You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

raisin comments on Common sense quantum mechanics - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: dvasya 15 May 2014 08:10PM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (42)
Tags: probability science quantum

Comments (42)

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

Comment author: raisin 16 May 2014 12:48:56PM 0 points [-]

I agree that "This removes the whole problem of wavefunction collapse", but only in the minds of philosophers of physics and some misguided philosophically inclined physicists. This paper adds nothing to physics.

Is physics important to you in ways other than how well it corresponds to reality? Physics relies on testing and experiments, but if we have another kind of system - let's call it bayesianism - and we have a reason to believe this other kind of system corresponds better to reality even though it doesn't rely perfectly on testing and experimenting, would you reject that in favor of physics? Why?

Comment author: shminux 16 May 2014 02:34:37PM 0 points [-]

if we have another kind of system - let's call it bayesianism - and we have a reason to believe this other kind of system corresponds better to reality even though it doesn't rely perfectly on testing and experimenting, would you reject that in favor of physics? Why?

Replace "bayesianism" with "Christianity" in the above and answer your own question.

The moment a model of the world becomes disconnected from "testing and experimenting" it becomes a faith (or math, if you are lucky).

Comment author: dvasya 16 May 2014 04:30:31PM 0 points [-]

I guess one could argue that "bayesianism" (probability-as-logic) is testable practically and, indeed, well-tested by now. (But I still don't understand how raisin proposes to reject physics in favor of probability theory or vice versa.)

Comment author: raisin 16 May 2014 06:22:27PM 0 points [-]

But I still don't understand how raisin proposes to reject physics in favor of probability theory or vice versa.

Well, 'reject' was a bad word. Physics is fine for mostly everything. What I meant was that "bayesianism" could supplement physics in areas that are hard to test like MWI, parallel universes etc. Basically what Tegmark argues here.

Comment author: shminux 16 May 2014 04:55:59PM *  -1 points [-]

I guess one could argue that "bayesianism" (probability-as-logic) is testable practically and, indeed, well-tested by now.

Well, sure, the techniques based on Bayesian interpretations of probabilities (subjective or objective) work at least as well as frequentist (not EYish straw-frequentist, but actual frequentist, Kolmogorov-style), and sometimes better. And yeah, I have no idea what raisin is on about. Bayesianism is not an alternative to physics, just one of its mathematical tools.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit