On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 GSLevy.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> Forgive me Jacques for trying to interpret your point of view (I may be
> wrong), but I think that Jacques insistance on the absolutism of measure, the
> certain loss of measure in case of QS, the absolute compartementalization of
> consciousness within worlds and the unquestionable linkage of a particular
> consciousness to a particular world led me to think that he does not accept
> the Leibnitzian identity principle (LIP?), (He does not pay LIP service :-)
> ) whereas others in our group do.
I do not pay LIP service. In addition I do not know the
definition of the LIP claim.
If a claim is made that there is no distinction between a world in
which observation 1 has more measure than observation 2, and a world in
which they have equal measure, then that claim is trivially disproven
(in an effectively, but not actually, statistical sense) by (e.g.) the
fact that the quantum probabilities are not equal for all outcomes.
If the LIP claims that only things that at least one observer can
observe are real, then it includes the above claim because no one can
observe the measure distribution directly. So either it would be
disproven, or its supporters must claim that the appearance of |psi|^2
probabilities is just a meaningless fluke.
Basically the ideas associated with the LIP tend to deny the
existance of a real world independent of observations, much as some
supporters of the Copenhagen interpretation do.
Regarding the original dispute between Newton and Liebnitz, at
first it seemed that Newton's ideas of an absolute world won the battle
for acceptance. However when the theory of relativity came along, and
even more so when QM came along, the situation was reversed. Personally I
see the MWI and computationalism as continuing the tradition of Newton.
Maybe, even, to the extent of having a real coordinate system. You know,
absolute space and time, as far out of favor though that is. (BTW, even
if the universe is a numerical simulation, note that you must pick a
coordinate system in order to run such a simulation. 'Course, you could
have many sims in all possible coordinate sytems, but that makes no
difference.)
It can't be denied that the insistance on the dependable reality
of only observable quantities has been fruitful in physics; namely, in GR
and in the importance of gauge invariance in QFT. However I don't think
this is very meaningful. "Observable" must itself be defined in terms of
(for example) a computationalist theory, which maps a system (possessing,
in general, more quantities than can be observed) to observations. Adding
the AUH does not change that.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Fri Oct 15 1999 - 18:56:33 PDT