8 ms·
The World is Built on Probability (1984)
- 1MachineElf 3y agoI've been meaning to read up on Frank Ramsey, an early 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and economist, who first postulated that people's actions are determined by the balance between their expectations and their desires. A world built on probability would be up his alley, I imagine.
- oh_sigh 3y agoRamsey is one of those great what-ifs in my mind - just seeing his intellectual output and knowing he died at 26...what would he have given us if he lived a normal life span?
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI read the preface and there are things I agree with and things I find problematic depending on how the author goes about explaining them. The major one of these last is the seeming identity of probability with randomness. Statistics and probability are tools humans use to predict outcomes of the world, they are not necessarily accurate reflections of the mechanisms of the world. Maybe I'm strawmanning the author here, I don't know. I may read the full book at some point but probably not yet. There may very well be a limit where events are random (such as particle decay), but surely even fully determined events can have probabilistic outcomes, when aggregated. Like say you have 4 beads, 3 black and 1 white. And you non-blindly align all combinations of three beads. You'll have four combinations, three of which contain a white bead. So the probabilistic odds of any one combination of three beads containing a white bead is 75%. If a person picks three beads based on preference, another person can say that there's a 75% chance that those three beads will contain a white bead, iterated over enough picks. But the actual picking for all picks is fully determined by the current preference of the person picking the three beads.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y agoThe book discusses the two sources of randomness early on: unknown information and true randomness. It even identifies Democritus and Epicurus as the philosophers who first identified these sources of randomness.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoThank you. I look forward to reading it now.
- hgsgm 3y ago> If a person picks three beads based on preference, another person can say that there's a 75% chance that those three beads will contain a white bead, iterated over enough picks. That's not true, which is the critical point, because preference is not independent.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoPreference among multiple unrelated people is, at least hypothetically, independent.
- DasCorCor 3y ago“… they are not necessarily accurate reflections of the mechanisms of the world.” I would suggest taking a few courses on Quantum Mechanics. ;)
- foogazi 3y agoFrom the preface: Is the result of a dice roll truly random or dependent on physics: angle, velocity, surface ?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoRandomness is not absolute, but relative. For the one having the computer powerful enough to compute how the dice will roll and bounce, it is not random. For others, it is. That's why people with computers are not allowed into casinos. In the world of online gambling, someone who knows the seed of the RNG, game outcome is not random. For others, it is. Here people with computers ARE allowed, because it's much harder to break a cryptographic RNG than to calculate physical roulette biases.
- layer8 3y agoI suggest acquainting yourself with quantum mechanics.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoI suggest you do the same and learn that QM is not needed to compute movements of the dice roll, roulette or RNG computation.
- lost_tourist 3y agoIt would be if you were looking for a perfect model of said die toss unless you are looking at it strictly from a purely theoretical and not actual physical die.
- pixl97 3y agoI believe in this scenario there are 2 different measures occurring. They do not seem to be playing a single dice roll, but many dice rolls. In that case you don't need a perfect simulation, but instead a good enough simulation to beat the house. Of course that's just more probability.
- Pbhaskal 3y agoCache works on probability. Superscalar processor works on probability. L1, L2 ....cache works on probability
- ark4579 3y agohmm probably
- contravariant 3y agoProbability theory works, with 100% chance even. Which annoyingly isn't the same as always.
- bmacho 3y agoWhat is funny thought, that 0% chance events don't can't happen, but must happen. Like when you pick a point on a line, or roll a dice infinitely many times.
- quantum_state 3y agoThe concept of probability is based on the concept of measure in math => limitation in its description of things, e.g., the probability for a real number in [0, 1) being an irrational number is 1.
- eli_gottlieb 3y agoHold on, what measure over the unit interval assigns probability 1 to the set of irrational numbers in the unit interval? Do irrational numbers on their own even form a proper measurable set?
- omnicognate 3y agoLebesgue measure [0]. I never did write part 2 and many years have gone by with that blog languishing unmaintained on free wordpress but I wrote a thing that goes through the issues around this [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebesgue_measure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebesgue_measure [1] https://omnicognate.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/sigma-algebras-and-filtrations-in-probability-theory-part-1 https://omnicognate.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/sigma-algebras-...
- contravariant 3y ago
- ouija 3y agoSeems like a lot of effort went into typesetting this, wow! I can recommend "Calculus: Basic Concepts for High Schools" by the same author (L.V. Tarasov) to anybody unfamiliar with calculus: https://archive.org/details/TarasovCalculus/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TarasovCalculus/page/n1/mode/2up. It's written as a dialogue between author and reader.
- a_w 3y agohttps://mirtitles.org/2018/09/04/calculus-basic-concepts-for-high-schools-tarasov/ https://mirtitles.org/2018/09/04/calculus-basic-concepts-for... https://archive.org/details/LevTarasovCalculusBasicConceptsForHighSchools https://archive.org/details/LevTarasovCalculusBasicConceptsF...
- the-mitr 3y agoThanks for linking Calculus book. His book on school physics also use the dialogue approach: Questions and Answers in School Physics (Dialogues between students and teacher) https://archive.org/details/questions-and-answers-in-school-physics https://archive.org/details/questions-and-answers-in-school-... While other two books use dialogues intermittently as in the probability book Basics Concepts of Quantum Mechanics https://archive.org/details/tarasov-basic-concepts-of-quantum-mechanics-2021 https://archive.org/details/tarasov-basic-concepts-of-quantu... This Amazingly Symmetrical World https://archive.org/details/TarasovThisAmazinglySymmetricalWorld https://archive.org/details/TarasovThisAmazinglySymmetricalW... (I am the curator/maintainer of the mirtitles.org blog and the typesetter of the books)
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoLearning calculus in high school made me question everything. You can never measure anything, never mind the area of a circe using calculus. It will only ever be a "good enough" measurement. There is a point where all of you will finally come to appreciate the limits of rationalism and materialism and let go a bit more.
- hgsgm 3y agoYou seem to have misunderstood the essence of calculus. Calculus provides efficient, high quality estimates for messy real world phenomena. Calculus put a man on the moon and a camera next to Pluto.
- goatlover 3y agoThe wavefunction is deterministic. If you take the MWI as the most straight forward interpretation of the math, then the universe if fundamentally deterministic. Probability on a physics level would represent our ignorance of the other branches.
- layer8 3y agoOr it would characterize the futures of the current branch.
- kubanczyk 3y ago> then the universe if fundamentally deterministic s/universe/multiverse/ And a universe is fundamentally probabilistic.
- jounker 3y agoWhat i remember from my PDE class was a lecture which involved solving the wave equation for a particular bounded case and, with a slight transformation, the professor showing that the normal distribution was embedded in that solution.
- golol 3y agoI don't think you can reason like this. As far as I understodod, standard quantum mechanics does not make any statement about how the measuring process and the collapse of the wavefunvtion happens. So while the waveform evolves deterministically, you can only ever apply this model when you are in the position of performing measurements on some quantum mechanical system. As I understand, Quantum mechanics is not meant to also model you together with the experiment as a wavefunction, because the act of you performing a measurement does not have a definition in the form of the wavefunction interacting with itself somehow. So without extensions to QM, you should not reason with universal deterministic waveforms.
- canjobear 3y ago> the act of you performing a measurement does not have a definition in the form of the wavefunction interacting with itself somehow Performing a measurement just means you become entangled with the thing you’re measuring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence
- andrewgleave 3y agoDavid Deutsch’s “Physics Without Probability” covers the history of probability, it’s legitimate and misconceived uses and concludes that according to MWI there is no such thing in reality - it’s basically that probabilities correspond to how measures of the multiverse proportion themselves as differentiation occurs. I watched it a few years ago so may be misremembering bits but I think that is the gist… Worth a watch especially if you balk at this idea just to to see a strong counter argument. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc&t=0s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc&t=0s Edit: link
- hgsgm 3y agoThere is no contradiction. In Many Worlds Interprepation, Each World (and mostly importantly, with relative weight = 1, the World I am in right now) is built on probabilities.
- NeutralForest 3y agoThe book looks absolutely beautiful
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoMy Hypothesis: All matter exists in a sphere of probability. Our brains are masters of computing probabilities to tell us the most likely location for any object. It is not that we collapse the wave form, but that our brain ignores the wave form for our convenience. Light is always a wave, never a particle. And a wave is just a probability.
- Eupraxias 3y agoWe need to connect - we are of the same mind. How do we do that? I have composed a 'book' on the topic and would love your thoughts.
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoawesome! followingdao@protonmail.com
- Eupraxias 3y agoHello again! I have tried to send you an email, but it says your address does not exist. I would very much like to connect! Is the address correct, and I have made an error? Perhaps it's .net? Thank you!
- pharmakom 3y agoOur brains would then exist in a state of probability too.
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoYes, they do. But our minds do not. The brain creates the mind, the ego, and this is another collapse of a wave form.
- pharmakom 3y agoso the brain creates the mind but it does not fully determine the mind? why does the mind only experience one of the brains collapsed states?
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoNo mention of Metropolis-Hastings :( It's the biggest, baddest, hammer in probabilistic machine learning.
- rajekas 3y agoNot about this book in particular, but I wanted to thank you for creating this amazing resource. As someone who obsessively bought every MIR title he could while growing up in Delhi, do take a bow.
- cuttothechase 3y agoMIR publishers (Moscow) published so many high quality books. They even had the same elegant style, quality and accessibility even in their translated works. The quality of paper used, the typesetting, the cloth binding and in general the physical attributes of their books were a work of art in itself. One can easily fall in love with the physical book just for the way it was designed, let alone the content. The authors used in their translated works were equally exceptional in their translation. I fondly remember reading their "Physics for entertainment" by Perelman as a translated work in good old days and it actually made me fall in love with the text book physics taught at the school level. Given that this was an artifact when USSR made it even more fascinating. Books were priced a trifle over the shipping cost as they were likely subsidized heavily by the government. It is sad to see that they are no more. They were likely defunded/dissolved when USSR broke up. Thank you MIR for lighting up my childhood. RIP. - https://mirtitles.org/ https://mirtitles.org/ - https://mirtitles.org/2012/04/30/misha/ https://mirtitles.org/2012/04/30/misha/
- the-mitr 3y agoI am the curator/maintainer of the mirtitles.org blog and the typesetter of the books. Thanks for the comment and putting in the perspective. The project started with the idea of preserving this knowledge about 15 years back. I grew up reading those books, but they were nowhere to be found for others to read by the end of 90s. The collection has been a collaborative effort with people from across the globe contributing to it. Though it will take some time (read years/decades), hopefully one day the collection will have all the books published during the Soviet era.
- nico 3y agoCool to see a conversation-style section 1980s AI-chat emulation technology: just print the chat history on a book But seriously, conversation style feels a lot more natural sometimes than just reading a wall of text and trying to decipher its meaning