Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical? - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 April 2008 07:06AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 April 2008 03:40:58AM 3 points [-]

Scott, I can't imagine any possible overthrow of QM that would resurrect the idea of two electrons having distinct individual identities.

Suppose we discovered our universe was being simulated on a classical computer. Then, at the fundamental level, there would be particles with individual identities. But the "electrons" we see today, would still be computed as amplitude flows between simulated configurations - they would not have identity as fundamental particles.

It wouldn't be enough to discover something new underneath QM - discover a new level transition, even if it was a transition to a classical level. That wouldn't do the trick.

You'd need something that threw out our existing, very-highly-tested knowledge about an already-known level transition between already-understood levels of organization. We already know how the illusion of an "individual electron" arises from approximate independence in an amplitude distribution over a joint configuration space.

Undiscovering this would be like undiscovering that atoms were made out of nucleons and electrons.

It's in this sense that I say that the observed universe would have to be a lie.