Scott Aaronson, Leonid Grinberg, and Louis Wasserman’s “Worldview Manager” is now live at http://projects.csail.mit.edu/worldview/home. It seems that I am not in much conflict over quantum computing
So, damnit, I may be wrong, but at least I’m consistent (the hobgoblin of a little mind, mind you.) Via @cgranade and @mattleifer.
O brave new quantum world!
LOL! Dave, my experience was not as happy as yours … the program flagged an inconsistency in my quantum beliefs — from which “inconvenient fact” my primate mind immediately deduced … that the program’s initial-release axiom list had a bug in it.
“It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it Mandrake?” is not just a great movie line, it’s also a wonderful summary of how human cognition works.
I got:
You have responded to all of the statements without any significant tensions. Congratulations! Below is a summary of all the responses you made to the “Axiom of Choice” topic.
But I have to say I think this is very, very iffy. What logic is being used to determine my motivic topos point of view on AC?
It’s a nice idea. Apparently my views on complexity and quantum computing are consistent but not my views on quantum mechanics. Maybe it’s just the way the questions are phrased, or maybe it’s me.
The tension in my results is apparently arising from the fact that 1) I do not believe that the measurement problem can ever be answered (which actually seems provably true to me) and 2) I believe decoherence is a perfectly adequate explanation for the quantum-classical transition.
I strongly suspect wave functions don’t collapse, but I am also acutely aware that it is essentially impossible to ever prove this for certain. Is this really such an inconsistent view?
I admit I did not finish the game (so many contradictions). But it’s ok. Imagine the first two questions:
Q1. Do you think an electron is a wave-like entity?
A1. Yes, definitely.
Q2. Do you think an electron is a particle-like entity?
A2. Yes, absolutely.
BANG You are being inconsistent
Q1 is not equivalent to Q2
Well, I agree and that’s actually the source of all fun here, no? So I want to say the logic system they use in the program might be perfectly, well logic, but it is completely irrelevant to the outside world.