Scott Aaronson's cautious optimism for the MWI

calef

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1103

Eliezer's gung-ho attitude about the realism of the Many Worlds Interpretation always rubbed me the wrong way, especially in the podcast between both him and Scott (around 8:43 in http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2220). I've seen a similar sentiment expressed before about the MWI sequences. And I say that still believing it to be the most seemingly correct of the available interpretations.

I feel Scott's post does an excellent job grounding it as a possibly correct, and in-principle falsifiable interpretation.

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1103

I feel Scott's post does an excellent job grounding it as a possibly correct, and in-principle falsifiable interpretation.

But obviously reality is not about non-relativistic quantum mechanics. So whenever a discussion about interpretations is brought up, I think it is dishonest to argue FOR a partial version of it that really has nothing to do with reality

Fair enough. Unfortunately, the interpretive options for QFT are still not clearly worked out. I think the idea among quantum foundations people tends to be that we first figure out the best interpretation in the relatively simpler domain of NRQM, then think about how to adapt this interpretation to meet any new challenges from QFT.

This is no doubt partly due to the fact that the formal structure of NRQM is much better systematized and understood. We basically have a satisfactory axiomatization of NRQM, but attempted axiomatizations of QFT still have many... (read more)

2Thomas14y

By all means! The Relativity complicates this MWI. We have different splits for different observers, since everything is not simultaneous for everyone. Now what, if the future velocity of an observer is a result of a quantum experiment's outcome. What's very often, if not always! MWI, the non-relativistic version is NOT real, anyway.