Saturday, September 14, 2013

More things in heaven and earth …

… Physics: Quantum quest : Nature News & Comment.


… Fuchs has rewritten standard quantum theory into a form that closely resembles a branch of classical probability theory known as Bayesian inference, which hasits roots in the eighteenth century. In the Bayesian view, probabilities aren't intrinsic quantities 'attached' to objects. Rather, they quantify an observer's personal degree of belief of what might happen to the object.
[Hardy] did not attempt to analyse such possibilities in any detail, however; his larger goal was to show how quantum physics might be reframed as a general theory of probability.
All actual existents are probable, but not all probable ones are actual. The world we inhabit is not merely probable. So the question is really what accounts for the world's transition from probable to actual. Consider a landscape painter, with his palette of colors, his knowledge of tone and shade, all the possibilities confronting him. He sorts those possibilities out and in so doing arrives at a set of probabilities. From this set he arrives at an arrangement that is actual. 
Theists have no problem with all this, because they posit that God is actuating potencies all the time. You might say that's what He does. This makes sense because it corresponds to the only way we experience actuating potencies — by exercising choice. It seems to me that trying to explain the world by factoring out the element of choice in reality is a fool's errand, since whatever that might be would be entirely outside our normal range experience. Of course, you could say the same of God..

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