Stuart_Armstrong comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 May 2007 06:36AM

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Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 02 May 2007 11:28:41AM 5 points [-]

that some properties by their very nature must take determinate values or not exist at all

This is not a scientific principle. Science lives or dies only on the accuracy of its predictions - probabilistic or deterministic. Don't be confused by the fact that pre-quantum, pre-thermodynamics laws were deterministic - that was just a lucky fact, that persuaded people that all laws had to be the same.

As for the "some properties", quantum mechanics asserts (and experiments back it up) that there is no such thing as position, or momentum - that the combination of the two is the actual property that exists.

As for the different interpretations of quantum mechanics - they're all equivalent, or they differ in ways we can't measure yet. So none of them on their own say anything about how we should view reality. Only the predictions of quantum mechanics tell us about reality, not the models.