Quoting WilliamP: Thank you for this diavlog. I enjoyed it very much.

To me, discussions like this always seem to boil down to what is a main tautology of existence, in the same category as "why is there something rather than nothing?" That is to say that science and reason don't give a satisfactory answer, and I don't think they ever even could give one. In this case, it seems to boil down to the question of whether there is some sort of a concept of a unified me. All of these discussions, and I suspect the complex philosophical research that David mentioned, seem just like increasingly baroque variations on this fundamentally undecideable question, maybe interesting in their intricacy, but shedding no light at all on the actual issue.

I choose to believe that consciousness is something, that I have it, and that other people have it as well. (I.e. the whole universe isn't a function that actually exists for, and collapses for me alone! Just try to prove this!) I don't think science can say a thing to support this, so I'd classify this belief of mine as almost religious. But I'm also confident that science can never say anything

Quoting AemJeff: Oh, indulge yourself, please! I think the point about the limits of science is pretty well-known. You can't climb out of the system using tools that exist only within it. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is an open question, hanging like bait where the monkey can't quite reach. It's the last question, maybe never answerable, but it is bait, and climbing the ladder toward it, has been probably the most fruitful pursuit our species has ever undertaken.

(How's that for self indulgence?)

Quoting Ocean: Well said! I would add to your thought that being such technologically developed monkeys, as soon as we reach the "top" of the ladder, not only we realize that the bait is still unreachable, but we can also build another step. And that's the most fun of all!

Quoting Ocean: Since we live our lives with the hope that we will, at least, get closer, it is worthy to give some thought as to how. There are some dead ends, and David appears to be stuck in one. But, what do we know? I agree with WilliamP: " In this case, it seems to boil down to the question of whether there is some sort of a concept of a unified me." Here we find the limits of our own capacity to conceptualize beyond our cognitive faculties. We can only experience a unified me, a single identity at all times. We can imagine switching to another, but always one at a time. Perhaps there are other ways to experience ourselves, but, we should probably not stir the pot with that. So David appeared to struggle with the experience of multiplicity. Since the only

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: The solution to Jeff's problem is simply to have these guys back as often as possible, and aske them to actually keep track of what they meant to get to, and bring those things up in the next diavlog.

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: And maybe tied for second is David's critique of the many worlds interpretation, which suggests (I think) that the many worlds interpretation undermines the claim that we have evidence for quantum mechanics. It sounds to me like David gets the better of Sean in that argument -- I have the sense Sean isn't quite getting at David's point.

I STRENUOUSLY DISAGREE with AEMJeff: the many

Quoting Ocean: Isn't this just the reflection of a scientist's vs a philosopher's preference?

Quoting bjkeefe: Whoa. Nice!

Thanks, look.

Quoting AemJeff: For the sake of clarity I want to point out that I'm no scientist. More like a superannuated fanboy.

Quoting AemJeff: Way to go look! APOD is my favorite site online, bar none. (Sorry Bob.)

Quoting Ocean: I don't know "what" you are. I actually don't know what anyone is, with a couple of exceptions. I don't even know the most basic stuff like age or gender!!!! This is not my element. I'm used to "meat space" as you call it. I'm used to know how to talk to a 19 year old or a 92 year old. And, believe me, it would not be the same. I'm also used to knowing if someone is a man or woman or undecided. And the latter is to be interpreted literally as I have known people that still haven't decided. And it's all OK.

Here I'm guessing. I feel tempted to add a signature to my posts with some pre-emptive disclosures like:

-If I refer to you as a scientist, I mean either a scientist or a scientist-like person.

- if I assume you are woman, but you are not, please be aware that I was only volunteering a guess, but I'm aware that I could be mistaken. And I take complete responsibility for my mistakes, which can be blamed entirely on my ignorance. No desire to offend.

How about that?

Quoting AemJeff: Oh jeeze, I get that, really! In fact it's why the clarification seemed like a useful thing to do. It's one thing to express an opinion and invite debate on topics you care about. It's another to think your opinion is authoritative, or worse, to seem to expect others to do so. If people begin to think I think I know what I'm talking about, I'll have a lot less fun here!

Quoting Ocean: I'm also an aficionado(a)on this topic. I have just a general idea. I did follow the discussion and tried to interpret it.

Quoting AemJeff: And, if I might say so, you bring a unique perspective to the table, at least within my experience. That's a welcome and valuable thing.

To me, discussions like this always seem to boil down to what is a main tautology of existence, in the same category as "why is there something rather than nothing?" That is to say that science and reason don't give a satisfactory answer, and I don't think they ever even could give one. In this case, it seems to boil down to the question of whether there is some sort of a concept of a unified me. All of these discussions, and I suspect the complex philosophical research that David mentioned, seem just like increasingly baroque variations on this fundamentally undecideable question, maybe interesting in their intricacy, but shedding no light at all on the actual issue.

A final thing is that a hidden assumption in reasoning like Sean made in this dialogue is: that we

Quoting graz: More pretty pictures (No, not the Edwards love child):
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200..._collider.html

Quoting Ocean: I would have to go back and listen to this again, but my impression was that Sean was puzzled because he couldn't follow David's argument. It was at the point of discussing David's view on many worlds that they departed from each other. I would speculate that Sean quite didn't engage in David's quest for an experiential understanding of multiplicity. David based his argument on the assumption of a continued unified identity between the pre-experimental subject and one of the post experiment probabilities. I don't know enough about QM to be sure, but it appears that Sean's problem with this is, that from his perspective as a physicist, he doesn't "go there". I think that David's point is more relevant to probability in general than to QM in particular, and that disconcerted Sean.

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: I don't think it's quite correct to say it's relevant to probability in general. As Sean seems to recognize, it is a matter of working out how to make sense of probability within the many worlds framework. The problem is not a general problem with probability but a problem with working out how a Many Worlder interprets probability.

Not at all -- it's an interest in really getting clear on the reasons for something versus just having it bandied about or gestured toward. In this, philosophers and scientists are pretty much on the same page as opposed to journalists and cocktail party-goers. People with short attention spans who will give up on a problem after half an hour if they can't solve it don't go on to become scientists, I'll wager.

Quoting JIM3CH: Self reference leads to paradox.

The wave equation contains itself.

I would recommend having D. Hofstadter on as a BH to talk about “Strange Loops”. Trust me, everything would then become clear.

I have made this recommendation a number of times in at least two different universes. I'm getting tired of being ignored.

Quoting JIM3CH: Self reference leads to paradox.

I have made this recommendation a number of times in at least two different universes. I'm getting tired of being ignored.

Quoting ledocs: If there were no bloggingheadstv, would God have had to invent it? And can God suspend the truths of mathematics?

This was one of the best things I have ever watched. The probability of this discussion having occurred on my laptop computer in France is so low, certainly lower than 0.5 to the millionth power, that only divine providence can explain the actual occurrence.

Quoting AemJeff: Yeah! That is precisely the point. The game is its own reward.

I'm curious what dead end you see David occupying. I think ultimately he wouldn't say he subscribes to a many-worlds POV, but was exploring some of the implications. I intend to read his QM book, maybe I'll be proved be proved wrong when I do so.

One of the really difficult classes of problem in string theory concerns the configuration of so-called Calabi-Yau manifolds which represent the way in which all of the extra dimensions that string theory seems to require are rolled-up. It's not possible even for an extremely advanced mathematician to picture a six dimension space. But, the characteristics of a particular manifold

It's a surprise, it's something unfamiliar to find claims in the foundations of the theory like the wavefunction is a thing that predicts how measurements are going to come out or gives you probabilities about how measurements are going to come out

Quoting Andrew: 1. When Professor Carroll tells us that there is no real position of a baseball (around minute 6 of the first segment), isn't he locking himself into a frequentist interpretation of probability, i.e. there is no such thing as the real position of anything because the only way we can define a probability is to imagine the same moment in time repeated over and over again, and we can only view the measured position of a baseball as the outcome of one of an infinite number of imaginary possible experiments where the baseball takes a different "real" position each time?

2. Can't you make a case that the problems that Professor Albert discusses at the end of the first segment, for example….…have more to do with trying to impose a frequentist framework on quantum mechanics than they do with the actual content of the theory? In other words, don't the ideas about measurement sometimes presented as intrinsic to quantum theory -- but that Professor Albert thinks are outside its scope -- have their origins in physicists trying to define probabilistic measurements in terms of

Quoting Ocean: I haven't read his book, but for what I heard in this diavlog, he tries to explore the implications through what appears to be linear experiential reasoning. His logic fails to follow the many worlds concept, once he picks one of the many probabilities to identify with. This is pretty much what you had said, you can't appreciate the multiplicity of Many Worlds theory by using a one-world (one identity, unified identity) reasoning. That's the dead end.

Quoting Ocean: I'll edit.

Quoting AemJeff:

Quoting Ocean: I'll edit.

I'll make you a deal. After I've written the book, we'll flip a coin on that!

Quoting Ocean: Following the above reasoning, as a result of flipping the coin, we would have two possible outcomes: you edit or I edit. Which one would you identify with? Would that be surprising?

Quoting AemJeff: Do you think that he outcome of that particular coin toss, after the book is written, would be in doubt?

I think those are central questions to the topic.

Quoting Andrew: I think I've got Professor Albert's point in the long segment above: the many worlds theory implies that you can have a universe that is governed by the same set of physical laws that exist in "our" universe, yet where no observation ever seems to conform to those laws, if the "you" that we're talking about is the one that exists at the end of a sequence all-unlikely branchings.

Now, taking that reasoning to a less-extreme case: on what basis do we expect observations in "our" universe not to show some wild fluctuations apparently inconsistent with physical laws on a regular basis, without a-priori assigning ourselves a special place as the always-average universe?

Quoting AemJeff: I have a prejudice against the idea of many worlds, however, and I might be predisposed to interpret an offering as criticism. It is the most unparsimonious physical theory ever devised...

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: On thinking about it a little, it strikes me that David rather underplays the charge he's making against the Many Worlds interpretation. The objection, if I understand it, is nothing less than that Many Worlds explains everything, and therefore explains nothing. [...]

Quoting fedorovingtonboop: i doubt anyone's still on this thread but can anyone explain the apparent discrepancy between Sean's initial summary of Many Worlds:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/134...8:24&out=38:48
where he is seemingly downplaying the infinite extra universes and at the end when he's embracing the Many Worlds' multiple universes?:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/134...8:59&out=49:09

i'm not clear on this. is he saying there are infinite "yous" and "mes"? or is he saying we're just witnessing an evolving wave function?

Quoting fedorovingtonboop: yeah, i think you might be right. i forgot at the time of the second clip he's merely humoring david and may not necessarily be endorsing any of the results of the thought experiment. however, he is kind of defending MW theory on both occasions so i'm still a little confused but whatever.

thanks ocean!

Quoting graz: More pretty pictures (No, not the Edwards love child):
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200..._collider.html