Aguirre, Tegmark, Layzer "Cosmological interpretation of quantum mechanics"

cousin_it

We haven't discussed it here yet, have we? Article from August 2010. ArXiv link. The upshot:

We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, statistically uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inlfation. It has recently been argued that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist, the standard projection operators and Born rule method for calculating probabilities must be supplemented by estimates of relative frequencies of observers. We argue that an infinite space actually renders the Born rule redundant, by physically realizing all outcomes of a quantum measurement in different regions, with relative frequencies given by the square of the wave function amplitudes. [...] Finally, the analysis suggests a “cosmological interpretation” of quantum theory in which the wave function describes the actual spatial collection of identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the observer’s inability to self-locate in this collection.

The notion that I am this huge equivalence class of almost-identical human beings (just similar enough to be running the same mind-computation at this moment), scattered over a spatially infinite universe, sounds very UDT-ish. Unfortunately I don't know enough physics to judge the paper properly. Please halp.

We haven't discussed it here yet, have we? Article from August 2010. ArXiv link. The upshot:

We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, statistically uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inlfation. It has recently been argued that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist, the standard projection operators and Born rule method for calculating probabilities must be supplemented by estimates of relative frequencies of observers. We argue that an infinite space actually renders the Born rule redundant, by physically realizing all outcomes of a quantum measurement in different regions, with relative frequencies given by the square of the wave function amplitudes. [...] Finally, the analysis suggests a “cosmological interpretation” of quantum theory in which the wave function describes the actual spatial collection of identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the observer’s inability to self-locate in this collection.

Once upon a time, there was a prisoner in solitary confinement, a former public enemy number one of France, aside the wards alone in the prison and allowed only to read science books. When he came across an astronomy textbook by Lagrange, he suddenly had the same idea as you express. http://ideafoundlings.blogspot.com/2009/10/nemo-eternal-returning.html

Once I see the possibility that some idea may be expressed in crisp mathematics, I'm no longer interested in vague philosophical treatments of that idea.