7 ms·

Yes! But the best theory is not Copenhagen or Pilot Wave. Eliezer Yudkowski has a brilliant treatise on the Many Worlds interpretation here: http://lesswrong.

Yes! But the best theory is not Copenhagen or Pilot Wave. Eliezer Yudkowski has a brilliant treatise on the Many Worlds interpretation here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ that really should be required reading for anyone that wants to talk intelligently on the subject. Edit: seriously, don't even bother reading the article. It (like most science journalism) is garbage. Take the time to work through Eliezer's sequence.

acqq 12y ago
So please explain in a few sentences what is that that Yudkowski writes, did he make any new contribution to the standard model or made something else or do you agree that the standard model is the most researched and most usable model up to now, and he just made a lot of posts where he just writes a lot of text? I see a lot of links in the article you gave, but I don't understand what we're supposed to discover in Yudkowski's writings after trying to follow most of them. There's a lot of free text, not much physics. The standard model is a lot of smart formulas supported by the decades of expensive elaborate measurements (and vice versa), however his texts look more like writings of some philosophy student who knows a little of the math than like a physicist's material. I'd also really welcome opinions of professional physicists. Edit: Wikipedia entry about him seems to fit my impression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky "Yudkowsky (...) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for Friendly artificial intelligence (...) Largely self-educated."
- gohrt 12y ago
  The Standard Model is a model, not an interpretation. Whether Yudkowsky is right or wrong, anyone's interpretation is going to be text, not physics.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- Sharlin 12y ago
  The Standard Model does not concern itself with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. It can, as of now, neither verify or falsify any of the interpretations which, consequently, are not scientific theories or even hypotheses, but firmly on the side of philosophy of physics. The interpretations are attempts to answer why Nature works as it does, within the framework of the Standard Model which only appears to answer the question how. Yudkowsky certainly hasn't invented the many worlds interpretation, which was originally formulated by the physicist Hugh Everett in 1957. Even though originally scorned, in the more recent times it has gained popularity among physicists. The series of blog posts by Yudkowsky are (in my opinion, at least) a persuasive argument in its favor against the competing interpretations, and are very much recommended reading for anyone who would like to better understand the issue.
  - acqq 12y ago
    > the interpretations which, consequently, are not scientific theories or even hypotheses, but firmly on the side of philosophy of physics. Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know. I'm completely satisfied with the "shut up and calculate" approach. For me, until somebody shows that he/she can calculate (that is, predict) more than what physicists achieve, they are the ones the closest to "the truth" and not the "interpreter."
    - scott_s 12y ago
      Last week, I wrote a comment replying to someone asking, if we can't use experiments to determine which interpretation is better, what's the point? Rather than repeat myself, I'll just link to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940647
      - acqq 12y ago
        You say there: "How they lean will influence what sort of questions they investigate, how they investigate it, and what sort of outcomes they will look for." If I understand you, we can expect that somebody is maybe going to be the first to discover something new thanks to the way he's used to think about the subject. Still, before that happens, what do we have? Edit: Only real hard science. The discoverer we expect of course must decide from which side to attack the matter to reach the new discoveries.
- Jach 12y ago
  Have you read Feynman's QED? It's a bit like that, in that it's meant for a layman, but with more algebra. Instead of abstract arrows, EY goes straight to complex numbers. It goes through a basic approach to quantum mechanics (taking diagrams from here for instance: http://www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk/node/60 http://www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk/node/60) in a modern way and tries to build an intuitive understanding of the subject, especially demolishing a lot of confusions one may have gained through popular media. He then departs from the basic theory to elaborate on why the collapse interpretation is ridiculous and why Many-Worlds makes more sense. You can stop when you get to the Timeless stuff. You're not really going to find anything ground-breaking, but it may help your intuitions about QM even if you're a physicist. As a chapter from the Aaronson book (http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html) I linked to in a cousin comment says in the first two paragraphs: There are two ways to teach quantum mechanics. The first way -- which for most physicists today is still the only way -- follows the historical order in which the ideas were discovered. So, you start with classical mechanics and electrodynamics, solving lots of grueling differential equations at every step. Then you learn about the "blackbody paradox" and various strange experimental results, and the great crisis these things posed for physics. Next you learn a complicated patchwork of ideas that physicists invented between 1900 and 1926 to try to make the crisis go away. Then, if you're lucky, after years of study you finally get around to the central conceptual point: that nature is described not by probabilities (which are always nonnegative), but by numbers called amplitudes that can be positive, negative, or even complex. Today, in the quantum information age, the fact that all the physicists had to learn quantum this way seems increasingly humorous. For example, I've had experts in quantum field theory -- people who've spent years calculating path integrals of mind-boggling complexity -- ask me to explain the Bell inequality to them. That's like Andrew Wiles asking me to explain the Pythagorean Theorem. (And on EY himself, just read the million or so words of the Sequences and you'll see he is actually really smart across multiple domains. ;))
  - acqq 12y ago
    I never claimed that EY isn't smart, only that what he writes is not actually physics. As much as I remember Feynman's lectures, he introduced the amplitudes very early?
- sriku 12y ago
  Yudkowsky's contribution is pedagogical rather than anything fundamentally new. He explains quite well in short the process of "decoherence" and links it well to the many worlds interpretation. He makes a case for why the "many worlds interpretation" is not really an "interpretation", but is just stating what the mathematics says on its face anyway .. and hence is the one we should adopt. In particular, he does a good job of connecting this to "timeless physics" - i.e. the Weyl equation for the "wavefunction of the universe" which does not have time in it.
  - sriku 12y ago
    edit: Sorry! Tongue of the slip. I was referring to the "Wheeler-DeWitt equation" [1] and not the "Weyl equation" [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_equation
- DavidPlumpton 12y ago
  Yudkowsky is more of an expert in reasoning than in Physics. For example, imagine you are a world class expert in Quantum Mechanics and you are asked to give a talk at a science club. You cover a lot of stuff and think "that was great". But somebody else tells you "that was terrible, you mumbled, you wrote illegible stuff on the board etc." and you realise it wasn't about QM, it was about public speaking. Similarly physicists have done amazing work over the decades, and now it's time to draw conclusions from all that evidence. But it turns out that physicists are not domain experts in drawing conclusions from evidence. That kind of skill is a separate domain in its own right.
X4 12y ago
May I add David Deutsch's (not yet peer-reviewed, but promising) paper on the Contructor Theory of Information? The Physics arXiv Blog writes about it here: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/deeper-than-quantum-mechanics-david-deutschs-new-theory-of-reality-9b8281bc793a https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/deeper-than-quantu... For the curious, the link to the paper can be found at the end of the article. I remember being downvoted by circle of HN folks who weren't comfortable with Information transfer using Quantum Teleportation. Depite efforts to refute it, here's a team that suceeded doing exactly this => http://phys.org/news/2014-05-team-accurately-teleported-quantum-ten.html* http://phys.org/news/2014-05-team-accurately-teleported-quan...
- Jach 12y ago
  While we're giving suggestions, I'd again point to Scott Aaronson's http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/default.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/default.html (also available in book form) and his blog in general (especially when quantum computers are in the news). His approach is unique to me in that it's a strongly computer science point of view. Edit: Another link I remembered that's strongly in the vein of QM for programmers is (suitably titled) here: http://oyhus.no/QuantumMechanicsForProgrammers.html http://oyhus.no/QuantumMechanicsForProgrammers.html
- thedufer 12y ago
  I'm skeptical, if only because this should be a big deal and hasn't gotten much press. > We're able to set the spin (rotational direction) of these particles in a predetermined state, verify this spin and subsequently read out the data. This is terribly unclear. I don't have access to the article - maybe its better explained there? The problem with using quantum entanglement for information transfer is that you can't cause a particular spin at either location - they're just both reading random data that correlates. Nothing about this allows any actual transfer of information. Why are they not explaining how they got around this? That's the interesting bit, as far as I can tell.
  - X4 12y ago
    Paper in short: http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2014/scienze/science-xpress.pdf http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2014/scienze/science-xpres... Paper in full: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.4369 http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.4369 To the physicists among the us, please share your opinion on the paper with the rest of us. It's not easy to digest the paper. The finding is not only going to change finance, but also the whole data economy will speed up. Now 'Quants' can be located anywhere and everyone has can enjoy same advantage of datacenter-closeness, evening out the prestigious role of the select few. Well, not really. It's going to take quite some time until the mid-class can access this technology unless, someone finds out a way for mass-production. That would be stellar. That's it. I hate nobody with a rational mind of whatever kind, but naysayers really itch me.
jostylr 12y ago
The clearest version of Many Worlds that I have seen is from the "Bohmians": http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2211.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2211.pdf Basically, you get a mass density on physical space by integrating over the wave function. Then you have correlations of changes in the mass density. Reality becomes a bit like fuzzy tv reception with overlapping channels. There is no splitting of the universe or any other nonsense. I still don't like the theory, but at least it is a well-defined theory.
deutronium 12y ago
And why should we read Yudkowski instead, rather than other physicists on this matter, as far as I know he's not in a position of authority in this area.
- spacehome 12y ago
  I would never say instead of. Read whomever you like; read them all. Though, I would suggest that anyone who still takes Copenhagen seriously really needs to digest that sequence. Eliezer is a smart guy with great insights into how to think about questions. His "position of authority" is that he writes in a way that's clear and conveys meaningful novel insights. If you think that only Ph.D.s have insights worth reading you're missing out. There's nothing "new" or "publishable" in the sequence, but Eliezer collates a lot of good ideas and presents them well. For what it's worth, I personally feel like I've learned a lot from reading him. I was just trying to share it in the hopes that someone else on HN may find him as insightful as I do, and the quantum physics sequence is one of his better works. It was just a friendly pointer. If you're not interested, disregard.
  - SilasX 12y ago
    >>And why should we read Yudkowski instead >I would never say instead of. When you recommend something, you're implicitly advocating that it be read in preference to other works on the matter. It makes no sense to say "I recommend this, but it's no better than anything else."
    - prutschman 12y ago
      "I recommend this. Reading it is better than not reading it, and you may not have been aware of its existence." The recommender is in no position to know whether your next-best alternative was reading another work on the subject or reloading hacker news or taking a nap.
      - SilasX 12y ago
        The recommendation and its follow-up question were about alternatives in the context of learning about quantum mechanics.
SilasX 12y ago
I want to upvote out of agreement, but I really, really hate when people recommend a very long work they expect me to read on faith without a summary of what it offers so I can know Of it's worthwhile. Here's what I would have added: Yudkowsky explains quantum mechanics in terms of the decoherence interpretation and how it makes logical sense as following from a simple rule that nonetheless contradicted widely held philosophical assumptions that kept its simple truth from being appreciated.
im3w1l 12y ago
I'd like to propose a thought experiment that in my opinion speaks for a many world interpretation. Imagine Schrödingers Cat. Only we have a physicist in the box instead! Also inside the box is a photon emitter programmed to send a photon after 30 seconds. Our dear physicist has been instructed to, if he is still alive after 20 seconds (adjusted to have 50% prob) to move the emitter just a tiny little bit to the left. Now according to the quantum laws, the photon from the original position should create an interference pattern with the photon from the slightly moved position... provided we succeeded in creating a superposition of dead/alive physicist. Of course, every single experiment would just give one detection, so we would have to do it many times, to really verify that it worked. The experiment could of course be scaled up, so that we instead proved that we had superpositions of planets being blown up or something. At some point, when the system in superposition is large enough - or significant enough -, I don't see how you could refrain from calling that many worlds.
- ars 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide
  - im3w1l 12y ago
    Since you only post a link with no comment text I don't really know what you mean to say with it. Anyway, I think my proposal had a key advantage. The interference pattern could in theory be measured. We could get tables and graphs and sigma values.
    - ars 12y ago
      It was just a link to something that seemed very similar to what you said.

acqq 12y ago

So please explain in a few sentences what is that that Yudkowski writes, did he make any new contribution to the standard model or made something else or do you agree that the standard model is the most researched and most usable model up to now, and he just made a lot of posts where he just writes a lot of text? I see a lot of links in the article you gave, but I don't understand what we're supposed to discover in Yudkowski's writings after trying to follow most of them. There's a lot of free text, not much physics. The standard model is a lot of smart formulas supported by the decades of expensive elaborate measurements (and vice versa), however his texts look more like writings of some philosophy student who knows a little of the math than like a physicist's material. I'd also really welcome opinions of professional physicists. Edit: Wikipedia entry about him seems to fit my impression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky "Yudkowsky (...) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for Friendly artificial intelligence (...) Largely self-educated."

gohrt 12y ago
The Standard Model is a model, not an interpretation. Whether Yudkowsky is right or wrong, anyone's interpretation is going to be text, not physics.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Sharlin 12y ago
The Standard Model does not concern itself with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. It can, as of now, neither verify or falsify any of the interpretations which, consequently, are not scientific theories or even hypotheses, but firmly on the side of philosophy of physics. The interpretations are attempts to answer why Nature works as it does, within the framework of the Standard Model which only appears to answer the question how. Yudkowsky certainly hasn't invented the many worlds interpretation, which was originally formulated by the physicist Hugh Everett in 1957. Even though originally scorned, in the more recent times it has gained popularity among physicists. The series of blog posts by Yudkowsky are (in my opinion, at least) a persuasive argument in its favor against the competing interpretations, and are very much recommended reading for anyone who would like to better understand the issue.
- acqq 12y ago
  > the interpretations which, consequently, are not scientific theories or even hypotheses, but firmly on the side of philosophy of physics. Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know. I'm completely satisfied with the "shut up and calculate" approach. For me, until somebody shows that he/she can calculate (that is, predict) more than what physicists achieve, they are the ones the closest to "the truth" and not the "interpreter."
  - scott_s 12y ago
    Last week, I wrote a comment replying to someone asking, if we can't use experiments to determine which interpretation is better, what's the point? Rather than repeat myself, I'll just link to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940647
    - acqq 12y ago
      You say there: "How they lean will influence what sort of questions they investigate, how they investigate it, and what sort of outcomes they will look for." If I understand you, we can expect that somebody is maybe going to be the first to discover something new thanks to the way he's used to think about the subject. Still, before that happens, what do we have? Edit: Only real hard science. The discoverer we expect of course must decide from which side to attack the matter to reach the new discoveries.
Jach 12y ago
Have you read Feynman's QED? It's a bit like that, in that it's meant for a layman, but with more algebra. Instead of abstract arrows, EY goes straight to complex numbers. It goes through a basic approach to quantum mechanics (taking diagrams from here for instance: http://www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk/node/60 http://www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk/node/60) in a modern way and tries to build an intuitive understanding of the subject, especially demolishing a lot of confusions one may have gained through popular media. He then departs from the basic theory to elaborate on why the collapse interpretation is ridiculous and why Many-Worlds makes more sense. You can stop when you get to the Timeless stuff. You're not really going to find anything ground-breaking, but it may help your intuitions about QM even if you're a physicist. As a chapter from the Aaronson book (http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html) I linked to in a cousin comment says in the first two paragraphs: There are two ways to teach quantum mechanics. The first way -- which for most physicists today is still the only way -- follows the historical order in which the ideas were discovered. So, you start with classical mechanics and electrodynamics, solving lots of grueling differential equations at every step. Then you learn about the "blackbody paradox" and various strange experimental results, and the great crisis these things posed for physics. Next you learn a complicated patchwork of ideas that physicists invented between 1900 and 1926 to try to make the crisis go away. Then, if you're lucky, after years of study you finally get around to the central conceptual point: that nature is described not by probabilities (which are always nonnegative), but by numbers called amplitudes that can be positive, negative, or even complex. Today, in the quantum information age, the fact that all the physicists had to learn quantum this way seems increasingly humorous. For example, I've had experts in quantum field theory -- people who've spent years calculating path integrals of mind-boggling complexity -- ask me to explain the Bell inequality to them. That's like Andrew Wiles asking me to explain the Pythagorean Theorem. (And on EY himself, just read the million or so words of the Sequences and you'll see he is actually really smart across multiple domains. ;))
- acqq 12y ago
  I never claimed that EY isn't smart, only that what he writes is not actually physics. As much as I remember Feynman's lectures, he introduced the amplitudes very early?
sriku 12y ago
Yudkowsky's contribution is pedagogical rather than anything fundamentally new. He explains quite well in short the process of "decoherence" and links it well to the many worlds interpretation. He makes a case for why the "many worlds interpretation" is not really an "interpretation", but is just stating what the mathematics says on its face anyway .. and hence is the one we should adopt. In particular, he does a good job of connecting this to "timeless physics" - i.e. the Weyl equation for the "wavefunction of the universe" which does not have time in it.
- sriku 12y ago
  edit: Sorry! Tongue of the slip. I was referring to the "Wheeler-DeWitt equation" [1] and not the "Weyl equation" [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_equation
DavidPlumpton 12y ago
Yudkowsky is more of an expert in reasoning than in Physics. For example, imagine you are a world class expert in Quantum Mechanics and you are asked to give a talk at a science club. You cover a lot of stuff and think "that was great". But somebody else tells you "that was terrible, you mumbled, you wrote illegible stuff on the board etc." and you realise it wasn't about QM, it was about public speaking. Similarly physicists have done amazing work over the decades, and now it's time to draw conclusions from all that evidence. But it turns out that physicists are not domain experts in drawing conclusions from evidence. That kind of skill is a separate domain in its own right.

X4 12y ago

May I add David Deutsch's (not yet peer-reviewed, but promising) paper on the Contructor Theory of Information? The Physics arXiv Blog writes about it here: https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/deeper-than-quantum-mechanics-david-deutschs-new-theory-of-reality-9b8281bc793a https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/deeper-than-quantu... For the curious, the link to the paper can be found at the end of the article. I remember being downvoted by circle of HN folks who weren't comfortable with Information transfer using Quantum Teleportation. Depite efforts to refute it, here's a team that suceeded doing exactly this => http://phys.org/news/2014-05-team-accurately-teleported-quantum-ten.html* http://phys.org/news/2014-05-team-accurately-teleported-quan...

Jach 12y ago
While we're giving suggestions, I'd again point to Scott Aaronson's http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/default.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/default.html (also available in book form) and his blog in general (especially when quantum computers are in the news). His approach is unique to me in that it's a strongly computer science point of view. Edit: Another link I remembered that's strongly in the vein of QM for programmers is (suitably titled) here: http://oyhus.no/QuantumMechanicsForProgrammers.html http://oyhus.no/QuantumMechanicsForProgrammers.html
thedufer 12y ago
I'm skeptical, if only because this should be a big deal and hasn't gotten much press. > We're able to set the spin (rotational direction) of these particles in a predetermined state, verify this spin and subsequently read out the data. This is terribly unclear. I don't have access to the article - maybe its better explained there? The problem with using quantum entanglement for information transfer is that you can't cause a particular spin at either location - they're just both reading random data that correlates. Nothing about this allows any actual transfer of information. Why are they not explaining how they got around this? That's the interesting bit, as far as I can tell.
- X4 12y ago
  Paper in short: http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2014/scienze/science-xpress.pdf http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2014/scienze/science-xpres... Paper in full: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.4369 http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.4369 To the physicists among the us, please share your opinion on the paper with the rest of us. It's not easy to digest the paper. The finding is not only going to change finance, but also the whole data economy will speed up. Now 'Quants' can be located anywhere and everyone has can enjoy same advantage of datacenter-closeness, evening out the prestigious role of the select few. Well, not really. It's going to take quite some time until the mid-class can access this technology unless, someone finds out a way for mass-production. That would be stellar. That's it. I hate nobody with a rational mind of whatever kind, but naysayers really itch me.

jostylr 12y ago

The clearest version of Many Worlds that I have seen is from the "Bohmians": http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2211.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2211.pdf Basically, you get a mass density on physical space by integrating over the wave function. Then you have correlations of changes in the mass density. Reality becomes a bit like fuzzy tv reception with overlapping channels. There is no splitting of the universe or any other nonsense. I still don't like the theory, but at least it is a well-defined theory.

deutronium 12y ago

And why should we read Yudkowski instead, rather than other physicists on this matter, as far as I know he's not in a position of authority in this area.

spacehome 12y ago
I would never say instead of. Read whomever you like; read them all. Though, I would suggest that anyone who still takes Copenhagen seriously really needs to digest that sequence. Eliezer is a smart guy with great insights into how to think about questions. His "position of authority" is that he writes in a way that's clear and conveys meaningful novel insights. If you think that only Ph.D.s have insights worth reading you're missing out. There's nothing "new" or "publishable" in the sequence, but Eliezer collates a lot of good ideas and presents them well. For what it's worth, I personally feel like I've learned a lot from reading him. I was just trying to share it in the hopes that someone else on HN may find him as insightful as I do, and the quantum physics sequence is one of his better works. It was just a friendly pointer. If you're not interested, disregard.
- SilasX 12y ago
  >>And why should we read Yudkowski instead >I would never say instead of. When you recommend something, you're implicitly advocating that it be read in preference to other works on the matter. It makes no sense to say "I recommend this, but it's no better than anything else."
  - prutschman 12y ago
    "I recommend this. Reading it is better than not reading it, and you may not have been aware of its existence." The recommender is in no position to know whether your next-best alternative was reading another work on the subject or reloading hacker news or taking a nap.
    - SilasX 12y ago
      The recommendation and its follow-up question were about alternatives in the context of learning about quantum mechanics.

SilasX 12y ago

I want to upvote out of agreement, but I really, really hate when people recommend a very long work they expect me to read on faith without a summary of what it offers so I can know Of it's worthwhile. Here's what I would have added: Yudkowsky explains quantum mechanics in terms of the decoherence interpretation and how it makes logical sense as following from a simple rule that nonetheless contradicted widely held philosophical assumptions that kept its simple truth from being appreciated.

im3w1l 12y ago

I'd like to propose a thought experiment that in my opinion speaks for a many world interpretation. Imagine Schrödingers Cat. Only we have a physicist in the box instead! Also inside the box is a photon emitter programmed to send a photon after 30 seconds. Our dear physicist has been instructed to, if he is still alive after 20 seconds (adjusted to have 50% prob) to move the emitter just a tiny little bit to the left. Now according to the quantum laws, the photon from the original position should create an interference pattern with the photon from the slightly moved position... provided we succeeded in creating a superposition of dead/alive physicist. Of course, every single experiment would just give one detection, so we would have to do it many times, to really verify that it worked. The experiment could of course be scaled up, so that we instead proved that we had superpositions of planets being blown up or something. At some point, when the system in superposition is large enough - or significant enough -, I don't see how you could refrain from calling that many worlds.

ars 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide
- im3w1l 12y ago
  Since you only post a link with no comment text I don't really know what you mean to say with it. Anyway, I think my proposal had a key advantage. The interference pattern could in theory be measured. We could get tables and graphs and sigma values.
  - ars 12y ago
    It was just a link to something that seemed very similar to what you said.