= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Great Explanations - 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 (113)
I don't know how much actual understanding you have about these issues, but if you really believe you understand them in some "non-mathematical" way, you are fooling yourself. Considering that all these are prominent recurring themes from the LW sequences, if you have no independent knowledge of these areas as a solid foundation for your opinions about them, it is reasonable to conclude that you have let your enthusiasm for the underlying philosophy of these sequences lead you to an illusory "understanding" that is in reality sheer rationalization.
Now, I don't think one could even state a workable definition of the Copenhagen interpretation without a sizable mathematical background, so that your self-confident assertion that you "understand" that it's "probably incorrect" strikes me as absurd -- let alone your claim that your "non-mathematical understanding of contemporary physics allows [you] to see how the majority of scientists can be wrong" about these issues. (They may well be wrong, to be sure, but I don't think you have any real evidence either way.) And what are the "predictions about the world" that the supposed wrongness of Copenhagen enables you to make anyway?
As for your assertion about the implications of QM on the questions of personal identity, this looks even more as a belief that you've taken on faith, backed by sheer rationalizations. (Again, regardless of its actual merits when the real arguments are considered -- I'm not saying that it's incorrect, merely that you don't have any good reason to believe either way if your grasp of the issue is entirely non-mathematical.)
I should add that I have no formal background in physics, but I do have a decent background in math (nowadays sadly a bit rusty), and I have spent quite a bit of effort over the years trying to get an accurate basic understanding of the fundamental physical theories out of sheer intellectual curiosity. And while I have managed to get a basic grasp of relativity, I am still nowhere near having a clear intuitive understanding of the fundamentals of QM, despite having spent a lot of time trying to get it, and even though I can handle the math of Hilbert spaces, Schroedinger equations, etc. (And yes, among other things I have read the LW QM sequence too.) To me it seems inconceivable that someone could gain such understanding in a "non-mathematical" way, based only on pop-science books and the LW sequences.
Leaving aside for now the question of understanding of Copenhagen validity but as for the specific claim about knowing enough contemporary physics to understand the implications to personal identity your rejection is just nonsense. You most certainly can gain enough knowledge to make conclusions about personal identity without knowing math.
Ask an impressive physicist:
From there you have some utterly trivial philosophizing to do to reject ideas of "same atoms for personal identity". This is a trivial question and basically relies on not being philosophically incompetent while also checking with a physicist just in case some relevant, surprising and bizarre phenomenon has appeared recently at incomprehensibly high levels of physics.
The critical step however involves asking a physicist and accepting his opinion on authority. Such evidence is by no means invalid, to be sure, but it's something quite different from the original context, which was about understanding things yourself. (Plus, the weight of this evidence should be discounted due to the fact that the question is, strictly speaking, outside of the physicist's immediate domain of expertise, and dependent on issues that raise significant controversy.)