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No Soup for You! Only one reality.

That just scratches the surface. You are attributing something unique to 'science' that is more common then you might think.

If you remember the Beach Boys. Their composer Brian Wilson said he had his piano at home in a large sandbox for inspiration .When writing songs he saw the notes in the air in front of him.


It is like you worship your image of science and scientists.

AE was a party animal of his day. He liked to eat, drink, smoke cigars, and hob knob with his peers.

IOW a flesh and blood human being.
 
Swammerdami said:
Three things occurred to me as I browsed this thread:

(1)
pood said:
... if confronted with a choice between Pepsi and Coke, according to the Born Rule the chance of one or the other emerging is 50/50....
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How do you figure that? Probabilities of bifurcations (per the "Born Rule") can be 80-20 or 99-1 or whatever. What's special about 50-50?
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In "normal" QM, nothing special. In MWI, when you repeat the experiment many times, after 2^N bifurcations, there are more universes where half the particles were spin-up and half were spin-down than ones with any other proportion.

This leads to a follow-up question: In a Many Worlds Interpretation both branches of a bifurcation lead to equally real realities. In that case what does a lop-sided bifurcation probability even mean? If the 99% branch and 1% branch of a bifurcation are both instantiated, then what do those probabilities even mean?

This seems like an argument AGAINST that version of Multi Worlds. Has that argument ever been made?
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Yes, David Bohm cited it as a reason to reject MWI in favor of pilot-wave theory. (Not original with Bohm, but I forget the name of the guy he credited the argument to.)
 
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steve_bank said:
That just scratches the surface. You are attributing something unique to 'science' that is more common then you might think.

If you remember the Beach Boys. Their composer Brian Wilson said he had his piano at home in a large sandbox for inspiration .When writing songs he saw the notes in the air in front of him.


It is like you worship your image of science and scientists.

AE was a party animal of his day. He liked to eat, drink, smoke cigars, and hob knob with his peers.

IOW a flesh and blood human being.
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And here I thought it was your opinion that anyone with a degree is an "ivory tower academic" who has no idea what real life is like. How on earth did Albert slip by the censors? 🙄
 
I think this thread is slipping of the rails. The latest content, I would suggest, belongs more in the Why Science Needs Philosophy thread.
 
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
 
Politesse said:
steve_bank said:
That just scratches the surface. You are attributing something unique to 'science' that is more common then you might think.

If you remember the Beach Boys. Their composer Brian Wilson said he had his piano at home in a large sandbox for inspiration .When writing songs he saw the notes in the air in front of him.


It is like you worship your image of science and scientists.

AE was a party animal of his day. He liked to eat, drink, smoke cigars, and hob knob with his peers.

IOW a flesh and blood human being.
Click to expand...
And here I thought it was your opinion that anyone with a degree is an "ivory tower academic" who has no idea what real life is like. How on earth did Albert slip by the censors? 🙄
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Don't think I said that. Some do seem to live in an intellectual bubble. I did say I thought based on your posts you seem to be out of touch with people outside your bubble. You probably self segrate. WEeo to some degree.

Looking through rose colored glasses so to speak.


A physicist I worked with was into amateur sports car rang and road rallys.

Another physicist I knewin the 80s was into guns, he gave some of his hand loaded ammunition.

AE had his eccentricities.
 
Elixir said:
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
Click to expand...

The formalism has never allowed for that possibility. It happens only in sci-fi.
 
pood said:
Swammerdami said:
(3) I have become almost a believer in  Quantum immortality -- another idea from Max Tegmark. (It is annoying that Wikipedia's bundles this with Quantum suicide, NOT a prerequisite for the Immortality.)
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Quantum suicide is a thought experiment to test for quantum immortality. You can test it yourself if you are brave enough, which you will be only if you are absolutely convinced that MWI is true, which of course no one knows.
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Depends on what constitutes a decision.
 
Apparently all possibilities/probabilities are realized, where the world splits into multiple alternate events. If so, who or what is the decision maker? Why this particular event in this universe and countless different versions in every other timeline? Each version with their own splits, ad infinitum.
 
pood said:
Elixir said:
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
Click to expand...

The formalism has never allowed for that possibility. It happens only in sci-fi.
Click to expand...
This appears to be a lay translation of the formal disallowance.
 
Elixir said:
pood said:
Elixir said:
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
Click to expand...

The formalism has never allowed for that possibility. It happens only in sci-fi.
Click to expand...
This appears to be a lay translation of the formal disallowance.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean. The many worlds interpretation has always ruled out, by its very structure or formalism, any form of contact between these branching worlds. That is not a “lay translation,” that is just how the metatheory goes.
 
pood said:
Elixir said:
pood said:
Elixir said:
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
Click to expand...

The formalism has never allowed for that possibility. It happens only in sci-fi.
Click to expand...
This appears to be a lay translation of the formal disallowance.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean. The many worlds interpretation has always ruled out, by its very structure or formalism, any form of contact between these branching worlds. That is not a “lay translation,” that is just how the metatheory goes.
Click to expand...
SciFi frequently uses a similar concept, in which the act of time travel necessarily causes (possibly, but not necessarily, by means of selecting different quantum choices) the formation of another timeline (or perhaps moves the time traveller(s) into such a timeline that already existed).

While this is superficially much the same as the MWI, there is no reason to believe it is the same thing (unless the Word of God - ie, the author of a given work - explicitly says it is).

Back to the Future certainly does this; Marty McFly changes the past, moves forward to a new future caused by the changes, and then goes back and "fixes" the past, and moves forward yet again to yet another new future. The dystopian world where Biff runs casinos and has become the ruler of everything still exists; By "fixing" things so that Biff doesn't get the Sports Almanac after all, Marty saves himself by moving into a future in which Biff never got the Almanac, but does nothing for anyone else trapped in the dystopian future, which apparently still exists alongside a number of "happy ending" futures.

My point being that, as this is all speculation, anything goes. We can write whatever stories we like. If QM rules out something we would like to include in our narrative, we can just invent a MacGuffin that allows us to travel to an alternate leg of the trousers of spacetime, where QM doesn't rule out that plot device.

Sure, the MWI metatheory may not allow it; But that just means we need another metatheory that does.

Fiction is fun. It's probably not real, though. Probably.
 
bilby said:
pood said:
Elixir said:
pood said:
Elixir said:
Anyhow, the point is, there will be no "tunneling into another universe", no visitors "from another dimension" etc.,
EVEN IF THEY EXIST
So FAPP, fuggedaboudit.
Click to expand...

The formalism has never allowed for that possibility. It happens only in sci-fi.
Click to expand...
This appears to be a lay translation of the formal disallowance.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean. The many worlds interpretation has always ruled out, by its very structure or formalism, any form of contact between these branching worlds. That is not a “lay translation,” that is just how the metatheory goes.
Click to expand...
SciFi frequently uses a similar concept, in which the act of time travel necessarily causes (possibly, but not necessarily, by means of selecting different quantum choices) the formation of another timeline (or perhaps moves the time traveller(s) into such a timeline that already existed).

While this is superficially much the same as the MWI, there is no reason to believe it is the same thing (unless the Word of God - ie, the author of a given work - explicitly says it is).

Back to the Future certainly does this; Marty McFly changes the past, moves forward to a new future caused by the changes, and then goes back and "fixes" the past, and moves forward yet again to yet another new future. The dystopian world where Biff runs casinos and has become the ruler of everything still exists; By "fixing" things so that Biff doesn't get the Sports Almanac after all, Marty saves himself by moving into a future in which Biff never got the Almanac, but does nothing for anyone else trapped in the dystopian future, which apparently still exists alongside a number of "happy ending" futures.

My point being that, as this is all speculation, anything goes. We can write whatever stories we like. If QM rules out something we would like to include in our narrative, we can just invent a MacGuffin that allows us to travel to an alternate leg of the trousers of spacetime, where QM doesn't rule out that plot device.

Sure, the MWI metatheory may not allow it; But that just means we need another metatheory that does.

Fiction is fun. It's probably not real, though. Probably.
Click to expand...

Quite right, I’m a big fan of sci-fi and the multiverse trope is commonly used now. It is interesting to speculate about backward time travel, but without invoking any multiverse. It is logically possible, and perhaps even physically possible (closed time-like curves, for example) to travel to the past. We’d have to ask though, whether — given one time line only — it is possible to travel to the past, AND change the past. The answer, as a matter of logic, turns out to be NO.

So if we ever get backward time travel and want to “change” the past, we’d have to hope alternative time lines exist. But even in those cases, NOTHING is actually changed, by traveling to the past. The alternative time lines were ALWAY there. because even before a putative time traveler climbs into his time machine to “change” the past by making an alternative time line, he ALREADY did so.

The upshot is that it would be impossible to change anything about the past even if you had a time machine. And that’s true whether alternative time lines exist or not.
 
Interestingly, the perhaps fanciful discussion of time travel to the past is yet another case where science and philosophy intersect and cannot be pulled apart. Metaphysics obviously informs science (and vice versa), but in this case another branch of philosophy, logic, comes to the fore. If scientists ever invent a time machine with the intention of going back in time to kill HItler before he was born, the logicians step in and explain why it can’t be done. It can’t be done very simply due to the fact that because Hitler was in fact born and did in fact start World War II, it is logically guaranteed that you did not kill him before he was born, because had you done so, history would have already been completely different. But it’s not.
 
And, as I think along these lines, here is yet another branch of philosophy that informs science: ethics. It’s encapsulated in the movie Jurassic Park when one of the characters asks something to the effect of, “Just because you CAN do something, SHOULD you?”

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, you could travel to the past and change it. You can’t as a matter of logic, but let’s suppose you could just for the sake of introducing ethics to science.

In Steven King’s novel 11/22/63, a grand of piece of entertainment with a totally absurd premise, the protagonist does indeed go back in time and change history by saving JFK from being shot. (There was a great streaming series based on the novel, too.)

The working premise was that if JFK had lived, he never would have gotten the U.S. involved in the Vietnam War (a highly debatable proposition) and thus some 57,000 American lives would have been saved. The future would have been better.

But there is a serious ethical problem here. In 1964, four milllion babies were born in the United States. It was the peak year of the so-called postwar Baby Booom.

How many of those do you think were born in August of 1964? Probably a lot more than 57,000.

Why is that important? Because after JFK was shot, there was a baby boomlet! People were having sex to get over the sadness of JFK dying, and nine months later more babies were born than would have been expected otherwise.

Which means, of course, that if you really could travel back in time and save JFK, you’d cancel that baby boomlet, with the result that a LOT more people who would have been born otherwise, weren’t, than died fighting in Vietnam. IOW, assuming no Vietnam War if JFK had lived, you, by saving JFK, just cancelled more lives than you saved.
 
Trying to split apart science and philosophy is like trying to split a quark: Can’t be done.
 
pood said:
And, as I think along these lines, here is yet another branch of philosophy that informs science: ethics. It’s encapsulated in the movie Jurassic Park when one of the characters asks something to the effect of, “Just because you CAN do something, SHOULD you?”

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, you could travel to the past and change it. You can’t as a matter of logic, but let’s suppose you could just for the sake of introducing ethics to science.

In Steven King’s novel 11/22/63, a grand of piece of entertainment with a totally absurd premise, the protagonist does indeed go back in time and change history by saving JFK from being shot. (There was a great streaming series based on the novel, too.)

The working premise was that if JFK had lived, he never would have gotten the U.S. involved in the Vietnam War (a highly debatable proposition) and thus some 57,000 American lives would have been saved. The future would have been better.

But there is a serious ethical problem here. In 1964, four milllion babies were born in the United States. It was the peak year of the so-called postwar Baby Booom.

How many of those do you think were born in August of 1964? Probably a lot more than 57,000.

Why is that important? Because after JFK was shot, there was a baby boomlet! People were having sex to get over the sadness of JFK dying, and nine months later more babies were born than would have been expected otherwise.

Which means, of course, that if you really could travel back in time and save JFK, you’d cancel that baby boomlet, with the result that a LOT more people who would have been born otherwise, weren’t, than died fighting in Vietnam. IOW, assuming no Vietnam War if JFK had lived, you, by saving JFK, just cancelled more lives than you saved.
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Good. As long as I wasn’t cancelled!
We have plenty of people.
 
Pood has trouble separating science from scifi.

One way to judge is to ask if it is testable. Wren String Theory was published some considered it philosophy because there was no way to test it.

Mathematically I can create a passive ideal capacitor inductor circuit that when excited will oscillate forever with no decay. Ideal meaning no resistance and no losses. It is mathematically correct and follows circuit theory, but it violates LOT and can never be physically constructed.

So, one can create any number of mathematical cosmologies that are mathematically and locally correct.

Pood, I am a Baby Boomer. The baby boom began in the 50s post war.

Pood, ethics apples to all not just those in science. I had a class in ethics and it was useful.

Have you ever been in a situation when your ethics was challenged and doing the right thing could have negative consequences for you? Or are ethics and philosophy just words in a debate for you?
 
steve_bank said:
Pood has trouble separating science from scifi.

One way to judge is to ask if it is testable. Wren String Theory was published some considered it philosophy because there was no way to test it.

Mathematically I can create a passive ideal capacitor inductor circuit that when excited will oscillate forever with no decay. Ideal meaning no resistance and no losses. It is mathematically correct and follows circuit theory, but it violates LOT and can never be physically constructed.

So, one can create any number of mathematical cosmologies that are mathematically and locally correct.

Pood, I am a Baby Boomer. The baby boom began in the 50s post war.

Pood, ethics apples to all not just those in science. I had a class in ethics and it was useful.

Have you ever been in a situation when your ethics was challenged and doing the right thing could have negative consequences for you? Or are ethics and philosophy just words in a debate for you?
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I have trouble separating science from sci-fi? You mean where like I told Elixir that nothing in the MWI interpretation of QM permits inter-world travel, that this happens only in science fiction?

I mean, can you read OK?

Yes, ethics applies to all, Steve. No shit! But that includes science. and ethics is a branch of PHILOSOPHY. Remember you have been telling us that philosophy has nothing to do with science? I guess you just contradicted yourself, didn’t you?

Does logic apply to science, Steve? Logic is a branch of PHILOSOPHY.

Does metaphysics apply to science, Steve? Did you read the underdetermination paper I linked? No, you did not, did you?

Should you happen to read it, you will discover how wrong you are, unless you choose to be willfully ignorant.

Also, your comments are a thread derailment.
 
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