Dustin2 comments on Collapse Postulates - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 May 2008 07:49AM

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Comment author: Dustin2 10 May 2008 03:49:32AM 1 point [-]

You aren't paying attention. Theories make predictions, interpretations of theories do not. In any case, suppose we grant you your little maxim. Then, if we can't tell the difference between an interpretation which claims that wavefunctions and their collapses are real and one which explicitly claims that they are not real by experiment, they're equivalent. Your maxim has just given us that wavefunctions are metaphysically real if and only if they are not.

And, in any case, someone who reacts against metaphysical realism should also take the brain in the vat hypothesis seriously, and you have no grounds for saying that something which is measured in all ways to be like a duck is, metaphysically, a duck. And that's fine. I'd agree. But if you don't want to play metaphysics, don't. Don't claim that two different ontologies are equivalent when they clearly aren't. Just don't reify the physical model. Tell anyone who purports to have a reification of a physical theory that they're committing a fallacy of reification and be done with it. You can't have it both ways.