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IANA physicist, but my layman's understanding was that under many-worlds the universe doesn't actually fork. Rather, the superposition of states observed in thi
by dghf 10y ago
IANA physicist, but my layman's understanding was that under many-worlds the universe doesn't actually fork. Rather, the superposition of states observed in things like the double-slit experiment applies to all particles all the time, including the ones in our brains. When we observe a system undergo an apparent collapse of the wave-function, what's actually happening is that we/our brains have become entangled with that system, so each of our brains' states becomes correlated to one of the system's states. To a consciousness generated by one of those brain states, it appears that the system under observation has undergone a collapse; however, the result of that collapse appears different to each such brain state.
At least, that's what I took away from this:
http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/ http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-man...
and this:
http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/11/q-according-to-the-many-worlds-interpretation-every-event-creates-new-universes-where-does-the-energy-and-matter-for-the-new-universes-come-from/ http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/11/q-according-to-the-...
- jospoortvliet 10y agoWow. At some point this theory just becomes so complex it will collapse like the wave functions it talks about... Seriously, to my also-completely-laymen mind this seems adding epicycles to me.