Dear All
This Wed at 3.30 in the Refectory we have Peter Lewis:
Lost in the Branches: Self-Location, Sleeping Beauty and Many-Worlds
Grad student pre-talk at 2PM
Abstract:
According to the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics, every
possible outcome of a measurement actually occurs. How, then can we
make sense of attaching probabilities to measurement outcomes, as is
required for the empirical adequacy of the theory? An attractive
answer appeals to self-location; the quantum observer gets lost in
the branching structure of worlds, so she doesn’t know which one is
hers. There is a striking analogy here with the much-discussed
Sleeping Beauty case; Sleeping Beauty gets lost among the days of the
week, so she doesn’t know which day is hers. But the Sleeping Beauty
case is itself problematic, so elucidating one case in terms of the
other may not look promising. Nevertheless, that is what I will try
to do. I think that this route can take us surprisingly far towards
an understanding of probability in many-worlds quantum mechanics,
although a significant difficulty remains.
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