EHeller comments on If Many-Worlds Had Come First - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 May 2008 07:43AM

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Comment author: EHeller 11 August 2015 09:43:14PM 0 points [-]

There is nothing in Copenhagen that forbids macroscopic superposition. The experimental results of macroscopic superposition in SQUIDs are usually calculated in terms of copenhagen (as are almost all experimental results).

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 15 August 2015 02:37:46PM 1 point [-]

That's mainly because Copenhagen never specified macrsoscopic ...but the idea of an unequivocal "cut" was at the back of a lot of copenhagenists minds, and it has been eaten away by various things over the years.

Comment author: EHeller 15 August 2015 07:48:43PM 1 point [-]

So there are obviously a lot of different things you could mean by "Copenhagen" or "in the back of a lot of copenhagenist minds" but the way it's usually used by physicists nowadays is to mean "the Von Neumann axioms" because that is what is in 90+% of the textbooks.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 29 August 2015 09:18:46AM 0 points [-]

The von Neumann axioms aren't self interpreting .

Physicists are trained to understand things in terms of mathematical formalisms and experimental results, but that falls over when dealing with interpretation. Interpretations canot be settled empirically, by definition,, and formulae are not self interpreting.

Comment author: EHeller 29 August 2015 10:21:31PM 1 point [-]

My point was only that nothing in the axioms prevents macroscopic superposition.