Re: The Road with no Branches argument

From: Mike Oliver (mike_lists_at_verizon.net)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 17:47:59 -0500

Acme Diagnostics wrote:
> Mike Oliver <mike_lists@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Observers in Dallas will "collapse the
>> wavefunction" by seeing whether it rains or not.
>
>
> You keep invoking our own POV. I keep repeating
> that I agree with you 100% from the POV of "observers in Dallas."

I thought with this POV stuff you were talking about
the difficulties *we* have in computing outcomes, and I
was pointing out that my point had nothing to do with that.
What other POV are you considering, then? That of
some observers in some other world, as in the many-worlds
interpretation? (My arguments in this thread are according
to the Copenhagen interpretation, to the extent that
I understand it.)

> <snip agreement QM might be deterministic>

Eh? I never agreed any such thing. The evolution of
the wavefunction is deterministic, yes. Actual observable
events are not. The wavefunction is not an observable
quantity. I'm pretty sure according to Copenhagen the
wavefunction is not thought to have any physical reality at
all; it's just a conceptual/mathematical tool.

>>Allowing the intervention of deorum ex machina, of course you
>>can have determinism without mechanism. But what *can't* you
>>have, in that case?
>
>
> Don't know "deorum ex machina." I get one unhelpful google hit.

Genitive plural of "deus ex machina".

> Sorry for insulting your intelligence. Of course there are lots
> of gambling and statistics examples. My point is that you seem
> to imply that the unpredictability of a single QM or coin-toss
> event must "amplify" into the higher level of description (like
> weather), whereas I observe that that is usually not the case.

How do you "observe" that, exactly? Can you predict the weather?
If you could, it would be a refutation of my claims.

Of course there are other possible reasons you might fail
to predict it, other than that it's genuinely non-determined,
But it's not clear how you claim to "observe" that such
things are predictable, if you don't actually have a
way to predict them.

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