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Occams razor implies that you should be agnostic to things that are not observable, not that you should pick your metaphysics. Whether the alternative universes
by jules 14y ago
Occams razor implies that you should be agnostic to things that are not observable, not that you should pick your metaphysics. Whether the alternative universes actually exist or not is completely irrelevant. The rational thing to say is "I don't care, I don't want to spend brainpower worrying about this". In mathematical terms, the hypothesis "many worlds is true" has more information content than "the predictions of QM are true" since the former implies the latter, hence Occam's razor prefers the latter. And indeed, you should also be agnostic to whether or not there is a teapot floating outside the observable universe.
- loup-vaillant 14y agoI'm not sure I agree. Things such acausal trade may mean we should know about what we can't affect (nor can affect us). But even then, I was merely talking about truth for truth's sake, where otherwise worthless knowledge does matter. Nitpick: You didn't even need Occam's Razor: Many World implies that the QM predictions are true. of course the truth of those predictions are more probable than Many Worlds. I, on the other hand, used Occam's Razor to compare Many Worlds and Copenhagen, which are mutually exclusive. I agree agnosticism is good. I'd rather be aware of my own ignorance. I like it better however when I'm also aware of its magnitude. Probability theory does just that. I don't know if Many Worlds is true, nor do I know if Copenhagen is false. But my current state of ignorance is more precise than that.