Today's post, Quantum Non-Realism was originally published on 08 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
"Shut up and calculate" is the best approach you can take when none of your theories are very good. But that is not the same as claiming that "Shut up!" actually is a theory of physics. Saying "I don't know what these equations mean, but they seem to work" is a very different matter from saying: "These equations definitely don't mean anything, they just work!"
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Jaynes died in 1998. How did he never hear of MWI? I'd heard of MWI in 1998, and I was just a kid.
EDIT: Google Books turns up the following snippet in The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III:
I have been unable to find any copies online, Amazon wants $30 for any copy, and neither my local library nor university nor county catalog hold it. Man!
EDITEDIT: Google Books gives more access to The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Collected Works 1955-1980, which gives an entire chapter 18 to 'Correspondence: Everett and Jaynes (1957)': http://books.google.com/books?id=dowpli7i6TgC&pg=PA261&dq=jaynes+everett&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N9CdT9PSIcLOgAf-3vTxDg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
I'm not sure what they are discussing, and many-worlds doesn't seem to come up (at least under that name) and most of the chapter is inaccessible, but it's clear from the chapter summary Jaynes doesn't think much of Everett's position.
EDIT: they are both on Libgen now. The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III's mention of Jaynes is just about statistics, not MWI. (The book is worth reading for other reasons.) Jaynes's view of MWI remains a mystery.
Buy Buy - Dan Davis: