= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_Nesov comments on Why Many-Worlds Is Not The Rationally Favored Interpretation - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (98)
Theories are for a big part about insight, are tools for looking at the world, and simplicity is a major factor for their usability. What gets selected by usability doesn't necessarily give a good picture of truth.
Come on, you don't seriously believe that in physics simplicity always wins over correctness?
If you look at physicists, they work in both directions:
And physicists clearly distinguish between the above two.
Would you seriously believe that e.g. Kepler's model of planetary orbits survived rather than that of Ptolemy just because his was simpler or because it was closer to truth?
Nothing wins over (the necessary extent of) correctness, but what wins within correctness is simple not because simplicity is necessary for correctness, but because it's easier to work with (and often easier to find too).
There is a good rational reason why simpler theories are more probably true: they are less probably tuned for the already existing evidence.
For example: Even if Ptolemy's circles made predictions that were equally predictive within that era's achievable precision of measurement. Those circles were tailored for that specific situation. Even if Kepler's law was quite ad hoc, Its simplicity could indicate that it had more substance, since it was not tuned to the given evidence in such a cumbersome way.
Could you give an example of something simple that won over something equally correct, because it was easier to work with or find?
Special relativity, winning over the add-hoc rules of time dilation and length/mass transformations that were known beforehand (and essentially predicted the same thing).
Special relativity is an example of an equally correct theory winning over an earlier, somewhat entrenched theory, but I'm not sure how it won. When it first appeared, many people declared it obvious, some claiming that this was good, some bad. It was still unpopular when Einstein won the Nobel prize. One possibility is that it won because of his eminence, eg, because of the photo-electric effect, which is an extremely poor reason. The obvious answer is that it won because of GR. I guess that probably constitutes an example of winning because of usability.
I'm a little concerned about how we draw lines between theories, but I suppose that would apply to any answer to the question.
It was the best theory to explain the results of the Michaelson-Morley experiments.
Saying that relativity is "the best theory" is not very different from saying that it won. Stuart says that it won because it was simpler than Lorentz contractions. It was not widely believed to be the best theory in 1915. What happened between then and now? Was it obviously better and the old guard just had to die? Or did something else that happened, like the Nobel or GR change people's minds?
I'm not sure that Lorentz's transformations were more ad hoc than Einstein's, though Minkowski's were a definite improvement. If Einstein's principle lead to Minkowski's work, that's good, and meets Vladimir's usability criterion; and probably counts as simplicity.
Lorentz contractions are special relativity. My understanding was that Einstein's great role was unifying and putting under one roof the various add-hoc results.