Scott_Aaronson2 comments on Quantum Explanations - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 April 2008 08:15AM

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Comment author: Scott_Aaronson2 10 April 2008 03:13:23AM 2 points [-]

When I talk about quantum mechanics, I am of course using words and stating my beliefs; but those words and beliefs refer directly to the territory, they are not about my or anyone else's knowledge ... Saying, "This coin has a 50% probability of landing heads", rather than "I assign 50% probability to the coin landing heads", is technically (though rather nitpickingly) a mind projection fallacy; you are talking about your beliefs as if they were directly in the coin.

The fun part, of course, will be to see how you handle mixed states, where the "map" and the "territory" get scrambled together into a non-uniquely-decomposable linear-algebraic soup...