CronoDAS comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (265)
Well, hmmm. I wonder if this qualifies as "stupid".
Could someone help me summarize the evidence for MWI in the quantum physics sequence? I tried once, and only came up with 1) the fact that collapse postulates are "not nice" (i.e., nonlinear, nonlocal, and so on) and 2) the fact of decoherence. However, the following quote from Many Worlds, One Best Guess (emphasis added):
Is there other evidence as well, then? 1) seems depressingly weak, and as for 2)...
As was mentioned in Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable, and brought up in the comments, the existence of so-called "microscopic decoherence" (which we have evidence for) is independent from so-called "macroscopic decoherence" (which -- as far as I know, and I would like to be wrong about this -- we do not have empirical evidence for). Macroscopic decoherence seems to imply MWI, but the evidence given in the decoherence subsequence deals only with microscopic decoherence.
I would rather not have this devolve into a debate on MWI and friends -- EY above to the contrary, I don't think we can classify that question as a "stupid" one. I'm focused entirely in EY's argument for MWI and possible improvements that can be made to it.
Is it really so strange that people are still arguing over "interpretations of quantum mechanics" when the question of whether atoms existed wasn't settled until one hundred years after John Dalton published his work?