On 1/12/2025 4:15 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 11:02 AM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Sunday, January 12, 2025 at 5:10:53 AM UTC+1 Brent Meeker wrote:
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.
You can convince yourself of explaining the list's raison d'etre
to me if it makes you feel better with the straw man
because Many-Worlds never says “all conceivable worlds exist.” It
says, rather, that all the outcomes allowed by the wavefunction’s
unitary evolution (i.e., by Schrödinger’s equation) are realized
in some branch.
Exactly. My point is you're reverting back from the original
list's founders to a "Few Worlds" and calling it "Many Worlds"
because you've rejected the more comprehensive idea. If you
believed the arguments you make for MWI as simpler you would apply
them consistently and arrive at Wei Dai and Bruno's ideas. That's
where they came from.
I have always thought that the argument from simplicity was deeply
flawed. What is simple for one person is probably a Rube Goldber
contraption for someone else.
Bruce
I think of it as just a rule of thumb about which of two theories to
pursue given they both work the same. Of course it two people don't
agree on what "simpler" means they will pursue different theories. It's
not about which is "true" because they are metaphysics. Philosophy at
best can just guide research; in this case into how to reconcile general
relativity and quantum mechanics.
Brent
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