tom

It was called "The Relative State Formulation" by its originator. "Many Worlds" was a catchy name coined by DeWitt. Those working in foundations, seem...

Many Worlds does not invoke anything, let alone many worlds. Your question is like - "What problem does 'elliptical planetary orbits' solve? Why does ...

The old argument from personal incredulity! Don't take MW seriously, just take the Schrödinger Equation seriously!

?????! Decoherence was discovered and developed under Everettian* quantum mechanics! *While H. D. Zeh - the discoverer of decoherence - was an Everett...

All quantum interference experiments are evidence of Many Worlds. A particularly fun experiment is the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester. All interaction fr...

??????! I don't know how you failed to notice, but Many Worlds is deterministic. In fact, it is the entire point of it! Many Worlds, is not just deter...

If Einstein's theories were written in incomprehensible code, then the books and papers would be forgotten. DNA contains information that, when instan...

I don't know what you mean. The information (though more precisely knowledge) encoded in DNA can be transferred through multiple media and preserved. ...

Well, it can't be an identity. The information content of DNA is not the DNA. The program that won at Go is not the hardware, the symphony is not the ...

So, you claim that the method of science does not impose any limits, but rather it is human frailty that does. Why not employ tools to help us, such a...

Have you figured out how an abstract chess program communicates with the physical world? How about the information contained in DNA, how does that com...

Yes we do. For details see "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper.

Let us just assume that Beethoven chose his final version based on whatever criterion he choose. Was he wrong?

So, is Beethoven fooling himself that when he thinks the final version is better than previous versions of his symphonies?

So, you disagree that scientific discovery and artistic creation involve the same process?

This is a particularly interesting talk, given at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Give it a few minutes and complain when you encounter something obje...

Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMiP2SM8Tpk

If you deny that beauty is an objective property, and deny that humans are able to develop a theory of that property, then how do you explain why only...

So, the abstraction - i.e. the real tiger in reality, is not the same thing as your conception of the abstraction. Seems obvious, why is that importan...

But you said... Now you claim tigers are real? What's going on?

So, tigers are real, but our concept of them is not part of the physics underlying the operation of tigers? Is that supposed to mean anything?

Is what you are claiming that, the autonomous and complex entities, that appear in most of our explanations and indeed in our best theories, are not i...

Future laws of physics must respect current knowledge and experimental evidence. Are you aware of Noether's theorem? If you are, how can you doubt tha...

Instead of the chess program, pick literally anything. The chess program obeys the laws of physics as does everything else.

Explain what a chess program does in terms of the Standard Model. Then show how what it does contradicts any law of physics. Then get back to me.

Bravo!

By your definition, a mindless facial-recognition-equipped robot would have the "experience" of "seeing" Alice. This is of course nonsense. The sequen...

Over the last 200 years, the understanding of the laws of physics has reached a point where we know certain principles that all future laws will respe...

It's quite simple - theories at the appropriate level of emergence cannot be reduced. e.g. the theory of evolution cannot be reduced to quantum field ...

Says th expert in "sleight-of-hand pop metaphysics". The theory is called The Theory of Evolution. Um,, well, since life is not reducible to matter, w...

Here's a slightly different take on things: time does not only *not* flow (which I think you may have realised), but it is *not* an observable under q...

Be honest, you haven't read a single Constructor Theory paper. And no, it's a reference to the theory of evolution, maybe you've heard of it? The good...

Everything always obeys the laws of physics - even tigers must do that. But what is remarkable about these laws is that they permit abstractions that ...

If you are arguing that the self must be excluded from physicalism because physicalism can only account for things in terms of physics, then why don't...

That is a good example, but then you could have picked just about any concept in science or mathematics.

So why doesn't the robot possess qualia then? It has all of those features. Why don't non-human animals possess them? And by the way, it is possible t...

If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that sensory apparatus of the scientist and of the robot can detect blue light, but neither i...

Computational universality is a principle of physics. It has nothing to do with mathematics, or its ontology. All known laws of physics, and all futur...

But where is the "terminus"? Both robot and scientist are being affected by blue light - i.e. some atoms are being affected. We know, via computationa...

The curious case of the robot and the scientist. Consider a faulty scientist and a faulty robot. The scientist is an expert in light, but was born wit...

Except that it is testable: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02048v3.pdf

Most interpretations of quantum mechanics are in fact alternative theories, which in the end make different predictions. Some interpretations however ...

Uhh? Duh!

Well then you should understand the implications of Obama denying he knew about Hillary's illegal email server. We now know, thanks to the 13th tranch...

Is it illegal to send covert US foreign policy details via an insecure server to someone's gmail account, who doesn't even have security clearance? ht...

Really? So how would you set about testing and falsifying a philosophical theory?

This will have 4.5 million views in 2 days! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY Part 2 is even worse!

I take it all back. Trump was clearly exploiting the birther issue in 2011, and it is obvious why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71q0D-Qsjsg

My apologies, all this cryptic stuff has got me confused. So the claim appears to be that Trump has tried to exploit the issue of Obama's true heritag...

You mean this issue: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/7860