On Thursday, January 2, 2025 at 3:21:20 PM UTC-7 Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Fri, Jan 3, 2025 at 1:09 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 9:08 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: On Wednesday, January 1, 2025 at 2:59:15 PM UTC-7 Quentin Anciaux wrote: *> *Quinton: *Look at the sky, look at the size of the visible universe and all the entities we can see... I don't see *many worlds* as more extravagant, there is already for sure a bazillion entities.* *I agree. Many Worlds is certainly not more extravagant with assumptions, and when it comes to theories that's the only sort of extravagance that matters.* *> *Alan:* It is more extravagant, hugely more extravagant.* *Many Worlds produces a much more extravagant outcome but it has far simpler assumptions than its competition, they need to work very hard to get rid of those unwanted worlds that they so much dislike.* *Many Worlds assumes everything always obeys Schrodinger's Equation, or its relativistic counterpart the Dirac equation. That's it. * *Objective Collapse theory needs to add another very complicated term to Schrodinger's Equation that contains nondeterministic (a.k.a. random) elements; and nobody has yet been able to produce a relativistic counterpart to that modified equation as Dirac had done for the unmodified Schrodinger Equation way back in 1927.* *Pilot Wave Theory keeps Schrodinger's Equation but needs to add another entirely new very complicated equation called the Pilot Wave Equation that contains non-local variables. When an electron enters the two slit experiment the Pilot Wave in effect produces a little arrow pointing to one of the electrons with the caption under it saying "this is the real electron, ignore all the other ones". The Pilot Wave does absolutely nothing except erase unwanted universes, it is for this reason that some have called Pilot Wave theory the Many Worlds theory in denial. * *The Pilot Wave is unique in another way, it can affect matter but matter cannot affect it, if it's real it would be the first time in the history of physics where an exception to Newton's credo that for every action there is a reaction; even after the object it is pointing to is destroyed the pilot wave continues on, although now it is pointing at nothing and has no further effect on anything in the universe. Also, nobody has ever been able to make a relativistic version of the Pilot Wave Equation.* *And then there is the Copenhagen Interpretation. Its fundamental assumption is "everything always obeys Schrodinger's Equation except when they don't". The trouble is that fans of Copenhagen can't agree, even among themselves, what the exceptions are. And all of them are very vague. Eugene Wigner and John von Newman thought consciousness collapses the wave function. Werner Heisenberg thought there was a sharp line dividing the microscopic quantum world and the macroscopic classical world, but he couldn't say exactly or even approximately where that line was. As for what Niels Bohr said, that depends on what day of the week you asked him, and even then what he wrote and said was almost incomprehensible. **Bohr was a great scientist but a lousy philosopher. * *And that's why I think Copenhagen is just a euphemism for "shut up and calculate".And that is why I believe that Many Worlds is, at least so far, the best bad interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Perhaps tomorrow somebody will come up with a better idea but if they do I am certain of one thing, it will be even stranger than Many Worlds. Nobody will ever be able to erase the weird from Quantum Mechanics. * It is just as well that we don't rely on you for a balanced and unbiased view of the different quantum interpretations. Bruce He keeps saying I have been insulting him by calling his pov on the MWI a cult. But that's how I see it because he refuses, with numerous opportunities, to explain how, from S's equation, he concludes the everything that's possible to happen, MUST happen (which of course requires those other universes). It's really galling, his claim of being insulted when he refuses to justify one of the key postulates of his favorite interpretation. Many would call this type of behavior fundamentally dishonest. AG -- 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 visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9adefe05-b40a-4132-bf09-32a76b787d82n%40googlegroups.com.
