My model requires repeated, large-scale miraculous intervention, apparently for no reason other than to make a text that actually doesn't describe certain events look like it did. If you like, you can place my model in the past too: God altered all copies of Genesis in 500 BC (assuming it existed then), along the memories of everyone who'd read it previously. That's still a lot fewer changes than your model requires.
Actually, I do not understand how your model solves any problem. How is it supposed to operate to solve the problem that certain people who read Genesis find a conflict with science? How does changing photons or changing copies of the bible in the past or the memories of people in the past lead to a solution of this real problem?
How can there be a reliable cultural memory when God is intervening to change things on massive scales?
"Reliable cultural memory" -
ad hoc definition - tradition passed down, as a whole, within a cultural group which does not differ significantly from the findings of history, archaeology, and other science based disciplines.
Once you decide that the evidence presented to our senses should be rejected as thoroughly unreliable, ...
I don't of course. Sophisticated YEC rejects, in a metaphysical sense, as unreliable nothing but scientific
inferences about events in the past prior to a specific date. The data leading to these rejected inferences are interpreted in a specific but metaphysically different way.
... you no longer have any basis for knowing anything at all.
That is only true of the generalization you make of my specific assumption which allows you to claim having photons change on the way to the eyes is the same thing as my model (even though you speak of
your model and
my model).
You're asking about several different kinds of things here, and I handle them differently. Quantum superposition describes physics on a small scale, so I accept it as an accurate model for the way the physical world works.
It doesn't just describe physics on a small scale. By various amplifications, it describes events on every scale. A flash on a screen caused by a particle that has been fired at it is caused by a particle in a superposition of states which, depending on the setup, could have been anywhere in a large region prior to its interception. This is fairly unweird, involving only amplification to flashes in an experiment about wee things whose positions are measured on a macroscopic scale.
Nothing to do with real life, right?
But there is no evidence for any
objective collapse theory in quantum mechanics, which means that "measurement" by our best theory, seems to be essential. "Measurement" is just another word for "observation" and is convenient for the avoidance of the uncomfortable mystical implications of a role for "observation" in determining events. "Observation", nonetheless, one way or another, seems to be a requirement. Observations involve minds, so its hard to get away from a role for mind in determining external events. Events, it seems, are not determined until a mind is involved.
Consider mutations in the DNA of the germ cells of placental animals. Will a fetus have a survivable mutation or not? Through amplification of the mutation by growth and of its effect in each cell by the production of multiple proteins, we have a natural version of Schrodinger's cat. Now we are talking about big differences in animals. Decoherence does not get rid of this. Entanglement of the states of the original piece of DNA with the environment just means that larger systems are superposed. Whether or not mutations to an animal's germ cells are serious is indeterminate at the time the radiation is applied. Some kind of observation is required to determine the seriousness of the mutation (do doctors testing fetuses for genetic abnormality 'collapse' wave functions and thereby convert the indeterminate into the determinate?).
The weather, a non linear dynamical system, amplifies quantum uncertainties into the weather we observe. It means that the weather is essentially unpredictable beyond a certain period of time. The more accurately we measure components of the state of the atmosphere at a given time, the more uncertain we make complementary components. The uncertainty in these components leads to uncertainty, through non linear amplification, to the weather x days later. The weather is indeterminate, as is, I suspect, the climate.
Whether or not Harold was killed by an arrow through his eye at Runymede in 1066 was dependant upon whether or not a puff of wind affected the arrow's course to cause it to hit or miss. The superposition of states and the whole future history of England was resolved by the observation of Harold's death. The world's history was determined by the mystical process of "wave function collapse".
Same goes for where the planets are in their orbits today and the particular locations of the galaxies.
It also violates our intuition, which is based on experience with classical systems, but one can develop a quantum intuition after a while.
Yes our intuited common assumptions. One supposes one could develop an intuition for whether or not a scientific model is interpreted one way or the other in sophisticated YEC as well (it's not the 'anything goes' that you claim it is, just as is the the case for quantum intuition).
I was an experimental particle physicist for a number of years, and it does get to be intuitive eventually.
Well, I didn't get to be a particle physicist, but I did find mistakes, which they admitted, in the work of a number of physicists. There was S. K. Sen at the University of Manitoba, one of my professors. I found mistakes in his course notes (how come none of the students who went on to be physicists didn't?) There was the disagreement with Tom LeCompte, a team leader of some sort at Fermilab (at the time - I don't know what he is doing now). We disputed over whether or not a spherically symmetrical electromagnetic wave is possible on the Compuserve Scimath forum. He was too proud to concede to a non physicist until another physicist intervened in my support (so is it possible? why?). Then there was Herbert Bernstein and Anthony Phillip's paper on fibre bundles and quantum theory in Scientific American. Bernstein later denounced his own paper but I see that it is still being used as reading material in some courses, no doubt confusing the poor students who hope to be enlightened by it.
which he is not claiming exist
OK, I hadn't read this paper for a long time. Just glancing at it the other day I read the subtitle "Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations" and just grabbed that as the basis of my statement, but I see he does not go so far in the text. Whether or not he approved of the blurb is another matter (and yes, I can see that the blurb does not say that all the parallel universe types are a direct implication of cosmological observations, so I am forced to admit carelessness here).
But it's not relevant to my point, which is that it is not beyond the pale of science to consider models of reality that are far beyond our experience. I claim that the existence of the parallel worlds of this paper directly implies the existence of the universe of sophisticated YEC.
the implication that the physical universe is therefore much larger or infinite, and therefore contains all possible physical states, is not supported by any evidence that I'm aware of. (Tegmark kind of glides over this distinction.)
NASA's WMAP mission determined the geometry of the universe to be flat with a 2% margin of error on the measured parameter (I am not yet allowed to put links into my posts here). A flat universe implies an infinite universe. So there's evidence that the universe is infinite or very large. I do not know what radius would be implied by a 2% error on the closed universe side in the measurement of the parameter.
I don't buy his probability calculation on how far it would be to another copy of me. It's based on the equal probability of initial states at the time of the big bang. I suppose at the big bang, there could have been a very hot copy of me somewhere, but considering the temperature, it would be exceedingly unlikely that the copy would exist a femtosecond later, and for each additional femtosecond, the probability would decrease by the same astronomically small factor. OTOH, considering the probability that other copies of me exist
today within the distance he calculates, that calculation depends on the assumption that all possible evolutions of an initial state are equally likely. I strongly doubt that as quantum probability densities are not like that.
Multiple worlds interpretations of QM solve a real problem with the theory,
What problem do they solve besides indeterminism from a God's eye point of view (which isn't the point of view of science, tied as it must be to human POV experiments)? Many-worlds doesn't solve the problem of indeterminism so far as doing experments goes. Many-worlds adds not one whit of predictability to measurement, so, while it's an idea some physicists like, it can't be said to be actual physics.
I don't like the "many worlds" interpretation. The only way we can have free will is through some effect of quantum superposition in the brain. (This is not as far fetched as it sounds as quantum superposition is now believed to play a role in the conduction of electrons in chloroplasts, which are structures on the same order of size as synapses.) If we merely split into multiple copies for every possible outcome of a superposition in the brain, with no input from the mystical will, then we have no choice about what we do, we are not responsible for what we do, justice is nonsense, and religion is meaningless bunk. Fortunately, it's metaphysics. I call it the atheist's preferred nihilist qm interpretation of the universe.
taking a model too literally
Hmmm, well that's exactly what I'm
not doing when I say that it
could be that the scientific model of our past is not what happened. I don't know and I know that I can't know.
And his final suggestion is wholly speculative.
I call it the Pythagorean model. The universe is all number, just a mathematical system. If our universe has nothing mystical about it which would make it real in distinction to all other mathematical systems, then there is no reason to say they do not exist. This is, once again, metaphysics. But it is the kind of thing that scientists like to think about and they do not feel that when they do think about it that they are doing violence to the spirit of scientific truth. Ironically, if mathematics, without supernature, is all there is, then one of these universes exists at the pleasure of a meta universe (running on a computer in the meta universe, for example). In one of these universes a "God" in the meta universe does miracles in the sub universe. His actions are "supernatural" in the sub universe. So, it looks like if there is nothing supernatural there is something "supernatural" which looks very much like the supernatural. So it looks like we can't get away from the supernatural. Of course, this model doesn't imply
our universe exists at the pleasure of a meta universe, etc ...
I think that this kind of model would undermine the truth of Christianity in exactly the same way that it undermines the truth of science,
What you assume about truth, of course, you have to conclude.
If one party decides to reject evidence entirely, ...
But they don't, they interpret it in one of two ways, depending on specific criteria. This dual interpretation actually falls within Tegmark's 4th form of parallelism, with the creation done from the metaverse according to the sophisticated YEC model so, hmmm, it's not beyond the pale after all.
The least you could do is tolerate it.
