The Multiverse is a deterministic framework for quantum mechanics. It
is completely compatible with it. A paradox can only occur if you
think the single world universe of our senses is deterministic - which
it clearly isn't.
My "definition" of free will is "the ability to do something
completely stupid" - ie related to irrationality. A perfectly rational
being would be completely deterministic, and in my mind has no free
will.
This certainly appears to be compatible with Conway's use of the
term. It is usual to equate the choice of measurement by the
experimenter as "free will". It is also certainly true that fixing the QM state
vector, as well as the choice of measurement does not determine the
outcome of the measurement. To say that the observed system has free
will in deciding the outcome of the experiment is certainly a
provocative way of putting it, but I think it is perfectly reasonable
to ask the question of why we use the term "free will" to refer to
conscious entities making indeterminate choices, and not for
non-conscious entities.
On an interesting segue on this matter is found in Roy Frieden's book
"Physics from Fisher Information", where he talks about measurement as
being a game in which the experimenter attempts expose as much
information as possible about reality, and reality attempts to hide
that information. The minimax principle this generates can be used to
derive all sorts of fundamental equations, including the Klein-Gordon
equation, a relativistic version of Schroedinger's equation.
Cheers
On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 01:30:00AM -0700, Pete Carlton wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I recently attended a talk here in Berkeley, California given by John
> Conway (of 'Game of Life' fame), in which he discussed some of his
> results with Simon Kochen, extending the Kochen-Specker paradox. He
> presents this as the "Free Will Theorem", saying basically that
> particles must have as much "free will" as the experimenters who are
> deciding which directions to measure the |spin| of a spin-1 particle
> in.
> --I would replace his words "free will" with "indeterminacy", but
> there is still an interesting paradox lurking there.
>
> A good online writeup is here:
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jas/one/freewill-theorem.html
>
> I wrote up my brief take on it, necessarily from a more philosophical
> angle, here:
> http://homepage.mac.com/pmcarlton/iblog/C1074759898/E263558720/
> index.html
> and here:
> http://homepage.mac.com/pmcarlton/iblog/C1074759898/E688049825/
> index.html.
>
> I have the intuition that a multiverse approach very readily dissolves
> his mystery, but am not quite sure how to formally work it out. I
> thought some people on this list might be interested, or have a ready
> answer in hand - in particular, I'd like to know if this 'paradox'
> really is a paradox in one or more of the multiverse conceptions
> discussed here.
>
> thanks and best regards,
> Pete
--
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Received on Thu Apr 07 2005 - 20:06:55 PDT