Will_Newsome comments on Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline - Less Wrong

88 Post author: lukeprog 28 March 2011 07:31PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 30 March 2011 04:11:46PM *  1 point [-]

Acid test 2: Are they chiding physicists for not decisively discarding single-world interpretations of quantum mechanics?

ETA: The following comment is mostly off-base due to the reason pointed out in JGWeissman's reply. Mea culpa.

Ugh, it's not like many worlds is even the most elegant interpretation: http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1066 . Talk of MWI is kind of misleading if people haven't already thought about spatially infinite universes for more than 5 minutes, which they mostly haven't.

I realize that world-eater supporters are almost definitely wrong, but I'm really suspicious of putting people into the irrational bin because they've failed according to a metric that is knowably fundamentally flawed. I doubt the utility lost via setting a precedent (even if you're damn well sure they're wrong in this case) of actually figuring out ways a person could have fundamentally correct epistemology is more than the utility lost by disregarding everyone and going all Only Sane Man. But my experience is with SIAI and not SL4. Maybe I'd think differently if I was Quirrell.

Comment author: JGWeissman 30 March 2011 09:20:52PM 5 points [-]

Ugh, it's not like many worlds is even the most elegant interpretation:

The proposed theory does not seem to be an alternative to MW QM so much as a possible answer to "What adds up to MW QM?". In this light, does pushing MW over Collapse really warrant an "ugh" response?