Because they keep ignoring consciousness. On Friday, 28 February 2025 at 15:02:40 UTC+2 John Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 6:33 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote: > > *>> Towards Quantum Superpositions of a Mirror* >>> <https://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~quopt/tow.pdf> >> >> >> >> *> That's to show that a macroscopic object can be in a superposition. I >> don't see how that would test MWI?* >> > > *Greg Egan asked: * > > *"I wonder just what the implications would be if the Bouwmeester et al. > experiment* [*Towards Quantum Superpositions of a Mirror* > <https://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~quopt/tow.pdf>] *shows no interference. It > certainly gives an opportunity to falsify Penrose’s theory of > gravitationally induced collapse, and a no-interference result would make > that theory much more credible."* > > *Scott Aaronson responded: * > > "Yes, absolutely, there might be “gravity-induced environmental > decoherence,” of a kind that left quantum-mechanical linearity formally > intact. But even then, if the decoherence were irreversible for some > fundamental reason (e.g., *if the differences in the gravitational metric > in the two branches propagated outward at the speed of light, and the > cosmology was such that the branches could never recohere*), then I’d > tend to say that unitarity “remained on its throne only as a ceremonial > monarch”! In other words,* as soon as we postulate any decoherence > (whatever its source) that occurs below the level of everyday experience*, > and that’s truly irreversible for fundamental physical reasons … at that > point, I would say that *we can now fully explain our experience without > any reference to parallel copies of ourselves in other branches*, and are > therefore not forced into MWIism." > > *So in Scott Aaronson's opinion, the Bouwmeester experiment has the > potential, at the very least, to make the MWI far less credible. That is > probably why, despite Aaronson not being a big fan of MWI he is not a big > critic either, he remains neutral on the issue. And I have never heard > Aaronson say MWI is not a legitimate scientific idea because it is not > falsifiable. * > > *So if you want we can argue about whether Aaronson is right or wrong > about that, but you can't dispute that I was correct when I said that was > Aaronson's opinion.* > > *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* > *8b0* > -- 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/becc07d9-4235-451a-a65b-d4792d6a3db1n%40googlegroups.com.
