It’s odd that the QM sequence is so little commented-on and voted-on, which suggests it’s little-read. Which is particularly strange in that so much of EY’s philosophy appears to build directly on his interpretation of QM. Does anyone have ideas on why? Are people just reading the headlines and going along with what they seem to say, and not reading the posts themselves and particularly not their comments?
so much of EY’s philosophy appears to build directly on his interpretation of QM.
Is this really the case? It seems to me that that the interpretation of QM (and almost all micro-level details of fundamental physics) ought to be (and in Eliezer’s case, are) independent of “macro-level” philosophy. Eliezer could justify his reductionism, his Bayesianism, his utilitarian ethics, his atheism, his opposition to most kinds of moral discounting, his intuitions regarding decision theory, his models of mind and of language, and his futurism—he could justify all these things even if he were a strict Newtonian believer in simple determinism who models all apparent indeterminacy as ignorance of the true initial conditions.
To my mind, the micro assumptions don’t change the macro conclusions, they only change the way we talk about and justify them.
To my mind, the micro assumptions don’t change the macro conclusions, they only change the way we talk about and justify them.
I agree with you that one should reach most if not all of the same conclusions from a strict Newtonian perspective (or from a Copenhagenite perspective, and so on). But the way it’s talked about does scare me, because it’s difficult for me to tell why they believe the things they believe, and opaque reasoning rings several warning bells.
That is, to answer your original question- “Is this really the case?”- it certainly is the case that it appears that EY’s philosophy builds directly on his interpretation of QM. When judging by appearances, we have to take the language into account, and to go deeper requires that you go down the rabbit hole to tell whether or not EY’s philosophy actually requires those things- and that rabbit hole is one that is forbidding for non-mathematicians and oddly disquieting for physicists (at least, that’s my impression as a physicist). QM is an inferential distance minefield.
It seems to me that MWI is just a convenient visualization trick, and thus there is equivalence, but I don’t feel I understand EY’s philosophy and its development well enough to argue for that interpretation.
And then there’s Timeless Identity, which expressly claims to be the philosophical payoff from the QM sequence. Given that post and the introduction I quoted from Quantum Explanations, I really don’t see how you can deny that his philosophy builds directly on his interpretation of QM.
It appears you are right. Eliezer derives his conclusions regarding zombies, personal identity, and the philosophy of transporters and duplicators from his understanding of QM.
On the other hand, I reach exactly the same conclusions on these issues without really understanding QM. Of course, I have the advantage over Eliezer that I have read far less Philosophy. :)
People shouldn’t build too much of their philosophy on top of the MWI, IMO. If evidence that relatively “distant” worlds are being deleted is found then they would have to revisit it all. That doesn’t seem terribly likely—but we can hardly rule it out. Occam’s razor just doesn’t rule against it that strongly.
On the other hand, I reach exactly the same conclusions on these issues without really understanding QM. Of course, I have the advantage over Eliezer that I have read far less Philosophy.
Well, ISTM that this sort of reductionism/functionalism is still right in a classical universe, just going by the whole notion of beliefs should pay rent; but it’s not forced like it is in the actual universe.
That’s as I understand it, too. However, I think that he also means that QM gives some additional evidence that consciousness is not substrate-dependent, as for instance Massimo Pigliucci meant in the Bloggingheads.TV discussion, because given QM there is no unique time-continuous neuron-number-124 in brain-234 etc. etc. at all. Only functions.
For a discussion of ems this helps. Pigliucci on the other hand meant substrate-independence would imply a dualism. What left me somehow puzzling as he seemed to accept that there is more than one consciousness in the universe, but now I start drifting off...
I think I must now temporarily digress from the sequence on zombies (which was a digression from the discussion of reductionism, which was a digression from the Mind Projection Fallacy) in order to discuss quantum mechanics. The reasons why this belongs in the middle of a discussion on zombies in the middle of a discussion of reductionism in the middle of a discussion of the Mind Projection Fallacy, will become apparent eventually.
That is, Eliezer brought QM up at all as part of a philosophical discussion, because he felt he had to in order to make his philosophical points. You may then argue (as you seem to in your comment) that he did not in fact have to bring in QM to make his points, but he felt he had to, per that quote.
The QM sequence was originally posted at overcoming bias, and was later posted here when LW was created. That explains its lack of comments and votes relative to posts made here originally. However, if there’s a lack of comments and posts relative to other parts of the sequences (which were almost all originally posted at overcoming bias), then you’ve noticed something.
If this puzzle exists, I’d guess many people didn’t read them because they were turned off by the math early on in the sequence.
I’ve been ploughing through the sequences in my idle reading time, more or less in wiki order, and yes, these have noticeably less votes and comments than other sequences. The QM sequence is the only place I’ve seen EY posts with votes of 0 or even −1. This suggests to me a lot less readers. (Perhaps displaying up and down totals, as per Reddit, would help distinguish “controversial” from “nobody cares”.)
It’s odd that the QM sequence is so little commented-on and voted-on, which suggests it’s little-read. Which is particularly strange in that so much of EY’s philosophy appears to build directly on his interpretation of QM. Does anyone have ideas on why? Are people just reading the headlines and going along with what they seem to say, and not reading the posts themselves and particularly not their comments?
Is this really the case? It seems to me that that the interpretation of QM (and almost all micro-level details of fundamental physics) ought to be (and in Eliezer’s case, are) independent of “macro-level” philosophy. Eliezer could justify his reductionism, his Bayesianism, his utilitarian ethics, his atheism, his opposition to most kinds of moral discounting, his intuitions regarding decision theory, his models of mind and of language, and his futurism—he could justify all these things even if he were a strict Newtonian believer in simple determinism who models all apparent indeterminacy as ignorance of the true initial conditions.
To my mind, the micro assumptions don’t change the macro conclusions, they only change the way we talk about and justify them.
I agree with you that one should reach most if not all of the same conclusions from a strict Newtonian perspective (or from a Copenhagenite perspective, and so on). But the way it’s talked about does scare me, because it’s difficult for me to tell why they believe the things they believe, and opaque reasoning rings several warning bells.
That is, to answer your original question- “Is this really the case?”- it certainly is the case that it appears that EY’s philosophy builds directly on his interpretation of QM. When judging by appearances, we have to take the language into account, and to go deeper requires that you go down the rabbit hole to tell whether or not EY’s philosophy actually requires those things- and that rabbit hole is one that is forbidding for non-mathematicians and oddly disquieting for physicists (at least, that’s my impression as a physicist). QM is an inferential distance minefield.
It seems to me that MWI is just a convenient visualization trick, and thus there is equivalence, but I don’t feel I understand EY’s philosophy and its development well enough to argue for that interpretation.
Agree. It would be nice to have Eliezer’s take on this question.
And then there’s Timeless Identity, which expressly claims to be the philosophical payoff from the QM sequence. Given that post and the introduction I quoted from Quantum Explanations, I really don’t see how you can deny that his philosophy builds directly on his interpretation of QM.
It appears you are right. Eliezer derives his conclusions regarding zombies, personal identity, and the philosophy of transporters and duplicators from his understanding of QM.
On the other hand, I reach exactly the same conclusions on these issues without really understanding QM. Of course, I have the advantage over Eliezer that I have read far less Philosophy. :)
People shouldn’t build too much of their philosophy on top of the MWI, IMO. If evidence that relatively “distant” worlds are being deleted is found then they would have to revisit it all. That doesn’t seem terribly likely—but we can hardly rule it out. Occam’s razor just doesn’t rule against it that strongly.
Love the Philosophy jibe! :)
Hah, same here.
Well, ISTM that this sort of reductionism/functionalism is still right in a classical universe, just going by the whole notion of beliefs should pay rent; but it’s not forced like it is in the actual universe.
That’s as I understand it, too. However, I think that he also means that QM gives some additional evidence that consciousness is not substrate-dependent, as for instance Massimo Pigliucci meant in the Bloggingheads.TV discussion, because given QM there is no unique time-continuous neuron-number-124 in brain-234 etc. etc. at all. Only functions.
For a discussion of ems this helps. Pigliucci on the other hand meant substrate-independence would imply a dualism. What left me somehow puzzling as he seemed to accept that there is more than one consciousness in the universe, but now I start drifting off...
I got this from Quantum Explanations:
That is, Eliezer brought QM up at all as part of a philosophical discussion, because he felt he had to in order to make his philosophical points. You may then argue (as you seem to in your comment) that he did not in fact have to bring in QM to make his points, but he felt he had to, per that quote.
The QM sequence was originally posted at overcoming bias, and was later posted here when LW was created. That explains its lack of comments and votes relative to posts made here originally. However, if there’s a lack of comments and posts relative to other parts of the sequences (which were almost all originally posted at overcoming bias), then you’ve noticed something.
If this puzzle exists, I’d guess many people didn’t read them because they were turned off by the math early on in the sequence.
The QM sequence is also linked to a lot less than other posts, as it tends to be less directly relevant to conversation topics.
I’ve been ploughing through the sequences in my idle reading time, more or less in wiki order, and yes, these have noticeably less votes and comments than other sequences. The QM sequence is the only place I’ve seen EY posts with votes of 0 or even −1. This suggests to me a lot less readers. (Perhaps displaying up and down totals, as per Reddit, would help distinguish “controversial” from “nobody cares”.)
Controversial is a decent possibility. What EY says IS controversial among physicists, and that may be the source of some of his downvotes.
The lack of comments compared to other sequences doesn’t fit that, though.
A technical subject. The gist seemed to be: Rah, MWI.
I’ve thought the MWI was correct since way back in the 1980s—after reading this—and so didn’t feel an urgent need to be lectured on its virtues.