DanArmak comments on The Dilemma: Science or Bayes? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 May 2008 08:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (185)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: chaosmosis 04 May 2012 03:11:27AM *  0 points [-]

That's exactly what I'm saying here. Believing in many worlds doesn't pay its rent. It also doesn't match Bayes or Occam's Razor. I agree that it doesn't make sense to privilege either their existence or their nonexistence, that's exactly what I was contending in the grandparent, that is why I said it doesn't make sense to say that "it's more probable that [they] exist than that they don't".

You're confusing my position for the one that I am attacking. Now, of course, I might be mistaken about what EY is saying and actually many worlds has other evidence than an appeal to Bayes Theorem or to Occam's Razor. But I don't think so. I even believe that one of the quantum mechanics posts explicitly concedes that due to the nature of many worlds theory it is not falsifiable.

Comment author: DanArmak 04 May 2012 11:47:54AM 4 points [-]

I favor the "shut up and calculate" school, which says any interpretations that don't make actual predictions are both unnecessary and harmful.

Certainly, if you have to choose an "interpretation" and tell stories about other universes we can't interact with, MWI is better than collapse, for the reasons Eliezer gives. But I don't think we should have either of them.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to privilege either their existence or their nonexistence

It's not a matter of privileging. Existence is not an applicable predicate. It's not that we don't know whether they exist. Just as other universes are neither sweet nor sour, neither happy nor sad, they neither exist nor not-exist.

Comment author: chaosmosis 04 May 2012 01:02:03PM *  0 points [-]

I mean the same things that you do, I'm just using different words to try to express them.

I agree that "existence is not an applicable predicate", I was just trying to roughly express what my thoughts were.