Re: Which universe are we in?

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:55:15 -0700

On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 03:13:48PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> -- "We don't yet know which world the cat is in, or which world we are
> in along with the cat, but in a few minutes we'll know for sure." (And
> everyone will agree on this...there will be no disagreement amongst
> honest observers as to whether got away or got caught by the dog.)

I'm afraid I don't quite see the point of this example. Maybe it's just a
matter of familiarity, but to me both the Baysian and the MWI ways of
thinking about this are more natural/easier to work with.

I should say that the Baysian and the MWI flavored descriptions are not
just different ways of saying the same thing. The Baysian is saything that
there is one outcome but he's not sure what it will be while the MWI-er is
saying both outcomes will happen. Notice that you can have a combination
of the two where you're not sure what proportion of branches each outcome
will occur in. How would the time-varying set way of thinking about this
handle the distinctions? I guess I don't see what's broken with Baysian
and MWI approaches that is fixed by this new concept.

Maybe I'll understand after reading one of the category theory books
(I've reserved Conceptual Mathematics from the library). However I have to
read Hartley Rogers's Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective
Computability first, so I hope you'll stay long enough for me to get to
it. :)
Received on Mon Jul 08 2002 - 22:55:51 PDT