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Dualism via Quantum Mechanics

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Evgenii Rudnyi

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May 12, 2012, 7:03:50 AM5/12/12
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A few quotes below to dualism from Max Velmans.

Evgenii

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/05/quantum-dualist-interactionism.html

In Chapter 2, Conscious Souls, Brains and Quantum Mechanics there is a
nice section Quantum Dualist Interactionism (p. 17 – 21) where Max
Velmans describes works that present interpretation of dualism in the
framework of quantum mechanics.

Stapp, H. (2007a) ‘Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness’ in The
Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, pp. 300-312.

Stapp, H. (2007b) ‘Quantum approaches to consciousness’ in The Cambridge
Handbook of Consciousness, pp. 881-908.

Stapp, H. (2007c) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the
Participating Observer.

Interestingly enough Stapp refers to the work of von Neumann:

Von Neumann, J. (1955/1932) Mathematical Foundations of Quantum
Mechanics/Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantummechanik.

p. 19. “In various interpretations of quantum mechanics there is in any
case ambiguity, and associated controversy, about where in the
observation process a choice about what to observe and a subsequent
observation is made. For example, according to the ‘Gopenhagen
Convention’, the original formation of quantum theory developed by Niels
Bohr, there is a clear separation between the process taking place in
the observer (Process 1) and the process taking place in the system that
is being observed (Process 2).”

p. 21. “To differentiate the conscious part of Process 1 (the ‘conscious
ego’) from the physically embodied part, Stapp (2007c) refers to it as
‘Process 0′. Stapp believes that such quantum dualist interactionism
neatly sidesteps the classical problems of mind-body (or
consciousness-brain) interaction (see Stapp, 2007a, p. 305). According
to the von Neumann/Stapp theory, consciousness (Process 0) chooses what
question to ask; through the meditation of Process 1 that interacts with
Process 2 (the developing possibilities specified by the quantum
mechanics of the physical system under interrogation, including the
brain) – and Nature supplies an answer, which in turn reflected in
conscious experience (making the entire process a form of
dualism-interactionism).”

p. 21. “A central claim of the von Neumann/Stapp theory, for example, is
that it is the observer’s conscious free will (von Neumann’s ‘abstract
ego’ or Stapp’s ‘Process 0′) that chooses how to probe nature.”

Bruno Marchal

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May 12, 2012, 7:33:22 AM5/12/12
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Evgenii,

All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe" theory
are non computationalist dualist theories.
But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the
wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in
physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem
to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in
collapse differ.

Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in
that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam.

Bruno
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Evgenii Rudnyi

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May 12, 2012, 8:59:26 AM5/12/12
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On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following:
> Evgenii,
>
> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe" theory
> are non computationalist dualist theories.
> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave
> leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics,
> or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what
> exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ.
>
> Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in
> that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam.
>

I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I am
not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation.

I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model. David Deutsch
does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad philosophy and
that we must take physical theories literally.

In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, "I know the truth
as this is a good explanation" is far away from skeptical inquiry.

After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity
contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into
interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful?

Evgenii


meekerdb

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May 12, 2012, 10:38:26 PM5/12/12
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On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Evgenii,
>
> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe" theory are non
> computationalist dualist theories.

Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian Kent has proposed
a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation.

arXiv:0708.3710v3 "Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory"

It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely showing that a
quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of quantum white rabbits.

> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave leads to many
> difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics, or solipsism in philosophy of
> mind. Or even just the problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all
> believers in collapse differ.

I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an objective property of
the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres "Quantum
Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement
results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information.

Brent

Evgenii Rudnyi

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May 13, 2012, 2:41:56 AM5/13/12
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On 13.05.2012 04:38 meekerdb said the following:
> On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Evgenii,
>>
>> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe" theory
>> are non computationalist dualist theories.
>
> Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean. Adrian
> Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer the
> ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation.
>
> arXiv:0708.3710v3 "Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory"
>
> It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely
> showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of
> quantum white rabbits.
>
>> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the
>> wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in
>> physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem
>> to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in
>> collapse differ.
>
> I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an
> objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist interpretation
> (c.f. Asher Peres "Quantum Theory:Concepts and Methods) which takes the
> wf to be a way of predicting measurement results doesn't suffer these
> problems: 'collapse' is just a change in our information.
>
> Brent


Brent,

Could you please comment on

On the reality of the quantum state
Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett & Terry Rudolph
Nature Physics, (2012)

http://www.nature.com/news/a-boost-for-quantum-reality-1.10602

What does it imply?

Evgenii



Bruno Marchal

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May 13, 2012, 9:09:26 AM5/13/12
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On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>> Evgenii,
>>
>> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe"
>> theory
>> are non computationalist dualist theories.
>> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the
>> wave
>> leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in
>> physics,
>> or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say
>> what
>> exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ.
>>
>> Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems
>> in
>> that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam.
>>
>
> I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I
> am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation.

The multiverse is a logical consequence of "1+1= 2", and mechanism.
You don't need quantum mechanics.

Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to
survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid,
and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism
multiverse/multidream.

So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special
physical laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person,
yet unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be
driven by wishful thinking only.

You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build
ad hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere.


>
> I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model.

Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported
by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence
of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts).



> David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a
> bad philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally.

I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously,
so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then
Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical
consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy.



>
> In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, "I know the
> truth as this is a good explanation" is far away from skeptical
> inquiry.
>
> After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity
> contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into
> interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful?

To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Bruno Marchal

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May 13, 2012, 10:02:28 AM5/13/12
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On 13 May 2012, at 04:38, meekerdb wrote:

> On 5/12/2012 4:33 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Evgenii,
>>
>> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe"
>> theory are non computationalist dualist theories.
>
> Not all of them, at least not in the sense of dualist you mean.
> Adrian Kent has proposed a one-universe theory which doesn't suffer
> the ambiguity of the Copenhagen interpretation.
>
> arXiv:0708.3710v3 "Real World Interpretation of Quantum Theory"
>
> It has some problems similar to those of everything theories, namely
> showing that a quasi-classical universe is stable against a chaos of
> quantum white rabbits.
>
>> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the
>> wave leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in
>> physics, or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the
>> problem to say what exactly is the collapse, on which all believers
>> in collapse differ.
>
> I think it only leads to these problems if you take the wf to be an
> objective property of the system. A more instrumentalist
> interpretation (c.f. Asher Peres "Quantum Theory:Concepts and
> Methods) which takes the wf to be a way of predicting measurement
> results doesn't suffer these problems: 'collapse' is just a change
> in our information.

OK, but then the superposition remains, and you have many worlds, or
many dreams. QM without collapse, and without many worlds just look
like word play to me. You can always define a world by a set of
physical events close for interaction. QM entails many worlds in that
sense, even if subjective, in the "subjective" interpretation of the
wf. So Asher, unlike Kent, is still a form of "don't ask", on the
nature of the world. Kent at least try to make sense of a realist QM
with a single universe. But it never succeeds, and given that I
believed in the multiverse even before knowing anything of QM, I have
stopped for awhile to read him, to be honest.

Bruno

Evgenii Rudnyi

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May 13, 2012, 5:19:02 PM5/13/12
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On 13.05.2012 15:09 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>
> On 12 May 2012, at 14:59, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 12.05.2012 13:33 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>>> Evgenii,
>>>
>>> All this is well known. Copenhagen theory, or "unique-universe" theory
>>> are non computationalist dualist theories.
>>> But as Shimony has shown, the idea that consciousness collapse the wave
>>> leads to many difficulties, like non local hidden variables in physics,
>>> or solipsism in philosophy of mind. Or even just the problem to say what
>>> exactly is the collapse, on which all believers in collapse differ.
>>>
>>> Computationalism and Everett (QM without collapse) have no problems in
>>> that respect, and line up well with the everything-like use of Occam.
>>>
>>
>> I listen currently to Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. Yet, I
>> am not convinced that Multiverse is a good explanation.
>
> The multiverse is a logical consequence of "1+1= 2", and mechanism. You
> don't need quantum mechanics.
>
> Then quantum mechanics, the first theory in physics succeeding to
> survive more that 5 years (indeed about a century now), is very solid,
> and based on very simple math, and it confirms the mechanism
> multiverse/multidream.
>
> So, to avoid the multiverse, you have to postulate very special physical
> laws, yet unobserved, and a very special theory of person, yet
> unobserved. Why not, but it is very speculative, and seems to be driven
> by wishful thinking only.

I am glad that you believe in multiverse and find it logical. Yet, I
guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When you
convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start thinking
about it.

For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even mentioned
in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an
eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not the
multiverse.

> You could as well defend the theory that the earth is flat, and build ad
> hoc rules to explain why it seems to be a sphere.
>
>
>>
>> I personally consider quantum mechanics just as a model.
>
> Yes. It is a theory. An hypothesis, very weird, but strongly supported
> by the facts, and whose main weird consequences are also a consequence
> of elementary arithmetic, and mechanism (even without any facts).
>
>
>
>> David Deutsch does not like it, he says that instrumentalism is a bad
>> philosophy and that we must take physical theories literally.
>
> I agree with Deutsch on this. That is science. Taking ideas seriously,
> so that we can change the theories more quickly when refuted. But then
> Deutsch uses comp, and very typically, like many, ignore its logical
> consequence. So Deutsch does not follow his own philosophy.
>
>
>
>>
>> In general, I am disappointed by his book. His style, "I know the
>> truth as this is a good explanation" is far away from skeptical inquiry.
>>
>> After all, we know that quantum mechanics and general relativity
>> contradict to each other. Why then to invest too much time into
>> interpretations like Multiverse? Why it is useful?
>
> To learn and to try to figure out what happens here and now.

Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and I
would say they have been already successful without a multiverse. Do you
mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they
will start working more productively?

Evgenii

Bruno Marchal

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May 14, 2012, 4:29:36 AM5/14/12
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I am just saying that a "multiverse" or a "multidream" is a logical
consequence of comp. Not that I believe in multiverse.
But yes, it is plausible, and simpler conceptually than the
speculation about one universe, or one computation.




> Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse.
> When you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start
> thinking about it.

On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start
reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one
reason really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument.
Science is not a question of majority vote.


>
> For example, I do not remember that multiverse has been even
> mentioned in The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. He discusses an
> eleven-dimensional space needed for the superstring theory but not
> the multiverse.

Martin Gardner said that the "many worlds" concept was the best hidden
secret of the 20th centunary (and he talked of the QM multiverse, not
the "more obvious" comp one).
No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to
talk with the "superposition state labeling", and they can invent for
themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the
contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid
looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal
conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The
collapse of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse,
and it has never work.


> Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse
> interpretation, they will start working more productively?

They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught
chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on
little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's
inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his
opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically,
and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie
behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory,
without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful
conviction. It is typical for humans to do that.

If you decide the destination of your holiday with a quantum choice,
QM predicts that all the term of the wave makes sense, and that "you"
will differentiate into going to all the chosen Holiday places. If you
believe that only one term "really results", it is up to you to say
what is wrong in QM.

Now, physicists never define what they mean by universe, with comp, we
could say that there is zero universes, indeed, zero physical objects,
we are dreaming those things, the universes are first person plural
construct. The "matrix" image is more close to reality than a
substantial reality, and this, by comp, explains where the physical
reality comes from. To have a unique real universe, you need a non
computationalist theory of mind, and nobody even try to present one.
The weakening of the comp hypothesis does not suppress any "universes/
dreams", on the contrary.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Stephen P. King

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May 14, 2012, 1:16:18 PM5/14/12
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Hi Bruno,

    Could we agree that this concept of "really results" is merely the folk language way of talking about what we can communicate unambiguously about? I see this as the same kind of idea as what you describe with Diary entries in your UDA. In that sense it seems to me that this is something that could use more closer exploration. I have a conjecture that our "shared reality" is restricted to being representable by a Boolean algebra (not a Heyting algebra!), have you any comment on this? (I suspect that I am missing something in this conjecture but am not sure what it is.)




Now, physicists never define what they mean by universe, with comp, we could say that there is zero universes, indeed, zero physical objects, we are dreaming those things, the universes are first person plural construct.

    This concept of "first person plural" is something that I have never understood. Could you elaborate on it please?


The "matrix" image is more close to reality than a substantial reality, and this, by comp, explains where the physical reality comes from. To have a unique real universe, you need a non computationalist theory of mind, and nobody even try to present one.

    I agree with you here, but my reasoning is different. A non-computationalist theory of mind does not have to be one that denies that the specific content of any single experience (1-p) is Turing emulable, it could be a theory that shows how a sequence of 1-p content is not Turing computable without accounting for the specific means that the resources for the computation became available.


The weakening of the comp hypothesis does not suppress any "universes/dreams", on the contrary.

    I agree, but it does severely undermine the idea that the mere existence and a priori truth of formal sentences uniquely determines the content of those sentences. A good analogy to this is seen in Shannon's theory of information; there is nothing that quantifies the particular meaningfulness of a message in the theory. It is only about the ability to recognize a signal as distinct from noise. This is the difference between a statistical notion and a non-statistical notion.


-- 
Onward!

Stephen

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." 
~ Francis Bacon

Evgenii Rudnyi

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May 14, 2012, 4:41:27 PM5/14/12
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On 14.05.2012 10:29 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>
> On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

>> Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse. When
>> you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start
>> thinking about it.
>
> On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start
> reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one reason
> really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument. Science is
> not a question of majority vote.

My empirical observations just shows that the easiness and obviousness
that you stress to accept multiverse seems to be overestimated. The life
seems to be more complex.

...

>> Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time and
>> I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse.
>
> No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to talk

In my view, your position that chemists have used multiverse all the
time contradicts to historical facts.

> with the "superposition state labeling", and they can invent for
> themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the
> contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid
> looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain personal
> conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The collapse
> of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it has
> never work.

You should look what molecular simulation is. It has nothing to do with
the collapse of wave function. Whether wave function collapses or not,
for chemists it does not matter. They use quantum mechanics according to
instrumentalism and, as I have written, they have been successful.

>
>> Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse
>> interpretation, they will start working more productively?
>
> They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught
> chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on
> little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's
> inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his
> opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and
> that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like
> ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking
> it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is
> typical for humans to do that.

Again, you need to look at what molecular simulation is. What you write
has nothing to do with molecular simulation, nor with the way how
chemists develop new molecules and materials.

That was my point, try to apply multiverse ideas to develop a new drug
more productively. I would say that it will not work, because the
collapse of wave function is irrelevant at this level.

Evgenii

Bruno Marchal

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May 15, 2012, 5:02:02 AM5/15/12
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Hi Stephen,


It is the content intended in that folk language, but it is also the literal reading of the wave.



I see this as the same kind of idea as what you describe with Diary entries in your UDA. In that sense it seems to me that this is something that could use more closer exploration.

Sure. Everything I say deserves more closer exploration. That's the goal. Now, I present a reasoning, and its validity is independent of further exploration.



I have a conjecture that our "shared reality" is restricted to being representable by a Boolean algebra (not a Heyting algebra!), have you any comment on this?

Why not. As long as we try to explain how such classicality emerge from the quantum, itself emerging from the classical relations of numbers.



(I suspect that I am missing something in this conjecture but am not sure what it is.)



Now, physicists never define what they mean by universe, with comp, we could say that there is zero universes, indeed, zero physical objects, we are dreaming those things, the universes are first person plural construct.

    This concept of "first person plural" is something that I have never understood. Could you elaborate on it please?

It is the same as the first person, except that instead of having one individual going into a teleportation or duplication device, we teleport or duplicate population of individuals. In that case frequency statistics match "Deutsch book"-like betting probabilities. We share computations, because the most numerous going through our states duplicate our conjoint states. Exactly like in Everett QM.




The "matrix" image is more close to reality than a substantial reality, and this, by comp, explains where the physical reality comes from. To have a unique real universe, you need a non computationalist theory of mind, and nobody even try to present one.

    I agree with you here, but my reasoning is different. A non-computationalist theory of mind does not have to be one that denies that the specific content of any single experience (1-p) is Turing emulable, it could be a theory that shows how a sequence of 1-p content is not Turing computable without accounting for the specific means that the resources for the computation became available.

But this is like adding non necessary difficulties, because comp makes already sequences of 1_p non computable a priori, but defined statistically on infinities of computations.





The weakening of the comp hypothesis does not suppress any "universes/dreams", on the contrary.

    I agree, but it does severely undermine the idea that the mere existence and a priori truth of formal sentences uniquely determines the content of those sentences.

What would mean "true", if it was not referring to some content of the proposition.



A good analogy to this is seen in Shannon's theory of information; there is nothing that quantifies the particular meaningfulness of a message in the theory. It is only about the ability to recognize a signal as distinct from noise. This is the difference between a statistical notion and a non-statistical notion.

I am not sure that analogy could work. Private content is not in a sentences, or strings. It is in the working mind of a universal machine, relative to its more probable universal neighborhood. The universal beings are the creator and co-creator of sense.

Bruno



Bruno Marchal

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May 15, 2012, 5:23:40 AM5/15/12
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On 14 May 2012, at 22:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 14.05.2012 10:29 Bruno Marchal said the following:
>>
>> On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>> Yet, I guess that even not all physicists believe in multiverse.
>>> When
>>> you convince all physicists that multivers exists, I will start
>>> thinking about it.
>>
>> On reality, usually all humans are wrong. Also, if people start
>> reasoning when the majority is convinced, this means that no one
>> reason
>> really. You should avoid that kind of authoritative argument.
>> Science is
>> not a question of majority vote.
>
> My empirical observations just shows that the easiness and
> obviousness that you stress to accept multiverse seems to be
> overestimated. The life seems to be more complex.

But that is true for any conception. 0 universes, 1 universes, etc.



>
> ...
>
>>> Let us take chemists. They use molecular modeling for a long time
>>> and
>>> I would say they have been already successful without a multiverse.
>>
>> No, this is false. They use multiverse all the time. They prefer to
>> talk
>
> In my view, your position that chemists have used multiverse all the
> time contradicts to historical facts.

They have use it without knowing. They use the collapse
methodologically, and they are not interested in reality, but in
practical applications. But they do use "state superposition", and
they do know the equation is linear.
A cosmologists asked me a long time ago if it makes logical sense to
apply QM to the cosmos. I said "yes" if we abandon the collapse of the
wave and refer him to Everett. In his paper he just added a tiny
footnote referring to Everett. Some ideas are shocking, for cultural
reason, and are accepted in some silencious way.

If you study the UD Argument, you can understand that elementary
arithmetic leads already to many worlds, with very weak version of
comp. This shocks some of us, like the idea that the Earth is round,
and turns around the sun can be shocking. But it is just much simpler
for the big picture sense.



>
>> with the "superposition state labeling", and they can invent for
>> themselves the idea that QM does not apply to them, to avoid the
>> contagion of he superposition state, but that's word play to avoid
>> looking at what happens. It is just avoiding facts to sustain
>> personal
>> conviction. Humans does that all the time. QM = multiverse. The
>> collapse
>> of the wave is already an invention to hide the multiverse, and it
>> has
>> never work.
>
> You should look what molecular simulation is. It has nothing to do
> with the collapse of wave function. Whether wave function collapses
> or not, for chemists it does not matter.

Sure. This is because they focuses on the accessible reality, and for
them, an electronic orbital is like a map where to find an electron.
They use both the wave, which gives the shape of the orbital, and the
collapse, to describe the result. They don't focus of what is real in
case QM applies to 'them + the electron', for they focus only on the
electron. Now, if one say that there is a collapse, then one just use
an inconsistent fuzzy theory which has never really work. here we
discuss everything, not just electron.


> They use quantum mechanics according to instrumentalism and, as I
> have written, they have been successful.

For their result, yes. With respect to the big picture, they don't
ask. It is their right. We are just not tackling the same question.


>
>>
>>> Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse
>>> interpretation, they will start working more productively?
>>
>> They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught
>> chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on
>> little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's
>> inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised
>> his
>> opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically,
>> and
>> that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves
>> like
>> ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without
>> taking
>> it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is
>> typical for humans to do that.
>
> Again, you need to look at what molecular simulation is. What you
> write has nothing to do with molecular simulation, nor with the way
> how chemists develop new molecules and materials.

But this is a different job. I am not interested in electron, but in
question like what is an electron, is it real, where its appearance
comes from, etc.


>
> That was my point, try to apply multiverse ideas to develop a new
> drug more productively.

Using QM, and being aware the collapse is non sensical (or could be)
means that you use the multiverse idea, because that is QM (without
collapse). People can easily use theories, without trying to get the
deep and annoying (for them) consequences. It change also the picture
of possible after-life, in which case we are all using it all the time.



> I would say that it will not work, because the collapse of wave
> function is irrelevant at this level.

It is not so much a question of level, than a question of personal
interest. You don't need to have the correct interpretation of a
theory to use it, like you can drive a car without knowing anything in
thermodynamic.
Instrumentalism is fine for application, but our goal here is not
application, but more like attempts toward possible truth contemplation.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



Stephen P. King

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May 15, 2012, 9:32:14 AM5/15/12
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
On 5/15/2012 5:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hi Stephen,


On 14 May 2012, at 19:16, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 5/14/2012 4:29 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 13 May 2012, at 23:19, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:


Do you mean that when all chemists accept the multiverse interpretation, they will start working more productively?

They accept it. I have a book, by Baggot, who explains that he taught chemistry for 17 years, absolutely convinced that QM was true only on little distance, so he predicts that nature did not violate Bell's inequality, but when the experience of Aspect was done, he revised his opinion, and accept the idea that QM might be true macroscopically, and that it makes the weirdness a real fact of life. De Broglie behaves like ghat too. This illustrates that people can use a theory, without taking it seriously, because they follow their wishful conviction. It is typical for humans to do that.

If you decide the destination of your holiday with a quantum choice, QM predicts that all the term of the wave makes sense, and that "you" will differentiate into going to all the chosen Holiday places. If you believe that only one term "really results", it is up to you to say what is wrong in QM.

Hi Bruno,

    Could we agree that this concept of "really results" is merely the folk language way of talking about what we can communicate unambiguously about?

It is the content intended in that folk language, but it is also the literal reading of the wave.

Hi Bruno,

    But you must understand that the "wave" does not encode position information thus you cannot speak of it as if it does; doing so is mathematically inconsistent. You must understand that the "wave" picture assumes a particular basis, the momentum basis via the phase and the amplitude quantities of the wave, and it does consider position questions only to the degree that they can be specified by the Fourier transform. In the wave picture there is not such thing as "you are in Moscow" or "you are in Helsinki" or "you are in Washington". That information is simply not considered by the representations and so questions regarding places are unanswerable.
    One thing that is the hardest part of QM for people to understand - at least it was for me - is the implications of the freedom and need to choose a basis. Without specifying the basis, it is not possible to define the inner product or orthogonality relation for the state vectors. It is impossible to have a predictive theory at all!

    I mention all of this because it is what is informing my question. I am asking about how it is that we continue to assume things about our shared reality that we know are false? We have to start off with a set of assumptions as to what is required for us to have a shared Reality in the first place, not just assume that the Reality is "out there" and we somehow can talk coherently about it.



I see this as the same kind of idea as what you describe with Diary entries in your UDA. In that sense it seems to me that this is something that could use more closer exploration.

Sure. Everything I say deserves more closer exploration. That's the goal. Now, I present a reasoning, and its validity is independent of further exploration.

    That is a nice attitude, Bruno Marchal is the "designator of what is interesting" (/sarcasm). What is true, my dear friend, but only for you. Your identity is tied up in what is interesting to you, but you are not the only mind that exist and your interests and Identity is not the only one that must be accounted for.



I have a conjecture that our "shared reality" is restricted to being representable by a Boolean algebra (not a Heyting algebra!), have you any comment on this?

Why not. As long as we try to explain how such classicality emerge from the quantum, itself emerging from the classical relations of numbers.

    You share that particular belief with many people, even - to my surprise - David Deutsch. I have come to the conclusion that that belief may be false; numbers in general are not necessarily "classical objects" with classical relations. Only the Integers come close to being "classical" but that is only because they are specified in advance to have a particular set of properties. Numbers in general cannot be said to have some particular set of properties in an a priori fashion unless one has specified the Arithmetic (algebra of relations between the numbers) structure that defines the basis within which the numbers can be known.

    This is a symptom of a problem in the Bp&p formulation of truth, it assumes an accidental notion of how it is that a particular string has some particular set of properties. I might agree with you that this is a good place to start in one's theology/cosmogony ideas motivating toward an ontological theory, as you discuss in your explanations of the hypostases, but it is not without its own problems. One of my favorite philosophers used a similar idea, Tychism, and involved a notion of chance and I see it also explicitly in the <> and [] of model logic, but we have to be careful that it not be interpreted to imply more that what it can. We have to also account for intentionality. Intentionality and chance seem to be duals in the same way as possibility and necessity are...



(I suspect that I am missing something in this conjecture but am not sure what it is.)



Now, physicists never define what they mean by universe, with comp, we could say that there is zero universes, indeed, zero physical objects, we are dreaming those things, the universes are first person plural construct.

    This concept of "first person plural" is something that I have never understood. Could you elaborate on it please?

It is the same as the first person, except that instead of having one individual going into a teleportation or duplication device, we teleport or duplicate population of individuals. In that case frequency statistics match "Deutsch book"-like betting probabilities. We share computations, because the most numerous going through our states duplicate our conjoint states. Exactly like in Everett QM.

    I have a problem with this. You are assuming the result of physical actions (that may or may not actually be possible!) and then defining a set of relations and properties on the resulting population and then using Occam to eliminate the physicality that generated the population in the first place. This is like holding me personally responsible for the shape of my ears and ignoring the long chain of events that came to bear on the DNA of my body. We have a notion of computation because there is a behavior that we can perform physically that generates a pattern. Absent the ability to invoke some class of  physical process that in turn generates the functional equivalence class of behaviors, there is no such thing as computation. This is what upsets me so much about your interpretation; you do not seem to understand that independence of any particular member of a class is not independence from the class.

    If we are going to consider notions of "shared states" then there has to be something that is "shared" and there has to be a plurality that is sharing. To take the universality of computations out of the functional equivalence of physical processes is to also leave behind the very definiteness that the physicality induces. Physical states are definite and "classical" because we share them, it is not the case that we share them because they are definite. This is what I have been trying to get you to see about the idea that numbers are "classical". It is a mistake to postulate such without explicitly admitting that to so such is an "act of faith" and not one that is based on actual facts.
    You are in fact using Bp&p reasoning about the truth of the Bp&p reasoning, how nicely vicious! ;-) I like this idea, but could you be honest about what you are doing?




The "matrix" image is more close to reality than a substantial reality, and this, by comp, explains where the physical reality comes from. To have a unique real universe, you need a non computationalist theory of mind, and nobody even try to present one.

    I agree with you here, but my reasoning is different. A non-computationalist theory of mind does not have to be one that denies that the specific content of any single experience (1-p) is Turing emulable, it could be a theory that shows how a sequence of 1-p content is not Turing computable without accounting for the specific means that the resources for the computation became available.

But this is like adding non necessary difficulties, because comp makes already sequences of 1_p non computable a priori, but defined statistically on infinities of computations.

    No no no no no! It is necessary, because we would just be assuming something is true without proof otherwise.





The weakening of the comp hypothesis does not suppress any "universes/dreams", on the contrary.

    I agree, but it does severely undermine the idea that the mere existence and a priori truth of formal sentences uniquely determines the content of those sentences.

What would mean "true", if it was not referring to some content of the proposition.

    And that, my dear friend, is the problem. You are assuming that truth is a distributive property. You are assuming that because the set of formal sentences that you can actually think of as true (because of some proofs) must be true, that the set of all formal sentences must have a definite truth value as well. This is the problem of induction hat David Deutsch rails against. Unless you have a means to specify what the content is, then you cannot assume that the content has a definite truth value. The mere possibility of being a number has such and such a value is not a "true statement" in the same sense as "1+1=2" is a true statement. Ambiguous definitions imply only ambiguous truth values.





A good analogy to this is seen in Shannon's theory of information; there is nothing that quantifies the particular meaningfulness of a message in the theory. It is only about the ability to recognize a signal as distinct from noise. This is the difference between a statistical notion and a non-statistical notion.

I am not sure that analogy could work. Private content is not in a sentences, or strings. It is in the working mind of a universal machine, relative to its more probable universal neighborhood. The universal beings are the creator and co-creator of sense.

    I agree with what you wrote here, but I was unclear in my sentence above. A nice illustration of the general idea that I am trying to discuss here with you. I will keep trying, I just wish that you could switch basis in your thinking a bit more. ;-)
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