Luke_A_Somers comments on Decoherence is Simple - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 May 2008 07:44AM

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Comment author: CCC 05 August 2015 11:51:34AM 1 point [-]

Under MWI, this is so unsurprising that I'm having a hard time justifying performing the experiment except as a way of showing off cool things we can do with coherence.

Then the justification is simple; it either provides evidence in favour of MWI (and Copenhagen and any other theory that predicts the expected result) or it shatters all of them.

Scientists have to do experiments to which the answer is obvious - failing to do so leads to the situation where everybody knows that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects because nobody actually checked that.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 August 2015 03:21:18AM 0 points [-]

The problem is, we've done much, MUCH more stringent tests than this. It's like, after checking the behavior of pendulums and falling objects of varying weights and lengths and areas, over vast spans of time and all regions of the globe, and in centrifuges, and on pulleys... we went on to then check if two identical objects would fall at the same speed if we dropped one when the other landed.

Anyway, I didn't say it shouldn't be done. I support basic experiments on QM, but I'd like them to push the envelope in interesting ways rather than, well, this.