On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 4:26 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 6/20/2019 11:11 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > After all, repetitions of the relevant interactions are happening all the >> time: and not just in our controlled experiments. How can there be such >> things as objective probabilities in the MWI scenario? How can we use >> experimental evidence to support theories when we do not know whether our >> observer probabilities are representative or not? >> >> >> The same as in any probabilistic theory. We repeat it so many times that >> we have statistics that we can compare to the theoretical distribution. >> The same way you would test your theory that a coin was fair. >> > > In other words, MWI is experimentally disconfirmed. > > How so? In repeated experiments I'm aware of (and a lot of photons go > thru Aspect's EPR experiments) the statistics are consistent with the > theory. To disconfirm MWI you'd have to observe statistics far from the > expected value, which is why Tegmark proposed his machine gun suicide > experiment. > If you observe statistics far from those expected under the Born Rule you just assume that your calculation of the wave function is in error! If MWI is true, then you would expect that in at least some cases, the Born Rule would be disconfirmed. There necessarily exists branches of the wave function in which this is the case. How can you be sure that were are not on such a branch? On some branches, you can send a large number of photons to your half silvered mirror, and observe that the results conform to binomial statistics with p = 0.5. But then next long sequence of photons will all go just one way, casting doubt on your earlier statistics. Since such branches necessarily exist under MWI, how can one ever have confidence in the results of any quantum experiment? In other words, in order to do experiments in quantum optics, one has to assume that MWI is false. Bruce -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLTcxem7M9HWb%3D9pBYOnV1S%2Bs2%3DW-sHzgu-q_t0npX6p2A%40mail.gmail.com.
