Re: Examples of Major Disjoints between PopperDeutsch and Science

--- In [email protected], Brett Hall <brhalluk@...> wrote:
>
> You can change little of the substance of what you have typed below...and argue for the truth of solipsism. You can argue that you, and you alone, are a conscious thinking being and that everything else is a figment of your imagination:

You mean what I say right at the start about MWI? Well sure, but then I go onto to make an argument for [another] objection to MWI. The first comment wasn't meant to be taken in isolation. 

But since you're on the line. You're an MWI guy, so would you answer me just one question. Why do you believe that QM strangeness and the 'big bang' event, are definitely NOT different faces of the same hidden explanation, such that neither one can be answered in isolation of the other, but can only be explained both together. 

I'm playing a little, but it is reasonable enough to associate your acceptance of MWI with an implicit rejection of the QM-and-Big-Bang-together approach. 

What's probably accurate is that you never considered that possibility in the first place. The pond that MWI people having been swimming in, only ever considered 'Interpretations' as legitimate competing explanations. 

And the reason for that - I think - is because that was what all the great mid 20th century quantum geniuses were doing.l..back in the mid to late 20th century. A convention which the subsequent generations seem to have just carried on with, possibly as an implicit collective decision that never saw a forum of debate. 

But all of that - this whole interpretation approach - came about  within a historical context in which the Big Bang was barely more than a vague conception. There were a lot fewer options for something to explain QM in terms of. In fact it's possible there weren't any at all yet sufficiently non-vague to be a viable candidate. 

I don't know for sure...I'll have to check the historical record. But certainly, that scenario would be where my bet would go. For me the reason is that, were there other huge mysteries that seemed to defy all sense, besides QM - and there's a lot about the Big Bang that would qualify for that - it would be utterly inconceivable that that generation of scientists, so many great geniuses among them, would overlook that other baffling mystery as a possible candidate for explaining QM. 

It just wouldn't happen in my view, because that generation would have been extremely familiar with the idea that apparently separate problems in separate places, can turn out to be different faces of the same thing, and as such only explicable in terms of one to the other. 

This may sound odd to you Brett, but it wouldn't have to them, because that is pretty much how all the major breakthroughs of the 100 years or so before their day, had come about. So this would have been extremely familiar to them, and any possibility of explaining QM like that would have automatically become the priority, because an arrangement like that would be consistent with several other breakthroughs. 

So based on that, I reckon the interpretation thing came about because there were no such alternative means in place at that time. 

Now..of course the Big Bang started becoming clear before these guys popped their clogs, but by that time, most of them were well past their prime and or (as in the case of Feynman) had ceased showing much interest in the interpretation scene, and moved onto other questions. 

So something like all that, could explain why *they* - that mid 20th century generation, turned to or raised no objection to, an interpretative approach. 

But the question is, why did Deutsch's generation carry that forward? Why has your generation? Why have you? I don't think any of you can hitch a ride with that old generation. You do need to have an explanation, why you have done everything exclusively within the 'interpretive' paradigm, to the exclusion of phenomena like the Big Bang. Why has Deutsch? And all of you. 

Would it be reasonable to say that given you all made this exclusive choice, and if you still stand by that, that this translates into a belief that were everything that happened in the 50's to be happening now, and all those people alive now, that that generation would make the exact same choice, on the exact same terms, now....as they did in the 50's? 

Is that what you believe? Does Deutsch believe that? 

If you do go that way....then can you, or any of you, provide a good explanation why that generation would invent a wholly different approach involving 'interpretation', that was totally different to the way science had occurred to date, in a situation where there were clear and present avenues to explore, with very much the same sort of  methodology, as was applied ubiquitously in science already.

How would that happen? What would prompt them to conclude that a new such approach was necessary. When old such approaches with great track records, were clear and present and available. 

Do you know what I think? I think that none of you have ever begun to think about these questions at all. And the reason why I think that's a problem is because.....and this bit will be falsifiable.....I predict that none of you will be able to provide a plausible explanation how the interpretation approach would have come about in 2013 within a context of 2013 evels of knowledge. 

And if I'm right about that, and if you agree that the fact that what all of you have done, is tantamount to YOU making the same decisions they made in the 1950's, in a process where you only considered 1950's scientific knowledge, then the fact you can't plausibly explain why that generation would have done the same thing if they were here now, is exactly the same as you can't plausibly explain why you made those decisions, with that filtering of knowledge. 

Now look old chap...if you're going to come straight back saying I'm being incoherent, could you first read what I have said 5 times then try writing my points in your own words. I do appreciate some of this is unfamiliar or whatever, and also that I'm not  great write. But make a mega effort.