bhobba said:
OK. I think I see where you are coming from. In applying the Kolmogorov Axioms they do not force you to associate a probability of zero with an event not in the event space and hence impossible. Its a reasonable assumption we make since its just as consistent with it in the event space as not in it. Welcome to applied math. But why anyone would want to make an issue it of it is beyond me.
I'm not making an issue about anyone
ASSUMING probability zero events never happen. I'm making an issue about the claim that that's somehow provably true. It's not. So in complaining about MWI that it doesn't justify the Born interpretation, my reaction is: what would it even mean to justify it?
There's a thought-experiment that sort-of relates to MWI. Imagine a world that is completely deterministic except for coin flips, and as far as anyone knows, there is no way to predict what the result will be. Let's assume that the way it works is that whenever anyone begins a coin flip, God stops time and makes
two copies of the world, in the exact same state. In one of the copies, he let's the coin flip yield "heads" and in the other copy, he let's it yield "tails".
This metaphysics is completely deterministic, like MWI. But for people living in one of the copies of the world, it will appear that coin flips are non-deterministic. Are those people justified in assuming that a coin flip has probability \frac{1}{2} of resulting in "heads"? I think they would be. But is that probability
derivable from the metaphysics?
But suppose instead of God making two copies, with one copy having result "heads" and the other copy having the result "tails", he makes three copies, two having result "heads" and only one having the result "tails"? Does that change the probability?
On the one hand, you could say that in this new metaphysics, a coin has a \frac{2}{3} chance of resulting in "heads" and a \frac{1}{3} chance of resulting in "tails". On the other hand, to the people living in one of the copies, it can't possibly make any difference what happens in a world that isn't their world. If they were previously justified in assuming "heads" has a probability of \frac{1}{2}, it is certainly permitted for them to continue to make that assumption.
I used to get worked up about this kind of stuff a bit during my ubdergrad days but my teachers eventually cured me of it by pointing out the morass you end up in otherwise.
I have no problems with people just saying: I'm not going to get into it, I'm going to assume X, to make things simpler. But I do have problems with people failing to realize that X is an assumption, not a necessary truth, and that reasonable people could make a different assumption.
I see a lot of that sort of thing with people discussing QM - you want to scream - why look at it that way and make things harder for yourself. Sometimes you get the distinct impression they take a perverse delight in it.
It's called trying to understand. People understand things by looking at them from lots of different angles.
As you correctly point out the difference between the strong law and weak law of large numbers is the type of convergence - weak is convergence in probability - strong is almost assuredly. But from an applied viewpoint is not really relevant - the simple assumption is we can find a n large enough that is so close to one for all practical purposes it can be taken as one. Its the same sort of thing you see with instantaneous velocity - that's impossible as well but times so short exist it's the same for all practical purposes. People seem to accept that but for some reason not for probability - don't quite know why.
As I said, I don't have any problem with making the assumption that relative frequencies approach probabilities. I just want it to be clear that it's an assumption, not a necessary truth. It simplifies our reasoning to make it (in some cases, we can't do much reasoning at all without it, or something similar). But to me, it strongly suggests Bayesianism. Probabilities are, at least partially, subjective.