13 May 2007 - defining probability

Have you ever believed a Peano axiom? Many parts are credible, but if we want our increasingly abstract mathematics to remain meaningful in the real world, we ought to base it on physics. Consider two domains fraught with foundational debates, quantum mechanics (Copenhagen tried to collapse the wave function but there are many worlds) and probability theory (where the Bayesians are still battling stubborn prior beliefs). Both problems can be cleaned up by simply defining probabilities in terms of quantum reality. Furthermore, this will work wonders for education:

teacher - I’m sorry Johnny, today we have diffEq and Feynman diagrams. We’ll get to coin-flipping in a couple weeks.