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I'm not saying Tegmark is wrong. I am saying that what he is selling isn't science. It is wild speculation based on nothing more than the fact that it can be supported with some branch of mathematics.

As I said ... based on Tegmark's theory ... in some universe Jesus Christ is "my" personal saviour and Noah built an ark.

Given an infinite number of possibilities ... I can't possibly be wrong.


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Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
I'm not saying Tegmark is wrong. I am saying that what he is selling isn't science. It is wild speculation based on nothing more than the fact that it can be supported with some branch of mathematics.

As I said ... based on Tegmark's theory ... in some universe Jesus Christ is "my" personal saviour and Noah built an ark.

Given an infinite number of possibilities ... I can't possibly be wrong.
If that were the case then he wouldn't be able to publish articles on this topic in peer reviewed journals like Phys. Rev. D.

Tegmark doesn't just make trivial predictions like there exists a pink elephant somewhere that can climb trees, but he can predict nontrivial physical observables which can be observed in experiments. That's what matters.

And yes, you can be ''wrong'' because, despite the infinite possibilities, not all are equally likely. Most of the possibilities are not typical and you would expect to find yourself in a typical situation.


B.t.w., you could just as well criticise quantum mechanics on your grounds. There is a finite probability that the entire earth will evolve into a place where pink elephants live in trees and Noah build an ark. However, the contribution to the wave function of such a state is vanishingly small. The same is true in Tegmark's theory about such states.

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the Count worte:
"If that were the case then he wouldn't be able to publish articles on this topic in peer reviewed journals like Phys. Rev. D."

Why not? His math is solid. His physics might even be solid. But the ambiguity of his conclusion I think is rubbish.

Is it possible that there are an infinite number of Daniel Morgan's in the universe (that thought ought to create an earthquake in the force). Of course it is. Is it proveable? No. Is it science? No.

Once again the claim that Tegmark can "predict nontrivial physical observables." I ask again ... name one. One thing he has predicted that was not already known? I'm not asking for anything that wasn't asked of Einstein or Bohr or any other world-class physicist.

If Tegmark is right ... then he is right in some subset of universes ... abd thus he must equally be wrong in just as many. That is not science.


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Quote:
"If that were the case then he wouldn't be able to publish articles on this topic in peer reviewed journals like Phys. Rev. D."

Why not? His math is solid. His physics might even be solid. But the ambiguity of his conclusion I think is rubbish.
The conclusions are not ambiguous. The article on neutrino masses clearly wasn't ambiguous and that one was published in Phys. Rev. D. You can't say that just because you can draw other ambiguous conclusions from his theory (pink elephants climbing trees somewhere etc.) that this isn't science. You can do the same thing with many other theories too.

Quote:

Is it possible that there are an infinite number of Daniel Morgan's in the universe (that thought ought to create an earthquake in the force). Of course it is. Is it proveable? No. Is it science? No.

It is science as long as you focus on experimentally verifiable predictions. The mere fact that in the multiverse an infinite number of copies of you exists was not the subject of the Phys. Rev. D paper. The paper was about the consequences for neutrino masses.

Quote:

Once again the claim that Tegmark can "predict nontrivial physical observables." I ask again ... name one. One thing he has predicted that was not already known? I'm not asking for anything that wasn't asked of Einstein or Bohr or any other world-class physicist.
Tegmarks paper predicts bounds for neutrino masses that are stricter than current experimental limits.

Quote:


If Tegmark is right ... then he is right in some subset of universes ... abd thus he must equally be wrong in just as many. That is not science.
Not all of these subsets are equally likely. That's because you are less likely to exist in places where galaxy formation is inhibited. If in some subset neutrino masses are radically different then you'll hardly have galaxies there. Far less copies of you are living there compared to other subsets. That's how he derives his confidence interval for neutrino masses.

He would be wrong only in marginal subsets, just like you would be wrong if you guess that I am under 7 feet long and I turn out to be longer.


Einstein objected to QM for similar reasons. He didn't like the fact that QM doesn't predict outcomes of experiments. So, you could say that whatever the outcome of an experiment is, it is ''always correct''. But the probability of different outcomes are generally not equal. QM predicts the probabilities and that makes it a scientifically verifiable theory.

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Count Iblis II wrote:
"Not all of these subsets are equally likely. That's because you are less likely to exist in places where galaxy formation is inhibited."

Ok we will ignore that infinite set of universes where galaxy formation can not exist. That leaves, still, an infinite number in which it can.

So you still think Tegmark, from first principles can predict the rest mass of a neutrino. Fascinating. For the third and last time I will ask: What is the value predicted from first principles. Choose any neutrino flavour you wish.


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With 90% probability the sum of the masses of the three neutrino masses is between 0.13 and 5 eV.

See page 4, Fig 2 of:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0304536

This is information about the neutrinos which was not known using other means, and therefore this area of research can be called ''scientific''. The fact that it doesn't predict an exact value for a neutrino mass doesn't imply that this isn't science.

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And if I were to write:

With 90% probability the value of Pi is between 0.13 and 5 you would accept that as science?

I've read his article. Read it when first posted. A range of greater than a magnitude is not a prediction. And if you think it is oh boy do I have some predictions for you.

You've had your say ... I've made my point. Enough of this thread. Compare Tegmark's predictions to those made by others for the same information with respect to other particles. He is a light-year away from anything of substance.


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Quote:
And if I were to write:

With 90% probability the value of Pi is between 0.13 and 5 you would accept that as science?

It depends. I can imagine Stone Age man trying to measure pi by drawing circles...

But since we can do better today you won't be able to publish this result.


Quote:
I've read his article. Read it when first posted. A range of greater than a magnitude is not a prediction.

Of course it is a prediction. It is a falsifiable statement. Current knowledge allows for neutrino masses well outside of Tegmark's range so it contains nontrivial information. Your bounds for pi does not contain useful information because we already knew that pi is in that range.

Morgan's law ''A range of greater than a magnitude is not a prediction'' isn't scientific at all smile Take the logarithm of the quantity to see why smile


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And if you think it is oh boy do I have some predictions for you.

I'm curious! But I doubt you have nontrivial predictions. Pi between 1 and 10 doesn't count, because we already know this. Your prediction has to add something to current knowledge. E.g., if you can show that dark matter very likely consists of particles with a mass between 1 and 30 GeV you can publish this in Phys Rev. D. This mass range much more limited than current experimental and theoretical constraints.


Quote:

You've had your say ... I've made my point. Enough of this thread. Compare Tegmark's predictions to those made by others for the same information with respect to other particles. He is a light-year away from anything of substance.
This comparison is irrelevant and Tegmark explains this in his article. It could be that theory fixes all parameters. But it could also be the case that it doesn't. There are models in physics where fundamental parameters are not fixed by theory, because you have a very large number of vacua. In such cases you can only use anthropic arguments like those used by Tegmark to calculate parameters which are not otherwise constrained.

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