Problem of Induction

[Anonymous No.6352367]

so how have you faggots answered the problem of induction?

or have you not, and has all your science been a waste

>inb4 not science
induction is the very basis for science, if you don't have a proper solution to this problem then you have no business doing science

[Anonymous No.6352376]

>has all your science been a waste

The shear volume of scientific knowledge required to allow you to post that half-baked thought voices a clear "No".

[Anonymous No.6352390]

>>6352376
it's allowed me to post this thread now, but how are you sure it will continue to let me post threads

[Anonymous No.6352407]

>>6352367
>induction

Given how the universe is non-deterministic, it cannot be answered.

[Anonymous No.6352431]

>>6352390
Let's experiment and see.

[Anonymous No.6353146]

There is no problem with induction. The problem is with philosophy. Philosophy (as it relates to induction) has a hidden assumption that the universe owes humanity a 100% reliable way of knowing... Universe says no. Induction: It works bitches (as least good as and usually better than anything else we have)

[Anonymous No.6353168]

Captcha and Mods have shown me that I can only probabilistically determine my ability to post.

[Anonymous No.6353184]

>>6352367
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma
>The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other (i.e. we repeat ourselves at some point)
>The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum (i.e. we just keep giving proofs, presumably forever)
>The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts (i.e. we reach some bedrock assumption or certainty)

Take your pick Mr. Hume.

[Anonymous No.6353181]

>>6352367
Actually, neither.

[Anonymous No.6353206]

>>6352367
yes

1: try to accomplish something that would be impossible unless the science works
2: if you see before your very eyes that this thing works then your inductions are as certain as can be for a human

This is why it is important to go to the moon and shit, for science.

[Anonymous No.6353212]

>>6353206
>1: try to accomplish something that would be impossible unless the science works
the problem of induction is that you have no guarantee it will work next time even if you just did it successfully

[Anonymous No.6353260]

>>6353212
Lift up a pencil, drop it and if there are no magnets or magician's tricks it will fall.

If you agree, then you agree that humans can achieve reasonably high standards of proof and that accomplishments and demonstrations of things that would only be possible if a scientific theory is true are ways of bringing standards of proof out of the laboratory and into plain view.

If you disagree, then your argument is a 2edgy4u philosophical quibble about whether there is such a thing as absolute certainty or not.

[Anonymous No.6353285]

>>6353260
>the basic foundations of scientific inquiry are edgy
if this is your idea of rigor i sincerely hope you never set foot near a laboratory

[Anonymous No.6353375]

>>6352407
>Given how the universe is non-deterministic
OH GOD THAT'S A GOOD ONE, ANON, HAHAHAHAHAHAH

[Anonymous No.6353376]

>>6353146
No. Philosophical empiricists have that assumption. This is why rationalists are the master race.

[Anonymous No.6353381]

>>6353375
he's right. universe is not deterministic at all. learn some fucking QM.

philosophers just can't fucking deal with uncertainty. as soon as they are confronted with it, they keep yelling "you can't know nuffin"

philosophy is what atheists who need religion study.

[Anonymous No.6353384]

>>6352367
You're an idiot.

[Anonymous No.6353389]

>>6353212
Except all our experience of the world says otherwise. If you do something a few times and get a consistent result, most likely you will get the same result on consecutive attempts. And if you don't, then it most likely means something has changed.

Philosophy is all well and good, but when it starts to deny the validity of experience and the scientific method, you know that there are Liberals and feminists behind it.

[Anonymous No.6353390]

>>6352367
Essentialism. The process that a thing is a part of defines what a thing essentially is as an individual thing. Aristotle solved the damn problem when he posed a 'problem of accidents', which was more or less the same as the problem of induction. But alas, we cannot read Aristotle because of his silly observations in the natural sciences!

[Anonymous No.6353409]

Science doesn't have a problem with induction because it doesn't make truth claims about any of its theories or laws. It's truth claims are about observations and measurements. The reliability of our repeated observations and measurements is an axiom. Those observations and measurements severely limit the possible theories and laws that can possibly make reliable predictions, and increasingly so as we find new ways to make observations and measurements. We dabble in that field of possibly reliable theories and laws without claiming any of them are "true".

[Anonymous No.6353410]

Science is not empiricism. The scientific method is a closed system that utilizes induction.

Scientists understand the empirical by way of induction. Scientists do not understand induction by way of the empirical. You may as well question the axioms of mathematics or your own existence. Now, I think there are ways of asking such hard questions, just not with an empirical approach. Experience must be subject to something or no sense is to be made of it. Whether your apparatus be induction, deduction or art is up to you.

[Anonymous No.6353420]

>>6353390
>>6352367

Aristotle on induction, stolen from guy on yahoo:

Aristotle and Plato differed from Hume and the other so-called "British Empiricists" in that both Plato and Aristotle distinguished sensitive from intellectual powers. None of the British Empiricists correctly made that distinction.

Any EMPIRICIST, whether a scientific empiricist like Aristotle, or Joseph Priestly (oxygen's discoverer), or Louis Pasteur or any of the 3 so-called British Empiricists believes that all knowledge originates with the senses. That's what is common to Aristotle, other scientific empiricists and to the British empiricists. But because the Brits did not correctly distinguish sensory from intellectual powers, there are huge differences between the Brits and other intellectual empiricists.

Aristotle actually responded to David Hume's account of INDUCTION, more than his limited account of CAUSATION (efficient causation as Curtis correctly notes). To Hume INDUCTION means to see the same thing over and over again [Hume's example being the rising of the sun.] and then become HABITUATED to expect the same thing to happen again. So INDUCTION is a mental habit to Hume.

But Aristotle informs his readers that INDUCTION is to see THE MIDDLE TERM by means of the extreme terms, rather than to use the MIDDLE TERM to link or divide extreme terms, which is the DEDUCTIVE process. So to understand what Aristotle means, you have to know something about syllogistic logic. In DEDUCTIONS middle terms disappear in the conclusions.

Every MAN (middle term) is mortal.
Socrates is a MAN (middle term)
Socrates (extreme minor term) is Mortal (extreme major term)

So in this example of DEDUCTION the middle term has disappeared from the conclusion. In INDUCTION the middle term is NEVER SEEN, but rather intuited/inductively inferred and, hence, can never be a matter of SEEING the same thing over and over again --- because the middle term is NEVER OBVIOUSLY SEEN.

[Anonymous No.6353423]

>>6353420
>>6353420
Classic INDUCTIONS which result in "scientific breakthroughs" are like Galileo's 1st telescopic OBSERVATIONS [never seen by anyone before] of Jupiter's moons revolving around the giant gas planet. Nobody had been in the so-called Humean "HABIT" of seeing such things (Jupiter's moons revolve) "over and over", as in the cases of people seeing the sun rise.

Similarly the Semmelweiss case of ONE MAN DYING of the same disease as many birthing women (over and over without any INDUCTION as to what was causing the womens' deaths) was not something "seen over and over out of HABIT." Many women had died over and over and no one could explain why a different situation was occurring almost next door (where women were not dying at the same rate from puerperal sepsis) --- until a mere ONE MALE died, but not in a birthing situation. That single and never before seen death (but a similar death in distinctly different circumstances) provided Semmelweiss (a medical doctor) with the actual and previously UNNOTICED "middle terms" [a cut in the presence of "cadaver matter"] or EFFICIENT CAUSE of death to many women but to only one single non-birthing male.

In sum and in short, Hume did not know what INDUCTION actually was/is and those who follow in Hume's modern footsteps also do not know what actual scientific INDUCTION actually is --- to see the MIDDLE TERM (the efficient cause) by means of the extreme terms (formal and material causes). So had Aristotle been alive in Hume's day, he would have argued that Hume did not have a correct IDEA of what INDUCTION actually is as an intellectual/logical process.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130131103256AAhmAJl

[Anonymous No.6353431]

>>6353420

It's funny that Hume is regarded so highly when he lifted his work from Sextus Empiricus. The history of philosophy is the same arguments over and over again under different contexts and with different vocabulary. Ironically, two of the brightest stars of 'Enlightenment' era philosophy are quite obscure: Giambattista Vico and JG Hamann.

[Anonymous No.6353455]

>>6352367
>so how have you faggots answered the problem of induction?

By defining knowledge not as a binary between absolutely certain and not absolutely certain, but by a quantifiable probability estimate. Thus, for any proposition, we assign a probability p of it being true, and 1-p of it being false. Here, p is strictly between 0 and 1: there is never absolute certainty about any elementary prediction regarding the universe. (Though you can combine propositions to get this, e.g., X OR ~X has probability 1 for all X.)

Science allows us to observe the universe, and those observations allow us to update our probabilities (via Bayes' theorem). This kind of knowledge (X is true with probability p) is the only kind of knowledge there is about the universe.

[Anonymous No.6353458]

>>6353455
The only kind of knowledge within a closed, constructed system. Let's not be dogmatists for no reason.

[Anonymous No.6353469]

>>6353381
>universe is not deterministic at all. learn some fucking QM.

Actually, the universe is deterministic. Learn more QM. There are some questions (namely, virtually all the questions we are interested in) that lack deterministic answers because they're ill-founded.

For example, if a particle is in a superposition of up and down, the answer to the question "When I measure it, will it be up or down?" is "Yes." But people aren't interested in that kind of answer. Nor will they accept the answer that they're in an entangled state with the particle after measurement. So we modify the question by throwing away off-diagonal elements in the density matrix, which basically makes the question "If I measure the particle, and then you take the resulting state and select one of its components in the up down basis at random, (proportional to their fractions of the total wavefunction) what are the odds that state will be entangled with the up state?" It shouldn't be surprising that *this* question has an indeterminate, probabilistic answer, since the question invokes an assumption of randomness.

[Anonymous No.6353474]

>>6353458
I think you mean that you *can* have perfect knowledge about constructed systems, right? Interpreting "constructed" to mean "axiomatic" here; e.g., Peano Arithmatic is a closed, constructed system.

[Anonymous No.6353478]

>>6353469
Actually it's not. You've obviously been indoctrinated with the many worlds interpretation and it has confused your mind.

[Anonymous No.6353508]

>>6353478
Which part of Schrodinger's equation is nondeterministic? Or alternately, at what point does the universe stop obeying Schrodinger's equation?

[Anonymous No.6353514]

>>6353389
>Except all our experience of the world says otherwise.
i really shouldn't have to point out that using induction to prove that induction works isn't a valid move

[Anonymous No.6353531]

>>6353474
Yes. Science is like this, too. As a deductive system takes its premises for granted, the inductive system must take its method for granted. And before the axioms of the deductive system, some kind of primal understanding of language must be taken for granted. In fact, some have argued that what we today call 'poetry' (meaningful, but 'unrealistic') use of words is that 'primal something' that language is built on. That it is the initial manner of understanding 'external objects' as being 'purposeful'; to not decide on a distinction between an 'external object' and one's potential intentions regarding it. In other words, to see the 'potential' in some 'actual' thing: To begin to construct. Verum esse ipsum factum. And it can continue for ever as far as I can see which is a quite beautiful, speculative conjecture.

[Anonymous No.6353534]

>>6353469
>Actually, the universe is deterministic. Learn more QM.

it's not you fucking DUNCE. I rarely call people stupid on the internet but you're clearly an idiot who knows fuck-all about QM. There isn't a single credible QM researcher who thinks that QM is deterministic.

[Anonymous No.6353573]

>>6353508
The universe obeys Schrodinger's equation nondeterministically.

[Anonymous No.6353595]

>>6353534
That's funny. I actually *am* a "QM researcher." Not that I'd call myself that, since no one calls himself a QM researcher. I'm an experimental physicist. I do research on ultracold atoms, specifically in the quantum states that form near absolute zero. I obviously do understand QM, and have studied it in enough detail to understand how it actually works. Was there something in my post that was incorrect? Do you have an alternative explanation? Or do you just want to hurl random insults?

>>6353573
>The universe obeys Schrodinger's equation nondeterministically.

What. That doesn't even make sense. You mean to say that sometimes it obeys the SE and sometimes it just doesn't feel like it, so it does something else?

The SE is deterministic, and it describes a system's evolution at all points in time--past and future. The universe either obeys it or it doesn't.

[Anonymous No.6353625]

>>6353595
>That's funny. I actually *am* a "QM researcher." Not that I'd call myself that, since no one calls himself a QM researcher. I'm an experimental physicist. I do research on ultracold atoms, specifically in the quantum states that form near absolute zero. I obviously do understand QM, and have studied it in enough detail to understand how it actually works. Was there something in my post that was incorrect? Do you have an alternative explanation? Or do you just want to hurl random insults?

Like I said, I don't hurl insults lightly but your ignorance and lack of QM knowledge shows how stupid you are. There's several kinds of stupid and the most dangerous and egregious ones just overestimate their knowledge of the subject and are ignorant of how little they know. Whatever school gave you your degree and whoever taught you QM should be ashamed of themselves.

Have you ever tried to derive Bell's theorem? You know… the one which states that any phenomena that is both deterministic and local must satisfy the Bell inequality? QM violates the Bell inequality. As an experimentalist, are you aware of that? What this means is that you MUST give up at least one: locality or determinism. Since without locality it is impossible to talk about causality, most prefer not to give it up, and instead give up determinism.

And btw, I'm a mathematical physics grad student at one of the top schools in the US and I don't swing my dick around and claim how I'm smart or understand QM. But your statements show the fundamental lack of knowledge of QM, which for someone who claims to be working in experimental physics, is scary.

Reconsider your knowledge. Go back to basics and relearn. Trust me, your knowledge of QM is extremely poor.

[Anonymous No.6353660]

>>6353625
>Have you ever tried to derive Bell's theorem? You know… the one which states that any phenomena that is both deterministic and local must satisfy the Bell inequality

Actually, it's not locality+determinism that lead to the Bell inequalities, it's locality+counterfactual definiteness. It should be obvious from my post that I subscribe to a many worlds interpretation of QM. MW is compatible with Bell's theorem, despite being both local and deterministic (basically, MW breaks counterfactual definiteness without dropping determinism). In MW, an EPR experiment isn't confusing or even the least bit surprising. So Bell's theorem is natural and intuitive.

>I'm a mathematical physics grad student ... But your statements show the fundamental lack of knowledge of QM, which for someone who claims to be working in experimental physics, is scary.

Really? Surely you know, as a "mathematical physics grad student," that the MWI and the other common interpretations (e.g. Copenhagen) give the same predictions for any experiment we perform, right? That the difference between MW and Copenhagen is just dropping the collapse postulate, and that one can derive the effects of apparent collapse directly?

I use that fact all the time: since tracing over the environment is equivalent to a Copenhagen-style collapse, you can use collapse to get the right prediction. No real collapse occurs; the "collapse" comes from us throwing out information that we'd never use anyway.

[Anonymous No.6353670]

>>6353595
>You mean to say that sometimes it obeys the SE and sometimes it just doesn't feel like it, so it does something else?
No, I mean it obeys it in that all observed events follow probability distributions that are described by the amplitudes of the SE. Thus it follows it nondeterministically. The SE doesn't determine events, but probabilities of events.

[Anonymous No.6353678]

>>6353660
>MWI crap
>MWI and Copenhagen give same predictions

Dear lord my sides. Only cranks and non-QM people believe in MW interpretation. MWI is counterfactually indefinite and gives indefinite solutions (look that one up). And you don't even understand Copenhagen.

Read a simplified summary:

http://motls.blog
spot.com/2012/08/simple-proof-qm-implies-many-worlds.html?m=1

I'm done here. Already told you that your knowledge of QM is awful. You're incompetent at best and I really don't care since I have real problems to work on.

[Anonymous No.6353686]

>>6353670
The SE determines amplitudes. Probability distributions neither go into nor come out of the SE. Now, it happens to be a theorem that the absolute value square of that amplitude behaves like a probability distribution would be expected to behave--i.e., that the length of the corresponding vector is conserved. But all the dynamics of the amplitude itself are totally deterministic. Give me the amplitude at t=0 (and a ridiculously powerful computer) and I can tell you what the amplitude will be 1 million years from now, or what it was 1 million years ago. Just like in classical determinism. It turns out that the things classical mechanics treated as deterministic aren't, because what the universe is really made of (these amplitudes) are the things that are deterministic.

[Anonymous No.6353714]

>>6353678
>MWI is counterfactually indefinite and gives indefinite solutions

MWI gives definite answers, but not to the sort of questions we want to ask it. In QM, being in a nice, clean, pure state is an aberration, not the norm. Everyone accepts that a particle can be in a superposition of two states, and that this is different from a classical uncertainty about which state it is in (classical uncertainty lacks phase, for starters). Everyone also accepts that particles can go into entangled states, and that these states are still not like classical uncertainty. Why should it be so hard to think that observers, who are themselves composed of particles, could be in an entangled superposition of states?

>link
Good lord, the person you linked to is retarded. He has no idea what MW actually says, so he creates a strawman and does a very nice job of bashing it to pieces. He actually thinks that in MW, a particle in a superposition of states is equivalent to a state of two particles! If you think he accurately portrays the MWI, then you are either ignorant or a fool.

[Anonymous No.6353711]

>>6353376
Key words "philosophical empiricists" Ask a working scientist if she is 100% sure of anything and the vast (though I won't say 100%) majority will say "no."

[Anonymous No.6353724]

>>6353686
>because what the universe is really made of (these amplitudes)
Except that you have no evidence to support that conjecture, EXCEPT for the fact that those amplitudes can be used to create probability distributions for predicting events. Scientifically speaking it's reasonable to say observable things exist. It's somewhat less reasonable to say that our mathematical models we've created to predict those events are "what the universe is really made of". Even if we allow that the SE is physical -- which is an odd thing to allow, but I can play at being a platonist as well as the next guy -- the events are still certainly part of the universe and nondeterministic. You have to go full hog into MW and postulate infinitely multiplying infinite unobserved events in order to claim that events are deterministic.

[Anonymous No.6353741]

>>6353724
>You have to go full hog into MW and postulate infinitely multiplying infinite unobserved events in order to claim that events are deterministic.

Since I do subscribe to MW, I should point out at this juncture that MW does not postulate the existence of many worlds; there is just one world. The "many worlds" that give MW its name are a theorem that follows from the (noncollapse) postulates of quantum mechanics. To be clear, that's the set of postulates used by the Copenhagen interpretation, minus the postulate that observation causes collapse. It shouldn't be surprising that adding a postulate can greatly constrain the predictions of a theory, or that a simpler (in an Occam's Razor sense) theory ends up predicting a more complicated-looking universe.

About amplitudes. All QM requires amplitudes to calculate. In a sense, the amplitudes must be real, since we have found it necessary to postulate their existence. [Of course, amplitudes are mathematical concepts, not real things. By saying that the amplitudes are real, I mean that there must be something in the universe that behaves the way amplitudes behave.]

The question is whether there is an additional object, a probability distribution, that obeys its own special laws and can rewrite the amplitudes under certain circumstances. I choose not to postulate such an entity, as amplitudes alone are sufficient to explain all our observations.

[Anonymous No.6353751]

>>6353714
>He has no idea what MW actually says,

That's Lubos Motl you shit for brains. You're a complete retard if you think he has no idea about what he's talking about. He's one of the smartest quant phy people alive.

[Anonymous No.6353754]

>>6352367
>so how have you faggots answered the problem of induction?

By induction.

>Induction has been tried many, many times experimentally and seems to be a reliable method, although not always completely correct
>Therefore, induction works.

[Anonymous No.6353783]

>>6353751
So you think he is correct when he claims that MW interprets an electron being in a superposition of up and down as there being two electrons?? MW has never made that claim. That claim is ridiculous and absurd, so of course he can refute it easily. Like I said, he built a nice strawman to knock down, but one that had nothing to do with real MW theory.

[Anonymous No.6353792]

>>6353741

Lurker here. Just wanted to tell this sir to keep up the good work. Let this anon (>>6353751
) rage on.. He already lost the argument by resorting to insults in every post. You seem well-controlled in contrast.

[Anonymous No.6353798]

>>6353783
>MW has never made that claim. That claim is ridiculous and absurd

Yes, he's correct. I see your lack of knowledge of MWI only eclipsed by your lack of knowledge of Copenhagen.

Read as Lubos actually goes through MWI papers and shows exactly what it is.

http://motls.blog
spot.com/2011/05/hugh-everetts-many-worlds.html?m=1

>>6353792
>You seem well-controlled in contrast.

And completely wrong and incompetent. He doesn't even know what the theory he endorses actually says.

[Anonymous No.6353812]

>>6353798

Then please continue without insults. If you are sure that you know it better, then try to explain it in a way that actually helps to understand your point. Science discussions should be a place of learning, not flame-wars.

I must admit, though, I don't have any knowledge on this field (certainly not to the extent of both of you), so I can't really make judgements based on the CONTENT of what you're saying.

[Anonymous No.6353849]

Science is a <span class="math"> {\it method} [/spoiler], not a philosophical theory of knowledge. I'm not too philosophically knowledgeable, but I believe Empiricism is the theoretical framework that justifies science as a method for achieving knowledge, and I believe it accomplishes this more or less axiomatically (takes for granted that we live in a universe that operates according to rules etc.).

[Anonymous No.6353860]

>>6353741
What do you mean by "rewrite the amplitudes"? If there is no collapse, why do we not experience all the positions of the electron on the detector? If our minds are in superposition, why do we not experience our minds as a superposition?

[Anonymous No.6353881]

>>6353792
Thank you.

>>6353798
OK, his posts are quite long, so I can't respond to everything. First, Lubos seems to subscribe to the idea that the wavefunction is a description of the knowledge in the experimenter's mind, rather than a thing that actually exists. I feel this is bizarre. If the behavior of wavefunctions correlates strongly to the behavior of the universe, then surely the natural conclusion is that the universe has something in it that behaves like a wavefunction. To talk about the experimenter's knowledge is to confuse the map for the territory: the wavefunction exists in the experimenter's mind because the universe he is observing is made of something that behaves like a wavefunction. I don't even know what the alternative hypothesis is supposed to be.

Second, he argues that MW needs something like the collapse postulate:
>But it's totally obvious that Everett's picture needs this boundary as well. The boundary tells you when the worlds actually split. ... They only split when something decoheres.

I must emphasize again, MWI does not postulate multiple worlds. That an apparent set of worlds exist is a theorem, not a postulate. If two of the "Everett branches," newly generated by some interaction, have not yet decohered, they can and will interfere with one another. As the decoherence grows larger, the interference dies away.

In Copenhagen there is an arbitrary line drawn, saying "and then, one of these alternatives is chosen at random, the other disappears, and then the universe starts obeying Schrodinger's equation again." But in MW, no line is ever drawn. Those branches are always there, and can always interfere--but those interference terms grow negligibly small due to decoherence, so we can ignore them in practice. Thus, we have the illusion of splitting into two worlds, whereas in reality we're in a boring old quantum superposition state.

[Anonymous No.6353889]

>>6353881
>First, Lubos seems to subscribe to the idea that the wavefunction is a description of the knowledge in the experimenter's mind, rather than a thing that actually exists. I feel this is bizarre.

That's not true at all. He actually says he doesn't believe that! Steven Weinberg, yes that Steve Weinberg, is the proponent of that idea. He has his reasons for believing that but I don't subscribe to it.

[Anonymous No.6353892]

>>6353860
>If there is no collapse, why do we not experience all the positions of the electron on the detector?

We do. Just as the electron can be in a superposition of states, so can we be in a superposition of states of mind.

>If our minds are in superposition, why do we not experience our minds as a superposition?

We do. This, right now, is what it's like to have a mind in a superposition. You and I are both experiencing it; it's the only thing we've ever experienced. The two parts of a superposition are totally ignorant of each other until they interfere, and they only interfere if their states are paired exactly by some interaction (like a beamsplitter will let |1>+|0> interfere, but the state |11>+|00> will not interfere, due to the entanglement with a second particle.)

[Anonymous No.6353913]

>>6353889
So when he proposes a sixth alternative that Everett has overlooked:

>In particular, "what is real" only means "what is already known"...

You're saying that he thinks this is actually false? He said that this is "The correct solution." ... but he doesn't believe it? He thinks someone else (Weinberg) does? Even though I don't see him quoted? The post seems to have been made by Lubos...maybe this is really Weinberg posting using Lubos's name? *rolleyes*

To make my stance crystal clear, what is real and what is known are totally different things. The universe behaves in its own way independent of my state of mind (although since my brain is part of the universe, the universe determines my state of mind). That behavior involves the universe behaving like a wavefunction behaves, even though wavefunctions are mathematical objects that exist in "mind-space" and the universe is a thing like "real-space."

[Anonymous No.6353927]

>>6353913

You're completely misunderstanding and/or misstating his position. Go read it for a second time.

And no, Weinberg's position is not cited there but for someone who says that they're a QM practitioner I assumed you'd at least be a) familiar with Weinberg's position and, b) have his QM book handy so you can refer to it.

His short positional statement:

>PT: There has been discussion on the Web about your "evolving" views on interpretations of quantum mechanics. What are the general flaws you see in existing interpretations? Are you working on a more satisfactory interpretation, and do you see one on the horizon?

>Weinberg: Some very good theorists seem to be happy with an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the wavefunction only serves to allow us to calculate the results of measurements. But the measuring apparatus and the physicist are presumably also governed by quantum mechanics, so ultimately we need interpretive postulates that do not distinguish apparatus or physicists from the rest of the world, and from which the usual postulates like the Born rule can be deduced. This effort seems to lead to something like a "many worlds" interpretation, which I find repellent. Alternatively, one can try to modify quantum mechanics so that the wavefunction does describe reality, and collapses stochastically and nonlinearly, but this seems to open up the possibility of instantaneous communication. I work on the interpretation of quantum mechanics from time to time, but have gotten nowhere.

More in his book, of course.

[Anonymous No.6353940]

>There are people here who think the universe is non-deterministic.
I bet you believe in free will too.

[Anonymous No.6353948]

>>6353940
Then how do you explain quantum mechanics, and the fact that the Bell Inequality proved that there are no classical "hidden variables" underlying quantum randomness?

[Anonymous No.6353966]

>>6353948
Non-local hidden variables, of course.

[Anonymous No.6353976]

>>6352367

my answer is pretty simple: I haven't. But the data seems to correspond to the math, and I'm just going to assume that this works.

And if it suddenly stops working I will be very butthurt.

Instrumentalism ftw

[Anonymous No.6354038]

>>6353927
>This effort seems to lead to something like a "many worlds" interpretation, which I find repellent.

The many worlds interpretation may be repellant to him, but that is a fact about his state of mind, not about the universe. If some aspect of the universe seems weird to you, you are the one with the problem; the universe is perfectly normal.

MW is what results from taking those postulates which all QM theories agree on, and applying them to everything. That these postulates result in a prediction of many apparent worlds is surprising, but not impossible. That those postulates are enough to explain all experimental results we have seen is a happy surprise. The postulates are not inconsistent; otherwise, all QM theories would be likewise inconsistent.

He can argue that MW is false--that there will be some experiment that proves that collapse really occurs and is truly irreversible. (E.g., that one of the objective collapse theories is correct.) This extra data would justify adding a new postulate. He can argue, as he does, that MW is repellant to him; so much the worse for him. But he cannot argue that it is inconsistent, since the theories he claims are consistent (though he doesn't do a great job of defining exactly what those theories are) make the same postulates!

[Anonymous No.6354042]

>>6354038

MW smacks its cock in the face of the Law of Conservation. Since thermodynamics holds at the quantum level, MW is sketchy at best.

[Anonymous No.6354044]

>>6353966

so believing in non-local hidden variables without one iota of evidence, just to back up your edgy incompatibalist determinism...

Do you wear fedoras too?

[Anonymous No.6354052]

deal with it, nerds

[Anonymous No.6354059]

>>6354052

"don't tell God what he can do with his dice" -Neils Bohr on Einstein being a pretentious dipshit

[Anonymous No.6354060]

>>6354042
?? The laws of thermodynamics are derived from QM, via statistical mechanics.

[Anonymous No.6354062]

>>6354052
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

>Einstein was always right

[Anonymous No.6354064]

>>6354059
Hidden variables, yo.

Schrodinger's interpretation is better than copenhagens. The cat isn't both dead and alive.

[Anonymous No.6354066]

>>6354064

Bell's Inequalities tho

[Anonymous No.6354082]

>>6354060

still, law of conservation tho

[Anonymous No.6354086]

>>6354082
You've got the same amount of mass/energy in all possible realities. It's just distributed differently.

And it's not like the many-worlds theory says that "reality literally splits into two separate universes every time something happens"

It's "whenever something happens, the result is a new entangled state containing all possible outcomes of those interactions"

The amount of momentum or mass-energy in the universe doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the superposition of ways it might be distributed.

[Anonymous No.6354091]

>>6354086

I know. But with each new entangled state, the amount of Shannon information necessary to represent the system explodes. That's the Law of Conservation I'm really concerned with.

[Anonymous No.6354105]

>>6354038
>But he cannot argue that it is inconsistent,

lmao… even I know that mwi falls flat when confronted with Bell's Inequality. mwi is shite.

[Anonymous No.6354126]

>>6354105
If A is inconsistent, A^B is inconsistent. Here A is the set of postulates assumed by MW, B is the collapse postulate of any other arbitrary QM interpretation. So either MW is consistent, or all QM interpretations are inconsistent.

[Anonymous No.6354131]

>>6354126
are you trying to apply exponentiation to a set of axioms?

Anon, I'm pretty sure that's not a thing.

[Anonymous No.6354136]

>>6354044
Even if the universe weren't deterministic, that wouldn't imply that there was free will. Do you will randomness?

You can be an edgy non-Libertarian and believe determinism is false, so
>hur dur fedora
doesn't mean anything.

[Anonymous No.6354140]

>>6354131
No, ^ was the AND operator.

[Anonymous No.6354143]

>>6354136

nor does determinism force non-Libertarianism.

Compatabilism simply takes the Standard Argument, and says "fuck that" to it.

Intuitive notions of free will are not incompatible with determinism OR indeterminism. Nor does indeterminism necessitate random.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that determinism is more likely than indeterminism, and due to Bell's Inequality, the data leans towards indeterminism. You argued from your conclusion to your premise. That's why I think your fedora is on too tight.

[Anonymous No.6354145]

>>6354140

I've never seen that to represent AND.

But I digress. Check the truth table for AND. It is entirely possible for B to be consistent, and have A && B be inconsistent. All those statements imply that A is not an element of the consistent QM interpretations.

[Anonymous No.6354149]

>>6354145
No, I was saying that if A AND B is consistent, then A is consistent. Adding postulates cannot make an inconsistent theory consistent. Copenhagen is "MW" AND "Collapse," so if Copenhagen is consistent, MW is consistent.

[Anonymous No.6354152]

>>6354145
>I've never seen that to represent AND.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_and

^ was shorthand for the formal AND operator: ∧

[Anonymous No.6354161]

>>6354149

It's my understanding that Copenhagen is epistemological, not ontological. Unless I'm wrong, about that, your assertion that Copenhagen is MV AND Collapse is a category error. And even then, I'd take issue with the assertion that Copenhagen => MV && Collapse.

In my neck of the woods, carrot typically refers to exponentiation when typed out, and ampersand is used to specify the logical operator.

[Anonymous No.6354167]

What can you do to compensate for a reality where induction doesn't work? Nothing that I can see so the rational thing is to act as if it does work because if it doesn't you're screwed either way.

[Anonymous No.6354223]

>>6353751
>He's one of the biggest quant phy asshole alive.

Rephrased for a more accurate statement.

[Anonymous No.6354252]

>>6354086
>ways it might be distributed.
If it never collapses, that's a meaningless descriptor

[Anonymous No.6354285]

>>6353976
This is the only honest answer anyone can give

Now I think I know why STEM majors dismiss all of philosophy as 'you can't know nothing' because the only encounter with philosophy is Humes induction fallacy and even that they don't really understand.

Try actually reading philosophy one day you autistic fruit cakes, you might actually realise that it's more important than you think but if you'd rather just adopt the views of Hawking who thinks physics answers everything then you're only hurting yourselves.

[Anonymous No.6354294]

>>6354161
One of the biggest problems I have with Copenhagen is actually that I don't know how collapse is supposed to happen. The theory gives very precise predictions about how wavefunctions evolve up until the moment of collapse. But when collapse actually happens, it's like a black box is thrown around the system for an instant, and then what comes out isn't a wavefunction, it's "here are some probabilities!"

The crazy thing is, MW explains how this can appear to happen: it has a precise, detailed mechanism (just the Schrodinger equation!) that explains exactly what happens during what a Copenhagener would call a "collapse." But people reject this, preferring the black box, because the idea that we, personally, could be in superposition states--like we know quantum particles are--is unpalatable. It offends our sensibilities, so we choose to close our eyes and pretend that we understand.

[Anonymous No.6354324]

>>6353469
There isn't any real proof of either stance, but most interpretations and most physicists are leaning toward it not being deterministic.

[Anonymous No.6354343]

>>6354294
>One of the biggest problems I have with Copenhagen is actually that I don't know how collapse is supposed to happen.

We will never know. It's similar to the religion vs atheism debate. Religious people claim they know exactly who created the universe and how it all unfolded and rational people claim that we don't know. MWI people are the religious people.

[Anonymous No.6354365]

>many worlds
I have a subjective experience of occupying a particular branch of this "multiverse" basis of the state vector. Bohmian mechanics is the only interpretation which picks this out, and therefore it must be the correct interpretation.

[Anonymous No.6354382]

>>6354365
Because subjective experiences can never be wrong, or misunderstood. And because you'd know what it would feel like to be in a superposition of states, and you can tell that this isn't like that.

[Anonymous No.6354387]

>>6352367
>doesn't know the difference between provable and true

[Anonymous No.6354501]

>>6354343
Actually, the problem with religious people isn't that they claim to know how things happen. After all, a person who really did know what happened would be right to claim that he did. The problem with religious people is that they explain everything by postulating a magical black box to make everything happen. There's no internal structure disclosed. No added predictive capacity.

If a religious person claimed a particular model of how god worked, saying for example that he would push all particles in such-and-such a way, or violate certain physical laws in X or Y circumstance, then they would not be doing bad science. They'd just be wrong. They'd be making a wrong prediction, and they'd get a wrong answer, but that just means they need to abandon their theory.

It's when a theory adds no predictive capacity that it becomes superfluous. The addition of a collapse postulate to MWI adds no predictive capacity, because collapse is predicted to happen precisely when MWI says that decoherence becomes practically irreversible. Usually, the collapse mechanism doesn't even get that much detail--yet vague details are a death sentence to scientific theories. Rest assured that if you ask the "vague collapse" people when collapse occurs, they will use the decoherence implied by MWI to figure out exactly when their predictions of collapse become experimentally irrefutable, and point to that moment as the collapse. "Oh, too bad, you just missed it. You could have proven me wrong, if only you could control 10^23 atoms at a quantum level of precision for a few more seconds." Something like that.

tl;dr collapse is actually the theory that shares the failings of religious thought

[Anonymous No.6354526]

>>6354382
It's an undeniable fact that I live in only one world and nowhere in MWI is it explained how this works.

[Anonymous No.6354528]

>>6354382
>subjective experiences can never be wrong, or misunderstood.
The burden of proof is on the MWI people. It's an undeniable fact that I live in only one world and nowhere in MWI is it explained how this works.

[Anonymous No.6354543]

>>6354136
You could choose your path through infinite multiverses using free will.

[Anonymous No.6354547]

>>6353285
*pick up a pencil*
Every time I do this and let go of the pencil it will fall. Through inductive reasoning I believe it will fall when I let go. What do you think will happen?
>if this is your idea of rigor i sincerely hope you never set foot near a laboratory
*lets go of pencil*
*pencil falls*

wut.

Quibbling opinionated hateful idiots like you should never be let near a laboratory, or have educational opportunities wasted on you for that matter. I say we bring a genius who was unfortunate enough to be born in the slums of Dhaka to take your place.

[Anonymous No.6354555]

>>6354528
>It's an undeniable fact that I live in only one world
Undeniable?! No matter what evidence you saw, no matter what experiences you had, you could never possibly be convinced? And the very idea of someone denying it is inconceivable to you? However were you convinced so totally?

Prepare to have your mind blown: I deny it. I deny the undeniable. Though there is just one universe, there are indeed many "worlds," as you think of worlds.

I do not dispute that we live in one world, if "world" is defined properly. The problem is that you assume that if we live in one world, that world must have the properties you think it has--that it must be the kind of "one world" that is natural and intuitive from a classical physics perspective.

MWI does not postulate multiple universes. There is one universe, and one universal wavefunction. That wavefunction is really strange: so strange that to our simple minds it appears as though it comprises a multitude of worlds. But there is no more a multitude of worlds than there is a multitude of electrons when an electron is in a superposition state comprising many different position states. The "many worlds" of the MWI are a metaphor, an imperfect model of a more complicated idea that can really only be properly expressed mathematically.

[Anonymous No.6356209]

>>6354555
I love you.

[Anonymous No.6356233]

>>6354555
You're grasping at straws so badly it's amusing. The top half of your post consists of stereotypical denial bloated with hand-wavy terms such as "strange" and statements on par with the retardation of stating "you wouldn't understand it" as a witchdoctor might do trying to explain how his healing powers work. There is absolutely no attempt to reconcile the problem I posed with your ontology.

When you talk philosophy, claiming that “your intuition is wrong” without substance is not an argument. All philosophies are inherently based on opinions, intuition, and emotions instead of facts. Let me remind you that no interpretation of quantum mechanics is a fact as of today and you have no experimental evidence to support your claim that there are indeed many worlds.

Anyhow, I know the math behind MWI, and thus I also know that the pilot-wave equation is the correct equation for tracing out a consistent history of one world, the world in which I live. I’m willing to bet, based on this post you make, that you probably don't, so I think we're done here.