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Stuart_Armstrong comments on Why Many-Worlds Is Not The Rationally Favored Interpretation - Less Wrong
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Comments (98)
Special relativity, winning over the add-hoc rules of time dilation and length/mass transformations that were known beforehand (and essentially predicted the same thing).
Special relativity is an example of an equally correct theory winning over an earlier, somewhat entrenched theory, but I'm not sure how it won. When it first appeared, many people declared it obvious, some claiming that this was good, some bad. It was still unpopular when Einstein won the Nobel prize. One possibility is that it won because of his eminence, eg, because of the photo-electric effect, which is an extremely poor reason. The obvious answer is that it won because of GR. I guess that probably constitutes an example of winning because of usability.
I'm a little concerned about how we draw lines between theories, but I suppose that would apply to any answer to the question.
It was the best theory to explain the results of the Michaelson-Morley experiments.
Saying that relativity is "the best theory" is not very different from saying that it won. Stuart says that it won because it was simpler than Lorentz contractions. It was not widely believed to be the best theory in 1915. What happened between then and now? Was it obviously better and the old guard just had to die? Or did something else that happened, like the Nobel or GR change people's minds?
I'm not sure that Lorentz's transformations were more ad hoc than Einstein's, though Minkowski's were a definite improvement. If Einstein's principle lead to Minkowski's work, that's good, and meets Vladimir's usability criterion; and probably counts as simplicity.
Lorentz contractions are special relativity. My understanding was that Einstein's great role was unifying and putting under one roof the various add-hoc results.