Mitchell_Porter comments on Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable - Less Wrong
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Comments (34)
I agree that he didn't show testable, but rather the possibility of it (and the formalization of it).
There's a problem with choosing the language for Solomonoff/MML, so the index's goodness can be debated. However, I think in general index is sound.
I don't think he's saying that theories fundamentally have probabilities. Rather, as a Bayesian, he gives some priors to each theory. As more evidences accumulate, the right theory will update and its probability approaches 1.
The reason human understanding can't be part of the equations is, as EY says, shorter "programs" are more likely to govern the universe than longer "programs," essentially because these "programs" are more likely to be written if you throw down some random bits to make a program that governs the universe.
So I don't buy your arguments in the next section.
EY is comparing the angel explanation with the galaxies explanation; you are supposed to reject the angels and usher in the galaxies. In that case, the anticipations are truly the same. You can't really prove whether there are angels.
What do you mean by "good"? Which one is "better" out of 2 models that give the same prediction? (By "model" I assume you mean "theory")
You admit that Copenhagen is unsatisfactory but it is useful for education. I don't see any reason not to teach MWI in the same vein.
If indeed the expectation value of observable V of mercury is X but we observe Y with Y not= X (that is to say that the variance of V is nonzero), then there isn't a determinate formula for predict V exactly in your first Newton/random formula scenario. At the same time, someone who has the Copenhagen interpretation would have the same expectation value X, but instead of saying there's another world he says there's a wave function collapse. I still think that the parallel world is a deduced result from universal wave function, superposition, decoherence, and etc that Copenhagen also recognizes. So the Copenhagen view essentially say "actually, even though the equations say there's another world, there is none, and on top of that we are gonna tell you how this collapsing business works". This extra sentence is what causes the Razor to favor MWI.
Much of what you are arguing seems to stem from your dissatisfaction of the formalization of Occam's Razor. Do you still feel that we should favor something like human understanding of a theory over the probability of a theory being true based on its length?
Because it sets people up to think that QM can be understood in terms of wavefunctions that exist and contain parallel realities; yet when the time comes to calculate anything, you have to go back to Copenhagen and employ the Born rule.
Also, real physics is about operator algebras of observables. Again, this is something you don't get from pure Schrodinger dynamics.
QM should be taught in the Copenhagen framework, and then there should be some review of proposed ontologies and their problems.