Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t)

Re:Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t) by nemo1618 on Sunday June 04, 2017 @08:51PM (#14484598)

>Maybe, as the physicist Yakir Aharonov has advocated, our universe has not only a special, low-entropy initial state at the Big Bang, but also a "postselected final state," toward which the outcomes of quantum measurements get mysteriously "pulled"

This sounds a lot like Terence McKenna's "Transcendental Object at the End of Time".

But on the whole... wow, you ever get so upset about a presidential election that you invent a new theory of metaphysics?

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Re:Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t) by mileszim on Sunday June 04, 2017 @08:59PM (#14484623)

The remark on the Aharonov post-selection is weird coming from Aaronson's usual hard adherence to known physics - postselection is relevant in the quantum world only. For Aaronson to twist it into an argument of cosmology seems markedly out of character.

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Re:Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t) by yakult on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:02PM (#14484641)

It is, of course, a joke. He's doing a reductio ad absurdem at the end of a tightly argued post about information theory.

It's the advantage of doing a blog post rather than a paper, I suppose.

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Re:Higher-level causation exists (but I wish it didn’t) by mileszim on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:10PM (#14484672)

Good point, I liked the work he's criticizing so I think I'm currently primed to take the post too seriously

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