DanielLC comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 2 - Less Wrong

15 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 20 April 2012 07:38PM

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Comment author: DanielLC 20 April 2012 09:51:30PM 0 points [-]

Also, if MWI hypothesis is true, there's no way for one branch to interact with another later, right?

Basically, if two of them evolve into the same "world", they interfere. It could be constructive or destructive. It averages out to be that it occurs as often as you'd expect, so outside of stuff like the double-slit experiment, they won't really interact.

Comment author: TimS 20 April 2012 10:34:48PM 0 points [-]

Hmm. I'm also pretty sure that the double-slit experiments are not evidence of MWI vs. waveform collapse.

Comment author: DanielLC 21 April 2012 06:34:15PM 3 points [-]

They are evidence against wave-form collapse, in that they give a lower bound as to when it must occur. Since, if it does exist, it's fairly likely that waveform collapse happens at a really extreme point, there's really only a fairly small amount of evidence you can get against waveform collapse without something that disproves MWI too. The reason MWI is more likely is Occam's razor, not evidence.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 21 April 2012 05:38:13AM 1 point [-]

Well, I tried to understand some double-slit corner-cases. If I read some classical Copenhagen-approach quantum physics textbook, it is hard to describe what happens if you install a non-precise particle detector securely protected from experimenter's attempts to ever read it.

Of course, in some cases Penrose model and MWI are hard to distinguish, because gravitons are hard to screen off and can cause entanglement over large distances.