Thanks Russell, for the testimony for our not being
omniscient.
I concur with Hal in his assumption that recent-day
physics is "close-to-right" - because it is within the
model-view of what we identified (over centuries) as
the "physical view of the world" strictly within our
actual (and continually growing) cognitive inventory
of our epistemic enrichment. Within this *model-view*
our "model-view" is (close to) right.
That has nothing to do with the totality from which it
has been cut out.
And whatever we conclude is within our human logic and
mindset (my post to Bruno forwarded to the list).
John M
--- Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 09:03:21PM -0800, "Hal
> Finney" wrote:
> >
> > I don't think most of our versions of multiverse
> theories depend on the
> > assumption that present-day physics is close to
> being right. It's true
> > that we have some efforts such as those of Russell
> Standish to derive QM
> > from a multiverse model, but (no offense to
> Russell) I don't think most
> > of us have found those very convincing. If it
> should turn out that QM
> > is not right, is only an approximation to a deeper
> theory, I don't think
> > that would be seen as invalidating any of our
> models.
>
> Lack of convincing is perhaps due to lack of
> understanding. Even I do
> not fully understand the true worth of my
> "derivation". It seems to me
> that I show that any physical theory that takes into
> account
> observation must have that Hilbert space structure,
> with that form of
> the Born rule. Yet there may well be special
> conditions that nobody
> has yet spotted that limit the claims. OTH, it
> cannot produce
> something like the classic Schroedinger equation for
> the hydrogen
> atom, which as we know must be strictly false as it
> ignores
> relativistic effects.
>
> I do not know how profound my result is - perhaps it
> is a trifle, but
> it seems interesting. AFAIK, none of the proposed
> quantum gravity
> theories like string theory, or quantum loops
> contradict the results I
> get, but it remains a testable prediction that if
> some form of physics
> is found that transcends and contradicts what we
> presently know of as
> QM, then some aspect my theory will need to be
> thrown out. Which of
> the big ideas would you choose to reject:
> Multiverse, Algorithmic
> information, Anthropic selection or Darwinian
> evolution? Hmm let us
> see...
>
> --
> *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment
> to my email, which
> is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry,
> it is not a
> virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be
> used to verify this
> email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed.
> Otherwise, you
> may safely ignore this attachment.
>
>
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Received on Thu Nov 03 2005 - 11:20:45 PST