Rule proportions will form a set of measure zero, and can be ignored.

That is just the law of large numbers at work, and is all very well if the amplitudes are such that the Born probabilities are equal to 0.5. But it is easy to rotate your S-G magnets so that the Born probabilities are quite different, say, 0.9-Up to 0.1-DOWN. Now take 1000 trials again.  According to Everett, you necessarily get the same 2^1000 sequences of UP-DOWN that you had before. The law of large numbers will then tell you that the majority of these will have approximately a 50/50 UP/DOWN split, which is grossly in violation of the Born rule result of a 90/10 split. In other words, MWI. or Everettian QM. has a problem reproducing the Born rule. It works in the simple case of equal probabilities, but fails miserably once one departs substantially from equal probabilities.

Bruce

David Z Albert mentions that if you define a measurement operator that just tells you the *fraction* of spin-up vs. spin-down in a large sequence of identical measurements, then even without any collapse assumption, in the limit as # measurements goes to infinity the wavefunction will approach an eigenstate of this operator that matches the probability that would be predicted by the Born rule. See his comments on p. 238 of The Cosmos of Science at https://books.google.com/books?id=_HgF3wfADJIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Then, even though there will actually be no matter of fact about what h takes the outcomes of any of those measurements to be, nonetheless, as the number of those measurements which have already been carried out goes to infinity, the state of the world will approach (not as a merely probabilistic limit, but as a well-defined mathematical epsilon-and-delta-type limit) a state in which the reports of h about the statistical frequency of any particular outcome of those measurements will be perfectly definite, and also perfectly in accord with the standard quantum mechanical predictions about what the frequency out to be."

But then Albert goes on to say that there are all sorts of reasons why this simple theory cannot be the answer to the origin of the Born rule. I have pointed out one of the most cogent of these. If you perform similar measurements on N identically prepared systems (say z-spin measurements on systems prepared in an x-spin-left state), then according to Everett, you get all 2^N possible sequences of UP/DOWN spins. This exhausts the possibilities for the outcome of N trials, and, significantly, you must get exactly the same 2^N sequences whatever the amplitudes of the initial superposition might be. So you get these 2^N sequences if the amplitudes are equal, and also if the amplitudes are in the ratio 0.9/0.1. This behaviour is incompatible with the Born rule, and hence with ordinary quantum mechanics.

You do get all these sequences but this tells us nothing about what their relative probabilities/frequencies are. I assume as an extension of his analysis, if we did repeated experiments where on each trial we performed exactly N measurements and this was repeated over many trials (approaching infinity), then you could define a measurement operator that would tell you the fraction with any specific N-sequence (for example, for N=3 there would be an operator giving the fraction of trials with result 000, likewise other operators for 001 and 010 and 011 and 100 and 101 and 110 and 111). If you had a setup where the relative probability of these sequences was not uniform according to the Born rule,

But there's the catch.  The relative probability of those sequences corresponds to p=0.5 no matter what p is.  In order that they instantiate the true value of p there must be an axiom that requires they satisfy the Born rule.

then if the number of trials with that setup goes to infinity, it will presumably likewise be true that the state approaches the eigenstate of this operator with the frequency predicted by the Born rule, without ever actually invoking the Born rule.

That's only the case for p=0.5, which as I read it Albert gratuitously generalizes.

Albert would presumably say that this still doesn't resolve the measurement problem because it doesn't give an outcome on any particular trial, only a sort of aggregate over many trials, but this is different from the criticism you are making. Even if we do use the Born rule in the above scenario, it's still true that each of the specific outcomes that are possible for a given trial with N measurements (eg the outcomes 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111) will occur in the long term, but that doesn't mean they are equiprobable.

They are not, and that's ASSUMING the Born rule.

Brent

Jesse

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[Jesse Mazer]

How do you get from "all present" to "equiprobable"? If you flip a pair of coins enough times you will surely get all the sequences HH, HT, TH and TT, but you could easily be using weighted coins that don't have 50/50 chances of landing heads and tails, in which case those 4 sequences won't occur equally often.

 

Thus, the operator that Albert talks about does not give the relative probabilities for each sequence.

But he's talking very generally about any sort of operator that gives relative frequencies of different results of quantum experiments, so do you disagree that it's plausible this could be generalized to an operator that gives frequencies of different multi-measurement sequences in the way I described? Making N measurements in a row can itself be considered a type of repeatable experiment that has 2^N possible outcomes each time you perform it. And each of those 2^N outcomes would be assigned some probability by the Born rule, so you should be able to design an operator that gives you the frequency of any one of those 2^N outcomes, which may not be equiprobable depending on the experimental setup. Albert's statement about the wavefunction converging to the correct eigenfunction of such an operator wasn't limited to cases where all outcomes are equiprobable, I can't say for sure but I'd expect his statement would cover this sort of case as well.

 

Actually, Albert is talking about the case where there is only one outcome for each measurement.

He doesn't specify that each "outcome" has to be a single spin measurement though. There's also another presentation of the same idea (apparently called 'Mittelstaedt’s theorem') starting on p. 13 at https://www.academia.edu/6975159/Quantum_dispositions_and_the_notion_of_measurement and it seems to be stated in a very general way, talking about an operator that gives "the relative frequency of the outcome a_k in a given sequence of N outcomes" without placing any conditions on an "outcome" only involving a single particle measurement.

Jesse

[Alan Grayson]

On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 4:56:12 PM UTC-7 Brent Meeker wrote:

On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

      On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

            On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG

You're misinterpreting what I wrote.  I meant that being alive is a superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead.  In other words the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are recovering.  It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat.  I means that alive and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement operator.

So if Alive and Dead are extreme cases, does the Cat's wf as written by Schrodinger, still represent a valid quantum wf? AG 

If the cat's wf isn't a valid wf in QM, which is now my belief, does the same apply to Decayed and Undecayed? That is, what is the operator which has Decayed and Undecayed as it eigenvalues? AG

No, for a simple particle or atom the decayed and undecayed states are well enough know that we can create measurement operators.

I googled decayed and undecayed states but couldn't find anything in the ballpark of specific mathematical forms. Can you provide their mathematical forms? AG

Another question relates to the superposition which involves the Environment. Carroll claims the observer is contained in this superposition as part of the Environment without experience it's in such a state. Is this the origin of the Many Worlds in the MWI? If so, this seems independent of S's equation, and follows directly from the quantum definition of the wf as a linear sum of eigenvalues. AG

Eigenvalues of what...of the Schroedinger equation (including a measurement interaction).

Carroll claims, without any apparent argument, that decaying atoms in our bodies create MW branches. Do you have any idea how that can be justified? He also writes decoherence formulas for the cat and environment as linear sums. What could these states have to do with MW branches? Maybe Clark could also respond to these questions. AG

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 5:02 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these worlds.  As
>> Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of worlds
>> find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It
>> appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger
>> equation.
>>
>> Brent
>>
> Bruce's argument is too coarse. He is assuming that all worlds have
> equal representation in the original experimental preparation, whereas
> the preparation process can clearly set things up such that there is
> 90% up 10% down in the original sample, after which measurement is
> performed.

That sounds like superdeterminism?  In Bruce's example I understood the
beam was prepared 100/0 in one axis before being measured in another.

Brent

[Jesse Mazer]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG

You're misinterpreting what I wrote.  I meant that being alive is a superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead.  In other words the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are recovering.  It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat.  I means that alive and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement operator.

In terms of our fuzzy ordinary language this may be true, but in classical mechanics we have the notion of a "macrostate" which is defined as some large set of microstates, can we do something similar in QM and just imagine classifying every possible position eigenstate as either falling into the macrostate "live cat" or not being a member of that macrostate? (ignoring the practical difficulties of actually going through all the eigenstates and classifying them this way) If we had such a precise definition, could we then define an operator corresponding to the macrostate we had defined? The discussion at https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/343380/how-is-a-macrostate-specified-in-quantum-statistics seems to indicate that macrostates in QM can be defined as density operators.

Jesse

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 7:20 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 6:36 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 10:21 AM Jesse Mazer <laser...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 9:14 AM Jesse Mazer <laser...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 12:44 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll

I watched this video, but it is not as comprehensive as Carroll's book "Something Deeply Hidden".

However, something came up in the question period that might warrant a comment. Talking about the Born rule, Carroll justifies it by saying that if you measure the spin of 1000 unpolarized particles, you get 2^1000 different UP-DOWN sequences. However, the vast majority of these sequences will show proportions of UP vs DOWN close to the Born rule prediction of 50/50. In the limit, if such a limit makes sense, the proportion of sequences that show marked deviations from the Born Rule proportions will form a set of measure zero, and can be ignored.

That is just the law of large numbers at work, and is all very well if the amplitudes are such that the Born probabilities are equal to 0.5. But it is easy to rotate your S-G magnets so that the Born probabilities are quite different, say, 0.9-Up to 0.1-DOWN. Now take 1000 trials again.  According to Everett, you necessarily get the same 2^1000 sequences of UP-DOWN that you had before. The law of large numbers will then tell you that the majority of these will have approximately a 50/50 UP/DOWN split, which is grossly in violation of the Born rule result of a 90/10 split. In other words, MWI. or Everettian QM. has a problem reproducing the Born rule. It works in the simple case of equal probabilities, but fails miserably once one departs substantially from equal probabilities.

Bruce

David Z Albert mentions that if you define a measurement operator that just tells you the *fraction* of spin-up vs. spin-down in a large sequence of identical measurements, then even without any collapse assumption, in the limit as # measurements goes to infinity the wavefunction will approach an eigenstate of this operator that matches the probability that would be predicted by the Born rule. See his comments on p. 238 of The Cosmos of Science at https://books.google.com/books?id=_HgF3wfADJIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA238#v=onepage&q&f=false

"Then, even though there will actually be no matter of fact about what h takes the outcomes of any of those measurements to be, nonetheless, as the number of those measurements which have already been carried out goes to infinity, the state of the world will approach (not as a merely probabilistic limit, but as a well-defined mathematical epsilon-and-delta-type limit) a state in which the reports of h about the statistical frequency of any particular outcome of those measurements will be perfectly definite, and also perfectly in accord with the standard quantum mechanical predictions about what the frequency out to be."

But then Albert goes on to say that there are all sorts of reasons why this simple theory cannot be the answer to the origin of the Born rule. I have pointed out one of the most cogent of these. If you perform similar measurements on N identically prepared systems (say z-spin measurements on systems prepared in an x-spin-left state), then according to Everett, you get all 2^N possible sequences of UP/DOWN spins. This exhausts the possibilities for the outcome of N trials, and, significantly, you must get exactly the same 2^N sequences whatever the amplitudes of the initial superposition might be. So you get these 2^N sequences if the amplitudes are equal, and also if the amplitudes are in the ratio 0.9/0.1. This behaviour is incompatible with the Born rule, and hence with ordinary quantum mechanics.

You do get all these sequences but this tells us nothing about what their relative probabilities/frequencies are. I assume as an extension of his analysis, if we did repeated experiments where on each trial we performed exactly N measurements and this was repeated over many trials (approaching infinity), then you could define a measurement operator that would tell you the fraction with any specific N-sequence (for example, for N=3 there would be an operator giving the fraction of trials with result 000, likewise other operators for 001 and 010 and 011 and 100 and 101 and 110 and 111). If you had a setup where the relative probability of these sequences was not uniform according to the Born rule, then if the number of trials with that setup goes to infinity, it will presumably likewise be true that the state approaches the eigenstate of this operator with the frequency predicted by the Born rule, without ever actually invoking the Born rule.

Albert would presumably say that this still doesn't resolve the measurement problem because it doesn't give an outcome on any particular trial, only a sort of aggregate over many trials, but this is different from the criticism you are making. Even if we do use the Born rule in the above scenario, it's still true that each of the specific outcomes that are possible for a given trial with N measurements (eg the outcomes 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111) will occur in the long term, but that doesn't mean they are equiprobable.

The trouble that I have pointed to is that if every possible outcome occurs for each measurement, then the sequences are all present whatever the amplitudes in the wavefunction. so the sequences 000...,001...,010...,100...,011...,... etc are all equiprobable, whatever the wave function.

How do you get from "all present" to "equiprobable"? If you flip a pair of coins enough times you will surely get all the sequences HH, HT, TH and TT, but you could easily be using weighted coins that don't have 50/50 chances of landing heads and tails, in which case those 4 sequences won't occur equally often.

 

Thus, the operator that Albert talks about does not give the relative probabilities for each sequence.

But he's talking very generally about any sort of operator that gives relative frequencies of different results of quantum experiments, so do you disagree that it's plausible this could be generalized to an operator that gives frequencies of different multi-measurement sequences in the way I described? Making N measurements in a row can itself be considered a type of repeatable experiment that has 2^N possible outcomes each time you perform it. And each of those 2^N outcomes would be assigned some probability by the Born rule, so you should be able to design an operator that gives you the frequency of any one of those 2^N outcomes, which may not be equiprobable depending on the experimental setup.

If you know what answer you want it's trivial to design an operator to give it.  You don't even need the data.

Albert's statement about the wavefunction converging to the correct eigenfunction of such an operator wasn't limited to cases where all outcomes are equiprobable, I can't say for sure but I'd expect his statement would cover this sort of case as well.

It seems to me that he generalizes from the equiprobable example to say that in the limit you will get the Born rule whatever the probability.

Brent

 

Actually, Albert is talking about the case where there is only one outcome for each measurement.

He doesn't specify that each "outcome" has to be a single spin measurement though. There's also another presentation of the same idea (apparently called 'Mittelstaedt’s theorem') starting on p. 13 at https://www.academia.edu/6975159/Quantum_dispositions_and_the_notion_of_measurement and it seems to be stated in a very general way, talking about an operator that gives "the relative frequency of the outcome a_k in a given sequence of N outcomes" without placing any conditions on an "outcome" only involving a single particle measurement.

Jesse

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[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 7:24 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:
> Carroll claims, without any apparent argument, that decaying atoms in
> our bodies create MW branches. Do you have any idea how that can be
> justified?

Carroll would say it's Schroedinger's equation and nothing else. That's
one thing that bothers me about it.  Whenever MWI advocates talk about
it they use examples in which the quantum level event is magnified via
something like a detector and then they argue it created another world. 
But what doesn't create another world?  Was the magnification necessary
or was it just for the sake of an example?  I tend to think it's
necessary; that there are quantum level events that don't get magnified
and are just statisitically washed out...but then that raises the
question "How much magnification?"

Brent

[Brent Meeker]

On 1/5/2025 7:29 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG

You're misinterpreting what I wrote.  I meant that being alive is a superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead.  In other words the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are recovering.  It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat.  I means that alive and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement operator.

In terms of our fuzzy ordinary language this may be true, but in classical mechanics we have the notion of a "macrostate" which is defined as some large set of microstates, can we do something similar in QM and just imagine classifying every possible position eigenstate

But what's your assurance that position eigenstates are the ones that provide a binary alive/dead dichotomy?  And position of what?  Particles...that doesn't work because the particle positions don't define an eigenstate of the whole.  It's a feature of QM that measurements are holistic.  You have to know what "alive" means in order to measure it.

Brent

as either falling into the macrostate "live cat" or not being a member of that macrostate? (ignoring the practical difficulties of actually going through all the eigenstates and classifying them this way) If we had such a precise definition, could we then define an operator corresponding to the macrostate we had defined? The discussion at https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/343380/how-is-a-macrostate-specified-in-quantum-statistics seems to indicate that macrostates in QM can be defined as density operators.

Jesse

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[Jesse Mazer]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 11:41 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 1/5/2025 7:29 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG

You're misinterpreting what I wrote.  I meant that being alive is a superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead.  In other words the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are recovering.  It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat.  I means that alive and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement operator.

In terms of our fuzzy ordinary language this may be true, but in classical mechanics we have the notion of a "macrostate" which is defined as some large set of microstates, can we do something similar in QM and just imagine classifying every possible position eigenstate

But what's your assurance that position eigenstates are the ones that provide a binary alive/dead dichotomy?  And position of what?  Particles...that doesn't work because the particle positions don't define an eigenstate of the whole.  It's a feature of QM that measurements are holistic.  You have to know what "alive" means in order to measure it.

Brent

I'm not a vitalist, so I don't think there is any objective quality in nature of "aliveness" such that a human choice of definition could be objectively right or wrong, any more than there is an objective quality of "planetness" such that the recent decision to change the definition to exclude Pluto could be objectively right or wrong. To paraphrase Democritus, in truth there are only atoms and void (or the modern equivalent, say states of quantum fields), all higher level categories are just useful conventions--Sean Carroll's book The Big Picture calls this view "poetic naturalism". Given the understanding that terms like "life" are just a matter of convention, one could come up with a convention that's as precise as one likes, including defining every position eigenstate as either a living thing or not a living thing (and the choice to use position eigenstates rather than momentum would also be a matter of convention).

Jesse

[Brent Meeker]

So you're saying if you make "alive" and "dead" arbitrary then you can measure them. 

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 12:44:05PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 12:02 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >
> > What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these
> worlds.  As
> > Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of
> worlds
> > find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It
> > appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the
> Schroedinger
> > equation.
> >
> > Brent
> >
>
> Bruce's argument is too coarse. He is assuming that all worlds have
> equal representation in the original experimental preparation, whereas
> the preparation process can clearly set things up such that there is
> 90% up 10% down in the original sample, after which measurement is
> performed. "Branch counting" can easily explain something like the
> 90/10 Stern Gerlach case.
>
>
> No, that does not work, even if you make the extreme assumption that
> measurement is a process of discrimination between already existing worlds (a
> point of view for which we have no evidence whatsoever.)
> In Everettian many worlds, every outcome is realized on every trial. So after
> one trial, there are two branches; after two trials, 4 branches; and so on; so
> that after N trials, there are 2^N branches.

Why do you think that just because there are two outcomes (up/down,
say), there will be precisely two branches generated?

It can only be guaranteed if there is a fundamental symmetry in the
system between the two outcomes. That is when you get equal branches
for each outcome.

It is quite easy to concoct an example where 3 branches are up and 1
down, giving a 75/25 ratio. Just perform a second binary measurement
if the down measurement is observed in the first measurement, but just
record if an up was seen in either measurement, or not. This can be
easily generalised to any ratio representable by a finite binary
expansion.

Not sure if you can squeeze the Stern Gerlach experiment into that
role, but my hunch is maybe. Positions of magnets are limited to the accuracy of our rulers and protractors.

But I do suspect that pure branch counting does fail to describe more
complex scenarios, such as Bell inequality violating ones, but I
haven't seriously looked into it.

[Quentin Anciaux]

Le lun. 6 janv. 2025, 00:41, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 11:21 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Le dim. 5 janv. 2025, 01:18, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 1:11 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN.

Basically it boils down to two things.  One, they think the Schoredinger equation is sufficient to described measurement so long as the world can separate into independent copies for each eigenvalue of the measurement.  Exactly how this separation proceeds and how it is originated is sort of hand wavy, but they're sure it can be squared.   Second, they want everything to be deterministic.  So having all but one of the world's go away would require randomness per the Born rule.  At one time they thought the Born rule was already implict in the Schoredinger equation.  But since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world?  How does the probability amplitude of a quantum event get to apply some kind of "weight" to you or to a world?  One my say "That's just the way it is.  If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic, not just Schroedinger's equation...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because to me in itself, only one world is absurd... as absurd that my life is finite and preceeded by an infinite time in the past and infinite time in the future...

You think it absurd that you didn't exist in the past and after a finite time you will no longer exist??  Most people, and physicists, think that's the case.

I know reality doesn't have to please me, but one world theory is as absurd as absurd can be imo. Only a theory about information where everything exists seems lesz absurd, yeah there is a gazillion things in it, so there is also in one world,  thing is with MW like things, there is an explanation for you to be, you're one of the possibilities... in one world, you're one possibilities realised whatever that means against all not realised whatever that means, the realised thing is the absurd.

It's just improbable, which is quite different from absurd.  Every hand of bridge I've been dealt was improbable, but I never considered one absurd.

Brent

I understand your analogy with improbable bridge hands, but I think the difference lies in the nature of "improbable" versus "absurd" when we scale it to the entirety of existence. The improbability of any specific bridge hand exists within a defined framework with clear rules and outcomes—it is improbable, but not absurd because we understand the context.

In the case of existence, a single-world theory suggests that out of infinite possibilities, only one outcome is "realized." This is not just improbable—it's a rejection of the inherent structure of possibility itself. Without a multiverse or some equivalent explanation, the realization of just one world feels like a singular, unexplained "bridge hand" with no deck, no dealer, and no game. It's the framework itself that becomes suspect.

With a many-worlds or "everything exists" perspective, there is a structure that accounts for all possibilities, including the one where "I am." It doesn't feel absurd because existence is distributed across possibilities rather than being inexplicably concentrated into one. The absurdity for me isn't about odds; it's about the lack of explanatory context in a single-world view.

Does that make sense?

Quentin 

Quentin 

-- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Roy Betty, Rutger Hauer

Brent

And please don't offer your BS that you've answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG 

0o1

 

 

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[Alan Grayson]

On Monday, January 6, 2025 at 2:38:43 AM UTC-7 Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Le lun. 6 janv. 2025, 00:41, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 11:21 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Le dim. 5 janv. 2025, 01:18, Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> a écrit :

On 1/4/2025 1:11 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG 

About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words.

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing that can happen, MUST HAPPEN.

Basically it boils down to two things.  One, they think the Schoredinger equation is sufficient to described measurement so long as the world can separate into independent copies for each eigenvalue of the measurement.  Exactly how this separation proceeds and how it is originated is sort of hand wavy, but they're sure it can be squared.   Second, they want everything to be deterministic.  So having all but one of the world's go away would require randomness per the Born rule.  At one time they thought the Born rule was already implict in the Schoredinger equation.  But since everything happens it's not so clear what it means that probabilities are equal to the squared amplitude.  Probability of what?  Not probability of a value happening.  Probability of finding oneself in a particular world?  How does the probability amplitude of a quantum event get to apply some kind of "weight" to you or to a world?  One my say "That's just the way it is.  If it's probabilistic then it must follow Born's rule by Gleanson's theorem."  But then that's assuming it's probabilistic, not just Schroedinger's equation...in which case why not just bite the bullet and says it's the probability that a particular world exists.

Because to me in itself, only one world is absurd... as absurd that my life is finite and preceeded by an infinite time in the past and infinite time in the future...

You think it absurd that you didn't exist in the past and after a finite time you will no longer exist??  Most people, and physicists, think that's the case.

I know reality doesn't have to please me, but one world theory is as absurd as absurd can be imo. Only a theory about information where everything exists seems lesz absurd, yeah there is a gazillion things in it, so there is also in one world,  thing is with MW like things, there is an explanation for you to be, you're one of the possibilities... in one world, you're one possibilities realised whatever that means against all not realised whatever that means, the realised thing is the absurd.

It's just improbable, which is quite different from absurd.  Every hand of bridge I've been dealt was improbable, but I never considered one absurd.

Brent

I understand your analogy with improbable bridge hands, but I think the difference lies in the nature of "improbable" versus "absurd" when we scale it to the entirety of existence. The improbability of any specific bridge hand exists within a defined framework with clear rules and outcomes—it is improbable, but not absurd because we understand the context.

In the case of existence, a single-world theory suggests that out of infinite possibilities, only one outcome is "realized." This is not just improbable—it's a rejection of the inherent structure of possibility itself. Without a multiverse or some equivalent explanation, the realization of just one world feels like a singular, unexplained "bridge hand" with no deck, no dealer, and no game. It's the framework itself that becomes suspect.

With a many-worlds or "everything exists" perspective, there is a structure that accounts for all possibilities, including the one where "I am." It doesn't feel absurd because existence is distributed across possibilities rather than being inexplicably concentrated into one. The absurdity for me isn't about odds; it's about the lack of explanatory context in a single-world view.

Does that make sense?

Quentin 

FWIW, whereas the MWI is IMO absurd, multiple worlds is not if you consider eternal inflation as a possible model of reality. AG  

[Cosmin Visan]

@Alan. So you mean the theories that people invent are true ? How come ? What guarantees their truthfulness ?

On Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 23:29:51 UTC+2 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 2:25:42 PM UTC-7 Cosmin Visan wrote:

@Alan you wouldn't ask such question if you would understand that energy doesn't exist. "Energy" is just an idea in consciousness. All these theories that people create are just random guesses. They work until they don't. Wondering where the energy goes and so on is pointless, for the trivial reason that you go beyond what that guess covered and you are back to square 1 of making another guess.

You're a stupid prick. AG 

On Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 23:03:50 UTC+2 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 2:00:46 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote:

On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 1:49:59 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

> his answer to energy requirements for these new worlds seems weak, that energy is somehow globally conserved while the energy in particular branches can decrease,

It doesn't matter if Many Worlds is correct or not, we've known for a century that in an expanding universe, like the one we live in, energy is NOT conserved at the cosmological scale; photons of light gets stretched to the red end of the spectrum and red photons have less energy than blue photons. In fact, unlike classical physics or even special relativity, the very concept of conservation of energy is not rigorously defined in General Relativity. GR does have something called the "stress-energy tensor" that includes contributions from all non-gravitational fields and matter, but gravity is not included.  If you're interested Sean Carroll goes into much more detail here: 

Energy Is Not Conserved

   John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

How could gravity be included as if it's something different from curvature of spacetime, which is caused by stress-energy tensor? I'm pretty sure Carroll said energy is conserved in the MWI, making it superior to the Copenhagan interpretations. AG 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 12:44:05PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 12:02 PM Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
>     On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 04:47:00PM -0800, Brent Meeker wrote:
>     >
>     > What he fails to explain is how probabilities are realized in these worlds.  As
>     > Bruce pointed out, except for 50-50 cases the overwhelming number of worlds
>     > find QM to be empirically falsified; so branch counting doesn't work.  It
>     > appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger
>     > equation.
>     >
>     > Brent
>     >
>
>     Bruce's argument is too coarse. He is assuming that all worlds have
>     equal representation in the original experimental preparation, whereas
>     the preparation process can clearly set things up such that there is
>     90% up 10% down in the original sample, after which measurement is
>     performed. "Branch counting" can easily explain something like the
>     90/10 Stern Gerlach case.
>
>
> No, that does not work, even if you make the extreme assumption that
> measurement is a process of discrimination between already existing worlds (a
> point of view for which we have no evidence whatsoever.)
> In Everettian many worlds, every outcome is realized on every trial. So after
> one trial, there are two branches; after two trials, 4 branches; and so on; so
> that after N trials, there are 2^N branches.

Why do you think that just because there are two outcomes (up/down,
say), there will be precisely two branches generated?

That is what the theory says. There is a separate branch for each possible outcome. The fact that decoherence might spread this outcome over many further branches is not relevant here. We are counting outcomes, not final branches.

It can only be guaranteed if there is a fundamental symmetry in the
system between the two outcomes. That is when you get equal branches
for each outcome.

Nonsense. You have no basis to assume that. The theory says the opposite.

It is quite easy to concoct an example where 3 branches are up and 1
down, giving a 75/25 ratio. Just perform a second binary measurement
if the down measurement is observed in the first measurement, but just
record if an up was seen in either measurement, or not. This can be
easily generalised to any ratio representable by a finite binary
expansion.

We are not doing branch counting as an explanation of probability here. The point is counting experimental outcomes. And the number of possible outcomes is determined by the initial wave function, which is a superposition of the possible eigenstates. Each eigenvalue is realized as an outcome on some branch.

Not sure if you can squeeze the Stern Gerlach experiment into that
role, but my hunch is maybe. Positions of magnets are limited to the accuracy of our rulers and protractors.

My point about S-G magnets to measure spin values was that they can easily be rotated away from the 50/50 position. The exact values do not matter in this context. You still get either an UP or a DOWN result along the axis of the magnet in its final position. The only thing that changes are the probabilities for each outcome.

Let us consider a more realistic experimental situation. We set up a source of spin-half particles in the x-spin-left state, (easily done by a preliminary state preparation magnet.) Then pass these prepared particles through a further S-G maget in some orientation and record the result -- either UP or DOWN. Do this N times and look at the records of all copies of the experimentalist. According to the Everettian theory, each copy will have recorded some sequence of UP/DOWN results, but each copy will have a different sequence. In total, there are 2^N copies and 2^N different output records. In fact, these 2^N records will cover all possible binary sequences of length N. The additional branches coming from decoherence do not come into play here. We are considering only the records of recorded measurement results. The final point to be made is that regardless of the orientation of the S-G magnet, we must get the same set of 2^N possible sequences. Each set of results will converge to 50/50 UP vs DOWN as N becomes very large. This contradicts the Born probability for all but a very limited number of magnet orientations.

But I do suspect that pure branch counting does fail to describe more
complex scenarios, such as Bell inequality violating ones, but I
haven't seriously looked into it.

Branch counting certainly fails as an account of probability. Decoherence involves an unknown number of branches, and this number is not controlled for different amplitude coefficients or Born probabilities. Branch counting is a washout as an account of probability via self-locating uncertainty. Also, branch counting has nothing to do with Bell's theorem.

Bruce

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. So you're not sure if you exist ?

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 7:47 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> If Many World is correct then ontological randomness can not exist but epistemological randomness certainly can and certainly does. 

>  It's not just epistemological when it includes the whole world whether anybody else knows it or not. 

It includes a whole world, but if Schrodinger's equation is right and it doesn't suddenly stop working when some vaguely defined thing called a "measurement" is made then it's an ontological fact that our world is not the sum total of existence. I like Many Worlds because it's bare-bones, no nonsense quantum mechanics with none of the silly bells and whistles tacked on that are needed to make those other worlds disappear.

 

> QBism is actually an epistemological interpretation

Yes, and "shut up and calculate" doesn't care if it's ontological or epistemological.  

>> you have to explain why Schrodinger's equation suddenly stops working.

 

> You have to explain when the worlds split

As I've explained before, you can either assume that the split propagates outward from the point of the change at the speed of light or that it does so instantaneously, it makes no observable difference.  

> Measurement doesn't even have to include me or anybody else.  The cat example just obfuscates the question.  The measurement is done when the detector detects the atomic decay.  A cleaner version has a clock stopped by the detection. 

OK. The quantum wave consists of { A* (a running clock, the environment the running clock is in, and you observing the running clock) + B*(a stopped clock, the environment the stopped clock is in, and you observing the stopped clock) }  Where A is a real number and B is a imaginary number and together they determine the quantum amplitudes, and the square of the absolute value of that determines the probability. For example if A=1/√2 and B= 1/i√2 then the probability is 50-50. And if A= 1/√0.75 and B=i/√0.25 then the probability works out to be 75-25; so if I hadn't opened the box yet and was asked to make a bet on what I would see I would bet that I would probably be in the environment that contains a running clock and therefore will observe a running clock. 

When I look at a map of branching universes in my mind's eye I like to think of the quantum amplitudes giving a little thickness to those 2D lines making them a little bit 3-D, but that's just me. 

 

> I can see that it will eventually make different orthogonal worlds, only one of which we see.  Carroll once joked that non-Everettians needed to explain the disappearing worlds.

Carroll was NOT joking! You agree that Schrodinger's Equation produces worlds that are orthogonal to our own so you would not expect to be able to detect them, and yet you insist, despite the fact that in every experiment ever performed it is been proven to be extraordinarily accurate, Schrodinger's Equation is wrong when it predicts those other worlds. You just wave your hands and Schrodinger's equation stops working and all those other worlds magically disappear. 

It's true that you can't make an experimental test for those worlds but I think a theory should be judged on the predictions that you can test not on the predictions that you can't test, and on every prediction that we can test Schrodinger's equation has been shown to be correct.   

> branch counting doesn't work. 

Obviously.  

> It appears that the Born rule adds another axiom; it's not just the Schroedinger equation.

Gleason proved in 1957 that if probability is involved in any way then the only mathematically consistent way to do it it's for the probability to equal the squared magnitude of the quantum amplitude, a.k.a. the Born rule. So the real question is, Schrodinger's equation gives us an exact description of the quantum wave, so why do we need probability at all? Because until you open the box you won't know if you are in the environment where the cat is alive or in the environment where the cat is dead, until the box is opened you just don't have enough information to know for certain what you are going to see, although you have enough information to have a probability.  

As for cases where things are not perfectly orthogonal you'd expect to see some interference between the two worlds, and WE DO for very small objects like electrons which can be kept isolated from their environment for a measurable amount of time, but we should not expect to see interference patterns in large microscopic objects like a cat that contains upwards of 10^24 atoms because something that big would become entangled with the environment before you had time to look at it.     

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

42v

[Terren Suydam]

I exist, consciousness exists. There's no question about that, for me.

What is unprovable is the claim "nothing else exists except consciousness".

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/eca484a1-d703-470a-a6b0-ac7edca5b396n%40googlegroups.com.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. You don't understand what you are. You are God. Once you understand why you are God, you also understand why only you exists. It has to do with what "to exist" means. "To exists" means to have form/meaning/quality. As such, only qualia exist, because "qualia" is just a synonymous for "existence". And qualia are the way in which you as God understand yourself. That's what reality is: is the process through which God knows itself. As such, there can be nothing else.

[Terren Suydam]

Believe it or not, I'm sympathetic to that kind of theory of reality. It's not far from what I personally believe.

But at the end of the day, you cannot prove it. Can you admit that?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/44642e49-a3e8-4e6c-8964-cb28acb77435n%40googlegroups.com.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. Is not a matter of proving. Is a matter of you becoming conscious of consciousness. Is a matter of you properly understanding what the concepts involved mean. For example, in your understanding, what does "to exist" mean ?

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 9:06 AM Terren Suydam <terren...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I exist, consciousness exists. There's no question about that, for me.

Your consciousness certainly exists, but what about my consciousness? Maybe I'm a philosophical zombie. If you think that's absurd then to be logically consistent you'd have to conclude that GPT and Claude are conscious too. 

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis 

ena

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 9:19 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> in your understanding, what does "to exist" mean ?

In your understanding what does "mean" mean? 

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

4ka

[Terren Suydam]

If you're not aware of what you can and cannot prove, your logic is going to be flawed, or worse, you will sound like a religious nut.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9b7fbeea-913b-49fc-82be-bda8a4aa448bn%40googlegroups.com.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. Why do you avoid the question ? I asked you a simple question: Define "to exist"! Otherwise, what are we even talking about ?

[Cosmin Visan]

@John. "Mean" means the way in which God understands itself. Meaning is a form of manifestation of God.

[Terren Suydam]

I'm the one that raised this line of questioning about metaphysics and proof, because you said you admit everything, and I'm challenging that. You are changing the subject.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b1721f71-642c-4340-906c-647520d75e05n%40googlegroups.com.

[Cosmin Visan]

@Terren. Prove what if we didn't even define our terms ? Define "to exist" and then ask me to prove that nothing else besides consciousness exists!