From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 05:19:18 EDT
Glenn wrote:
>...Conclusion. If we perform a calculation using more than the particles in our Hubble volume, in a time shorter than the age of the universe, where are those calculations being done? Particles had to be manipulated but there aren't enough of them. It seems to me that if you want to avoid the MWH, you have to answer that question. Do you have an answer?
So what you seem to be implying is that Deutsch's test is absolutely foolproof, it will absolutely establish whether or not MWs exist. My long experience as a student of science and as a practicing scientist tells me, even though I don't know much about Deutsch's work, and don't have an answer to your question, that this is simply too much to swallow: The most astonishing claim in all of science is going to be confirmed from an inference about a result obtained on a quantum computer.
A point of my previous post was that we can tentatively evaluate certain claims on the basis of experience even without digging very deeply into the details of those claims. This is where "gut feeling"--intuition based on experience--comes in. For example, if someone claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine, no one with scientific training would take him seriously unless he could demonstrate his claim conclusively. Similarly, if someone claims that there are multiple worlds, in order to be taken seriously by those who do not already favor the idea he must have really conclusive proof, not just evidence from an indirect inference.
As I tried to point out before, theorists are almost always able to come up with alternatives to any given explanation. I would not be able to come up with a good alternative explanation of Deutsch's anticipated result, because I'm not well-versed in the relevant fields and I'm not motivated at this point to become so. But there are others who are well-versed, and I am confident that at least one of them will be able to come up with a reasonable alternative explanation of Deutsch's anticipated result that does not require the existence of multiple worlds. In fact, Richard McGough already may be able to do so. I'm sorry you did not hear him out more carefully. (It's apparent that both of you are fairly high-strung and lack patience for communication on topics where there are several points of disagreement.)
As I see it, the most Deutsch can hope for from his experiment is to establish that MWs are somewhat more likely than before to be real. This will happen if he gets his hoped-for result, and no good alternative explanations appear that don't require multiple worlds. He certainly is not proposing anything like a direct measure of MWs. If he made a direct measure of MWs and could demonstrate that he'd done it, then I'd believe. I'm not going to believe on the basis of an inference that may ultimately prove to be unfounded, and no one else should, either. The claim is far too astonishing for that.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Morton
To: Don Winterstein ; Asa
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 4:25 AM
Subject: RE: MWH experimental test
Hi Don, Your use of gut feel was different than below. A gut feel in science leads to insight after which the person goes and uses scientific methodology to say why the gut feel is correct or incorrect. One doesn't simply leave it there.
I have spent a lifetime fighting mistaken scientific ideas of YECs. The one thing they do with a high degree of probability is that when one goes to the work to put out data, evidence and carefully reasoned argumentation, they simply turn and say, "I don't believe it". No reason is given other than that they have faith. Frankly the thing that got me about your 'gut feel' was that it simply didn't address the argument at all. It simply said, I don't believe it.
Now that is your right, but one can't claim that it is a very reasoned line of argumentation. If there is something wrong with Deutsch, I would like to hear it. But gut feels don't further that goal very much. And what I know about computing tells me (my gut feel if you will but with a lline of logic) that Deutsch is onto something.
Fact: information is a property of matter. You simply can't point to disembodied information.
Fact: computation processes information.
Fact: this requires the manipulation of particles. One simply can't point to disembodied calculation either. that is, calculations which don't use matter. (or matter-energy)
Conclusion. If we perform a calculation using more than the particles in our Hubble volume, in a time shorter than the age of the universe, where are those calculations being done? Particles had to be manipulated but there aren't enough of them. It seems to me that if you want to avoid the MWH, you have to answer that question. Do you have an answer?
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On Behalf Of Don Winterstein
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 4:01 AM
To: Asa; Glenn Morton
Subject: Re: MWH experimental test
Glenn Morton wrote:
>...'Gut feels' are
irrelevant in science....
Albert Einstein would disagree most vehemently. His essays on science are replete with references to intuition and its role in leading scientists to good theories and bypassing ones likely to be a waste of time. "Intuition" is just a sophisticated word for "gut feel." By no stretch am I saying that gut feels can't be wrong, but in fact they've always been important in science. They're how scientists often get started on breakthroughs.
IMHO you're giving way too much credence to people who claim that this or that single observation will prove the existence of MWs. Physics has come up with lots of astonishing results, but the most astonishing claim ever has to be this one asserting the existence of MWs. It's OK to entertain notions of MWs, but no one should put faith in such astonishing claims without extraordinarily good and straightforward evidence. Everything I've read about that "MWH experimental test" suggests that, if the quantum computer really works as expected, supporters are going to say, "How else could this have happened except through MWs?" Well, "how else" questions always explicitly beg the question; they never prove anything. If it comes to that, sooner or later some bright theorist will tell us exactly how else. That's my gut feeling. I'd never say "the test won't work." I will say that, if the test works, the result probably won't mean what Deutsch says it will mean.
If one could prove that a given outcome absolutely could not have happened except through MWs, then that outcome would of course establish the existence of MWs. Unfortunately science has never yet been able to come up with that kind of absolute proof. It would require theory that is absolutely true, and no such theory yet exists.
Therefore it's totally inappropriate at this stage IMO to get worked up about this MWH experimental test, partly because the test is not testing for MWs, it's testing someone's inference about MWs; and MWs are so astonishing that we need better evidence for them than something purely inferential. To accept such inferential evidence as hard proof would be to put far too much confidence in the opinions of a few theorists.
Their inference may be unjustified, and I'm not obliged to say why it may be (i.e., that's not my area of competence; and even if it were, I might not be the best person to critique the inference), other than to point out that human inferences are often mistaken. QM experiments have no track record in establishing the existence of MWs. In other areas of physics we trust predictions because of track record. I confidently expect particle physicists to find the Higgs boson, because the standard model has been extraordinarily successful in predicting the existence and properties of real particles. I have no reason to think any quantum computer experiment will establish the existence of MWs. In the first case there is a very successful track record with lots of supporting evidence, in the second case there is no track record and as of now no supporting evidence. In the first case the expected results are far from astonishing, in the second case the reality of MWs would be astonishing in the extreme and hence not believable without truly exceptional evidence.
What if MWs become widely accepted as real among scientists even without convincing proof? Well, the absence or irrelevance of God, without convincing proof, is already widely accepted among scientists. We don't have to follow the crowd. (The rest of the world wouldn't follow such scientists either, as the existence of the flourishing YEC community attests.) What we believe doesn't have to be what the majority of scientists believes. Such majority can be dead wrong.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Morton
To: Asa
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 4:22 AM
Subject: RE: MWH experimental test
I never cease to be amazed that people ignore what is written. I present a
means of testing MWH and this is the reaction:
Don wrote:
>Nothing they say is ever worth losing sleep over
>unless it can be directly tested, and my gut tells me no one is ever going
>to figure out how to test directly for multiple worlds. So I regard
>discussions of MWs as a form of entertainment.
Richard wrote:
>But seriously folks ... the argument that quantum computers require "real"
>resources in alternate universes seems to be an empty and untestable claim.
This is not serious scientific discussion or even criticism. 'Gut feels' are
irrelevant in science, and ignoring suggestions which have passed peer
review and been published (for which I gave entre to the literature in the
post) seems to be hiding one's head. Calling it mere entertainment is
reminiscent of Copernicus putting in his book that his view was merely a
calculating technique. Once again, I would challenge both of you to take on
Deutsch's claim which I believe is in "Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing
Principle and the Universal Quantum Computer,' Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London A 400(1985), pp 97-117, and then get your refutations
published. It is a cheap out to claim that this idea is wrong when you are
unwilling to do the work to show why it is wrong and get it published.
Without a doubt one might find something wrong with Deutsch's test, but just
saying a 'gut feel' or claiming that it is untestable, seems highly
unscientific. The scientific thing is to explain exactly why that test won't
work. If you actually read what I quoted from Brown's book the experiment
gives a different result for the 2 different views of quantum. That means it
is TESTABLE. Deutsch's article does have the computer world thinking about
these things. And regardless of whether or not we christians want to deal
with the implications, theologically, they are there.
1. IF MWH, then hell is full of an infinity of unsaved vs the 1 saved
individual. It means that God saves everybody with a plan to condemn the
vast, vast majority to hell.
2. Why evangelize. This is the same issue one runs into with predestination.
If you are predestined, what is the point. the problem, in my view becomes
more accute under MWH
3. If MWH, then is that the best way God can ensure what happens in the
future?
4. There must be universes where God's predictions fail, i.e. where Jesus
didn't come.
5. Are there universes where Jesus married?
6. Are there universes where Jesus sinned?
7. Would such a situation falsify christianity?
There are lots of theological implications. And claims that this can't be
tested, in spite of my pointing you to where the idea is published, seems to
imply that evidence and data don't count here, just gut feel and claims.
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