From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Sep 12 2002 - 02:10:54 MDT
Amara writes
> Although Einstein and many physicists would disagree with him [Bohr]
> and say that science is about learning what is reality, and what are
> its 'laws', Bohr is pointing out that any theory about reality can
> have no consequences testable by us, unless that theory can also
> describe what humans can see and know.
I don't understand. Say that I have a theory that traffic is
backed up because a railway train is blocking the road ahead.
Or that I have a theory that a peculiar structure in a tree
was made by a bird. It doesn't seem to me that you or Bohr
could be correct---such theories certainly don't address what
humans can see and know, nor should they, right?
> If one incorporates human
> information into science, i.e. the original "logical inference" as
> described long ago by Bernoulli and Laplace, the quantum mechanical
> mud becomes clearer. For example, the quantum mechanical probabilities
> involved in the EPR scenario became Bayesian probabilities.
This is evidently still a very sticky wicket:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2002-05/msg0041406.html
I admit that this is the first I've heard that Bayesian probabilities
(which I gather are different from normal probabilities) have anything
to say to clarify EPR. The only solution that I know to EPR is
the Many Worlds theory, in which EPR simply isn't an issue. So
far as I understand Bayesian statistics, probabilities can be
assigned in cases that other statisticians become queasy about,
and so resort to likelihood. I haven't finished Carleton Cove's
"A Bayesian Approach to Everything" paper, but he does sound
awfully defensive about quantum probabilities. But to return
to MWI again, probabilities there retain their classical
simplicity.
Lee
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