DanielLC comments on A new derivation of the Born rule - Less Wrong

15 Post author: MrMind 25 June 2014 03:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (19)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: shminux 25 June 2014 06:54:59PM *  2 points [-]

I see no justification whatsoever for concluding that gravity must therefore be detectable in the weak-field limit.

Suppose we perform an experiment where, based on the measured spin value, we move some macroscopic object with detectable gravity in opposite directions. In the Newtonian background spacetime approach there is no issue with MWI, as both branches live on the same spacetime. In a full GR case, however, the spacetime itself must decohere into different branches, or else we could detect the interaction between different branches gravitationally (I don't know if this has been tested, but it would be extremely surprising if detected). I am not sure what would the mechanism which splits the spacetime itself be, since all current QM/QFT models are done on a fixed background (ignoring ST and LQG). So presumably this requires Quantum Gravity. Yet the whole thing happens at very low energies, slow speeds and weak spacetime curvatures, so that's why I said that this would have to be a QG effect in the weak-field limit. Of course it would only be "detectable" in a sense that if there is no gravitational interaction between branches, then the spacetime itself must decohere by some QG mechanism.

Comment author: DanielLC 25 June 2014 07:44:49PM -1 points [-]

I'm not an expert in the field, so it may be best to take what I say with a grain of salt, but:

There was some result to some experiment that showed that there were quantum fluctuations in space-time during the formation of the universe. We don't fully understand quantum gravity, but this shows that masses moving around and messing with spacetime isn't going to be all that different from electrons moving around and messing with the magnetic field.

Comment author: Ander 25 June 2014 09:44:05PM 0 points [-]

It looks to me that you're referring to the BICEP2 results published in March. If so, this is still unconfirmed, and physicists have pointed out a possible issue with some of the data that needs to be resolved. (Its still more likely than not to end up being true but shouldn't be taken as a definite right now).