4 ms·
Has nobody at Quanta Magazine heard of the Many Worlds Interpretation? I'm tired of these awful articles from Quanta.
by Simon_says 7y ago
Has nobody at Quanta Magazine heard of the Many Worlds Interpretation? I'm tired of these awful articles from Quanta.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoThis 'awful article' is about experimental tests of a working theory. Can you provide a reference explaining how MWI might be falsified experimentally?
- Simon_says 7y agoMWI can be differentiated from the Copenhagen Interpretation via experiment as soon as the Copenhagen Interpretation decides what a "measurement" is, when it happens, and when it doesn't. As it is now, the Copenhagen Interpretation is an incomplete theory because it doesn't give you a formal algorithmic way to know when to apply the measurement operator. The answer is whatever it needs to be to make the answer come out right. To answer your question more directly, MWI could be falsified in a lot of ways, but one would be if structures larger than a certain size don't self-interfere.
- kgwgk 7y agoIs the MWI more complete in this regard? How does it decide what a "branching event" is, when it happens, and when it doesn't?
- Simon_says 7y agoYes it is. MWI's only rule is that reality evolves according the the Schrödinger equation. It's what would get if you took collapse out of the Copenhagen Interpretation. The idea of "branching" is a human-legible metaphor for describing the resultant behavior. But the math doesn't have branching.
- kgwgk 7y agoAccording to you the MWI cannot make any predictions about experimental outcomes then?
- Simon_says 7y agoHow did you pick that up from what I said?
- kgwgk 7y agoMaybe I misunderstood you. How does the MWI decide what a measurement is, when it happens, and when it doesn't?
- Simon_says 7y agoAccording to MWI, there's no special privileged operation called "measurement" like there is in the Copenhagen Interpretation. Of course there's still scientists looking at stuff, but according to MWI, the scientists and their machines are made of matter that follows the same law of physics of the matter they're studying.
- kgwgk 7y agoHow does the MWI make predictions about experimental outcomes then? Unitary evolution doesn’t cut it.
- Simon_says 7y agoSure it does. You should read about MWI.
- kgwgk 7y agoYou do need something more than Schroedinger’s equation to get definite outcomes and probabilities. Apparently when and how it happens are not questions so easy to answer, are they? MWI may be what you would get if you took collapse out of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but to get the same predictions you have to put the collapse back in somehow. And the question of what is a measurement cannot be completely avoided.