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Originally Posted by Disinfo Agent
But if Ken has been trying to use this kind of reasoning to choose between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, I think he's mistaken.
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That is not what I have been trying to do at all. There is only one means for "choosing between interpretations", and that is an appeal to personal preference. Period. My objection to the many-worlds interpretation is that it if you google it, you will immediately encounter a handful of links in which that "interpretation" is not only framed as a theory, even worse, it is framed as a true description of the nature of reality. Try it.
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He's trying to use philosophy to answer a question in physics, and that cannot work.
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That is precisely what I am
not doing, indeed I am doing
more than the opposite: I am pointing out
why it cannot work to use philosophy, or mathematics for that matter, as an authority to answer a question in physics. In physics, observation of reality is always the master of our mathematical postulates and our philosophical principles-- never the other way around, despite the confusion I point out constantly in this forum.
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What I mean by this is that Ken seems to think that if only everyone would have a better understanding of what science really is, and what objectivity really means, the correct interpretation of QM would become clear, or at least that some interpretations could be immedietaly discarded as unscientific.
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That's not a terribly good summary of what I said, it would be a better summary of the opposite of what I've said. What is unscientific about the many-worlds interpretation has nothing at all to do with the interpretation itself, it has to do with the way people try to
justify that interpretation
as a way of deciding reality and an argument against the Copenhagen interpretation.
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As far as I know, the various interpretations of QM are all valid, in the sense that they are compatible with the predictions made by QM equations.
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You will never find me making any statements to the contrary, indeed, you will find me meticulously distinguishing the proper
meaning of an "interpretation" from the improper
usage that is so easy to find.
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They are of course incompatible with each other, so they can't all describe reality (unless reality truly is illogical, as Ken sometimes alleges, but I'll put that possiblity aside).
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It is already obvious that no interpretation "can describe reality" in a unique way, it is when one thinks this is the purpose of an interpretation that one has already stepped off the track.
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If reality is logical, or consistent if you prefer, then only one of the interpretations can be right.
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See what I mean?
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Ken is apparently trying to solve it by appealing to the "true meaning" of science, an approach which I think is doomed to failure, because appealing to true meanings is not science, it's philosophy.
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Had that been anything like my goal, I would definitely agree with you.
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Only an experiment, or a series of experiments, can solve such a problem.
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My goodness, that's precisely what I would say. You frame my arguments much better when you claim they are a point you are making to refute me.
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The problem with scientists despising philosophy is that it makes them fail to realise when they themselves start to philosophise.
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That barb might have had some application had your ideas about what I was saying borne the slightest resemblance to what I actually said. It's no matter--
Len Moran, to whom your comments are directed, seems to see what I am saying quite clearly.