3 ms·

MWI has a great deal to say about your life, as the rules that imply MWI are the exact same rules that imply chemistry. MWI is not QM with an added postulate of

MWI has a great deal to say about your life, as the rules that imply MWI are the exact same rules that imply chemistry. MWI is not QM with an added postulate of "Oh, by the way, everything happens." MWI is QM. Period. Decoherence unambiguously happens in the math, and nothing we have ever observed gives any reason to think the math doesn't apply to us.

thret 15y ago
Um, MWI is not QM. MWI is an elegant way of explaining the results of QM just as 6000 years ago God was an elegant way of explaining creation. It is interesting to think about but without proof of any kind it has little value. Think about the implications of a real MWI. Real universes are not cheap, an apparently infinite supply is extremely ridiculous.
- aaronbrethorst 15y ago
  I know they're completely different, but it still amuses me to think that not roo long ago you could have almost said the same thing about version control: Real branches are not cheap, an apparently infinite supply is extremely ridiculous. :-)
- gjm11 15y ago
  1. How do you know that "real universes are not cheap"? Are you an expert on the universe-making process? 2. The "universes" that appear in MWI are simply parts into which the universal wavefunction gets decomposed. Getting rid of them would require some sort of wavefunction-pruning process. You might equally say "Destroying universes is not cheap", a statement for which I think I have every bit as much evidence as you have for yours. (Of course non-MW interpretations of QM do have a wavefunction-pruning process. They don't generally have much to say about how it happens, and they tend to require ridiculous things like building the notion of "observer" into the fundamental equations of physics. Or, as in the case of Bohmian QM, they include all the same mechanics as MWI plus a bit extra and then claim to be more parsimonious simply because they attach the label "real" to a different subset of what the theory talks about.)

thret 15y ago

Um, MWI is not QM. MWI is an elegant way of explaining the results of QM just as 6000 years ago God was an elegant way of explaining creation. It is interesting to think about but without proof of any kind it has little value. Think about the implications of a real MWI. Real universes are not cheap, an apparently infinite supply is extremely ridiculous.

aaronbrethorst 15y ago
I know they're completely different, but it still amuses me to think that not roo long ago you could have almost said the same thing about version control: Real branches are not cheap, an apparently infinite supply is extremely ridiculous. :-)
gjm11 15y ago
1. How do you know that "real universes are not cheap"? Are you an expert on the universe-making process? 2. The "universes" that appear in MWI are simply parts into which the universal wavefunction gets decomposed. Getting rid of them would require some sort of wavefunction-pruning process. You might equally say "Destroying universes is not cheap", a statement for which I think I have every bit as much evidence as you have for yours. (Of course non-MW interpretations of QM do have a wavefunction-pruning process. They don't generally have much to say about how it happens, and they tend to require ridiculous things like building the notion of "observer" into the fundamental equations of physics. Or, as in the case of Bohmian QM, they include all the same mechanics as MWI plus a bit extra and then claim to be more parsimonious simply because they attach the label "real" to a different subset of what the theory talks about.)