On 1/11/2025 6:13 AM, PGC wrote:
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.
In fact infinitely many that have already been preemptorily ruled out
because they don't satisfy Schroedinger's equation. The reason this is
called the "Everything List" is because the originators wanted to
discuss theories like Max Tegmark's and Bruno Marchal's that
*/everything/*, in some sense happens and each of us is only a thread of
it. Both have argued that this is "simpler" because no additional
assumptions are needed to exclude all the things we don't see, they are
just on different threads.
Brent
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
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