Well, if you take the wave function seriously, which you probably should, you have to answer the question: what causes the spontaneous collapse of the wave function? This is serious question. Why does the probability function instantaneously collapse, apparently randomly, to a fixed point in space?

The Copenhagen interpretation is simply just not that satisfying of an answer, and Feynman's famous retort that people demanding one just "shut up an calculate" has left a huge hole in our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

What you're saying here is basically "why doesn't spontaneous collapse of the wave function satisfy you?" And my answer is: because spontaneous collapse is obviously wrong!

... which makes sense, given the extremely high energy thresholds of the Newtonian limit. The universe is not literally jumbling around in a stochastic dance before our very eyes.

What *will* cause branching of the wave function in your body is radioactive decay of isotopes in your body, since those occur randomly. But that isn't the same thing as rolling the dice at every human-scale possibility (like giving n to the power of a gogol permutations of this discussion). The relative amplitude of wave function interactions between a radioactive decay and interactions that would cause those changes in your brain is *insanely* low, relative to that not happening.

You're correct Bell was a promoter of Bhomian mechanics. That's not the important part. Bell proposed his inequality theorem as a way to experimentally confirm or rule out hidden variables. Bell's inequality was proven to be *violated* in a famous experiment in 1972 -- which would appear to *rule* *out* hidden variables.

Secondly, that's an incorrect understanding of Everettian mechanics. A branching of the wave function does not happen every time you tap a key on the phone. That misunderstands how decoherence works in the real world. There are not *infinite* possibilities. There is the evolution of the wave function, which is not an infinite possibility space. The evolution of the wave function progresses according to the Schrödinger equation, given the Hamiltonian. Within that evolving wave function, most interactions in our daily life are purely classical! There's no quantum indeterminism going on at every move of your fingers. If that were true, Newtonian mechanics wouldn't work at all, and the Newtonian limit would not be at the insanely high energies it does.

Also, the protests about the extra dimensions, being so unbelievable comes from an intrinsic belief that two branch worlds are somehow a duplication of information or energy. But this isn't true. The size of the universe is proportional to the amplitude of the inverse of the wave function squared for that probability of the measurement. The net sum of the antecedent world's energy is equal to the total sum of branch universes.

In the math, this solution looks far more simple than Bohmian mechanics by a mile, which requires you to imagine there's a whole bunch of stuff that we can't see and can't measure that explains it -- even though the Bell inequality being experimentally violated seems to rule it out.

It's only in the human imagination does Everett seem so hard to believe. The argument for it, isn't that it's exciting like Marvel movies. The argument is it's much simpler math!

Probability is equally a problem in Everettian mechanics. The Born rule equally applies. Instead it's interpreted as measuring the probability you'll find yourself on one branch of the wave function versus another.

I think this is the base case, yes. Also, a shrinking Chinese population raises the specter of a manufacturing recession that pushes marginal manufacturing costs from declining economies of scale, up. This is also inflationary.

There's literally nothing we can do about these production dynamics. Even if we snapped our fingers and we were on a bitcoin standard tomorrow, all these dynamics continue to apply into the medium-term.

Hidden variable theories are trying too hard. And, of course, there's Bell's inequality. Also, Everettian mechanics are completely deterministic.

Thanks!

Almost everybody takes the concept of probability for granted. But the nature of probability is one of the biggest philosophical problems in foundational questions about nature. Statistical mechanics in physics shows that probabilities in nature are not merely human abstractions, but fundamental to the laws of physics, with the most jarring example of probability showing up in our attempts at quantum interpretation.

I am partial to Hugh Everett's interpretation in this regard. But that doesn't take the probability away from the problem that Sean Carroll characterizes as "self-locating uncertainty". It's actually a philosophical mindf**k.

Good news. TBD is not use JSON-LD in any of our Web5 architecture. So our work on DID/VC is completely unaffected by this limitation. In fact, even the *government* based pilots for DID/VC that we're seeing use plain JSON schema, too. Including the DHS's green card on VC program. So the issues you are raising just don't seem like a practical concern from a centralization/decentralization argument.

It seems you're talking about JSON-LD, which is not required. You can use plain JSON and literally everything you're wringing your hands about becomes a non-issue.

So you're saying that because the spec is hosted at the W3C, it will break if the W3C goes down? Are you actually arguing that?

I wouldn't make that argument. Because it's a paradigmatically different concept. A DID points to a document that can contain arbitrary data. Which then allows you to implement things like verifiable credentials.

Why do you think individuals are going to be typing DIDs in by hand? They're URIs that point to documents. They're not meant to be the equivalent of email addresses or wallet addresses.

You do not need DNS with this scheme. That's the point. DNS is a centralized scheme for identity on the internet.

UX can easily hide most of the ugliness. Similar URI schemes are in use over many protocols. From the web, to LDAP, ActiveDirectory, and user experiences have been built that hide them, extremely well. Having a URI scheme allows for multiple resolver protocols, which is pretty important if you want to break free of centralization of the Certificate Authority (CA) architecture we are all reliant on, and is very vulnerable to state-level attack.

Small earthquake in LA! Officially starting #EarthquakeNostr

You are never thinking clearly when you're angry. Even when the anger is justified.

What, you mean there's no such thing as false balance in logic??? /s

The rank hypocrisy going on at the bird site is really something to behold. The completely cynical engagement farming going on there now, by increasing the emphasis on algorithm-selected content (remember the promise of algorithm transparency?).

The thing is, I always thought this was going to happen and it was never about some abstract principle of free speech. I always knew it was about cultural grievance and personal vengeance. I said as much over the past year. Many people close to me said I was wrong and that my distrust was simply stemming from my personal animus for Space Karen.

Whether or not that factored in or not -- people tend to have animus for some reason or another -- it's worth mentioning that my prediction dart landed pretty close to, if not squarely on the bullseye.