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.

... territory is in the territory.

Umm. That sounds... non-controversial. Did I read that wrong somehow?

No, you read it right. However, instrumentally, the map-territory relation is just a model, like any other, though somewhat more general. It postulates existence of some immutable objective reality with fixed laws, something to be studied ("mapped"). While this may appear self-evident to a realist, one ought to agree that it is still an assumption, however useful it might be. And it is indeed very useful: it explains why carefully set up experiments are repeatable, and assures you that they will continue to be. Thus it is easy to forget that it i... (read more)