# Non-Experts and Science **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2017, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866 "2017-08-17T11:41:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 165
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/165 "2017-08-27T08:44:43Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > How could science exist without information? Science couldn’t, but the world wouldn’t be bothered. > [@](#): > > A photon, for example, isn’t physical - it is a probability distribution, in other words, a ‘packet of information.’ Again, this is a strong claim regarding the interpretation of quantum mechanics that is currently not supported by actual quantum mechanics. I’ve told you this before, but there are two ways of interpreting a wave function: psi-onticism and psi-epistemicism. On the first, the wave function is just a physical wave, like an electromagnetic one. This is supported, for instance, by the [PBR-theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBR_theorem), which rules out many of the most natural psi-epistemic models. On psi-epistemicism, the wave function isn’t an ‘element of reality’, to use a somewhat old-fashioned term, but rather, just an element of our description of reality, like, for instance, the probability distribution that results when I put either a red or green ball into a box. That’s an element of our knowledge, of the way we describe the world. So you have two options: either the wave function is something like an electromagnetic wave, and thus, perfectly physical; or, it’s an element of our description of the world, only sort of summarizing what we know about a given system. In neither case does the inference you want to draw follow: on psi-onticism, the wave function is just a physical field; on psi-epistemicism, the wave function doesn’t tell us anything about the world, but merely about what we know about the world. You sort of want to mix those two alternatives: the wave function describes our knowledge, and hence, is ‘informational’ in some ill-defined sense, but also describes physics, and consequently, physics is ‘informational’. You’re already tangled up in contradictions here. > [@](#): > > I did not say the the world was created by our subjective ideas. You said, for example: > [@Quantum Mechanics and Mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/157): > > Now, something \*did \* exist before we did, undoubtedly, but whatever that was only existed as a _probability_ which combined with our consciousness to appear to us as what we call ‘reality’. Or: > [@abashed](#): > > But how can you demonstrate wavefunction collapse occurs at all without a human-based consciousness? You can’t. These are completely wrong ideas. I’ve outlined to you an experiment that yields different outcomes if consciousness did, indeed, collapse the wave function; and I’ve detailed how nothing about quantum mechanics implies that what existed before our consciousness interacted with it was just ‘a probability’. What exists, exists independently from us; you just fall for the trap of associating properties of our models with the world they model. It’s like saying the ancient Greeks must have been made from marble, because all the statues depicting them are. > [@abashed](#): > > Occam’s Razor applies here. It doesn’t (and wouldn’t lead to your desired conclusion anyhow, since your view doesn’t add any explanatory power, but merely handwaves in the direction of the mysteries of consciousness). Occam basically ensures predictivity of theories: among two theories that explain the same data, you choose the one making less assumptions, as otherwise, you’d have no way to make any predictions, since you can always find a sufficiently baroque theory to ‘explain’ any experimental evidence. But here, we have different interpretations of a theory leading to the same predictions; parsimony simply isn’t well-defined in that case. > [@](#): > > If people didn’t devise experiments and gathered data and then derive mathematical constructions from these there would be no science! The world, however, would not care at all about that, and work according to the same laws. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866)._