Re: Time, Causality and all that

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:46:39 +0200

Le 21-oct.-06, à 21:52, Charles Goodwin wrote :


> [mailto:Fabric-of-Reality.domain.name.hidden] On Behalf Of Peter D
> Jones
>
>> The problem is not that there are no such resemblances in a
>> Multiverse, it is that ther are far too many. How does one
>> distinguishing "real" ones from "coincidental" ones. How does a Harry
>> Potter film differ from a documentary?
>
> The only way I know of that the MWI distinguishes these is that the
> "measure" of the "real ones" is Vastly larger than the "measure" of the
> rest. But that is just restating things.



Except, I would say that QM-without-collapse + decoherence theory
explains the measure of the real one is vaster than the measure of the
Harry-Potter (HP) stories, and, as DD said himself, why the probability
to remains in a Harry Potter story is negligible.

In a a-la-Feynman nutshell: QM entails a phase randomization making the
HP story amplitude of probabilities self-destroying.

But now, most presentation of QM-without collapse assumes the classical
turing emulability of the observer. Then, (it is my main point), it
remains to explain why we are not confronted with the classical HP
stories, which, at least at first sight, have purely additive
probabilities and no phase randomization to eliminate the HP one.

But then the high non triviality of the classical turing emulability of
the observer hypothesis (computationalism(*)), makes it possible to
justfify the appearance of physicalness.



  (*) which btw remains true in the Hamerov doctrine where the brain is
a quantum machine, comp is only false in Penrose doctrine where
consciousness is presupposed to be both physical and non turing
emulable.


Le 21-oct.-06, à 21:52, Bob Schott wrote:


> I actually adhere, just as a point of reference, to the
> consciousness-created interpretation of QM, which is also held by John
> Wheeler (or at least was the last I heard; he seems to change his mind
> often about such matters) and some other respected physicists. Like
> them, I have not as of yet fallen into the murky realm of idealism,
> but who knows. It would appear to quite nicely answer a multitude of
> seemingly perplexing questions, such as: How could insentient matter
> ever become conscious; ever feel? Does matter produce consciousness
> or visa versa? Is there really any fundamental proof for one over the
> other?

I think there are arguments showing that if we assume we are digital
machines then the theory of matter should be retrieved from computer
science/number theory/information theory. This makes the comp hyp
empirically testable.


Bruno


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


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Received on Sun Oct 22 2006 - 09:12:53 PDT

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