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The thing missing is an explanation for why we find ourselves in a particular branch. Insisting that this doesn’t require an explanation is never going to be sa
by pchiusano 7y ago
The thing missing is an explanation for why we find ourselves in a particular branch. Insisting that this doesn’t require an explanation is never going to be satisfying for some people.
I’ll try to explain why, using your random variable sampling analogy, which is telling. In the case of say, sampling from a coin toss random variable, there is indeed a more primitive explanation for why the coin comes up heads or tails, it’s just that it would be a much more complicated explanation involving knowledge of huge amounts of detail about the exact force applied to the coin, maybe air currents in the area where coin is being flipped, etc. But in principle that is all explainable.
With quantum measurement, there is no such explanation available, even in principle. We are told only that we will find ourselves in one of the possibilities admitted by the distribution predicted by QM. We have no further explanation for which one it will be. The QM multiverse folks then expect us to be okay with this as the end of the explanation. But notice this is a choice to adopt something as axiomatic. We could have done that at other points in the history of physics but didn’t.
- zajio1am 7y ago> The thing missing is an explanation for why we find ourselves in a particular branch. That question does not really make sense. In every branch, there is 'you' asking about why is being in that particular branch.
- pchiusano 7y agoI think you are making a hidden assumption. Here is a good question to tease it out: why does it make sense to ask why a coin flip came up heads but not make sense to ask why we observe one QM outcome? With the coin flip, it’s understood that the probability distribution is not reality. It’s just a way of approximating reality without having to model all the things that would explain our observations. With QM we have equations that predict probability distributions, and there is debate about whether reality is literally a distribution of possible states, or if it’s more like the coin flip random variable.
- zajio1am 7y agoYes, i was assuming MWI, so my point was it is not a problem itself (it does not need an explanation) in context of MWI.
- MockObject 7y ago> why does it make sense to ask why a coin flip came up heads but not make sense to ask why we observe one QM outcome? But you had just explained why: > With quantum measurement, there is no such explanation available, even in principle.