From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 02:45:46 EDT
Glenn wrote:
>I don't think it will be irrelevant to the hoi polloi any more than
evolution is (which most of them don't understand either). The philosoophy
will spread as all views which are considered successful do. Movies will
incorporate these ideas, the discovery channel will have documentaries on it
etc. It will be anything but irrelevant if Deutsches ideas succeed.
Yes, you're right. It will become another facet of the vulgar modern myth, which incorporates big ideas of science in some watered-down form. When I used "irrelevant," I was thinking of the actual science rather than the popular themes that emerge from science.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Morton
To: Don Winterstein ; asa
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 4:20 AM
Subject: RE: MWH experimental test
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Don Winterstein [mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com]
>Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 3:20 AM
>To: asa; Glenn Morton
>Subject: Re: MWH experimental test
>
>Agreed, except how far up the probability goes will be contingent on how
>good the alternative explanations (i.e., the non-multi-world ones) will be.
See my note to Jim this morning for the energy requirements, which I already
realise I mistyped the mass which should be 10^470 kg rather than 10^469, I
simply had in mind the 9.31 x 10^-31 when I typed instead of the approx. 1 x
10^-30 kg mass. Oh well, its early.
>
>If Deutsch succeeds and if no one has a good alternative explanation, you
>are definitely correct in saying that we won't be able to ignore the issue
>even if the probability of MWs goes up only a little. That's food for
>thought, so thanks for broaching the subject.
>
>Still, one wonders, if you can't ever interact with other worlds in any
>intelligent way or ever find out anything that's going on in them, how
>relevant will they ever be? At the moment MWH is not science. It's only a
>possible way to interpret the meaning of a scientific theory, and meanings
>of theories belong to philosophy more than to science. MWH will become
>science if it can be tested, and Deutsch claims he can test it.
>But even as
>science MWs would seem to be mostly irrelevant to anything in our world
>except as abstract concepts. And of course they'd always be conceptually
>irrelevant to hoi polloi, as is most of the rest of science.
I don't think it will be irrelevant to the hoi polloi any more than
evolution is (which most of them don't understand either). The philosoophy
will spread as all views which are considered successful do. Movies will
incorporate these ideas, the discovery channel will have documentaries on it
etc. It will be anything but irrelevant if Deutsches ideas succeed.
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