On 2/28/2025 5:01 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 6:33 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]>
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 Eganasked: *
/"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
All decoherence is irreversible for stat mech reasons, but I suppose
Scott is calling that non-fundamental. But what about the escape of
information to infinity via photons (and gravitational waves)? Wouldn't
that count as fundamentally irreversible? And given IR radiation from
everything not at absolute zero; it's pretty ubiquitous.
Brent
… 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*
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