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In QM math is essential. Most of things I had learnt about QM before learning its basic, well, mechanics were actually building false intuitions. Without math,

by stared 11y ago

In QM math is essential. Most of things I had learnt about QM before learning its basic, well, mechanics were actually building false intuitions. Without math, many-world interpretation is a ridiculous absurd, and an Ockham's nightmare. With - well, it's pure QM _without_ adding additional assumptions.

amelius 11y ago
> ...and an Ockham's nightmare... Just never forget that Ockham's razor has absolutely no basis in science. Also, what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary.
- pdonis 11y ago
  > what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary But one can quantify the complexity of a theory as the number of bits required to compute all of its predictions. In that sense, the MWI is the least complex version of QM, because, as stared pointed out, it's just the basic math of QM with nothing added on. All of the other interpretations add something on, which means requiring more bits for computation.
- jasonwatkinspdx 11y ago
  > what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary There are ways of making it formal and precise. See section 3 in this chapter from Judea Pearl's book: http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-99/ch2.pdf http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-99/ch2.pdf or for a more lightweight discussion that happens to be in my tab stack atm, see https://probmods.org/occam's-razor.html https://probmods.org/occam's-razor.html I understand people think they're being helpful with the knee jerk "that's not science" response to someone asserting Occam, since the principle is often abused/overused, but the academic perspective on this has been much richer for decades now. It's not fair to just sweep that away with a ba-humbug.
- nazgulnarsil 11y ago
  Has a basis in information theory. But it's funny how you would assert that so confidently. What lead you to being that confident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
  - amelius 11y ago
    > What lead you to being that confident? It was certainly not my intention to impress an opinion on anyone else. Everybody here has the brains to think differently. I'll be happy to see my comments proved wrong; please provide proper argumentation. To elaborate a little more on my original point: the razor has proved useful as a guidance for thinking, and historically it has helped us to avoid going into paths that are not worthwhile, but there is absolutely no guarantee. In fact, the razor might even prevent us from going into paths that are fruitful. So, I'd be cautious about it. That was all, basically.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  You may want to read this paper: "Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism, and Kolmogorov Complexity" (Paul Vitanyi, Ming Li) http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9901014 http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9901014
- jpt4 11y ago
  > what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary And so one does not consider what a person, nor any collection of as yet inscrutable minds, finds simpler. Instead, the question is posed to a rigorously formalizable third party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonoff%27s_theory_of_inductive_inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonoff%27s_theory_of_induc...

by stared 11y ago

amelius 11y ago

> ...and an Ockham's nightmare... Just never forget that Ockham's razor has absolutely no basis in science. Also, what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary.

pdonis 11y ago
> what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary But one can quantify the complexity of a theory as the number of bits required to compute all of its predictions. In that sense, the MWI is the least complex version of QM, because, as stared pointed out, it's just the basic math of QM with nothing added on. All of the other interpretations add something on, which means requiring more bits for computation.
jasonwatkinspdx 11y ago
> what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary There are ways of making it formal and precise. See section 3 in this chapter from Judea Pearl's book: http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-99/ch2.pdf http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-99/ch2.pdf or for a more lightweight discussion that happens to be in my tab stack atm, see https://probmods.org/occam's-razor.html https://probmods.org/occam's-razor.html I understand people think they're being helpful with the knee jerk "that's not science" response to someone asserting Occam, since the principle is often abused/overused, but the academic perspective on this has been much richer for decades now. It's not fair to just sweep that away with a ba-humbug.
nazgulnarsil 11y ago
Has a basis in information theory. But it's funny how you would assert that so confidently. What lead you to being that confident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
- amelius 11y ago
  > What lead you to being that confident? It was certainly not my intention to impress an opinion on anyone else. Everybody here has the brains to think differently. I'll be happy to see my comments proved wrong; please provide proper argumentation. To elaborate a little more on my original point: the razor has proved useful as a guidance for thinking, and historically it has helped us to avoid going into paths that are not worthwhile, but there is absolutely no guarantee. In fact, the razor might even prevent us from going into paths that are fruitful. So, I'd be cautious about it. That was all, basically.
pdkl95 11y ago
You may want to read this paper: "Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism, and Kolmogorov Complexity" (Paul Vitanyi, Ming Li) http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9901014 http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/9901014
jpt4 11y ago
> what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary And so one does not consider what a person, nor any collection of as yet inscrutable minds, finds simpler. Instead, the question is posed to a rigorously formalizable third party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonoff%27s_theory_of_inductive_inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonoff%27s_theory_of_induc...