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endoself comments on Open Thread, December 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is favored by EY as having a shorter message than others.
However, the short-message version of MWI does not include a theory as to how my particular stream of consciousness winds up in one branch or another. So Copenhagen (wave function collapse) is a theory of what I will experience, MWI is not.
Further, I have always thought MWI motivated by the ideas behind Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe." That is, a non-deterministic theory is no theory at all. And then, MWI, would be a theory without wave function collapse, so a theory with no randomness. But of course, it is NOT a theory of what a particular observer will experience. To go from MWI to a theory of what I will experience, it seems I still need to have a random function. I suspect some will answer, "no, there is one of you in every branch so MWI predicts you will experience it all, but in separate non-interacting branches. No randomness." To which I would reply, we still need a theory that accounts for my subjective experiences, how did this me, the one I actually wound up as, "choose" between the various branches. To me it would seem essentially theological to say that because some me I can't see, hear or interact with in any way experience all the other possibilities that there is no randomness in the universe. It sure seems random that I wound up experiencing this particular version, in the absence of a non-random theory of that.
Please take this as an invitation to educate me or discuss the conclusions I reach. I am interested in sorting out just what MWI really gains you when leaving Copenhagen, and as competing theories of my own personal experience, they both seem to have, essentially, a random choosing event at their core: one calls it wave function collapse, the other one tries not to talk about it.
Copenhagen is not a theory of what you will experience either; there are multiple minds even in Copenhagen's single world
Copenhagen is an interpretation where I have one mind, you have one mind, and each of us have one thread of experience. There are numerous places along that thread where the physics to calculate the time evolution of that thread is not deterministic, where a random choice has been made.
MWI is an interpretation where I have many minds, as opposed to the one mind I have in Copenhagen. In the MWI interpretation, each of my minds exists in a separate and non-interacting universe from all the other versions of my mind. If I wonder as I type this why this version of me is the one in THIS branch, MWI has no theory for that. MWI tries to make that question seem less interesting by pointing out that there are lots of versions of me asking that same question, so somehow obscuring the me-ness of the me in this branch with the me-ness of all these other similar but not identical me's in these other branches would render the question meaningless.
But as an interpretation with no observable experimental differences, MWI and Copenhagen are likely to have the same number of random events dictating progress. In MWI, the randomness is isolated to just one of many me's which of course is still quite unique and interesting to me, but which is not as bad as Copenhagen where it is the entire universe that got changed by each random waveform collapse.
How is this different to wondering why you are THIS mind in THIS branch rather than THIS OTHER mind in THIS branch? Why you are you rather than someone else?
Do I have multiple minds even in Copenhagen? And by I I mean flesh-and-blood me?
I mean that there are other minds in the world, in the sense of other people. Neither Copenhagen nor many worlds chooses a preferred mind, but people don't notice it as strongly in Copenhagen since they're already used to the idea of other conscious beings.
If I understand correctly, Copenhagen has only one mind for me, and the reality experienced by this mind is fundamentally randomly branched through wave function collapses. MWI creates a new mind for me so their are many minds for me, one in each Everett Branch. Did I miss something?
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Even under Copenhagen, one can duplicate an upload as it's running.
Let's suppose that your mind is a function of your brain, and that your brain is composed of atoms.
In MWI there are many branches with many configurations of atoms, that means many branches of your brain, that means many branches of your mind. In every branch your mind is entangled with the other atoms of the same branch. So for example in the universe with atoms of a dead cat, your mind is in the "poor kitty" state, and in the branch with the atoms of an alive cat, your mind is in the "kitty, you are so lucky, I promise I will never try this cruel experiment on you again" state.
In Copenhagen, on a tiny time scale there are many branches of atoms. But it is believed that on a larger scale it is not so. At some unspecified moment there is supposed to be a collapse where many branches of atoms become a single branch again (through a process of random selection). Nobody knows when does this happen. On a large scales, we are not able to run a precise enough experiment that would say either way. On smaller scales, where we can run the experiment, the result has always been that the collapse did not occur yet. So after the collapse, there is only one branch, and therefore one mind. Before the collapse... I would say that there is a superposition of minds (because there is a superposition of brains, because there is a superposition of atoms the brain is composed of), which should become one mind again at the moment of the collapse. But it is believed that this superposition exists only for a very small fraction of the second, so it's not like the different minds in the superposition have enough time to really think significantly different thoughts. The neurons work at a limited speed, and sending a signal from one neuron to another requires dozens of chemical reactions.