>Is it pseudoscience?
>quantum
Yup.
Pseudoscience or real?
Kayden Harris
Ian Sanders
Oddly specific, and I'm sure you realize it could just be a trend in your area, right? You're just speaking in absolutes to shorten down what you have to say, right? Anyways thanks for the fleshed-out reply, breddy high quality.
Jordan Brooks
>10 seconds into video
>we gon explain cold fusion n shiet
dropped
David Edwards
(1/2)
Hi user. I largely agree with your assessment of CS folks and arrogance. I am a yuropoor theoretical CS researcher in the field of formal verification; and yet I have a strong opinion on quantum mechanics and many-worlds, based on little more than QM 1. I don't, however, have a strong opinion on any other unsettled topics in physics; and I think my position on this is representative for quite a few computer scientists with QM opinions.
I don't know much physics beyond high school level, and my isolated understanding of quantum mechanics is quite limited even by physics undergrad standards. And yet on the specific topic of interpretations of quantum mechanics -- unlike all other open questions in physics -- I feel quite licensed to have a strong opinion, and it is because of expertise that derives from my CS background.
There is a generic scientific skill that I think is, on average, much more developed amongst CS folks than it is among physics folks. That is the skill of *taking a formal system seriously* -- understanding what a formal system means in practice, what it has to say about mundane situations, what experiences it predicts, and how common and uncommon situations play out in the setting of the formal system. You would expect this to largely go hand in hand with formal skill, but this turns out not to be the case -- it is very easy to have a very deep understanding of a formal system, and yet totally miss how your pet formal system predicts something weird in a common scenario that you are not actually experiencing.
(Continued...)
James Ross
(2/2)
As said, I think this skill is generally well-developed in the computer science field, to a degree that it is not even in most other formal sciences such as theoretical physics. Programming builds this skill, of course -- about half of debugging consists of tracking down consequences of your design that you never realized until you tested it -- and theoretical computer science contains quite a few other activities that rely heavily on this skill.
And I think that the whole open question regarding the interpretation of quantum mechanics is largely an exercise in applying this skill correctly. In particular, I think that quantum mechanics, taken for granted and applied all the way through, predicts many-worlds outright, and you would have to apply some EXTRA rule to the formal system to forbid it. And moreover, I think that quantum-mechanics-with-many-worlds outright predicts the behavior of quantum systems that we see in experiments, such as the apparent nondeterminism -- except for the Born probabilities, which is the big open question in this pet view of mine.
(It does not help that systems behaving superficially like many-worlds quantum physics are reasonably common in computer science, which lends the interpretation more mundanity in computer-science-land than it has in other scientific communities. But I don't think this is the real reason behind the stereotypical common support of many-worlds among computer sciency folks.)
Gavin Hughes
Utter garbage
Nolan Morris
>He was also a co-founder of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity "University" in 2007.[13]
OY VEY
Kayden Gutierrez
Yes, had to squeeze that in 2k words, sorry for all the stylistic and grammatic errors or if something isn't clear, i was in a hurry and it was just "brain to keyboard". We've had long debates on this topic among my peers (CS including) and noticed that the more mature a mathematician you are, the less arrogant or ignorant of your lack of understanding you are. Personal anecdotes are terrible data set to draw conclusions from, but that's how it seem to work on my university as we all noticed it.
I've noticed QM and especially many-worlds is popular topic among CS people. You might be interested in Aaronson's information-theoretical approach. I'm not familiar with your math background, but if you are grad then you're more than ready for Landau (especially volumes 3,4,5(9) but i highly suggest building up to it) to get the basic rigor down. I have yet to see someone go through Landau and still think many-words isn't wrong. It is very, very worthwhile to read it even for an armchair-physicist just to hold his own in a discourse with an actual theoretical physicist. Meanwhile, if i have some time next week, i'll try to explain in layman terms and undergrad (or highschool) math why many-worlds doesn't make sense.
Now since you seem to argue that copenhagen requires extra axioms and that makes it "uglier" or more artificial, what is your opinion on many-wolrds not being CPT invariant? Does it not bother you that many-worlds is incompatible with string theory?
Liam Nguyen
(1/2)
>You might be interested in Aaronson's information-theoretical approach.
I have looked at it in the past, but did not find it convincing. Probabilities are artifacts of imperfect knowledge in a mind, not pieces of nature; any system of physics that takes probabilities as a primitive, rather than as something necessarily arising in minds due to a non-probability-based underlying physics that forbids perfect knowledge, seems seriously misguided to me. (Obviously, this further relates to me favoring many worlds over Copenhagen.)
>I'm not familiar with your math background, but if you are grad then you're more than ready for Landau (especially volumes 3,4,5(9) but i highly suggest building up to it) to get the basic rigor down.
Yeah, I should probably study a real quantum mechanics textbook at some point. My non-discrete math is a bit rusty, but that's easily remedied.
>I have yet to see someone go through Landau and still think many-words isn't wrong.
That is very interesting. I am seriously considering working through this textbook, if I can find some time.
Yet, how does this square with the fact that many worlds is an accepted position among physicists? It may not be a majority position, but neither is it unheard of or even particularly uncommon, as I understand it. Surely that is not a matter of all those physicists never having read Landau?
>Meanwhile, if i have some time next week, i'll try to explain in layman terms and undergrad (or highschool) math why many-worlds doesn't make sense.
That would be awesome. Seriously.
(Continued...)
Xavier Smith
(2/2)
>Now since you seem to argue that copenhagen requires extra axioms and that makes it "uglier" or more artificial
I do indeed. Are you implying you disagree? Surely, the notion of wavefunction collapse is something that is NOT part of the equations of quantum mechanics, and therefore an additional axiom that demands its own evidence and justification?
>what is your opinion on many-wolrds not being CPT invariant?
Can you explain that? As I understand it, many-worlds *is* CPT invariant, whereas the Copenhagen interpretation is not (wavefunction collapse obviously violates it).
>Does it not bother you that many-worlds is incompatible with string theory?
I don't know anything about string theory, so this cannot inform my opinions either way -- but I was under the impression that string theory is generally considered to be on MUCH shakier ground than quantum mechanics, and therefore a poor test of it either way.