[ExI] Probability is "subjectively objective".

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Tue Jul 15 10:51:13 UTC 2008


2008/7/15 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:

> However, Quantum Theory is still for me the one and only Great
> Sticking Point to the whole thing.  For in any version of QM that
> I know of, probability is quite objective. In MWI, there exists
> a definite fraction of universes in which one carefully defined result
> obtains, and that fraction is identical to the probability we calculate.
> Thus that fraction is as objective as, say, the proportion of human beings
> alive at this instant who have blood type O.  Even in the Copenhagen
> interpretation, the probability is taken as objective as I understand it,
> though since the Copenhagen interpretation is not coherent (given
> its clash with special relativity), I can't really defend that claim.

Actually there is a fundamental difference between collapse and
no-collapse interpretations of QM. The CI has (how best to put it...)
genuine, weird, uncaused randomness: an atom will choose to decay or
not based purely on its quantum mechanical whim; it will do one thing
but under exactly the same physical circumstances it might equally
well have done something else. The MWI, on the other hand, is
perfectly deterministic, and the randomness is only apparent because
each version of you can only observe one outcome at a time.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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