steven0461 comments on Why Many-Worlds Is Not The Rationally Favored Interpretation - Less Wrong

15 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 29 September 2009 05:22AM

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Comment author: steven0461 29 September 2009 07:10:53PM 4 points [-]

The possibility of future evidence against some hypothesis isn't evidence against that hypothesis. It also isn't evidence for that hypothesis. The only experiments that count are the ones that have actually been done.

Comment author: JGWeissman 29 September 2009 07:17:23PM 3 points [-]

The absence of evidence against a hypothesis that other hypotheses predict you would encounter is evidence in favor of that hypothesis.

Comment author: steven0461 29 September 2009 07:47:13PM 2 points [-]

Right, but only if they predict you'd encounter the evidence in situations that have actually happened.

Comment author: JGWeissman 29 September 2009 07:56:11PM 2 points [-]

What are the probabilities, given Many Worlds or Collapse quantum mechanics, that in our past investigations of sub atomic particles, we would have encountered some non linear term in the Schrodinger equation? I would say this has a higher probability in the collapse theory that would not be falsified by it, and thus its absence does in fact favor Many Worlds.

Comment author: steven0461 29 September 2009 08:06:44PM *  0 points [-]

Sure, it's just that taw and simpleton both seemed to be making stronger claims than that.

Comment author: taw 01 October 2009 01:16:47AM 2 points [-]

The claim I'm making is that Eliezer's acting as if MWI was proven beyond any possibility of doubt, just as non-existence of the Christian god, is not justified.

MWI is a decent interpretation, but preference for it is based mostly on different intuitions on what counts as mathematical simplicity (as data is agnostic between interpretations now), and it might get invalidated in a single experiment - which is not that terribly unlikely to happen, given past performance of our physical theories.