The half-life of a radioactive element is something that can be found without using probability. It is the time it takes for the measure of the universes in which the atom is still whole to be exactly half of the initial measure. Similarly, phase change can be defined without using probability.
The universe may be indeterministic (though I don’t think it is), but all this means is that the past is not sufficient to conclude the future. A mind that already knows the future (perhaps because it exists further in the future) would still know the future.
Even without references to MWI, I’m pretty sure you can just say the following: if at time t=0 you have an atom of carbon-14, at a later time t>0 you will have a superposition of carbon-14 and nitrogen-14 (with some extra stuff). The half-life is the value of t for which the two coefficients will be equal in absolute value.
Uncertainty in the mind and uncertainty in the territory are related, but they’re not the same thing, and calling them both “uncertainty” is misleading. If indeterminism is true, there is an upper limit to how certain someone can reliably be about the future, but someone further in the future can know it with perfect certainty and reliability.
If I ask if the billionth digit of pi is even or odd, most people would give even odds to those two things. But it’s something that you’d give even odds to on a bet, even in a deterministic universe.
If I flip a coin and it lands on heads, you’d be a fool to bet otherwise. It doesn’t matter if the universe is nondeterministic and you can prove that, given all the knowledge of the universe before the coin was flipped, it would be exactly equally likely to land on heads or tails. You know it landed on heads. It’s 100% certain.
Yes, future is uncertain but past is already fixed and certain. So? We are not talking about probabilities of something happening in the past. The topic of the discussion is how temperature (and/or probabilities) are “in the mind” and what does that mean.
The past is certain but the future is not. But the only difference between the two is when you are in relation to them. It’s not as if certain time periods are inherently past or future.
An example of temperature being in the mind that’s theoretically possible to set up but you’d never manage in practice is Maxwell’s demon. If you already know where all of the particles of gas are and how they’re bouncing, you could make it so all the fast ones end up in one chamber and all the slow ones end up in the other. Or you can just get all of the molecules into the same chamber. You can do this with an arbitrarily small amount of energy.
The half-life of a radioactive element is something that can be found without using probability. It is the time it takes for the measure of the universes in which the atom is still whole to be exactly half of the initial measure. Similarly, phase change can be defined without using probability.
The universe may be indeterministic (though I don’t think it is), but all this means is that the past is not sufficient to conclude the future. A mind that already knows the future (perhaps because it exists further in the future) would still know the future.
So, does your probability-less half-life require MWI? That’s not a good start. What happens if you are unwilling to just assume MWI?
Why do you think such a thing is possible?
Even without references to MWI, I’m pretty sure you can just say the following: if at time t=0 you have an atom of carbon-14, at a later time t>0 you will have a superposition of carbon-14 and nitrogen-14 (with some extra stuff). The half-life is the value of t for which the two coefficients will be equal in absolute value.
Uncertainty in the mind and uncertainty in the territory are related, but they’re not the same thing, and calling them both “uncertainty” is misleading. If indeterminism is true, there is an upper limit to how certain someone can reliably be about the future, but someone further in the future can know it with perfect certainty and reliability.
If I ask if the billionth digit of pi is even or odd, most people would give even odds to those two things. But it’s something that you’d give even odds to on a bet, even in a deterministic universe.
If I flip a coin and it lands on heads, you’d be a fool to bet otherwise. It doesn’t matter if the universe is nondeterministic and you can prove that, given all the knowledge of the universe before the coin was flipped, it would be exactly equally likely to land on heads or tails. You know it landed on heads. It’s 100% certain.
Yes, future is uncertain but past is already fixed and certain. So? We are not talking about probabilities of something happening in the past. The topic of the discussion is how temperature (and/or probabilities) are “in the mind” and what does that mean.
The past is certain but the future is not. But the only difference between the two is when you are in relation to them. It’s not as if certain time periods are inherently past or future.
An example of temperature being in the mind that’s theoretically possible to set up but you’d never manage in practice is Maxwell’s demon. If you already know where all of the particles of gas are and how they’re bouncing, you could make it so all the fast ones end up in one chamber and all the slow ones end up in the other. Or you can just get all of the molecules into the same chamber. You can do this with an arbitrarily small amount of energy.