Adirian

Karma: 64

Adirian 20 May 2008 0:12 UTC
0 points
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on: Changing the Definition of Science
Your high-capacity Einstein would come to the conclusion, left to those parameters, that the picture never changes. The pattern for that is infinitely stronger, thinking so quickly, than any of the smaller patterns within. Indeed, processing the same information so many times, it will encounter information miscopies nigh-infinitely more often than it encounters a change in the data itself—because, after all, a quantum computer will be operating on information storage mechanisms sensitive enough to be altered by a microwave oven a mile away.

You have a severe bootstrapping problem which you’re ignoring—thought requires subject. Consciousness requires something to be conscious of. You can’t design a consciousness and throw things for it to be conscious of after the fact. You have to start with the webcam and build up to the mind—otherwise the bits flowing in are meaningless. No amount of pattern recognition will give meaning to patterns.

Adirian 5 May 2008 0:23 UTC
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on: Bell’s Theorem: No EPR “Reality”
I think you read something which left out something; Belle’s Theorem disproved “neo-realism,” which is the idea that there was a classical-physics explanation, i/e, with real particles with real properties. It’s the model EPR was trying to assert over the Copenhagen interpretation—and that, indeed, was its only purpose, and I find it odd that you bring that thought experiment up out of the context of its intent.

Well, actually, Everette’s Many-Worlds actually repermits classical physics within its confines, and hence real particles, as do other superdimensional interpretations—within his model, you’re still permitted all the trappings of classical physics. (As they break an assumption of normality in Belle’s Theorem, namely, that there is only one universe, or in the case of superdimensionality, that the universe doesn’t extend in other directions we can only detect abstractly.)

Adirian 4 May 2008 1:41 UTC
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on: Decoherence as Projection
Eliezer -

“Information” in this case is the properties; my apologies, I am loose with language. The properties were transformed—and, in the case of a splitting beam, with a 1-1 function. The properties were “lost” when they were split—they weren’t the same as they were before. But they weren’t irrecoverably lost. (At least close enough for testing; you may have medium degradation, i/e, property attenuation, depending upon the quality of the crystals and the intermediate material provided it isn’t in a vacuum.)

To irrecoverably lose properties, you need a non 1-1 function—which is exactly what we had when we sent them through the filter rather than the splitter.

Adirian 3 May 2008 8:13 UTC
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on: Decoherence as Projection
The fundamental descriptive mathematics are known—the interpretations are still debated. As has been the case for nearly a century now, and I don’t see that changing anytime in the immediate future. And if you recombine all four sets of split beams, then there isn’t anything interesting going on there, either; half still goes through, same as before, and predictably so. That is, if you direct one polarization one direction, and another in another, and then recombine them—and there’s the snag, see. You can’t combine them without re-emitting both of them; you’re performing an additional operation which is generating/modifying information. You aren’t reproducing lost information; you’re generating new information which is equivalent to the lost information.

For the fundamental physics to be known, they must be falsifiable, and have passed that test. This is not the case. The mathematics are passing with flying colors, of course—nobody is entirely sure what the mathematics mean, however. (Everybody thinks they do, though.)

Adirian 2 May 2008 21:36 UTC
2 points
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on: Decoherence as Projection
There is, of course, a fairly simple alternative solution, dealing with “real” particles; the photons coming out of the filters are not the photons that went in. Photons don’t travel through the sheet; the energy is absorbed, and the properties of individual components of energy determine what happens next. The properties of some chunks of energy cause similarly-propertied energy to be re-emitted on the other side. It’s not that the photons have mysteriously lost the information about their “spin” in the middle sheet—it’s that we’re dealing with new photons with new property sets, which are being re-emitted with the emission properties of the second sheet, rather than the first.

With this interpretation, the phenomenon makes perfect sense, and the old textbooks are right—after a fashion—that the second measurement destroyed the information that the first measurement generated.

Adirian 18 Apr 2008 23:08 UTC
1 point
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on: No Individual Particles
“Well, it’s physics, and physics is math, and you’ve got to come to terms with thinking in pure mathematical objects.”
- Physics is modeled as math—physics and math are not the same thing. Math is a functionally complete descriptive language—but it is not a definitive one. Newton’s laws were mathematically perfect, it was the physical things that they incorrectly represented which ultimately broke their backs. Newton’s laws also had perfect predictive power over everything in their realm—the macroscopic—for more than a century, before we developed instruments finely tuned enough to detect their inaccuracies.
If you’re trying to convince anybody here, you’re going to fail, because you start by assuming the very mathematical models which they challenge—asserting repeatedly that particles have no definition, and therefore particles have no definition, is an advancement towards nowhere. If you’re trying to enlighten people, you do so from the perspective of one biased in favour of a particular mathematical model.

I can’t prove my position, but I generally favour a variant of multiverse theory in which the uncertainty principle is the result of consciousness. That is, the human mind as a conscious entity is a functional quantum computer, and the uncertainty principle is a result of that, rather than a fundamental property of the universe. (The uncertainty is not about what state the particle is in, but what spectrum of probability space the mind inhabits, and thus what spectrum of particle states the mind observes.)

You’ll notice that this is a functionally equivalent interpretation. Which is the problem with quantum mechanics—the mathematics describe something, but interpretation is, for now, still up in the air.

You’ll also notice that this interpretation suggests that a ‘slice’ of probability space produces a universe of zombies. But a slice of probability space as an independent structure is no less ridiculous in this model than a slice of 2D space taken out of our “normal” three dimensions when treated independently.

Adirian 17 Apr 2008 0:46 UTC
2 points
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on: Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical?
Will—field theory is pretty good, yup, although...

We’re basically at the same point in physics we were a little more than a century ago. Back then, there were two major camps—the atomicists, and the energists. The energists’ position was essentially that everything was made of energy, the atomicists’ position was that there were these tiny particles we hadn’t seen yet, but they were in fact real.

Now, at the time, both camps had equally valid positions, although the energists had the stronger support—but there was a very interesting distinction between the two. If the energists were right, we were in a position where we knew all the basic rules of the universe, and it was just a matter of sorting out a few weird details. If the atomicists were right, there was a LOT of stuff we didn’t know yet.

The atomicists, as history will back me, were right, and physics went right on trucking. Well, actually, that isn’t quite correct—the atomicists were mostly right; the particles they thought existed weren’t quite what we found. We did indeed find the particles, but not the fundamental indivisible particles much of their camp had been expecting. A few years later, the roles were reversed; the atomicist position had some smaller particles, and everything, except for a few weird details, was sorted out. (One can say something of the amazing predictive power of quantum physics—well, it wasn’t any more remarkable than the amazing predictive power of Newtonian physics.) And the energists owned the next age, although not quite the way they had ever expected.

We’ve reached that same point again today. The atomicists for the most part no longer believe in an atomic (indivisible) particle, but the fundamentals are otherwise the same; if the energists are right, then we basically know all the basic principles of physics, and it is just a matter of sorting out a few really weird details. Meanwhile, you have the atomicists, now called neo-realists, inspired by the late giants Einstein and Feynman, finding some curious approaches to handling those few weird details—although pushed into a much harder corner this time by Bell’s theorem. Third time is the charm, I suppose?

Anybody who is proposing we know all the fundamentals of a field should arouse your instant suspicions—this is a hubris from which men have fallen every time they’ve mounted it. It’s a very seductive idea to those who chase order. It is also a mindkiller.

Adirian 16 Apr 2008 21:33 UTC
2 points
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on: Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical?
Will -

The reasoning is better understood in terms of in wave mechanics; if the particle states diverged in the least, then the cancellation wouldn’t be complete, and the experimental results would differ.

That is, they must be identical, not indistinguishable, for wave cancellation to operate. (sin-1(sin(x) +.0000000000001) isn’t x.

However, again, this depends upon a particular mathematical definition of the particles—in particular, a model which has already defined that particles have no discrete existence. Eliezer is by far my favorite author here, but he has a consistent fault in confusing mathematical descriptions with mathematical definitions. That is, he seems to believe a model which accurately describes and even predicts behavior must be the “correct” model.

Equivalence is not correctness. To put it in programming terms, two functions which return the same result are equivalent—you can describe one function with the other. But you cannot define the behavior of one by the other, because they may operate by completely different processes to arrive at the same result.

You also can’t make inferences, by looking at the algorithm of one, as to what data is acceptable input to both, if it’s not data you have the capability of putting in. In terms of programming, this is like saying a blackbox text algorithm can’t operate Unicode input because the equivalent function you’ve written can’t, and your operating system only has ASCII installed. In terms of the argument, this is saying the universe can’t have particles because the mathematical model you utilize will throw up non-numbers if you do (not that this is any special behavior in a field of physics where the canceling out of infinities is a regular exercise), and you don’t have a universe where you know particles exist to compare ours to.

Adirian 16 Apr 2008 4:21 UTC
5 points
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on: Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical?
“But the “electrons” we see today, would still be computed as amplitude flows between simulated configuration”

- Eliezer, the argument being posted against you is that the MODEL could be wrong. Remember, it’s a mathematical model—it describes, it doesn’t define.

Remember, there are quite a few models of quantum physics that describe the behavior of quantum “particles”—and that presumes on the particles’ very existence. It is quite possible to invent a model which describes physics perfectly but which omits the existence of electrons, photons, and other quantum particles, as nothing more than artifacts of interaction between particle’s fields. (The math gets ugly in a way that is reminiscent of the models of universal motion which pushed a geocentric model, but the models can still function descriptively.)

There are currently a dozen mathematical models which accurately describe quantum physics—predictive behavior is nonexistent for a couple of them (generally the more obviously taoist-nonsense), but curiously correlative among the others.

Superdimensional models, such as those derived from Hilbert space, can be defined to both permit and to deny individual particles; it depends upon the assumptions you put in. You’re assuming special cases for “normal” dimensions; i/e, that the additional n to infinity dimensions don’t behave exactly the same way our usual four (three and a half) dimensions operate.

If you remove special behavior from the extra dimensions—permit particles to move on them, rather than have characteristics defined on them (phase space) - then you can derive an interference model which exactly parallels that which a configuration space will generate, without defeating individuality of particles in the process, similar in nature to multiverse theory. (Although you end up with some other curiousities as a result—i/e, wave behavior must be defined as rotation against an arbitrary pair of additional dimensions.)

In other words, your proof makes the assumption that the mathematical model IS the universe, rather than merely describing it. And remember that any finite set of data can be described by an infinite set of formulas; that is, we can never be certain that a mathematical model is “the one.” This is a mathematical—not a philosophical, as you imply—limitation.

(Or, in other words—the universe doesn’t have to be a lie for the sun to turn into chocolate cake—you’ll still have a finite data set, you can still write formulas which will describe the transformation behavior.)

Adirian 1 Mar 2008 16:39 UTC
−2 points
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on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
“Bayes-language can represent statements with very small probabilities, but then, of course, they will be assigned very small probabilities. You cannot assign a probability of .1% to the Sun rising without fudging the evidence (or fudging the priors, as Eli pointed out).”
- Yes you can. You can have insufficient evidence. (Your probability “assignment” will have very low probability of being correct, but the assignment itself could still easily by .1%.)
“So much for begging the question. Please do a calculation, using the theorems of Bayes (or theorems derived from Bayesian theorems), which gives an incorrect number given correct numbers as input.”
- How about this as a counterchallenge—produce a correct number, any correct number at all, as it relates to the actual universe.
Incorrect numbers are generated constantly using probabilistic methods—they’re eliminated or refined as more evidence comes along.

“Using mathematics to describe the universe goes all the way back to Ptolemy. It isn’t going away anytime soon.”
- If you’re going to address a single statement, you should really pay attention to context.
“Ah, here we have found one who does not comprehend the beauty of math. Alas, it is beyond my ability to impart such wisdom in a blog comment. Just drive down to your local university campus and start taking math classes- you’ll get it eventually.”
- Beauty is truth, truth beauty? If you’re going to argue reality you’ll have to do better than the aesthetic value of mathematics.
“Neither GR nor QED requires a coordinate system of any sort. This is, admittedly, hard to wrap your head around, especially without going into the math. To name a simple example, it is mathematically impossible to cover the surface of a sphere (or, by topological extension, any closed surface) with a single coordinate system without creating a singularity. Needless to say, this does not mean that there must be some point on Earth where numbers go to infinity.”
- Everything requires a coordinate system. For every value that HAS a value, there is an axis upon which its values are calculated. It might be a very simple boolean axis, and it might be a more complex one, representing a logarithmic function. But if a value has value, that value will be stored in some sort of mathematic concept space.
“We can predict that they won’t violate the earlier ones.”
- No, we can’t.
“You simply flip the sign on the gravitational constant G. No geometric transformations required.”
- Which is utterly irrelevant to the point I was making. Yes, there are simpler transformations, and less lossy ones in many cases. But the point was that any model can represent the universe, not that all are equally messy.

Adirian 29 Feb 2008 22:54 UTC
−1 points
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on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
Tom -

“Obviously, you can’t rewrite the laws of math with C. But a C program can produce obviously incorrect statements, such as “2 + 2 = 5″. There is, on average, one bug in every ten lines of C code.”
- That, of course, is a completely different statement. But then you are suggesting that Bayes-Language is incapable of representing a false statement—which is an obvious lie.
“See http://lesswrong.com/lw/ms/is_reality_ugly/.”
- Yup. I see it. It’s begging the point that I’m arguing—that the model is the universe.
“Then, of course, it is no longer Bayes-language. You cannot simply redefine math- every theorem is tangled up with every other theorem to produce a coherent system, which will give you exactly one correct answer to every question. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/.”
- Yes, it is Bayes-language. Mathematics does NOT describe the universe, it describes mathematics—it is the variables which you input INTO the mathematics which make it describe a particular real-world situation. Mathematics is a modeling language no different from any other save in precision.
“It’s perfectly possible to write a C program that inputs all the right data and generates garbage. You cannot write a Bayes program that inputs all the right data and generates garbage.”
- You’re begging the point, and yes, you can. Others have put this eloquently enough, however.
“Every prediction that the laws of physics make has been tested over and over again (often to ten decimal places or more).”
- You missed the point—we can’t predict what the next law of physics we’ll discover will be.
“The laws of physics do not require a coordinate system of any sort to function, although this admittedly requires some pretty fancy math to get at (see Gravitation, by Meisner, Wheeler and Thorne).”
- That’s very good, if not entirely accurate. All variables are variables on some coordinate system or another, after all, if not a spacial one. The coordinate systems are particular mathematical models.
“If I wrote a version of GR that made gravity repulsive instead of attractive (a perfectly valid thing to do, mathematically), it would not be accurate in describing the universe, as this universe does not make things fall up.”
- You didn’t perform the appropriate transformations. They get quite nasty in this case, as your coordinate system would have to warp quite considerably in some fashion or another, but it can be done. As a very simple example, suppose a two-particle system, with the perspective as one of the particles; you then merely need to change the behavior of your measuring concept—say, light—to arrive in a time T inversely proportional to the distance. More complex systems with more complex variables would require exponentially more complex transformations to describe related concepts.

Adirian 29 Feb 2008 3:55 UTC
2 points
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on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
Tom—you can’t write a C program that adds 2 and 2 and gets 5. You can write a C program that takes two and two, and produces five—through an entirely different algorithm than addition. And you’re adding in an additional layer of model, besides—remember that 2 means absolutely nothing in the universe. “Two” is a concept within a particular mathematical model. You can choose the axioms for your model pretty much at will—the only question is how you have to twist the model to make it describe the universe.

And yes, I can write a program in Bayes-language that assigns a 1% probability to the Sun rising—simply by changing the definitions for these things, as you did when you wrote that you could write a C program that added 2 and 2 to get 5. It is the definitions—a form of axiom in themselves—that give meaning to the modeling language. Bayes-language can describe a universe completely contradictory to the one we live in, simply by using different definitions.

Bayes-language doesn’t naturally describe the probability of the Sun rising, after all—you can’t derive that probability from Bayes-language itself. You have to code in every meaningful variable, and their relationships to one another. This is no different from what you do in C.

And first, no, the laws of physics are provably no such thing—as we have no way to assign probability that we have a significant enough subset of those laws to be able to produce meaningful predictions of the laws of physics we don’t yet know. And second, the laws of physics are equivalent to multiple contradictory coordinate systems. Any model can be, with the correct translations and transformations and definitions, accurate in describing the universe. That the universe behaves as a model might expect it to, therefore, says nothing about the universe, only about the model—and only as a model.

Adirian 29 Feb 2008 0:41 UTC
2 points
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on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
Eliezer—Bayesian theory is a model. It isn’t the universe. This is where you will be losing most of your readers—yes, you can express anything in Bayesian terms. You can express anything in C, too—this doesn’t mean the universe is a program, and it doesn’t provide any fundamental insight into how the universe works.

Adirian 19 Dec 2007 1:19 UTC
4 points
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on: Guardians of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was wrong in many regards—and her epistemology came after the definition for her philosophy, and should certainly be discounted as rationalization and little more—but any half-rational Objectivist will recognize that the philosophy should be regarded objectively, and her quite subjective views of personal values should be taken with a grain of salt.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in her as a character, you may want to read We The Living (Which she herself described as a philosophical autobiography) - there are several hints scattered throughout it that she always had a love affair with power, that it was not merely something that she developed later in her life.

Adirian 8 Dec 2007 1:05 UTC
1 point
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on: Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
I’ve believed this was so for a long time, after reading about the Klu Klux Klan. Which, it is weird to think, was once a (for the time) moderate and respected political institution. After the Grand Dragon got caught in a sex scandal, membership dwindled rapidly, leaving a core of fanatics—with results that I think we’re all quite familiar with.

I think the schism in Objectivism ended differently—because I don’t think on the one hand you have the fanatics, but rather simply two groups, each of which ended up defining Objectivism differently. One treats Objectivism as a complete value set, by which every aspect of their lives can be defined. I don’t think they’re fanatics, but, rather individuals who already lived in agreement with that value set. And on the other hand are those whose value system has a different set of values, who treat Objectivism as an approach to thinking rather than the definition of it. The latter definition is best expressed in Atlas Shrugged and We The Living; the former is best expressed in The Fountainhead and her philosophical essays. It’s a distinction in definition. I am, incidentally, of the latter persuasion—I consider myself an Objectivist, but disagree with Ayn Rand on the matter of values. (I, for example, reverse her logic—life is important because it is necessary to reason, rather than the other way around.)

Adirian 5 Dec 2007 1:04 UTC
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on: Affective Death Spirals
I didn’t mean specifically, I meant on average. My apologies for the poor phrasing. Yes, any individual formula’s odds of being correct can vary. (To deny this would be to deny Bayesian reasoning, and I think I might get mugged here if I tried that.)

Adirian 4 Dec 2007 1:21 UTC
0 points
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on: Affective Death Spirals
the fact that their agreement-about-observations was predictable in advance doesn’t make it any less an agreement. (And if you’re talking only about the parts of those theories that are “theories about the reasons why”, bracketing all the agreements about what’s observed and how to calculate it, then I don’t think you are entitled to call the things that disagree completely “models for modern theoretical physics”.)
- It renders that agreement meaningless. If you curve-fit seven points, and come up with a thousand different formulas, the fact that each of these thousand formulas includes each of those seven points produces exactly no additional information. The fact of the matter is that we have discarded every formula which DIDN’T describe those points—that the remaining formulas do describe them tells us absolutely nothing about either the points or the relative value of the formulas with respect to one another.
At best, out of N formulas, each has a 1/N chance of being correct. (At worst, none of the formulas is correct.)

Adirian 4 Dec 2007 1:12 UTC
−1 points
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on: Affective Death Spirals
Nick—that proof works fine for any of the neorealist models, in which Everett’s model is, variably, placed. The problem is in interpretation. Remember that there is great disagreement in the Copenhagen models about where, exactly, waveform collapse happens—after all, if one treats the quantum measurement device itself as being in a quantum state, then 100% correlation may be acceptable. (Because the waveform state of the computer wasn’t collapsed until the first and third measurements were examined together.)

The real problem here is that the Copenhagen models are effectively unscientific, since it is fundamentally impossible to disprove the concept that anything that is unmeasured is in an uncertain/undefined state. It’s an intellectual parlour trick, and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Adirian 4 Dec 2007 0:16 UTC
1 point
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on: Affective Death Spirals
They agree about observations—but we already have the observations, so that doesn’t mean much. Any theory worth thinking about isn’t going to disagree about those observations, which, after all, they are created to explain. They disagree in every way it is meaningful that they, theories about the reason why, MAY disagree—in the reasons why. And extreme verificationists can go take a leap off a logical cliff when it comes to discussing differences in the reasons why something may be.

Adirian 3 Dec 2007 23:25 UTC
3 points
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on: Affective Death Spirals
Notably, regarding theoretical physics, there are at least nine models for modern theoretical physics, all of which can perfectly explain the empirical observations, and all of which are completely and totally contradictory to one another. (Okay, almost all of which. There are a few compatibilities scattered amongst them. Neorealism can work fine with the multiverse model, and there are a small handful of models which are derived from Bohr’s interpretations and are semicompatible with one another.)