Had an exchange with David Deutsch earlier today. I didn’t have the full context of the original question that prompted him to post a 9 minute video essay on YouTube, but it was in defence of the Everettian Many Worlds Interpretation being seen as part of the “concensus” in 21st C physics.
[My gloss on his argument in the video] His emphasis from the off is on “the reality of Many Worlds being as uncontroversial as the reality of dinosaurs and their evolution” seen by future historians of science.
(He also notes that even proponents of the theory will have / had disagreements and distinct interpretations – visible even from history.)
(IF) we agree it describes reality – not just that observations confirm predictions of the formal theory according to limits in confidence and knowledge – but we disagree about that reality described. Does that “function” describe reality or is it reality? [Lots of technical quantum detail still open to disagreement.]
We don’t have the “Many Dinosaurs” interpretation of evolution, it’s just evolution. It’s just Everettian (true) Quantum Physics, not an interpretation.
Explanatory theory split into formalism and interpretation(s) is wrong. It’s just another interpretation. Institutionalised casuistry – unsound sophistry.
Mistaken about what the world is actually like (in reality). What exactly were the unpersuaded, unpersuaded of.
Physicists incorporate accepted new physics (eg Einsteinian relativity) into their worldviews (or not – quantum theory). People stuck in Kuhnian paradigms are probably those that believe in paradigms (implying we shouldn’t).
Apply the theory, test it, note what that tells us about the world and let that inform your worldview.
[Andromeda / Time / Now / Self – who am I? Self-Identity even in computation theories – more nonsense. Unreasonable gullibility. Ada Lovelace denying that computers could think. Positivism as a poison.]
It has become accepted in science education that learning science doesn’t require you to change your world-view. Shut-up and calculate, toe the party line. Sneer at reality.
What’s noticeable is that there is nothing about “Many Worlds” in there – as a reality or otherwise – just dropping it from the naming of quantum theory or any interpretation of it? But there is lots about what we hold as reality in our world-view.
It was a standing joke that few (if any) quantum physicists actually behaved as if QT were a reality, however they actually described or interpreted it. Obviously one factor might be that at the human living and decision-making scale no quantum effects are observable anyway – even if they / we do hold it as part of our world-view.
Anyway my comment was purely about the Many Worlds interpretation / metaphor and any reality to reality held in a worldview.
I don’t buy Everettian many worlds – so far as I understand it – but I do buy the ontological commitment.
You’re right to point out the reality<>model<>interpretation fudge and the institutional biases in maintaining the “right” interpretation.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) January 11, 2023
Now do dinosaurs.
— David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) January 11, 2023
Insofar as we build models of them from archeological evidence, but don’t allow interpretations of these to fudge our thinking that these things really did exist.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) January 11, 2023
So you buy the theory that dinosaurs existed in reality?
— David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) January 11, 2023
Yes.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) January 11, 2023
Even though none of the archaeological evidence from which we build our models of past dinosaurs consists of observations of one? And even though our very theory of them implies that no one has ever seen one, nor could ever go there and see one, nor could do an experiment on one?
— David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) January 11, 2023
Yes.
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) January 11, 2023
And this is where it took a weird turn:
So since we can’t do an experiment on dinosaurs, how can we refute the position of a creationist who doesn’t buy the theory of their existence because of precisely the above reasons?
— David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) January 11, 2023
We have indirect / partial evidence and chains of logic and processes & models of how all that works – which are themselves well evidenced. Same with any scientific “facts” that can’t be directly observed. (I think this is spurious to my “ontological commitment” to “the model”?)
— Ian Glendinning (@psybertron) January 11, 2023
And there it ended, but I thought I’d elaborate here, on the ontological commitment.
[Metaphors / Thought experiments >>> Accepted as reality?]
[Goldstein / ontological commitment / Einstein’s rubber sheets / quarks and their properties.]
[And capture the tweet contents more directly. Matt Segall’s tweets too.]