3 ms·
I'm not sure what you mean by "effectively" a PRNG, but the big objection here is the EPR paradox. A true RNG can be stateless, but a PRNG necessarily requires
by millstone 7y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "effectively" a PRNG, but the big objection here is the EPR paradox. A true RNG can be stateless, but a PRNG necessarily requires state. So where is that state?
It's not in the wavefunction, so we must introduce new axioms: non-local variables, or super-determinism, etc. Yuck!
The MWI program is eliminating the objectionable "part two" of QM: probabilistic measurements and wavefunction collapse. But it's no progress if the replacements are even worse!
- vincent-toups 7y ago"non-local variables, or super-determinism, etc. Yuck!" All of these things are less philosophically objectionable to me than the idea that all outcomes (in some sense) "occur" or that the true substance of the universe is an inaccessible, linearly evolving, quantum mechanical wave function. I mean seriously - the latter is an enormous enlargement and modification of our ontology. Non-locality and super-determinism are actually much less objectionable. Indeed, before quantum mechanics, we were essentially _certain_ that determinism would win the day. And we only need to jettison one of them, of which non-locality seems the most plausible. In that view, spacetime emerges from some underlying non-local dynamics. This isn't particularly hard to imagine (see a Smolin paper called "Nonlocal beables" or something like that).
- joycian 7y agoThanks for calling out how the Canon interpretations of QM do not not actually save us from much of the problems that are objected to in other interpretations. Sometimes I feel like everyone just repeats what they heard as a student. Smolin's work looks interesting, thanks for the recommendation.
- vincent-toups 7y agoI knew the Phd would come in handy eventually.