From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Mar 05 2009 - 03:55:21 MST
2009/3/5 Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com>:
> With no experience of a coin toss, you can't even assume the outcome is only
> heads or tails - it could disappear via slight of hand, it could turn into a
> dozen pigeons, it could explode. Your first observation of a coin toss may
> likely be so fascinating that you marvel at the trajectory of the object and
> the sound of its impact - ignoring the orientation of it faces. If we're
> discussing robots easily capable of reproducing the "flip" action, the
> result may always be heads due to a carefully controlled application of
> forces. Would this observation that the particular flip action results with
> 100% reproducible outcome indicate anything fundamental about probability?
> Is this a completely deterministic cosmology? Oh, so the "flip" needs to be
> more 'random' - so where does this randomness come from? It gets computed?
> By what mechanism? I propose angels/demons vie for control of the coin's
> yin/yang energies and stuff happens below the threshold of observation and
> eventually the result becomes known. Simple as that.
Interestingly, the MWI of QM and duplication thought experiments in
general allow for true randomness in the setting of absolute
determinism. If you are duplicated so that one copy sees heads while
the other sees tails, then the objective fact of the matter is that
one copy sees heads and the other copy sees tails, each with a
probability of 1. But from the first person perspective of the
experimental subject, who can only experience one thing at a time,
there is a probability of 1/2 that he will experience heads or tails.
The same applies to an observer watching an event like radioactive
decay under MWI: which world he will find himself in, and hence which
outcome he will see, is completely random, even though the physics of
the multiverse as a whole is completely deterministic. Thus, quantum
randomness is explained without resorting to the fundamental
randomness of collapse interpretations.
-- Stathis Papaioannou
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