Art wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:12:39 -0700, D H
budweiser.com>
> wrote:
>>>Art wrote:
>>> There are a series of lectures given by physicist David Deutsch
>>> which can be viewed here:
>>>
http://www.quiprocone.org/Protected/DD_lectures.htm
>>> which concern theoretical quantum computation.
>>>
>>> In the first lecture, the viewer is asked to discount all the
>>> other interpetions of QM and take seriously that multiverses
>>> are the reality and the only valid interpretation. However,
>>> I found nothing at all in any of the presentations that
>>> makes his case.
>>>
>>> It seems to me that this is another case of dishonesty
>>> in science. If David had started off by saying something
>>> like, "Ok, my references to a multiverse are just a game
>>> I play mentally ... and prefer to consider multiverses as
>>> actual or real rather than a artifice ....", I would admire
>>> his intellectual honesty. All he's doing, so far as I can
>>> tell, is following the "logic" and rules of QM ... the
>>> multiverses explanation/interpretation is irrelevant.
>>>
>>> Why do so many top notch scientists choose to engage
>>> in religious wars?
>>
>>He's a scientific realist ("the success of theoretical science would
>>be a miracle if its entities or etc didn't have ontological existence
>>or blah, blah"). He therefore doesn't like logical empiricism, which
>>even though a virtually dead faction of PoS today, it still seems to
>>hold sway in QM (with the non-realist Copenhagen Interpretation). He's
>>stated before that he dislikes Bohm's Causal Interpretation, Cramer's
>>Transactional Interpretation, and etc because he considers them "many-
>>worlds" in disguise, trying to fly under the radar.
>>He has claimed that his "multiverse" is testable, even though it may
>>actually require the advent of quantum computers or etc to be such.
>>
>>As far as individuals go (not the scientific method) there are
>>probably plenty of realists or metaphysical naturalists in the other
>>sciences (especially biology), but those same people seem to curiously
>>regard realists as "mavericks" in microphysics.
>
> How would you characterize Frank J. Tipler? I've been reading
> his most recent book, "The Physics of Christianity". He claims he's
> proven multiverses mathematically. To be a bit sarcastic, I just
> thought of a good "Tiplerism". I can just hear him claiming that
> Christ's "In my Father's house are many mansions" is a obvious
> reference to multiverses :)
>
Didn't the poster "Immortalist" even get his nym from Tipler's other
book back in the '90s, "The Physics Of Immortality"? I've only read
reviews of this recent book "The Physics of Christianity", but it
sounds like he has jumped fully over the edge of the cliff this time
(if he has promoted it as anything other than science fiction or a
speculative philosophy romp).
> Maybe it was Tipler's book that set me off on the topic of
> physicist's fairy tales. I really do think these guys should
> keep their personal views separate from their physics.
> Again, Deutsch had no need whatsover to mix his
> philosophical beliefs into the first video on the topic of quantum
> computation. As you point out, the "realism" of multiverses
> remains to be seen.
>
> Art
>
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
