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Reading Sean Carroll (1) and David Deutsch convinced me that Everett is the straightforward interpretation of what the data is saying. Copenhagen is adding unn

Reading Sean Carroll (1) and David Deutsch convinced me that Everett is the straightforward interpretation of what the data is saying. Copenhagen is adding unnecessary concepts to the interpretation and making it more complex, so, if we are using the scientific method, the burden of proof should be with the backers of Copenhagen. (1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6FR08VylO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6FR08VylO4

simiones 6y ago
I dislike both interpretations, because they both throw in the towel and consider that the measurement problem is not resolvable. Even in MWI, you still to compute probabilities (of what is actually much harder to say) if you want to actually use it for predictions. Instead, the more interesting thing is to stop ignoring the measurement problem and find a theory that actually solves it somehow; until such a thing exists, waxing philosophically about many worlds or un-reality is not really interesting.
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Everettianism does not ignore the measurement problem. It fully acknowledges it as decoherence. The problem you have instead is the location identification problem, and for that you need to calculate probabilities. Objective Collapse theories, and Bohmian Mechanics (hidden variables / pilot waves) are the only other games in town for being actual working theories. (Copenhagen is not a theory, it is an assertion that one should stop trying.) Of these, Everettianism is actually the simplest. That said, the multiverse, often referred to as the Bulk is a horse of different color. It has nothing to do with branches of the wave function in Everettian mechanics. Instead it seems to be a way to explain the fine-tuning problem. If there is no Bulk, and our comoving patch of the universe is representative of the whole shebang, then the conditions at the time of the Big Bang were unimaginably improbable, extraordinarily special, just exactly right to produce the stars in the sky, and us. A single solar mass black hole has more entropy than the entirety of the universe did at the time of the Big Bang. One way to explain that "problem" is to think that the universe in which our comoving patch exists is a small pocket arising from quantum fluctuations in a much more vast "bulk" of true vacuum that exists at high entropy. It does seem like a lot of mental gymnastics, and mostly it seems to be directed at elimination of every whiff of the idea that a creator was required for the improbable conditions in the early universe that give us the arrow of time. I'm not sure it's at all useful, nor would it have any predictive power were the idea to be true. Our comoving patch still expands to an infinite nothingness where even the black holes have evaporated away.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    Everettian universe has fine tuning problem too (and explanation): the universe has non-fine tuned states orthogonal to our, where complex life doesn't exist.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  We don't really understand probabilities, we only learned to jump from probabilities to decisions, MWI just explicates this lack of understanding. The problem was known since early 19th century.
AnHonestComment 6y ago
To concur: Copenhagen made a choice to try and preserve locality when faced with two different solutions to quantum. Unfortunately, it looks like reality is non-Euclidean instead. At this point, we actually know Copenhagen represents an extraneous assumption — but it’s deeply baked into the work of the past century.

simiones 6y ago

I dislike both interpretations, because they both throw in the towel and consider that the measurement problem is not resolvable. Even in MWI, you still to compute probabilities (of what is actually much harder to say) if you want to actually use it for predictions. Instead, the more interesting thing is to stop ignoring the measurement problem and find a theory that actually solves it somehow; until such a thing exists, waxing philosophically about many worlds or un-reality is not really interesting.

slowmovintarget 6y ago
Everettianism does not ignore the measurement problem. It fully acknowledges it as decoherence. The problem you have instead is the location identification problem, and for that you need to calculate probabilities. Objective Collapse theories, and Bohmian Mechanics (hidden variables / pilot waves) are the only other games in town for being actual working theories. (Copenhagen is not a theory, it is an assertion that one should stop trying.) Of these, Everettianism is actually the simplest. That said, the multiverse, often referred to as the Bulk is a horse of different color. It has nothing to do with branches of the wave function in Everettian mechanics. Instead it seems to be a way to explain the fine-tuning problem. If there is no Bulk, and our comoving patch of the universe is representative of the whole shebang, then the conditions at the time of the Big Bang were unimaginably improbable, extraordinarily special, just exactly right to produce the stars in the sky, and us. A single solar mass black hole has more entropy than the entirety of the universe did at the time of the Big Bang. One way to explain that "problem" is to think that the universe in which our comoving patch exists is a small pocket arising from quantum fluctuations in a much more vast "bulk" of true vacuum that exists at high entropy. It does seem like a lot of mental gymnastics, and mostly it seems to be directed at elimination of every whiff of the idea that a creator was required for the improbable conditions in the early universe that give us the arrow of time. I'm not sure it's at all useful, nor would it have any predictive power were the idea to be true. Our comoving patch still expands to an infinite nothingness where even the black holes have evaporated away.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Everettian universe has fine tuning problem too (and explanation): the universe has non-fine tuned states orthogonal to our, where complex life doesn't exist.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
We don't really understand probabilities, we only learned to jump from probabilities to decisions, MWI just explicates this lack of understanding. The problem was known since early 19th century.

AnHonestComment 6y ago

To concur: Copenhagen made a choice to try and preserve locality when faced with two different solutions to quantum. Unfortunately, it looks like reality is non-Euclidean instead. At this point, we actually know Copenhagen represents an extraneous assumption — but it’s deeply baked into the work of the past century.