@tomr,
tomr wrote:
Quote:The problem with the God of the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics is that:
1. It must be a consciousness: a God that knows about all worlds -- the only one to know about that.
2. It must be outside of all those worlds for them to be the object of his/her knowledge, hence outside of quantum physics.
So that God poses the same logical problem of a Creator for those who believe in creation.
Poor Many-Worlds God: can you imagine one being the eternal observer of all outcomes in all possible worlds already knowing what they will be? He would have died of boringness by now.
This many worlds god idea is not far off from what is needed to justify the statistical basis for quantum mechanics. You said earlier that god would be the only one capable of holding many worlds together. Yet a similar problem results from a fundamentally statistical and indeterminate interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a feature of nature itself, so not even God could ever know what we cannot. The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics eliminates (not solves) only the wave-function collapse problem, but nature continues to be fundamentally non-deterministic (uncertain, thanks to the HUP), which simply eliminates the logical possibility of an omniscient God. The fact that the Many-Worlds interpretation requires a God (as it does) is just another clue of its internal inconsistency, since it requires what quantum physics prohibits.
tomr wrote:If you take it that the infinite number of possible particle positions or paths created by the wave function are real possibilities, though they do not yet exist in this universe, where is the information of that infinitude of possible states stored?
What does not exist in this universe is the particle in which the wave function does not collapse and does collapse in another world: the wave function itself, which represents all probabilities of observing a particle, exists in this world (in the Many-Worlds interpretation or in any other one).
tomr wrote:In the wave attribute of the duality? But do those possible states (paths) of particles also have a dual wave attribute?
The wave function is not an attribute of the particle: it is the whole set of probabilities of observing that particle anywhere. You are thinking as if the particle actually existed when it is just a possibility: you are confusing possible existence with actual existence, then turning possible existence in an attribute of actual existence, as if the latter preceded the former. It is the other way around: possible existence (the wave function) precedes actual existence (the particle).
tomr wrote:How can an infinite amount of information of particle paths (also having wave states with more paths, etc...) be justified if not by being outside this universe?
This monstrosity is just the consequence of the inversion in precedence between possibility and actuality.
tomr wrote:Also who or what is sorting through these possibilities and picking the observable particle?
No one: this is what true randomness is all about. Here is the source of true non-determinism.
tomr wrote:Because if I understand the way this works... when we observe something the possible states collapse to one observable one. Yet even the process of observation should be based on these same rules. And the wave function (all possible states) of the photon from the particle to be detected cannot be resolved by the wave function from particles in the retina. How can something that only describes the totality of possibilities pick anything?
That's the point: it can't. Nothing can: it is
random (have you ever heard that word?). This is just chapter two of your confusion between possibility and actuality: you want possibility to be already actual, when it is not. Since possibility precedes actuality, they must be
really different: you must accept the nature of possibility, which is precisely to be
not actual, hence the nature of actuality as non-deterministic. This is the essence of non-determinism: the absence of any actuality to act as a determinant.
tomr wrote:Something outside this process must pick which one is the reality.
Why? Because you feel better that way?
tomr wrote:And this goes for any interaction between waves/particles in the universe.
Wave functions and particles do not interact, because wave functions do not actually exist. This is something quantum physicists know exceedingly well. Wave functions are not physical objects: only particles are. If wave functions were particles, then there would be no wave/particle duality.
tomr wrote:Who decides which state? Or what is outside the wave function that is actually doing the selecting? I think this sounds like a problem God could solve.
This is neither a decision nor a choice: it is a
random event, and the fact that you don't like it doesn't create the logical necessity for either a decision or a selection.
tomr wrote:This is why a deterministic view of the world is superior to an indeterministic one.
This what? What is the reason for that alleged superiority? You just asserted it must be that way, but you forgot to mention why.
tomr wrote:God is not required.
Neither God nor any decision-maker or selector: a random event requires nothing but itself and its possibility.
tomr wrote:But when statistics is the fundamental rule of the universe, something is needed to keep track of and make a judgement on an infinite number of possible states.
God is only required in the Many-Worlds interpretation, and not because of the multiple possibilities, but because of the multiple
outcomes, each one originating a new world. God is the only one who could unify those different worlds, since by definition they do not interact.
tomr wrote:Something like God.
You mean God or God with another name.
tomr wrote:Deterministic laws can produce the same results that are said of statistcal indeterminance but the path is inherent in the particles reaction to other particles.
Quantum mechanics is inherently non-deterministic, thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the outcome is inherently uncertain -- you don't even know what the outcome is
after it happens, since you can only measure
half of it.
tomr wrote:A much cleaner, non-solution free, way for a universe to exist.
Certainly not the universe described by quantum physics.