On 1/9/2025 10:42 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Le ven. 10 janv. 2025, 07:31, Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com> a
écrit :
On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 5:06 PM Quentin Anciaux
<allco...@gmail.com> wrote:
Brent,
You’re using a mathematical tool to assign probabilities to
events, but in a single, eternal history, those probabilities
lose their connection to reality. For example, if a specific
bridge hand never occurs in this unique history, then its true
probability wasn’t what was calculated—it was effectively
zero. The calculated probability would then only reflect an
abstract game, disconnected from the realized world.
In such a framework, the probabilities assigned to events have
no actual meaning because they do not correspond to any real
possibility. They are purely formal, a mathematical exercise
without any grounding in what actually happens. The ensemble
you invoke doesn’t exist, so the probabilities become a kind
of illusion, suggesting possibilities where none exist.
When you roll a die, the probability of a four is 1/6. Do the
other possibilities have to exist? Even if they do, they have no
influence on the outcome you actually observe. Probabilities are
useful for predicting possible outcomes; so I can, in advance,
predict that the possibility that I shall get a four is 1/6. That
is all there is to it. That is what probabilities do. There is no
need for the other possible outcomes to exist, either in advance
or after the fact. They play no role, outside of your imagination.
Bruce
Bruce,
The difference with your die example is that in a single-history
framework, the probabilities we assign are only meaningful if the
ensemble of possible outcomes has some kind of reality. When you roll
a die, the probability of a four being 1/6 relies on the existence of
a mechanism where all six sides are genuinely possible outcomes before
the roll. If we later observe that, in the single history of the
universe, a four never occurs, then its actual probability was not
1/6—it was zero. (It’s an example)
In a single-world view, the other possibilities never had any reality
at all—they were not actualized, not even hypothetically.
Of course of the other possibilities were "actualized" hypothetically.
They were hypothetical possibilities included in the Schroedinger
equation. And if fact in repetitions of the same experiment the the
different possibilities are realized with the frequencies as predicted.
So they were not MERELY hypothetical.
So, the act of assigning probabilities becomes a purely formal
exercise, disconnected from what can or cannot happen. The other sides
of the die are reduced to abstractions, with no causal role in the
observed outcome.
Probabilities are indeed tools for predicting outcomes, but their
usefulness depends on the assumption that the possibilities they
describe have some grounding in reality. Without that grounding, they
become empty numbers. In frameworks like many-worlds, those
possibilities exist as actualized outcomes in other branches, giving
substance to the probabilities. But in a single-history framework, the
unobserved possibilities never existed, making the probabilities feel
like a game of imagination rather than a reflection of the world.
But the "unobserved possibilities" are observed in other instances of
the same experiment. That's how we confirm the predictions of the
Schroedinger equation.
If the "other possible outcomes" have no reality, even as hypothetical
constructs, then the act of predicting probabilities loses its
explanatory value. They become detached from the reality they aim to
describe. That’s the fundamental issue I’m pointing to. Without some
ontological weight for the ensemble of possibilities, probabilities
are just formal tools with no connection to what actually happens.
I have no idea what "ontological weight" means.
Brent
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