George Levy:
>
>
>Jesse Mazer wrote:
>
>>Why, out of all possible experiences compatible with my existence, do I
>>only observe the ones that don't violate the assumption that the laws of
>>physics work the same way in all places and at all times?
>
>
>There are two kinds of white rabbits: microscopic and macroscopic.
>
>Microscopic white rabbits exist all around us. Particles popping in and out
>of the vacuum, particles being two places at the same time and so on.
In order to claim that these sorts of events are "white rabbits" you have to
say they're due to a sort of first-person uncertainty about the laws of
physics (because there are subjectively identical versions of you in
universes with slightly different rules), but I don't see why that should be
the case. The randomness at the quantum level follows very specific laws,
unless you have a measure on different possible laws I don't see how you
could derive the details of the statistical distributions from this
first-person uncertainty. Remember, the evolution of the wavefunction is
totally deterministic, it's only the mysterious measurement process that
introduces any randomness, with the probability of different outcomes equal
to the amplitude of the wavefunction squared. Why that probability
distribution as opposed to any other?
>Microscopic white rabbits obey statistical rules, distributions etc, which
>translate into very solid and reproducible macroscopic laws such as the
>second law of thermodynamics. Because of these solid macroscopic laws,
>macroscopic white rabbits are extremely rare.
>
>The macroscopic laws of physics are the same everywhere because mathematics
>(statistics) is the same everywhere.
But aside from thermodynamics, I don't think many other macroscopic laws can
be derived from statistics. How would you derive relativity from statistics,
for example? How about the particular distribution of photons hitting the
screen in the double-slit experiment--why aren't all possible distributions
equally likely, like the distribution of gas molecules in a container at
equilibrium?
Jesse
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Received on Fri Jan 09 2004 - 20:39:34 PST