🚀 go-pugleaf

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  .-.         Laury
 (o o)
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Joshua P. Hill <joshhill@snet.net.remove.this> wrote in message news:mgolbuo2aa6c5mtppoftctnnpvf9lauhk4@4ax.com...
| On Sun, 14 Apr 2002 23:31:43 +0100, Rain <rc@earthpoetry.demon.co.uk>
| wrote:
|
|
| >Back up, back up! This sounds like many-worlds and many-words talk.
| >Can't we employ Occam's razor and say that the "many Universes" are too
| >complex and that the cause of the effect is from this one single
| >Universe only because that's what Existence is like.
|
| I'm hardly an expert on the philosophy of QM, but until someone more
| knowledgeable comes along to shoot me down (generally takes about a
| nanonsecond), I'll throw out some thoughts --
|
| It seems to me that the many worlds model is at this stage more a
| question of interpretation than of science, insofar as it doesn't in
| and of itself predict alterations in measurement and so isn't
| falsifiable. OTOH, I suspect that it may ultimately prove simpler to
| formulate physical law with a many-worlds interpretation. I know that
| this sounds counter-intuitive, given the multiplication of entities.
| but to a degree these are already part of quantum mechanics, and it's
| always seemed to me that the Copenhagen interpretation introduces an
| arbitrary element. Can a theory that is simpler but multiplies
| undetectable entities and so can't be falsified, superior under
| Occam's Razor? I tend to think so; the purpose of a theory is to
| predict measureable events using the simplest means possible, and that
| means there must be no *unnecessary* multiplication of entities, but
| thats not the same as saying that all entities must be observable. One
| ought to rule out unobservable entities insofar as they are
| unnecessary to produce the simplest theory consistent with
| observation; but otherwise it seems to me that one must favor the
| successful theory that has the simplest formulation, even if it
| predicts things that are not subject to measurement.
|
| (I'll add that it seems to me that from the perspective of simplicity
| or elegance, infinities are superior to an arbitrary finite number. In
| other words, it seems to me that complexity isn't necessarily a matter
| of quantity, but rather of the amount of information necessary to
| uniquely describe something. Thus the presence of an infinite number
| of unobservable universes isn't necessarily messier than the presence
| of one. OTOH, if a theory posited five, I'd want to see a damn good
| reason.)
|
| My very intuitive and uninformed take on things, anyway.
|
| Josh