AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[John J. Lee]

mis6 at pitt.edu (Michele Simionato) writes:

> jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) wrote in message news:<87znflcy6b.fsf at pobox.com>...
> > [...snip most of a huge list of arguments from authority...]
[...]
> But when I see a statement such as
> 
> "It's a bit of an embarrassment to Physics that some physicists 
> apparently still believe in the Copenhagen interpretation" 
> 
> I simply cannot let it pass.
> 
> I do think this statement is strongly misleading and I cannot let
> people in this newsgroup to get a false impression abot Physics. False in 
> my own view, of course. But here is the reason why I pointed out my 
> background in Physics: my background is very relevant in this context 
> (how popular is MWI between physicist). For sociological questions like 
> this, first hand experience does matter: I do know from the inside what 

Well, we simply disagree about the epistemology of this, and the
statement of mine that you quote just reflects that disagreement.  A
discussion of popularity can't clear that up.

[...]
> > but the single serious survey of
> > "great and good" Physicists' opinions I have read about (sorry, can't
> > give reference... but I think it must have been either in one of those
> > flaky books by Frank Tipler, or in Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality"
> > that I read about it) revealed that a large majority believed
> > (essentially -- obviously there are subtleties) in the MWI.  Not sure
> > when that was carried out either, but it was back when Feynman was
> > still alive.
> 
> Who is making argument from authority now?

<cough, splutter> I was responding to you!  Am I to be reprimanded for
responding to your anecdotes with an actual survey?


> > Precisely, and IMHO (as well as, if you want argument from authority,
> > rather cleverer folks, like Deutsch)
> 
> Arguments from authority have the problem that you can always choose
> your preferred authority, so you are always right. I would not qualify
[...]

<gasp> How *dare* you aim this at me, when *YOU* posted an enormous
list of arguments from authority, and *I* told you off for doing so?
Even in the section you quote, I explictly labelled my parenthesised
comment as argument from authority (hence invalid).  The cheek of it
*ASTOUNDS* me! :-)

I hereby give up on this thread in disgust, this'll be my last post
(the rest of the NG will be very pleased to hear ;-).


> Finally: notice that I didn't make any specific claim against MWI 
> in this posts, I limited myself to few sociological observations 

Yes, I was QUITE well aware of that!  ;-)


> and a few facts. An objective fact is the number of conferences 
> about MWI theory. Please, look at 
> http://www.physics.umd.edu/robot/confer/confmenu.html
> and compute yourself the percentage of conferences about MWI 
> (including or not including the ones mixed with philosophy 
> conferences).

If you read my posts, you would know that I *agree* with you that the
fact that this is still an issue is unfortunate and takes time away
from more important issues of new Physics.


> Also, please believe that physicist are no stupid, so there must
> be some reason why there is relatively little active research about MWI.

Yep, because there's probably not much to be done on MWI in itself.  I
agree with you there.


> I write all this for the benefit of c.l.py regulars, anybody has 
> the right to follow Deutsch's views, but they should not be presented 
> as dominating in the physics community ("some physicists 
> apparently still believe in the Copenhagen interpretation").

OK, I give you that, I shouldn't have implied that that the overall
number (or fraction) of CI-believers or non-MWI-believers was small
(though I certainly don't know whether it's a majority or not -- and
I'm afraid your anecdotes don't persuade me that you do, either).
Amongst jobbing Physicists (rather than the "great and good" of that
survey), I would *guess* the fraction of CI-believers or people who've
never really thought about it is much higher (partly because some
parts of the 'front-line' of Physics, cosmology and quantum
computation in particular, tend to rub the inadequacy of CI in your
face).


John