Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 August 2012 11:38:39PM 5 points [-]

There were plenty of physicists reading those posts when they first came out on OB (the most famous name being Scott Aaronson). Some later readers have indeed asserted that there's a problem involving a physically wrong factor of i in the first couple of posts (i.e. that's allegedly not what a half-silvered mirror does to the phase in real life), which I haven't yet corrected because I would need to verify with a trusted physicist that this was correct, and then possibly craft new illustrations instead of using the ones I found online, and this would take up too much time relative to the point that talking about a phase change of -1 instead of i so as to be faithful to real-world mirrors is an essentially trivial quibble which has no effect on any larger points. If anyone else wants to rejigger the illustration or the explanation so that it flows correctly, and get Scott Aaronson or another known trusted physicist to verify it, I'll be happy to accept the correction.

Aside from that, real physicists haven't objected to any of the math, which I'm actually pretty darned proud of considering that I am not a physicist.

Comment author: CarlShulman 07 August 2012 02:17:34AM 16 points [-]

There were plenty of physicists reading those posts when they first came out on OB (the most famous name being Scott Aaronson)

As Scott keeps saying, he's not a physicist! He's a theoretical computer scientist with a focus on quantum computing. He clearly has very relevant expertise, but you should get his field right.

Comment author: Quantumental 08 August 2012 12:00:15PM 3 points [-]

I still wonder why you haven't written a update in 4 years regarding this topic. Especially in regards to the Born Rule probability not having a solution yet + the other problems.

You also have the issue of overlap vs non-overlapping of worlds, which again is a relevant issue in the Many Worlds interpretation. Overlap = the typical 1 world branching into 2 worlds. Non-overlap = 2 identical worlds diverging (Saunders 2010, Wilson 2005-present)

Also I feel like the QM sequence is a bit incomplete when you do not give any thought to things like Gerard 't Hoofts proposal of a local deterministic reality giving rise to quantum mechanics from a cellular automaton at the planck scale? It's misleading to say the MWI is "a slam dunk" winner when there are so many unanswered questions. Mitchell Porter is one of the few persons here who seem to have a deep understanding of the subject before reading your sequence, so he has raised some interesting points...