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timtyler comments on Bloggingheads: Yudkowsky and Aaronson talk about AI and Many-worlds - Less Wrong
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On the issue of many-world, I must just be slow because I can't see how it is "obviously" correct. It certainly seems both self consistent and consistent with observation, but I don't see how this in particular puts it so far ahead of other ways of understanding QM as to be the default view. If anyone knows of a really good summary for somebody who's actually studied physics on why MWI is so great (and sadly, Eliezer's posts here and on overcomingbias don't do it for me) I would greatly appreciate the pointer.
In particular, two things that I have a hard time wrapping my head around are: -If multiple worlds really are "splitting" from our own how is this accomplished without serious violations of mass and energy conservation. (I'm sure somebody has treated this somewhere since it's so basic, but I've never seen it.) -Even assuming everything else is fine, the actual mechanism for which world diverge has to be spelled out. (Maybe it is somewhere, if so please help me end my ignorance.)
I'll admit that I haven't actually spent a great deal of time considering the issue, but I've never come across answers to basic questions of this sort.
For energy conservation see:
http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#violate
The main reason for following the MWI is Occam's razor:
http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#ockham%27s
Thank you, this is exactly the type of linking that I was looking for. Unfortunately, the FAQ that you so kindly provided isn't providing the rigor that I'm looking for. In fact, for the energy conservation portion, I think (although I'm by no means certain) that the argument has been simplified to the point that the explanation being offered isn't true.
I guess what I'd really like is an explanation of MWI that actually ties the math and the explanations together closely. (I think that I'm expressing myself poorly, so I'm sorry if my point seems muddled, but I'd actually like to really understand what Eliezer seems to find so obvious.)
The first sentence lays out the issue:
"the law conservation of energy is based on observations within each world. All observations within each world are consistent with conservation of energy, therefore energy is conserved."
Conservation of energy takes place within worlds, not between them.
FWIW, I first learned about the MWI from: Paul C.W. Davies' book: "Other Worlds" - waay back in the 1980s. It was quite readable - and one of the better popular books on QM from that era. It succeeded in conveying the "Occam" advantage of the theory.
OK, if that's really what it takes I guess I'll leave it at that. But I don't see the loss of generality from conservation laws operating on any closed system as a good thing, and I can't understand how weighting a world (that is claimed to actually exist) by a probability measure (that I've seen claimed to be meant as observed frequencies) is actually a reasonable thing to do.
I would actually like to understand this, and I suspect strongly that I'm missing something basic. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to make my ignorance suitable for public consumption, but if anyone would like to help enlighten me privately, I'd be delighted.