From Costanza's original thread (entire text):
This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.
Meta:
- How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.
- Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.
A couple of embarrassingly basic physics questions, inspired by recent discussions here:
On occasion people will speak of some object "exiting one's future light cone". How is it possible to escape a light cone without traveling in a spacelike direction?
Does any interpretation of quantum mechanics offer a satisfactory derivation of the Born rule? If so, why are interpretations that don't still considered candIdates? If not, why do people speak as if the lack of such a derivation were a point against MWI?
The primary argument in favor of MWI is that it doesn't require you to postulate additional natural laws other than the basic ones we know for quantum evolution. This argument can pretty easily be criticized on the grounds that yes, MWI does require you to know an additional fact about the universe (the Born rule) before you can actually generate correct predictions.