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timtyler comments on What I've learned from Less Wrong - Less Wrong
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Comments (232)
I enjoyed the post (enough for a vote up!) but I find myself wishing it had stopped at #5.
6 is mostly correct but has significant edge cases (even if you subscribe to MWI, probabilities pop up when dealing with tiny things). Something like "Probabilities exist in minds" is a much more agreeable statement than "Probabilities don't exist elsewhere," and has the same framing benefits.
7 just flat out bothers me. Many Worlds is just an interpretation, a flavor- it shares the exact same math with all other flavors of quantum mechanics. I agree with Eliezer that it's a far more agreeable flavor than Copenhagen- but those aren't the only two flavors available. And if you are making predictions based on your flavor preferences, something went wrong somewhere. I cannot see how your tastes when it comes to QM should impact whether or not you sign up for cryonics with the currently existing firms offering cryonic services.
It isn't according to The Everett FAQ's: Q16 Is many-worlds (just) an interpretation?
Have you read that and considered it convincing?
They use four supports, all of which collapse under examination (I don't number them the way they do, because they seem confused about what are separate supports):
They list three predictions made MWI, all of which are already disproved or nonsense:
If memory is reversible, it's not memory because thermodynamic fluctuations make it unreliable. Beyond that confusion, the crux of this argument is whether or not a spin measurement can be reversed- if so, it should work for any flavor, and not depend on whether or not you also erase what's in memory.
Their discussion of quantum gravity serves to make MWI not more plausible, as it supposedly requires quantum gravity, while other flavors function whether gravity is quantum or classical.
Their discussion of linearity is flat-out bizarre. Paraphrased: 'We're pretty damn sure that QM is linear, but if it weren't and MWI were true, aliens would have teleported to our dimension, and that hasn't happened yet.' Why they think that is evidence for MWI is beyond me- using Bayesian logic, it strictly cannot increase the probability of MWI.
I don't think the intention was to offer these as evidence for MWI. The evidence for MWI is that it has one less postulate (and therefore is "simpler"). They're just showing what MWI rules out. That these predictions are different correctly justifies saying "MWI is not just an interpretation".
It is best not to use quotation marks - unless you are actually quoting - or otherwise make it very clear what you are doing. The resulting self-sabotage is too dramatic.
I read that - and your incorrect comments about reversible memory - and concluded that you didn't know what you were talking about.
At your suggestion, I've revised my comment to make clear that I'm paraphrasing my interpretation of their comment instead of quoting it directly.
I was least sure about my reversible memory objection, and was considering placing a disclaimer on it; however, I feel I should stand by it unless given evidence that my understanding of information entropy is incorrect. My statement is in accord with Landauer's Principle, which I see is not known to be true (but is very strongly suspected to be). There appears to be a fundamental limit that their trend is bucking up against, and so I feel confident saying the trend will not continue as they need it to.
Even if we shelve the discussion of whether or not memory can be reversible, the other objection- that any process which reverses a measurement can be understood by both MWI and Copenhagen- demolishes the usefulness of such an experiment, as none of the testable predictions differ between the two interpretations.
If it helps, this seems relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing
Landauer's Principle doesn't seem particularly relevant - since in reversible computing there is no erasure of information.
I don't see the relevance- the description of the experiment linked purports to hinge on the reversibility of information erasure. It sounds like both of us agree that's impossible.
(It actually hinges on whatever steps they take to 'reverse' the measurement they take, which is why it's not an effective experiment.)
It seems relevant to the comment that "if memory is reversible, it's not memory". Reversible computers have reversible memory.
Reversible computer designs people actually consider building do a small bit of irreversible computation copying end results of the reversible computations into irreversible memory before rolling back the reversible computation. Perfectly reversible computations are a bit useless since they erase their results when they start rolling backwards.
You can erase some of their results without erasing others, of course.
Nobody says you have to run a reversible computer backwards.
A big part of the point is to digitise heat sinks and power management. For details about that, see here.