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While there are Occam's razor and complexity arguments concerning the relative merits of the Many Worlds Interpretation and the Copenhagen Interpretation, I thi
by chrislipa 13y ago
While there are Occam's razor and complexity arguments concerning the relative merits of the Many Worlds Interpretation and the Copenhagen Interpretation, I think this is at best a weak argument. Because, who knows? We could actually be living in a world with very complicated physics.
However, there's a different flaw that I believe completely torpedoes the Copenhagen Interpretation: the Copenhagen Interpretation is not a fully specified theory because it never actually gets around to defining when a measurement is performed. What algorithm can an experimenter run to tell when a measurement takes place? There is none. When a system is considered to be "measured" is always determined with the help of human judgement ex post facto, and alway in such a way as to fit the experimental outcome. If proponents of the Copenhagen Interpretation ever proffered such algorithm to determine when a measurement takes place, then at least we'd have something testable, even if the test were outlandish. But as it is now, the lack of such concrete specification makes the Copenhagen Interpretation unfalsifiable with respect to the Many Worlds interpretation.
Besides that, there are a couple other weaker reasons to be very suspicious of the Copenhagen Interpretation. It doesn't seem to address in any way the fact that experimenters and detectors are a part of physics themselves. If you believe that consciousness arises from physical processes happening inside of the universe, it's very hard to imagine how the Copenhagen Interpretation would compute and explain (even in theory) the physics of what's happening inside of the brain. [1] And if waveform collapse actually occurred, it would be the only known law of physics that's non-local, inherently random, has a preferred reference frame (breaking relativity), destroys information, and violates CPT symmetry. This rule is not like the other rules.
[1] - There actually is a serious school of thought that conscious beings brings the universe into existence, rather than the other way around. I don't know of any experimental evidence for or against this theory, but I'm personally not a big fan of it because the Kolmogorov complexity required to fully specify the theory is fantastically large, because it would need to fully specify how consciousness operates. Without a corresponding amount of evidence in its favor, there's no reason to elevate this hypothesis among all the others with the same or less complexity.
- chrischen 13y ago> While there are Occam's razor and complexity arguments concerning the relative merits of the Many Worlds Interpretation and the Copenhagen Interpretation. Exactly, we don't know anything, but Occam's razor is all we have, and I believe many smart people take many-worlds seriously because it is simpler.
- chrislipa 13y agoI hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Many Worlds is the simplest known hypothesis that explains the available evidence.
- chrischen 13y agoIt is the simplest known unfalsifiable theory. We can also ponder about the true existence of reality. Do we really exist, or are well all non real and in someone or somebody's head. Neither of which will ever be provable, but we obviously default to "yes we do exist" because it's simpler.
- chrislipa 13y agoMany Worlds is falsifiable. It's making testable claims about how amplitude flows between configurations and recombines constructively and destructively. If we ever find an experiment in which amplitude is flowing by some rule other than Schrödinger's equation, we'll have falsified Many Worlds, and we can throw out the theory. Not all consequences of the theory are testable, but that's true of a lot of theories.
- VladRussian2 13y agothe simplest is statistical aggregate interpretation. An interpretation of QM experiments depends on your interpretation of QM :) When one sees the world through Copenhagen interpretation (i.e. superposition of states, simultaneously dead/alive cat) one sees miracles like entanglement, and starts wondering about many worlds, etc... On the other side one can look at Hitachi's electron double-slit experiment : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ-0PBRuthc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ-0PBRuthc It doesn't refute superposition, it just allows to interpret/explain things without it. Of course with superposition gone, quantum computers are gone, and no miracles like entanglement, and many worlds while still may exist lose a potent argument in their favor :) (note: the experiment clearly shows 2 separate things: 1. the main point of QM that, for example, position of a particle is described by wave-function/quantized 2. superposition of many positions is visible as a characteristic of the whole set of particles Bringing in additional superposition at the level of one particle doesn't add anything for explanation, it only brings "miracles" that Copenhagen interpretation is filled with )
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago[1] - There actually is a serious school of thought that conscious beings brings the universe into existence, rather than the other way around. I don't know of any experimental evidence for or against this theory, but I'm personally not a big fan of it because the Kolmogorov complexity required to fully specify the theory is fantastically large, because it would need to fully specify how consciousness operates. Without a corresponding amount of evidence in its favor, there's no reason to elevate this hypothesis among all the others with the same or less complexity. That actually depends on what consciousness is. You might not necessarily need a fully operating human or humanoid brain to be conscious enough for a "psychic universe" to care.