Things you can't verify

[Rivendale]

Sean Carroll's podcast https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/po ... ultiverse/ is fascinating. Sean does an interesting thing when he describes how the multiverse and the many worlds conjectures are things we can never verify or even create an unfalsifiable scenario. In fact these theories have no grounding in experimental science as of yet but they guide the direction of physics. The podcast points out that if you disagree or don't believe with the many worlds idea (the idea that multiple copies of everyone is generated all the time) then you must provide an explanation as to why. The idea that you must believe because it directs the course of the acquisition of new knowledge as described by Sean is similar to Moroni's promise. Or is it?

Interesting sound bite....Philosophers care more about how you get to your answer than what the answer is....



Transcript link. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/po ... ultiverse/

[doubtingthomas]

The podcast points out that if you disagree or don't believe with the many worlds idea (the idea that multiple copies of everyone is generated all the time) then you must provide an explanation as to why.

I don't think we have to. It is very hard to disprove something, especially when apologists get creative and come up with clever ways to defend their beliefs.

But I'll listen to the podcast next week.

[Philo Sofee]

Sean Carroll's newest podcast https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/po ... ultiverse/ is fascinating. Sean does an interesting thing when he describes how the multiverse and the many worlds conjectures are things we can never verify or even create an unfalsifiable scenario. In fact these theories have no grounding in experimental science as of yet but they guide the direction of physics. The podcast points out that if you disagree or don't believe with the many worlds idea (the idea that multiple copies of everyone is generated all the time) then you must provide an explanation as to why. The idea that you must believe because it directs the course of the acquisition of new knowledge as described by Sean is similar to Moroni's promise. Or is it?

Interesting sound bite....Philosophers care more about how you get to your answer than what the answer is....

This is exactly what Wolfgang Smith has described! So scientists propose a multiverse (there goes Occam's Razor with a vengeance!), and then if someone else doesn't believe it, it is up to THEM to explain why and THEY must defend their reasons?!? BS. I am not obligated to believe something simply because someone proposes it, even if it is proposed with logic. Wolfgang Smith is right, science has become a dogmatic affair and has lost it's way. It is NOT science to say, "Hey we have a proposal, without any kind of evidence whatsoever, so it is utterly pure fantasy, but you have to believe us, or else say why you don't accept our fantasy." The plain fact is, I do not have to believe one word of your fantasy, and I truly have no obligation whatever to justify me simply saying no to it. Wow, science has become a religion in it's mentality. No evidence is needed anymore, just say so which must be believed.

To see a world renowned intelligent scientist of Carroll's magnitude in this mode is entirely, totally discouraging...
I have not yet had time to see this, so I am assuming yo are presenting it accurately. I sure hope somewhere you have made a mistake though.

[Rivendale]

Sean Carroll's newest podcast https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/po ... ultiverse/ is fascinating. Sean does an interesting thing when he describes how the multiverse and the many worlds conjectures are things we can never verify or even create an unfalsifiable scenario. In fact these theories have no grounding in experimental science as of yet but they guide the direction of physics. The podcast points out that if you disagree or don't believe with the many worlds idea (the idea that multiple copies of everyone is generated all the time) then you must provide an explanation as to why. The idea that you must believe because it directs the course of the acquisition of new knowledge as described by Sean is similar to Moroni's promise. Or is it?

Interesting sound bite....Philosophers care more about how you get to your answer than what the answer is....

This is exactly what Wolfgang Smith has described! So scientists propose a multiverse (there goes Occam's Razor with a vengeance!), and then if someone else doesn't believe it, it is up to THEM to explain why and THEY must defend their reasons?!? B.S.. I am not obligated to believe something simply because someone proposes it, even if it is proposed with logic. Wolfgang Smith is right, science has become a dogmatic affair and has lost it's way. It is NOT science to say, "Hey we have a proposal, without any kind of evidence whatsoever, so it is utterly pure fantasy, but you have to believe us, or else say why you don't accept our fantasy." The plain fact is, I do not have to believe one word of your fantasy, and I truly have no obligation whatever to justify me simply saying no to it. Wow, science has become a religion in it's mentality. No evidence is needed anymore, just say so which must be believed.

To see a world renowned intelligent scientist of Carroll's magnitude in this mode is entirely, totally discouraging...
I have not yet had time to see this, so I am assuming yo are presenting it accurately. I sure hope somewhere you have made a mistake though.

To be fair to Carroll he supports his conclusions. He claims that the many worlds is the most parsimonious explanation. He also says that science does not have to be done differently because of this. Sean's explanation.

SC: So how you do science is affected by whether or not you take this particular theory seriously. Likewise, for the many worlds of quantum mechanics, again, you’re trying to do science. Science is not done. Physics does not have the theory of everything yet. You’re trying to build on what we currently know. And how you do that will be dramatically affected by your attitude towards the foundations of quantum mechanics. If you don’t believe many worlds… Many worlds just comes out of thinking that there’s a wave function or a quantum state that obeys the Schrodinger equation.

And his defense of anti science claims.

One thing to emphasize, which I’ve noted all along, is that every single one of these three options is a consequence of other ideas. It is not put forward for its own sake. And it’s a consequence of other ideas that were proposed in order to account for data. In order to explain the universe that we see… So it is 100% the standard scientific process going on here. There is no sense, some diversion or distraction away from doing real science by thinking about these different multi-verses.

I’m not in the camp that says, we need to think about a new paradigm for doing science because of the multiverse. It’s exactly the same paradigm we always had. We come up with a theory, we use it to account for the data. So for example, in the cosmological multiverse, we invoke the cosmological multiverse as an explanation for the observed value of the vacuum energy and possibly for the observed values of other constants of nature, like the mass of the Higgs boson and so forth. To account for the apparent mysterious numbers that we observe in physics. The fine tuning of certain parameters. That was what Steven Weinberg tried to do before we even knew the cosmological constant was not zero. And so the point is, if you are a working physicist and you say, I would like to understand why the vacuum energy has the value it does. Whether or not you think that the cosmological multiverse is a promising theory… Absolutely, indisputably affects what kind of theoretical ideas you will consider and put forward.

If you are in the "don't believe camp".....

If you don’t believe that, you need to tell me either what there is in addition to the wave function or why and how the wave function doesn’t obey the Schrodinger equation. That’s extra work you gotta do if you don’t believe in the many worlds of quantum mechanics. Tell me what the hidden variables are. Tell me what the explicit objective collapse rule is if you believe in those kinds of things.

0:51:49.3 SC: Again, your practice of science is affected by the reason-ability of this multiverse scenario. And finally, again, likewise for the fluctuating cosmology, the eternal fluctuating cosmology scenarios, because how do you account for the Big Bang and its low entropy state. That will matter, that will be affected by, if you think our universe is eternal and fluctuating. What do you think will happen in the future to our universe also affects… Is affected by how you think about these scenarios.

[Chap]

Wolfgang Smith is right, science has become a dogmatic affair and has lost it's way. [...] Wow, science has become a religion in it's mentality.

Would you perhaps agree to reword the above and related statements to make it clearer that you are referring to a particular topic area in theoretical physics, rather than to the entire set of institutions of modern science?

I am sure you would not like any TBM readers of this board to get the impression that somehow all scientists have now adopted a way of thinking similar to that of religious dogmatists. Whether or not this can be truly stated with reference to those who put forward many-world interpretations of certain physical phenomena is certainly not a settled question - but this issue is in any case completely irrelevant to the work and discourse of the immense majority of those who practice professionally as scientists.

[dastardly stem]

I think Carroll is definitely worth taking seriously.

David Deutsch from The Beginning of Infinity:

Appearances are deceptive. Yet we have a great deal of knowledge about the vast and unfamiliar reality that causes them, and of the elegant, universal laws that govern that reality. This knowledge consists of explanations: assertions about what is out there beyond the appearances, and how it behaves. For most of the history of our species, we had almost no success in creating such knowledge. Where does it come from? Empiricism said that we derive it from sensory experience. This is false. The real source of our theories is conjecture, and the real source of our knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism. We create theories by rearranging, combining, altering and adding to existing ideas with the intention of improving upon them. The role of experiment and observation is to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones. We interpret experiences through explanatory theories, but true explanations are not obvious. Fallibilism entails not looking to authorities but instead acknowledging that we may always be mistaken, and trying to correct errors. We do so by seeking good explanations–explanations that are hard to vary in the sense that changing the details would ruin the explanation. This, not experimental testing, was the decisive factor in the scientific revolution, and also in the unique, rapid, sustained progress in other fields that have participated in the Enlightenment.

That was a rebellion against authority which, unlike most such rebellions, tried not to seek authoritative justifications for theories, but instead set up a tradition of criticism. Some of the resulting ideas have enormous reach: they explain more than what they were originally designed to. The reach of an explanation is an intrinsic attribute of it, not an assumption that we make about it as empiricism and inductivism.

I think we often treat science, or the look into reality, as if it has to have all sorts of justification, or has to have empirically derived purpose or grounding. I don't think that's what science is, nor how we arrive at what we know or can know.

[Physics Guy]

Carroll is worth taking seriously but he is definitely not Science. Very few physicists take Many Worlds seriously. Most of us find it ridiculous: postulating uncountably many undetectable copies of everything—and calling that "parsimonious".

On this one Carroll's arguments are just bad. No, if one doesn't buy MW, one is not obliged to have a ready alternative explanation for quantum measurement. I'm allowed to doubt that bleach cures cancer even though I don't yet have any other cure for cancer. We don't understand quantum gravity, we don't understand irreversibility. That's enough uncertainty to make the neutral "something we don't understand is going on" hypothesis highly plausible.

Believing in MW will indeed guide your research. That can be bad. If you believe MW, you will not be inclined to dig deeply into exactly how quantum detectors work. That's an opportunity cost. You may pursue some things but you will neglect others.

[Philo Sofee]

Carroll cannot possibly be taken seriously that he is working with 100% science, in the multiverse, when there is precisely, and exactly NO EVIDENCE for this postulate, in any manner, nor, in theory can there be. Multiverses cannot even communicate with each other let alone see each other, so there is literally no way to even find out of this fantasy has any teeth to it. This is not science, it is pure speculation and fantasy. Carroll is not doing science with the multiverse, he is doing philosophy. They are not the same. Science is about confirming or refuting observations, not speculations, even if based on pure mathematical equations, even if within a so-called scientific parameter. He's blowing smoke. The multiverse has about as much reality to it as Democritus's indestructible little atoms, i.e., none whatsoever. Just because he says he is working within a scientific paradigm (in this he is certainly not) doesn't mean everything he states is fact. I am a complete disbeliever in the multiverse and for very gosh darn good reason, there is simply no "there" there. It is a tissue of absurdity based on and extending from earlier faulty interpretations of the other ridiculous speculations of inflation, dark energy, and string theories and the like. Notice NONE of these are observed, they are simply philosophized into science with fundamentally no evidence whatsoever. I may as well believe Joseph Smith's statement that God is a man of physical flesh and bone sitting on a throne in yonder heavens! If all we now have to do is believe what is said, then the difference between science and religion has disappeared. After all, Joseph Smith bases his own idea on 100% revealed truth, so it ought to be believed like Carroll's idea, right? Not even close. It takes evidence, as proper science knows.

[Philo Sofee]

Dastardly
I think we often treat science, or the look into reality, as if it has to have all sorts of justification, or has to have empirically derived purpose or grounding. I don't think that's what science is, nor how we arrive at what we know or can know.

Then don't pretend it is science being done and imagine you are working under its rubric. Science was FOUNDED ***UPON*** empirical evidence. Observation is what makes science science, (all you need is one black swan, but you do NEED that black swan!) and the ability to falsify claims, again, not upon words, but upon PHYSICAL evidence. If the parameters of that has changed, then science is doing something else, not science. I mean does no one remember Bacon anymore? Science is exactly the methodology of determined whether a theory is correct or not by utilizing actual evidence. Man you can't change this now and pretend we are no knowing scientifically things upon another basis. We may very well be using other means and basis to learn truth, but if it's not based on evidence, it ain't science. It is exactly why Galileo used the telescope to look. He didn't speculate, he SAW the moons, he had empirical evidence.

[Philo Sofee]

Sean Carroll
If you don’t believe that, you need to tell me either what there is in addition to the wave function or why and how the wave function doesn’t obey the Schrodinger equation. That’s extra work you gotta do if you don’t believe in the many worlds of quantum mechanics. Tell me what the hidden variables are. Tell me what the explicit objective collapse rule is if you believe in those kinds of things.

Et tu Brute?