That's something you keep assuming. I’m not here to defend Many-Worlds or any particular ontology. I defend nothing. Rather, I’m struck by the curious fact that insisting on “nothing extra” in quantum mechanics—like ordering one’s bourbon neat—can mean quietly negating a host of other flavors that were right there on the menu. Yes, the Born rule is a triumph, and I fully recognize its power for quantum computing, materials science, lasers, and more. Still, there’s a subtlety: that “neat” approach—while perfectly valid pragmatically—relegates all those wavefunction branches to the realm of “not real.” It looks minimal but actually demands a long list of invisible exclusions.
I actually appreciate the aesthetic side of this tension, even if I am concerned with the consequences of the dominance of scientific compartmentalization. There’s nothing wrong with “neat” per se, but the alternative—allowing those other cocktail variants, or other worlds on the menu— is at least equally rational and as extravagant as their negation; counterintuitively perhaps even less. Merely focusing on which is “simpler” can obscure the bigger risk: by separating metaphysics from practical science, we risk deploying technology in ways divorced from meaningful reflection on their applications. This is the path to endless weaponization, disinformation, runaway inequalities, monopolies, self-dealing politics, and shortsighted power grabs. It’s like mixing potent chemicals with no regard for synergy or side effects—paradoxically, the outcome is more likely to become toxic because we never asked, “What for?” And, as with bourbon, we shouldn’t forget it’s fundamentally a poison. As Paracelsus noted, the right dose in the right circumstances can heal while the wrong dose applied thoughtlessly destroys. Today’s headlines confirm how easily an unexamined, “neat” technological progress can poison us on a global scale. Sidestepping metaphysical questions doesn’t remove their force; it just lets the cruder, more destructive impulses flourish unchecked. In short, I’m not “enamored” of any grand rule-of-thumb—only mindful that neglecting the “rest of the wavefunction” might be the bigger extravagance, both in science and in the messy human world we share. But I do not "occupy a side", nor am I vain enough to let the internet convince me that doing so would change anything. I remain fascinated and repulsed by this tension and our current bias to the mainstream stance that "progress is everything" and "philosophy/reflection is for idiots"; while shooting ourselves in the foot in the news day after day. That's why I ask technological progress/domain specific mindset folks: "What for? How are you not serving the sea of emerging dictators, thieves, and opportunists with weapons/tools/technologies of mass destruction at their fingertips?" On Friday, January 10, 2025 at 3:57:55 AM UTC+1 Brent Meeker wrote: On 1/9/2025 2:37 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Seems to me a good summary 😉 Le jeu. 9 janv. 2025, 11:33, PGC <multipl...@gmail.com> a écrit : This is getting circular. Brent’s single-world view treats the wavefunction ∣Ψ⟩=∑iαi∣ϕi⟩ as purely instrumental: it calculates probabilities for each outcome, but in the end only one outcome (∣ϕk⟩) “actually happens.” Everything else is declared “not real.” This works fine for making predictions, yet offers no deeper reason why all other ∣ϕj⟩ (j=k) must be forcibly nullified. One must simply accept that, by some extra postulate or interpretation, the other possibilities vanish. Quentin’s many-worlds (or “all possibilities realized”) approach skips that forced collapse. Instead of removing alternate terms, it treats each ∣ϕj⟩ as persisting in a branching global state. The “randomness” we see is then about which branch “we” (as observers) occupy, rather than an inexplicable destruction of non-selected outcomes. So there’s no logical step that says, “Everything else is disallowed”; it’s all there in the broader superposition. Probabilities emerge from relative measures of those branches rather than from an unexplained single selection. In short, Brent’s stance is instrumentally consistent but depends on an unelaborated principle that kills off every competing outcome. Quentin’s stance avoids such “negation” by allowing all terms of the wavefunction to proceed. Whether that’s too big an ontological leap is a separate debate—but it at least doesn’t require a special rule that says, “Only one of these can exist; the rest never happened.” Brent, you're asking for "extra negation", pretending that you simplify when in fact, you add a whole new assumption. Similar to atheists who need to use the notion of god to assert ~god, thinking rather simplistically that you've cleaned up the whole mess. Nothing extra. It's know as "saving the phenomenon". I've never seen people so enamored of a philosophical rule-of-thumb that they defend an extravagant ontology as though their souls were on the line. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/efca0659-6e0c-45c1-b01c-f8d983ec13den%40googlegroups.com.
